Mankind must reconnect with nature and restore balance to the world, says Charles

Population growth must slow if the world is to live within "nature's benevolence and bounty", the Prince of Wales has warned.

Charles said increased industrialisation and population growth was harming the world and that was unsustainable.

The heir to the throne was speaking as Patron of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, in the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford University last night.

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In the speech entitled Islam and the Environment, he said schemes in places such as Bangladesh had lowered the number of children born from an average of six to three. But the world's population was continuing to grow, at the rate of about 60 million each year.

"It raises some very difficult moral questions, I know, but do we not each one of us carry the same responsibility towards Earth?

"It is surely time to ask if we can come to a view that balances the traditional attitude to the sacred nature of life on the one hand with, on the other, those teachings within each of the sacred traditions that urge humankind to keep within the limits of nature's benevolence and bounty."

Charles also said Islam was able to offer much to help the world maintain a balance and reconnect with nature as the Earth struggles with increased industrialisation and population growth.

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He said that technology alone cannot solve the problem and he believed there was a 'missing element'.

"When we hear talk of an environmental crisis or even of a financial crisis, I would suggest that this is actually describing the outward consequence of a deep, inner crisis of the soul. It is a crisis in our relationship with, and our perception of, nature."

He said the modern scientific world had relegated the spiritual and religious to being outdated and that empiricism proved there is no "supreme being".

Likewise, however, "no brain scanner has ever managed to photograph a thought, nor a piece of love, and it never will. so QED, that must mean thought and love do not exist."

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And he added: "Whichever faith tradition we come from, the fact at the heart of the matter is the same. Our inheritance from our creator is at stake.

"It will be no good at the end of the day as we sit amidst the wreckage, trying to console ourselves that it was all done for the best possible reasons of development and the betterment of mankind."

Earlier, the Prince visited Somerset, where he opened the third branch of his Highgrove organic produce stores, in Bath, and treated a royal fan to a kiss.

Patricia Blair Gould, 75, a retired tour guide, showed no qualms in asking him for the honour.