The King has issued a warning over humanity's response to the climate crisis and admitted he's concerned about future generations as he does not want them left to deal with a "ghastly legacy of horror".
Charles, 77, airs his worries in a new ITV documentary in which broadcaster Steve Backshall recreates some of the memorable moments from the monarch's 1975 trip to the Canadian Arctic, and highlights how the region is being affected by climate change.
The King also said it was "very peculiar" that on many topics the conclusions of scientists were seen as the "truth" but with climate change "it is not so apparently simple".
In the 90-minute documentary, Steve Backshall's Royal Arctic Challenge, Charles, apparently commenting on the response to the climate crisis, tells the presenter: "This is the problem, isn't it? Why is it taking so long? By which time it is almost too late to, to rectify. That's my great worry about it, because you get to a tipping point. Which is what all the scientists have been talking about.
"These things are rescuable, but it seems very peculiar to me that, you know, in other areas everybody takes what the scientists are saying as absolute vital truth, but in this case for some reason or other it is not so apparently simple."
The monarch has long been an advocate for environmental issues and five years before his trip to the Canadian arctic, he gave a landmark speech to the Countryside Steering Committee for Wales in 1970, in which he warned about the problems of plastic waste, chemicals discharged into rivers, and air pollution caused by factories, cars and planes.
Speaking to Steve at Buckingham Palace, Charles speaks about the legacy that may be left to the "younger generation".
"To me it is not fair to leave them something in a far worse state than I found it, if you know what I mean," the King said. "The whole point, I have always felt, is to improve it for people, so they don't have a ghastly legacy of horror to have to deal with. That's why I spent all these years, because I don't want to be accused by my grandchildren of not doing anything about it. That is the key."
In the documentary Steve joins a research scientist studying pollution in Arctic seabirds, and who examines the stomach contents of two dead short tailed shearwaters, birds that spend much of their life at sea, and finds pieces of plastic. He also visits the Coronation Glacier and chats to an expert who uses satellite images to plot how it has melted, retreating about 0.6 miles in the last 50 years.