KING CHARLES’S climate change warnings at Cop28 are meaningless unless the government backs them up with actions, campaigners said today.

The monarch said the world remains “dreadfully far off track” in key climate targets and that, despite some progress, “transformational action” was needed as the dangers of climate change are “no longer distant risks.”

He warned nature was being taken into “dangerous, uncharted territory” by human activity and called for “nature-positive” change.

Closing his speech at Expo City Dubai, he added: “We need to remember too that the indigenous worldview teaches us that we are all connected, not only as human beings but with all living things and all that sustains life.”

But Izzie McIntosh, climate campaign manager at Global Justice Now, said: “King Charles’s dire warnings are meaningless unless the UK government backs them up with actions.

“Instead, Rishi Sunak has been rolling back net-zero plans, expanding North Sea oil and gas, and is now fiddling the figures on climate finance.

“Rich polluting countries saying the right thing while doing the wrong thing has become all too familiar over 30 years of climate summits — the only difference this time is that in Charles and Rishi it’s a deceitful double act.”

Zahra Hdidou, from ActionAid UK, added: “The irony should not be lost that the king is flanked at the summit by two men who remain committed to climate-wrecking policies.

“On one side we have a prime minister who has gone on record as saying he wants to ‘max out’ North Sea oil and gas — and stands accused by former colleagues as being ‘uninterested’  in environmental policies.

“And on the other side, the king is joined by a foreign secretary who swiftly abandoned his own promise to lead the greenest government on record just three years after being elected in 2010.”

The Prime Minister declared to Cop earlier today that he had watered down Britain’s climate policies, insisting net zero could only be delivered in a way that “benefits the British people.”

WWF UK’s chief executive Tanya Steele said: “The Prime Minister wants the UK to be able to stand tall on the international stage despite his backpedalling on climate promises at home.

“First, he must put his own house in order — it is senseless to be simultaneously giving cash to protect forests while being complicit in cutting them down.”