Pope Francis on Wednesday appealed to climate change deniers and politicians who are slow to change their views, saying they cannot ignore human causes or ridicule scientific facts while the planet “may be reaching breaking point.”
In the new document, published ahead of the COP28 conference, which begins next month in Dubai, Francis says the transition to clean, renewable energy and away from fossil fuels is not happening fast enough.
He warned against over-reliance on technology to capture gas emissions, saying that, while promising, it does not address the human causes that are at the root of global warming.
The 7,000-word document, called Laudate Deum (Praise be to God), follows his 2015 encyclical on the environment “Laudato Si” (Praise be to God). This was motivated by extreme weather events that have occurred since then, which he called the Earth’s “cries of protest”.
“The world we live in is collapsing and may be reaching a breaking point,” he said. “There is no doubt that the impacts of climate change will increasingly harm the lives and families of many people.”
GOOD WILL
Addressed to “all people of good will regarding the climate crisis,” the document includes some highly technical sections that read like a scientific or foreign policy document.
“Despite all attempts to deny, hide, cover up or relativize the issue, the signs of climate change are here and increasingly evident,” he said.
“No one can ignore the fact that in recent years we have witnessed extreme weather phenomena, frequent periods of unusual heat, drought and other cries from Earth that are just a few tangible expressions of a silent disease that affects us all,” he said .
Francis called for abandoning “the short-term interests of some countries or companies” and political forces, saying the time has come to rise to the occasion. “In this way they demonstrate the nobility of politics and not its shame.”
Stating that “it is no longer possible to doubt the human – ‘anthropic’ – origin of climate change”, he took aim at those who “ridicule these facts”, saying they use “supposedly scientific data” to demonstrate that the planet has always had heating and cooling periods.
He specifically criticized deniers and skeptics for refusing to recognize the speed of current changes occurring in “one generation, not centuries or millennia.”
“Rising sea levels and melting glaciers can easily be noticed by an individual in his or her lifetime, and likely, in a few years, many populations will have to move their homes because of these facts,” he wrote.
IT’S TIME TO BE EFFECTIVE
“If we have faith in the ability of human beings to transcend their narrow interests and think in broader terms, we can continue to hope that COP28 will enable a decisive acceleration of the energy transition, with effective commitments subject to continuous monitoring,” he said. .
Dubai’s failure, he said, “will be a great disappointment and will put at risk all the good that has been achieved so far.”
Activist groups should not be labeled “radicalized,” he said, because they are “filling a space left empty by society as a whole.”
The document’s footnotes, which in some parts refer to highly specific projections of temperature increases, statistics on the melting of the polar ice caps and other technical issues, reference reports from Catholic sources, the United Nations, specific laboratories and of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Francis acknowledged that the Church is also divided on climate change. He gave no examples, but in the United States, for example, former President Donald Trump’s claim that climate change is “a hoax” was supported by some American bishops.
“I feel obliged to make these clarifications, which may seem obvious, due to certain contemptuous and unreasonable opinions that I encounter, even within the Catholic Church,” Francis wrote.
“However, we can no longer doubt that the reason for the unusual rapidity of these dangerous changes is a fact that cannot be hidden.”
Source: Terra
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