The Queen’s record-breaking 70-year reign spanned a interval of giant social, technological and political upheaval.
For the UK and the broader world, the second half of the twentieth century noticed speedy adjustments in the way in which we lived, labored and consumed. From the wide-scale adoption of plastics to the rise of low-cost aircraft journey, since Queen Elizabeth II ascended to the throne on 6 February 1952, the world has modified dramatically.
And the primary quarter of the twenty first century has solely seen issues speed up once more. Whereas local weather change wasn’t an idea on the forefront of most individuals’s minds in 1952, it's now one of the crucial pressing problems with our instances.
So how did the general public’s angle to the local weather disaster develop throughout the Queen’s reign, and the way inexperienced was the Queen herself?
We glance again at a number of the most environmentally essential developments throughout Queen Elizabeth II’s reign and the way she tailored to rising issues about world warming.
What was the Nice Smog?
When the Queen took to the throne, there have been already indicators of local weather stress within the UK. Ten months into her reign, in December 1952, the Nice Smog enveloped London.
Introduced on by a mix of chilly climate, an anticyclone (a system of winds that rotates a couple of centre of excessive atmospheric strain) and windless circumstances, London’s nice smog was made up of airborne pollution. Most of those got here from the widespread burning of coal, which was nonetheless being utilized in home properties.
A thick blanket of air pollution hung over the town from 5 to 9 of December, lastly dispersing when climate circumstances modified.
The smog even labored its method inside buildings in what's now regarded as the worst air air pollution occasion in UK historical past. Fashionable estimates recommend that between 10,000 and 12,000 individuals died as a direct end result as London’s ambulance service stopped working on account of poor visibility.
The extreme results of the smog led to the primary main piece of environmental laws for Queen Elizabeth II.
The Clear Air Act obtained royal assent in July 1956 and aimed to scale back the consequences of air air pollution from coal burning and industrialisation. It restricted the burning of coal in home fires and created clear air pockets across the metropolis.
However whereas politicians grappled with a shift away from coal, one other main pollutant was taking to the skies.
The rise of air journey within the late 60s and 70s
The rise of the international vacation was one of many greatest adjustments within the Queen’s 70 12 months reign.
As soon as solely obtainable to the wealthy and well-known, the expansion of mass transit led to the delivery of the bundle vacation, as many individuals started to journey overseas for the primary time.
By the late Nineteen Sixties and early 70s, maybe spurred on by the 1972 movie ‘Keep on Overseas’ the bundle vacation was massive enterprise.
Whereas the Queen didn't strictly ‘go on vacation’, as she at all times travelled for work causes, she definitely did see quite a lot of the world.
Based on the Telegraph, which assessed how far the Queen travelled, throughout her lifetime the Queen visited 117 totally different nations (out of a potential 195).
For comparability, in accordance with a YouGov survey carried out in 2018, the typical Brit has visited 9.58 nations.
When it comes to mileage, this quantities to greater than 1.6 million kilometres, which is the equal of travelling across the circumference of the globe 42 instances.
Although lately, on account of her age and in poor health well being, the Queen’s carbon footprint fell dramatically, she travelled greater than every other royal in British historical past.
What was the Queen’s carbon footprint?
Because the Royal Household is partly funded by the taxpayer, the Prince of Wales is legally obliged to publish annual studies relating to the household’s carbon emissions and journey schedules.
In October 2021, forward of the Queen’s speech at COP26, the eco consultants analysed this knowledge to work out the carbon footprints of the person royals.
Based on their analysis, the Royal Household had a mixed carbon footprint of three,810 tonnes a 12 months, in comparison with the typical Brit whose footprint quantities to only 10 tonnes per 12 months.
Regardless of this staggering quantity, the Queen’s journey footprint in 2021 was by far the smallest within the household, coming in at simply 7.7 tonnes in comparison with Charles and Camilla’s 432.3 tonnes.
What concerning the carbon footprint of the Royal Family?
The Queen had six official Royal residencies, together with Buckingham Palace and Windsor Fort. Though not all of Buckingham Palace’s 775 rooms are in use daily, it nonetheless takes quite a lot of vitality to warmth this historic constructing.
