Originally published October 5, 2023 10:01 am PDT
The pope thinks the world is “crumbling and perhaps approaching a breaking point.”
QUICK FACTS:
- In a document released October 4 titled “Laudate Deum,” Pope Francis asserted that humanity must abide by strict climate change policies.
- The document comes ahead of the COP28 climate conference, which he called a “historic event.”
- Pope Francis wrote, “[I]t is verifiable that specific climate changes provoked by humanity are notably heightening the probability of extreme phenomena that are increasingly frequent and intense.”
- This is despite numerous studies suggesting mankind does not have a grave impact on so-called climate change.
- He believes that scientists “have confirmed that in the last fifty years the temperature has risen at an unprecedented speed, greater than any time over the past two thousand years.”
- To combat what he sees as a crisis, the Pope called for “binding forms of energy transition that meet three conditions: that they be efficient, obligatory and readily monitored.”
- “This, in order to achieve the beginning of a new process marked by three requirements: that it be drastic, intense and count on the commitment of all,” he wrote.
- The pope specifically blamed the United States and other Western nations’ “irresponsible lifestyle.”
- “If we consider that emissions per individual in the United States are about two times greater than those of individuals living in China, and about seven times greater than the average of the poorest countries, we can state that a broad change in the irresponsible lifestyle connected with the Western model would have a significant long-term impact,” the pope asserted.
- Because of this perceived “irresponsible lifestyle,” the pope advocated for using even “indefensible” means to reduce carbon emissions.
- It is unclear what the pope meant by “indefensible.”
POPE CALLS FOR GLOBAL RESPONSE AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE:
- Pope Francis argues that world organizations with “real authority” must lead the climate change agenda: “The issue is that [leaders] must be endowed with real authority, in such a way as to ‘provide for’ the attainment of certain essential goals. In this way, there could come about a multilateralism that is not dependent on changing political conditions or the interests of a certain few, and possesses a stable efficacy,” he said.
- To combat job losses he believes are due to “rising sea levels, droughts and other phenomena,” global political leaders must take action, according to Francis.
- “It is not enough to think only of balances of power but also of the need to provide a response to new problems and to react with global mechanisms to the environmental, public health, cultural and social challenges, especially in order to consolidate respect for the most elementary human rights, social rights and the protection of our common home,” the pope wrote in the document.
- He pushed for a global response.
- “It is a matter of establishing global and effective rules that can permit ‘providing for’ this global safeguarding,” he said, adding that global action would require the “development of a new procedure for decision-making and legitimizing those decisions.”
- Those new procedures include “required spaces for conversation, consultation, arbitration, conflict resolution and supervision, and, in the end, a sort of increased ‘democratization’ in the global context, so that the various situations can be expressed and included.”
BACKGROUND:
- A study from Canadian and Australian researchers published in the journal Energies claimed that one billion people will die from climate change in the next century.
- The study uses the “1000-ton rule,” which stipulates that a “future person is killed every time humanity burns 1000 tons of fossil carbon.”
- However, Nobel Prize winner John F. Clauser has argued the mainstream climate narrative “reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people.”
- “In my opinion, there is no real climate crisis,” Clauser stated. “There is, however, a very real problem with providing a decent standard of living to the world’s large population and an associated energy crisis. The latter is being unnecessarily exacerbated by what, in my opinion, is incorrect climate science.”
