Brrrrrrr
If you haven’t heard, Great Britain’s newly-anointed monarch, King Charles III, is a committed environmentalist — so committed, in fact, that he’s sacrificing his servants’ body temperatures for his cause. Brave!
As sources recently told The Times, King Charles has kicked off his reign with an effort to conserve energy by turning the heat on the palace pool way down. As a result, the servants who once enjoyed the water feature — a notable-sounding perk of working at the palace — have been left shivering.
“A few people using the pool have noticed that the temperature of the water has dropped, and it is quite a bit cooler than it used to be,” an anonymous palace source told the Times. “They have been told the King has had the heating turned down.”
A sacrifice indeed, but rest assured, it’s one that Charles is willing to make. After all, someone’s gotta save the planet — and skimping on the heated pool ought to offset those private jet emissions, right?
Climate King
According to the Times report, Charles is also seeking a private chef who, one day a week, can cook vegan meals for the Sustainability King.
“Charles follows a vegan diet one day a week where he avoids eating meat, fish, and dairy products for environmental reasons,” a source told the Times. “And he has also been keen to reduce the royal household’s energy use, which has been a priority of his in recent years.”
To be fair, Buckingham Palace is absolutely massive, so watching its energy use is a good idea. And there’s a solid environmental argument for going without animal products from time to time.
That said, though, as The Washington Post pointed out last year, Charles’ relationship to the climate and sustainability isn’t that simple. While he’s spent decades decrying industrial farming and telling world leaders at 2021’s COP26 Climate Conference to take a “warlike footing” against climate change, he and the rest of the royal family, due to their sheer wealth and lavish lifestyles, have a massively outsized carbon footprint compared to the average bloke. And among some wind turbine-related flip-flopping, he’s also said some questionable things about population growth.
But, hey, it’s something. God save the King!
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