Based on the Prince of Wales’ Annual Assessment in 2021, 100 per cent of the electrical energy utilized by the Family and 89 per cent of all workplace and home vitality is now from renewable sources. Round 49 per cent of that is generated on-site by biomass boilers, warmth pumps and photo voltaic panels.
The Family additionally buys credit from sustainable tasks to offset carbon emissions to internet zero. Intensive tree planting takes place within the Royal gardens, and the Queen herself planted oak bushes for every of her 4 kids on the grounds of Buckingham Palace.
The Queen and the age of plastic
Whereas inexperienced causes are often extra related to King Charles III than the Queen herself, lately she did play a task in enhancing the environmental influence of the Royal Household.
Plastic, first patented in 1907 by the Belgian-born American inventor, Leo Baekeland, was maybe a very powerful materials of the twentieth century. It's a legacy we're nonetheless residing with immediately.
Though the Queen wasn’t born till 1926, plastics would solely start to be mass-produced after she took the throne. Within the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies, this pervasive materials started to succeed in a a lot wider viewers, with the plastic bag starting its takeover of paper within the late Nineteen Eighties.
To place the expansion of plastic use into perspective, in accordance with the Middle for Worldwide Environmental Legislation (CIEL) world plastic manufacturing was at 2 million tonnes in 1950 - by 2015 this had elevated to 380 million tonnes.
Simply three years after manufacturing hit these dizzying heights, the Queen, impressed by David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II documentary, banned plastic straws and plastic bottles from all her estates.
The Queen was an enormous fan of Attenborough, and when presenting him with the Chatham Home Prize in 2019 she mentioned, “Your capacity to speak the wonder and vulnerability of our pure surroundings stays unequalled.”
The cafes within the Royal Assortment can now solely serve meals and drinks in compostable or biodegradable packaging.
The Queen at COP26 in Glasgow
Maybe the Queen’s most impactful actions got here in the direction of the tip of her reign.
A couple of weeks earlier than the COP26 summit in October 2021, she was caught on video on the opening of the Welsh Parliament.
“I’ve been listening to all about COP, I nonetheless don’t know who’s coming. It’s very irritating after they speak, however don’t do,” she was heard saying.
If something was to drive dwelling the significance of the upcoming local weather summit to the British individuals, it was the Queen’s irritation on the lack of motion.
She gave a speech, through videolink on the opening of the summit, telling gathered dignitaries: “It is a responsibility I'm particularly completely satisfied to discharge, because the influence of the surroundings on human progress was a topic near the guts of my expensive late husband, Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh.”
It's telling that the Queen, ever the impartial diplomat, positioned concern for the surroundings onto the shoulders of different royals.
She went on to say: “It's a supply of nice satisfaction to me that the main position my husband performed in encouraging individuals to protest our fragile planet, lives on by way of the work of our eldest son Charles and his eldest son William. I couldn't be extra pleased with them.”
And it's to the youthful Royals that the Queen has now left the burden of environmentalism.
What does the longer term maintain for the Royals and environmentalism?
As we’re solely within the early days of his rule, we’re but to see how King Charles III will govern.
His environmental views are a lot clearer than his mom's although. The brand new King, an ardent gardener who advised journalists that he likes to speak to his crops, has spoken about local weather change for a few years, telling delegates at COP21 in 2015:
“It is vitally easy: we should save our forests, for there isn't any Plan B to deal with local weather change or most of the different important challenges that face humanity with out them.”
He even met local weather activist Greta Thunberg on the World Financial Discussion board in Davos in 2020. The now King gave a speech stating: "Will we wish to go down in historical past because the individuals who did nothing to carry the world again from the brink in time to revive the steadiness after we might have completed? I do not wish to.”
How the brand new King will have the ability to sq. this ardour for the surroundings with the carbon-intensive duties of being King is but to be seen. Except he alters his persona in a single day, nevertheless, there’s a superb likelihood he will probably be rather more vocal about inexperienced points than his late mom.
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