Pope to oil industry leaders: don’t destroy civilization

At the same time as the G7, the Vatican hosted an unprecedented closed door conference of oil and gas multinational CEOs, investors and industry experts focused on how to switch world energy production away from fossil fuels to renewable energies to meet increasing consumption and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In contrast to the secret proceedings, the Pope’s hard-hitting address was immediately made public. “The energy question has become one of the principal challenges, in theory and in practice, facing the international community,” the Pope stated. “The way we meet this challenge will determine our overall quality of life and the real possibility either of resolving conflicts in different areas of our world or, on account of grave environmental imbalances and lack of access to energy, providing them with new fuel to destroy social stability and human lives.”

“In December 2015, 196 nations negotiated and adopted the Paris Agreement, with a firm resolve to limit the growth in global warming to below 2° centigrade, based on preindustrial levels, and, if possible, to below 1.5° centigrade. Some twoand-a-half years later, carbon dioxide emissions and atmospheric concentra- tions of greenhouse gases remain very high. This is disturbing and a cause for real concern. Yet even more worrying is the continued search for new fossil fuel reserves, whereas the Paris Agreement clearly urged keeping most fossil fuels underground. This is why we need to talk together – industry, investors, researchers and consumers – about transition and the search for alternatives. Civ- ilization requires energy, but energy use must not destroy civilization!”

“Hence the need to devise a long-term global strategy able to provide energy security and, by laying down precise commitments to meet the problem of climate change, to encourage economic stability, public health, the protection of the environment and integral human development. Energy should also be clean, by a reduction in the systematic use of fossil fuels. Our desire to ensure energy for all must not lead to the undesired effect of a spiral of extreme climate changes due to a catastrophic rise in global temperatures, harsher environments and increased levels of poverty.”

Pope Francis ended by calling on participants “to be the core of a group of leaders who envision the global energy transition in a way that will take into account all the people of the earth, as well as future generations and all species and ecosystems. Let this be seen as the greatest leadership opportunity of all, one that can make a lasting difference for the human family and one that can appeal to your boldest dreams and ideas”.

While industry leaders were reported to have requested the encounter, no formal reactions from them to this call have been published so far.