KUCHING, April 12: If only country leaders especially those in politics, commerce and industry had taken Prince Philip’s warning on climate change seriously, the world would not have been how it is today, opines social activist Dato Sri Ang Lai Soon.
He asserted whatever the late Duke of Edinburgh Prince Philip had predicted about the environment has come true, pointing to ‘unbearable and highly damaging surrounding’ as seen in many natural disasters in recent years.
Ang said Prince Philip was mostly probably the founding father of the world movement for “the conservation of nature and the natural environment to acquire a totally new dimension — the conservation of the human environment”.
Some 51 years ago, he added, Prince Philip also founded Australia’s first ever environmental organisation, the Australian Conservation Foundation. It is today Australia’s most prominent environmental organisation.
In 1961, he co-founded the World Wildlife Fund which is today the world’s largest conservation organisation.
Ang opined that if not for Prince Philip’s active and influential environmental efforts, the world today would have been worse off.
“I always believe that if only more people as privileged as Prince Philip who has the time, influence and money, could join this ongoing environmental crusade, the world would have been a much better place to live in.
“Had it not been for people like Prince Philiip, the world could possibly have been in a worse situation,” he said in a statement today.
Adding on, Ang said Prince Philip’s lifetime work had gotten the fullest support from his wife Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II of England as well as influenced his eldest son, the Prince of Wales Prince Charles to follow in his footsteps.
“It was an honour and privilege to have met this eminent environmentalist extraordinaire Prince Philip a few times, and I found him friendly, highly knowledgeable and witty in conversations.
“We are all saddened by the passing of the Prince Consort after 70 years of service to the British Crown and the people in the Commonwealth. A very far sighted and highly knowledgeable person, he had made himself useful.
“Prince Philip had, indeed, justified his existence in this rather crowded, difficult and tumultuous world,” said Ang.
Prince Philip passed away peacefully at the age of 99 on April 9 at Windsor Castle. — DayakDaily
