Pope Francis demanded swift action on Thursday to save the planet from environmental ruin, urging world leaders to hear “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor”.
In the first papal document dedicated to the environment, he calls for “decisive action, here and now,” to stop environmental degradation and global warming, squarely backing scientists who say it is mostly man-made.
In the encyclical “Laudato Si (Praise Be), On the Care of Our Common Home”, the pope calls for a change of lifestyle in rich countries steeped in a “throwaway” consumer culture and an end to an “obstructionist attitudes” that sometimes put profit before the common good.
The pope criticises those who “maintain that current economics and technology will solve all environmental problems, and argue, in popular and non-technical terms, that the problems of global hunger and poverty will be resolved simply by market growth.”
The clarion call to his flock of 1.2 billion catholics, the most controversial papal document since Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae upholding the Church’s ban on contraception, could spur the world’s Catholics to lobby policymakers on ecology issues and climate change.
‘Power politics’
The Argentine-born pontiff (78) decries a “myopia of power politics” that he said has delayed far-sighted environmental action and says “many of those who possess more resources and economic or political power seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms”.
Because he has said he wants to influence this year’s key UN climate summit in Paris, the encyclical further consolidates his role as a global diplomatic player following his mediation bringing Cuba and the United States to the negotiating table last year.
Pope Francis dismisses those who argue that “technology will solve all environmental problems (and that) global hunger and poverty will be resolved simply by market growth”.
‘Pile of filth’
Time is running out to save a planet “beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth” and which could see “an unprecedented destruction of ecosystems” this century, he says.
“Once more, we need to reject a magical conception of the market, which would suggest that problems can be solved simply by an increase in the profits of companies or individuals.”
Pope Francis also dismisses the effectiveness of carbon credits, saying they seemed to be a “quick and easy solution” but could lead “to a new form of speculation” that maintains excessive consumption and does not allow the “radical change” needed.
“Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain. We may well be leaving to coming generations debris, desolation and filth,” he writes in the nearly 200-page work.
“The pace of consumption, waste and environmental change has so stretched the planet’s capacity that our contemporary lifestyle, unsustainable as it is, can only precipitate catastrophes, such as those which even now periodically occur in different areas of the world ... we need to reflect on our accountability before those who will have to endure the dire consequences,” he said.
The release is timed to precede September addresses to the United Nations and the US Congress on sustainable development.
Scientific research
Saying he was “drawing on the results of the best scientific research available,” the pope calls climate change “one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day” and says poor nations will suffer the most.
In several passages in the six-chapter encyclical, Francis confronts head on both climate change deniers and those who say it is not man-made.
In a passage certain to upset conservatives, he says “a legal framework which can set clear boundaries and ensure the protection of ecosystems has become indispensable”.
One of the major themes of the encyclical is the disparity of wealth.
“We fail to see that some are mired in desperate and degrading poverty, with no way out, while others have not the faintest idea of what to do with their possessions, vainly showing off their supposed superiority and leaving behind them so much waste which, if it were the case everywhere, would destroy the planet,” he says.
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