The Prince of Wales has challenged President Bush’s policy on global warming in a letter read out to the US Congress yesterday in which he called for an “international legally binding” agreement for reducing carbon emissions.

His missive, 231 years after America revolted against royal control in the War of Independence, was immediately described by Congressional aides as some advice “from Prince Charles to ‘King’ George”.

Although President Bush has shifted his position on climate change — which he now acknowledges is a serious and manmade problem — over the past year, he still favours a much looser framework of voluntary emission reduction targets set by individual nations.

The letter from Prince Charles took a swipe at arguments deployed by the Bush Administration, which regularly suggests that it is unfair to ask US industry to make severe cuts if other countries do not follow suit and that the long-term solution lies in developing new technology.

The Prince said that his own Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change, established in 2005, was “particularly focused” on supporting a binding United Nations agreement “as the only way to provide business with the certainty it needs to increase investment sufficiently in low-carbon technologies”.

The letter added: “I hope the boldest possible targets can be set, together with the policies needed to implement them — otherwise how can we expect developing countries, such as China and India, to take action?”

Edward Markey, the Democratic chairman of the House of Representatives Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, read the letter to his members yesterday. Such a public intervention on policy by the Royal Family with the US Government is highly unusual.

Eben Burnham-Snyder, a spokesman for the committee, welcomed yesterday’s letter. “This is Prince Charles giving some advice to ‘King George’. He is right to give global warming the royal treatment because President Bush has given it short shrift for too long.”

Although Prince Charles did not mention Mr Bush by name, in his letter to Congress he praised the British Government and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California, for introducing “legally binding targets” and showing “how policy-makers in both our countries are moving to address this problem”.

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