Prince Charles warns of human extinction

I couldn't think of anything funny to put in the headline until I realized that playing it straight was pretty funny itself.

I realize this poor fellow has nothing to do but wait around for his mum to die. And the very concept of "royalty" in the 21st century is giggle worthy. But really, do we have to listen to this titanic bore droning on about things of which he has little knowledge and less wisdom?

The Telegraph:

In his first speech as the new President of the Worldwide Wildlife Fund (WWF) UK, Prince Charles suggested 'surviving ourselves' should be a priority.

Referring to himself as "an endangered species", he warned that the world is already in the "sixth extinction event", with species dying out at a much faster rate than at any time since the death of most of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Despite campaigning for years on global warming, he said climate change was not the only problem but merely speeding up the "rapacious" destruction of natural resources like water, land and food that humans need to survive.

The Prince said if the world carries on "business as usual" then the human race itself could be in danger.

"We are, of course, witnessing what some people call the sixth great extinction event - the continued erosion of much of the Earth's vital biodiversity caused by a whole host of pressures, from the rising demand for land to the corrosive effects of all kinds of pollution," he said.

He got one thing right; princes of the royal house are pretty close to becoming extinct - thank God. The balmy notion that someone should occupy a superior position in society based solely on who his mom and dad were brings to mind the brilliant Monty Python sketch on British blue bloods vying for the "Upper Class Twit of the Year." Lord knows there has been enough inbreeding over the years to make the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. (er, Windsor - they changed it because they found it inconvenient to be related to German royalty during WW I), spew out nitwits like Charles every few generations.

Few biologists beleive we are close to human extinction. And while there is a mass extinction going on due to population growth and the destruction of sanctuaries and the like, many of those species were on the brink of extinction for the last millenia anyway while others failed to adapt to the new species - humans - that moved in. The chilling reality is that in order to avoid contributing to the extinction of many plants and animals, humans would have to remove themselves from the habitat occupied by these species. That would mean a mass migration of humans the likes of which hasn't been seen. How many millions of humans would have to die in the resulting chaos to save other species? Charles doesn't say.

Why anyone pays attention to this upper class twit is a mystery. Perhaps when he becomes king, people will pay less attention to him and his politically correct causes.

We can always hope.