I am delighted to see The Argus airing Caroline Lucas MEP's views on climate change, and the media's role in shaping public perceptions of the problem (July 6), if a little saddened to read how her remarks have been misinterpreted by so many eminent commentators, both in the story and on The Argus's online message board.

My reading of her statement was that it was actually acknowledging the enormity of the holocaust and the offence of denying it, as a way of warning about the way the media allows itself to be used by those seeking to pervert the facts about climate change.

The holocaust caused the death and suffering of many millions - climate change threatens death and destruction on an even greater scale.

Denying either is unacceptable and offensive. Her comments were surely not racist, but "denier-ist".


When Caroline Lucas makes a comparison between holocaust denial and climate change denial she points out the urgency of the need for everyone to do something about global warming.

The holocaust happened, and this comparison does not belittle the seriousness of that shameful part of our recent history or the terrible suffering endured by millions of its victims.

As the recent floods in Britain have proved, climate change is real. It is happening now and, unless we all recognise the need to act now, more and greater disasters will follow.

  • Valerie Moffett, Wilkinson Way, Seaford

I am from a Jewish family and the word "holocaust" doesn't offend me one bit. It has always been used to describe a wiping out or destruction and I don't feel that any race, religion or group should have a monopoly on it.

What happened to the Native Americans was like the holocaust.

Okay, the immigrant Europeans didn't have gas ovens but they did make the indigenous population, all ages and health conditions, go on long treks in harsh winter weather to desolate reservations.

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-91), the greatest Yiddish writer and winner of a Nobel Prize for literature, referred to what we do to animals as "an eternal Treblinka" and said that for animals we are all Nazis. If he can make the analogy then I'm sure we can forgive Caroline Lucas using the analogy in her comments on the future effects of climate change.

  • Sue Baumgardt, Stoneham Road, Hove