Labour donor Dale Vince compares climate change sceptics to Holocaust deniers
Green entrepreneur Dale Vince has compared those who are sceptical about man-made to Holocaust deniers. The businessman has given at least 1.5million to the Opposition under Sir , as well as helping to bankroll the controversial activist group . 'Anyone who says the climate crisis is not happening or it's not man-made, honestly, I think they're a dangerous fool, because it's like denying the Holocaust happened,' he told the Mail. 'This [climate change denial] is denying the holocaust that is coming now.' Mr Vince, the founder of green energy firm Ecotricity, suggested that climate change denial should be outlawed. 'It shouldn't be allowed,' he added. He also claimed that Rishi Sunak's Government is killing people. 'How is it not deliberate to drill fossil fuels now when your Government is signed up to the Paris accord to keep [the increase in global average] temperatures down to 1.5 degrees?' he said at the launch party for his Skydiamond and Kyle De'Volle collection in Mayfair, central London. 'We're now heading for 3 degrees and we need to stop drilling for new fossil fuels. Is it not deliberate to continue to do that, knowing that it drives the climate crisis which has already killed 4million people globally? I say that's deliberate.' Questions have been raised over whether Mr Vince's donations to Labour, via Ecotricity, have shaped leader Sir Keir's vow to block any more new North Sea oil and gas exploration if he takes power. The plans have provoked anger from industry and trade unions fearing job losses, but Sir Keir said such a move would cut bills and create roles in manufacturing turbines and other infrastructure for green energy production. Energy Secretary Grant Shapps has accused Labour of being 'the political wing' of Just Stop Oil. But Mr Vince has denied lobbying Sir Keir or the wider Labour Party over the group's activism. Mr Vince's citing of the Holocaust, in which around 6million Jews and members of many other ethnic, social and political groups were systematically murdered between 1940 and 1945 by the Nazi regime, will inevitably cause offence. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, apologised in 2021 after he compared politicians who ignored climate change with 'politicians who ignored what was happening in Nazi Germany'. Speaking at the Glasgow COP26 climate summit, the head of the worldwide Anglican Church argued that the politicians' inaction would 'allow a genocide'. And Green Party MP and former leader Caroline Lucas also said sorry after she compared Holocaust deniers to climate-change deniers during an interview in 2019. Mr Vince defended the actions of Just Stop Oil, whose activists have halted rush-hour traffic around the country on several occasions this year and invaded the pitch at Lord's cricket ground earlier this week to disrupt The Ashes Test series between England and Australia. 'That little bit of traffic disruption, or several minutes of cricket disruption, they're nothing compared to losing your life or losing your home,' he said. 'The more fossil fuels we burn, the more people are going to die.'