"extraordinary" climate change from destroying the planet and said
wealthy countries must bear responsibility for creating the problem
and for solving it. In a radically worded letter addressed to every
person on the planet, the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics
blames human greed for the critical situation "Our Sister, mother
Earth" now finds itself in.
"This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted
on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God
has endowed her," he writes in his long-anticipated Encyclical on the
environment.
Arguing that environmental damage is intimately linked to global
inequality, he goes on to say that doomsday predictions can no longer
be dismissed and that: "The earth, our home, is beginning to look more
and more like an immense pile of filth."
Green activists hailed the charismatic Argentinian pontiff's
widely-trailed intervention as a potential game-changer in the debate
over what causes global warming and how to reverse it. "Everyone,
whether religious or secular, can and must respond to this clarion
call for bold urgent action,"said Kumi Naido, the International
Executive Director of Greenpeace.
Environmentalists hope the pope's message will significantly increase
the pressure for binding restrictions on carbon emissions to be agreed
at global talks in Paris at the end of this year. But even before the
official publication, climate change sceptics had dismissed the
document's argument that the phenomenon is primarily man-made and that
humanity can reverse it through lifestyle changes including an early
phasing-out of fossil fuels.
"I don't get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinal or my
pope," US presidential candidate Jeb Bush said on the eve of the
release in comments that underlined the depth of opposition in the
United States to a binding agreement to curb greenhouse gases.
– Fast track to disaster –
The Encyclical references the arguments of the sceptics by
acknowledging that volcanic activity, variation in the earth's
movements and the solar cycle are factors in climate change. But it
maintains that "most global warming in recent decades is due to the
great concentration of greenhouse gases released mainly as a result of
human activity".
President Muhammadu Buhari
And it leaves no doubt that Francis believes the world is on a
fast-track to disaster after decades of inaction. "If present trends
continue, this century may well witness extraordinary climate change
and an unprecedented destruction of ecosystems, with serious
consequences for all of us," he writes.
Bemoaning the "remarkable" weakness of political responses to this,
Francis accuses the sceptics of cynically ignoring or manipulating the
scientific evidence. "There are too many special interests, and
economic interests easily end up trumping the common good and
manipulating information so that their own plans will not be
affected," he writes.
"We know how unsustainable is the behaviour of those who constantly
consume and destroy, while others are not yet able to live in a way
worthy of their human dignity," he adds, saying the time has come for
parts of the world to accept decreased growth.
– Conflict and war –
The consequences of climate change, he argues, will include a rise in
sea levels that will directly threaten the quarter of the world's
population that lives near or on coastlines, and will be felt most
acutely by developing countries. Highlighting warnings that acute
water shortages could arise within decades, he writes that, "the
control of water by large multinational business may become a major
source of conflict in this century".
He adds: "It is foreseeable that, once certain resources have been
depleted, the scene will be set for new wars," with the ever-present
risk that nuclear or biological weapons could be used. One of the
strongest themes in the encyclical is that rich countries must accept
responsibility for having caused climate change and should "help pay
this debt" by cutting their carbon emissions and helping the
developing world adopt sustainable forms of energy generation.
"The land of the southern poor is rich and mostly unpolluted, yet
access to ownership of goods and resources for meeting vital needs is
inhibited by a system of commercial relations and ownership which is
structurally perverse," the pope writes in perhaps the most radical
passage of the document.
—Vanguard
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