Former Archbishop Claims Climate Change ‘Largest Challenge Ever to Human Race’

CROYDON, ENGLAND - OCTOBER 17: Former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams speaks to
Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Victoria Friedman

The former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has claimed that man-made climate change is “the largest challenge ever to the human race” and that those who do not believe in it have fallen for conspiracy theories.

The former archbishop has voiced his support for the Greta Thunberg-led climate school strikes and last year backed Extinction Rebellion in its calls for mass protest in reaction to the “unprecedented global emergency” of anthropomorphic climate change.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday, Williams said that one of the things that concern him are people who believe that anthropomorphic climate change is a scam, and that largely these beliefs are held by people on the conservative side of the political spectrum.

“We’ve got arguably the largest challenge ever to the human race in the shape of an environmental crisis,” he said during an interview with artist Grayson Perry.

The former archbishop of the worldwide Anglican Communion said he believed that one of the driving forces of ‘climate denial’ was that it was “just too uncomfortable to face” because it will require people to “stop doing things [they] like doing” — implying that people ‘like’ rather than ‘need’ to do activities that require fossil-fuel energy like driving to work, heating houses to keep warm, and having lights on to see when it gets dark.

Williams continued that the West will need to make significant sacrifices for the environment, saying: “It’ll require our society, our civilisation, to think again about the levels it expects of comfort and security.”

The former primate ended that he “worr[ies] a bit more” about people “who genuinely believe climate change is a huge confidence trick” and that such people have been fooled by conspiracy theories into believing that “climate change has been invented by Communists, Illuminati, some mysterious group who are determined to undermine who we are”.

The Church of England has recently come under fire from the Queen’s former chaplain for failing to defend the faith against political correctness in general and children against the transgender agenda in particular, with the church becoming notably more progressive in recent years.

Last year, the current archbishop, Justin Welby, called climate change an “ethical crisis” whilst a London vicar compared the disruptive Extinction Rebellion activists who brought London to a standstill in 2019 to Jesus Christ.

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