The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has been branded the ‘Archbishop of Airmiles’ for clocking up thousands of miles while preaching about carbon neutrality. The Mail has the story.
The Archbishop of Canterbury will be travelling to Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama and Costa Rica later this month having only just returned from Zanzibar.
Church of England officials and parishioners said their leader had almost become a “member of the Foreign Office”, jetting to global hot spots and summits while seemingly ignoring problems at home.
Analysis by the Daily Mail found that by next month Dr. Welby will have travelled at least 48,000 miles on ten trips since last September on a worldwide tour.
The flights alone would have added at least 15 tons of carbon dioxide emissions to his carbon footprint.
But the true figure is likely to be higher, with the inclusion of Dr. Welby’s travelling entourage.
His trips have enraged parishioners and officials who pointed out its incompatibility with the Church of England’s Net Zero strategy.
The Church has heaped pressure on congregations by bringing the deadline of its carbon neutrality goal forward from 2045 to 2030.
Parishes have been urged to remove gas and oil boilers in favour of heat pumps and solar panels as the church seeks to divest itself of fossil fuels.
A senior church official said: “It seems quite extraordinary that the Archbishop chooses to spend so much time away when there is so much going wrong at home.
“His own diocese is showing a catastrophic fall in numbers attending – the worst figures for young people of any diocese – yet he is too busy to attend to it.”
Worth reading in full.
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