Is Prince Charles ill-advised, or merely idiotic?

I do wish the Prince of Wales weren’t such a terrible prat because then I wouldn’t have to say it in print and quite ruin my chances of a knighthood. But he is a prat. A dangerous prat at that — as he reminded us yet again just the other day in a speech he gave to ‘business leaders’ at St James’s Palace about what he thinks is happening with ‘climate change’.

He said: ‘It has been profoundly depressing to witness the way the so-called climate sceptics are apparently able to intimidate all sorts of people from adopting the precautionary measures necessary to avert environmental collapse. For too long we have treated the planet like a perpetual cash machine which doles out money without there ever being any need to check the bank balance. But now finally the money is running out.’

There are so many idiocies, false assumptions, inversions of the truth and malevolent yearnings in just that one paragraph that I’m not sure where to begin.