Britain's Prince Charles urged the European Union Thursday to show even greater leadership in the fight against global warming as the "doomsday clock of climate change" ticks down.

In a speech to members of the European Parliament in Brussels, the prince urged the EU to strive to unite the public and private sectors and non-governmental organisations to help save the world's rain forests.

"Determined and principled leadership has never been more needed. Surely this is just the moment in history for which the European Union was created," he said.

"Can that moment not be captured before it slips lifeless from our grasp?"

The prince praised the EU for sweeping measures announced last month to try to cut emissions of the gases -- chiefly carbon dioxide -- that cause climate change by 20 percent by 2020, compared to 1990 levels.

But he said to implement them would "require substantial adjustment" in the way Europeans think about energy, industry, transport and agriculture, and that Europe would probably have to go further to keep down the global temperature.

"The doomsday clock of climate change is ticking ever faster towards midnight. We are simply not reacting quickly enough," he said, on the final leg of a two-day trip to Brussels.

"We cannot be anything less than courageous and revolutionary in our approach to climate change. If we are not the result will most likely be catastrophe for all of us, but with the poorest in our world hit hardest of all."

The 59-year-old heir to the British throne said the public and private sectors must unite and that European industry needs governments to set "principled long-term policies" to step up the fight against global warming.

"It is a task that calls for the biggest public, private and NGO partnership ever seen," said Charles, who has been accompanied on his trip by representatives of a number of environment-oriented charities he heads.

Priority number one, he said, would be to save the world's tropical rain forests.

"I believe this to be a matter of the gravest urgency," he said. "We are destroying our planet's air conditioning system."