Welby sorry for ‘sickening’ Nazi slur over climate battle
JUSTIN Welby was forced to apologise yesterday after claiming that world leaders who fail to act on climate change could be worse than those who ignored the Nazis.
In a controversial interview, the Archbishop of Canterbury suggested that politicians who shirked the task of limiting global warming would ‘allow genocide on an infinitely greater scale’ than that by Hitler’s regime.
The Archbishop later issued an ‘unequivocal apology’ to Jewish people, admitting that it was ‘not right’ to make comparisons with the Nazis.
The shocking comments came during an interview with the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg in which he said that world leaders attending the Cop26 summit would be ‘cursed if they don’t get this right’.
Asked about his use of the term ‘cursed’, the Archbishop said he had ‘consciously’ used the word, adding: ‘People will speak of them in far stronger terms than we speak today of the politicians of the 30s – of the politicians who ignored what was happening in Nazi Germany.
‘This will kill people all around the world for generations, and we will have no means of averting it.’
Asked whether he was saying failing to act on climate change would be worse than ignoring Hitler and allowing genocide, Archbishop Welby went further, saying: ‘It will allow a genocide on an infinitely greater scale.
‘I’m not sure there’s grades of genocide but there’s width of genocide. This will be genocide indirectly by negligence, recklessness, that will come back to us or our children and grandchildren.’
His comments sparked a fierce backlash, with Stephen Pollard, editor of The Jewish Chronicle newspaper, saying they were ‘sickening’.
‘I simply cannot comprehend how Welby can remain as a priest, let alone Archbishop,’ he added. Yet, in a rare retraction, the Archbishop later issued an ‘unequivocal apology’, saying he had been trying to ‘emphasise the gravity of the situation facing us at Cop26’.
Posting on Twitter, he added: ‘It’s never right to make comparisons with the atrocities brought by the Nazis and I’m sorry for the offence caused to Jews by these words.’ Asked if the Archbishop’s comments were appropriate, a spokesman for the Prime Minister said: ‘It is up to individuals how they choose to frame the problem.’
Elsewhere in the interview, the Archbishop, who worked in the oil industry for more than a decade, said climate change was ‘the longterm equivalent of a nuclear war’.