“This book is a call to revolution. Earth is in danger. She can’t handle everything we demand of her.” This is how Harmony begins. A new way of seeing the world, the book in which Prince Charles, together with the environmentalist Tony Juniper and the BBC broadcaster Ian Skelly, concentrates the keys to his commitment to the environment. A volume that made the leap to audiovisuals some time ago and that is translated for the first time into Spanish by Diente de León publishing house, but which was published in its original language in 2010. A decision that Juniper applauds, then, as and as he assures in an interview with La Vanguardia, “it makes all the sense in the world, since it is now when we begin to become aware of this matter, despite the fact that there is still a long way to go”.
An opinion shared by the heir to the British throne in an updated prologue: “Although it may not seem like a long time, the world has changed beyond recognition. At the time, the threat of a climate catastrophe seemed to many a very remote possibility. Yet here we are, barely a decade later, living with the consequences of rising global temperatures that, if left unchecked, threaten the very foundations of our civilization.”
The Prince of Wales’s commitment to nature and the environment has been firm for a long time. Over the years he has written numerous articles and given lectures on topics as varied as education, health, agriculture and the environment. Ideas that he compiles for the first time in these pages and that have also led him to star in numerous initiatives, such as Terra Carta, “a recovery plan that puts nature, people and the planet at the heart of creation” or the Prince’s Rainforest Project, with which it aims to raise awareness about the devastating effects of deforestation.
Throughout its pages, the son of Isabel II exposes some realities and points to the need for a “balance with nature” to solve the great crises that this century has to face: “poverty and climate change ”.
To this, Tony Juniper adds “the importance of education and of talking about all these issues with children from a very young age”, since “only in this way will they end up understanding the true gravity that the planet is facing”. In this sense, he regrets that “people are very disconnected from what is happening” so “they don’t bother to look for a solution”. This is something that, beyond the political leaders, he points out, “is in everyone’s hands.” Thus, he points out that there are “many small gestures we can make, from recycling to our way of eating or the commitment to a more sustainable agriculture”.
Despite everything, the authors strive to imagine a less harsh future, although Juniper warns that “everything will depend on the decisions that are made in the coming decades.” And is the damage already suffered reversible? Can we correct the mistakes made as a society? The environmentalist concludes that “if we don’t try we won’t know, but the question now is to start being part of the change to avoid a real disaster.”
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