The Prince of Emissions: Charles fails to offset environmental damage caused by 9,000-mile tour

Prince Charles arrived home from a two-week foreign tour last night to criticism over his failure to take action to offset the environmental damage done by his private jet during his 9,000-mile odyssey to the Middle East and India.

An analysis by The Independent shows that the plane which carried the Prince and his 22-strong entourage on the trip spewed more than 40 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the weight of six London buses. Although the Prince publicly stated a few months ago that climate change was the "greatest challenge" facing mankind, his officials admitted yesterday he had not followed the Government's lead by offsetting the pollution from his trip.

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Tony Blair went on a 21,000-mile tour of Asia and Australasia this week - in part to discuss climate change - but Downing Street tried to make up for the pollution by funding carbon reduction programmes as part of a campaign to lower emissions.

Concern over pollution from Prince Charles's privately chartered Airbus 319 comes amid growing political and environmental concern about climate change. The issue, about which Prince Charles said he feared his grandchildren would ask, "Why didn't you do something about it?", rose up the political agenda this week after the Government admitted it would fail to meets its carbon targets by 2010.

Attention is increasingly turning to aviation emissions because growing air travel threatens to make them the biggest source of Britain's CO2 emissions by the middle of this century.

While his embarrassed ministers were admitting Labour's failure this week, the Prime Minister was flying around the world with officials on a 220-seat Boeing 777. He held talks with the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, and the New Zealand premier, Helen Clark, on a global deal to stabilise emissions.

His trip generated an estimated 714 tons of carbon dioxide. But Downing Street pledged to make up for the pollution by investing in projects for renewable energy and carbon-reducing housing schemes and said that all future ministerial flights would be carbon-offset.

The Prince of Wales offered no such eco-compensation for his trip with the Duchess of Cornwall to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and India. Journalists said he had his entourage included a secretary, press aides, bodyguards, equerries, valet and hairdresser.

The Prince toured a war cemetery at El Alamein and water conservation and sustainable agriculture projects in India, befitting his reputation as a keen environmentalist. There was little publicity about his two days in Saudi Arabia, a source of major arms deals for Britain.

The trip has done little to enhance the Prince's credentials on emissions, already in question because of his liking for gas-guzzling cars. On the Today programme last October, the Prince described climate change as "the greatest challenge to face man" and has publicly urged President George Bush to take a lead.

A spokeswoman for Clarence House, the Prince's residence, said she had never heard of the idea of carbon-offsetting. A spokesman later said a review of the Prince's estates was being done with the aim of making his Highgrove and Balmoral homes carbon-neutral. He said the trip might be carbon-offset by the Government because it had been paid for by the Foreign Office, but a spokeswoman for the Foreign Office said: "We won't carbon-offset those flights."

Many environmentalists dislike carbon-offsetting because they say it is a form of "greenwashing" but advocates say it is inevitable that world leaders travel but urge them to do their best to counter the impact.

Joss Garmin, a spokesman for the Plane Stupid pressure group, said of the Prince: "It's ironic because he's always held up as an environmental figure. He's clearly not walking the walk but talking the talk. Every time he gets on a plane he is directly causing an increase in CO₂ emissions, which is raising sea levels and as a consequence killing people.

"If he is serious about climate change - and I am sure he is - he needs to start flying less."

A spokesman for the Campaign Against Climate Change said: "It's a symbolic thing, setting an example to other people which Prince Charles is not doing when he could do it."

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