Pope turns up the volume on climate
Francis calls on doubters to wake up and condemns ‘culture of waste’
Those who claim Pope Francis should keep quiet about the disastrous consequences of climate change are, in effect, trying to silence almost half the Canadian population, says a Jesuit scientist.
“The Pope feels the volume needs to be turned up on the climate change discussion. And it’s a ridiculous anti-democratic statement to say he should butt out,” says Father Rob Allore, a Jesuit priest who works for a University of B.C. science laboratory and teaches at adjacent St. Mark’s College.
Noting that roughly 14 million Canadians profess loyalty to the Catholic Church, Allore said the Pope’s historic letter on the environment on Thursday reflects how Catholics and others “should be allowed to participate in civil society. To say they should have no voice in the public conversation doesn’t make sense.”
The Jesuit priest was responding to conservatives’ criticism of Francis’ groundbreaking public letter on the environment, which lamented humanity’s “unrestrained delusions of grandeur,” while calling for the phasing out of fossil fuels and their replacement with sustainable energy sources.
Acknowledging that churches should be “cautious” about making specific policy recommendations, the Jesuit priest nevertheless opposed fossil-fuel industry lobbyists and U.S. Republican presidential contender Jeb Bush, a Catholic anti-abortion activist, for saying the Pope and other religious leaders should keep away from economic and political issues.
In a clear sign that the Pope was trying to spread his message about the devastating consequences of human-made climate change beyond the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, Francis released his letter Thursday in the presence of a top cleric of the Eastern Orthodox church and a leading non-religious climate scientist.
Ian Bruce, who speaks on science policy for Canada’s David Suzuki Foundation, said the Pope’s 192-page letter, titled Praise Be: On Care for Our Common House, will have a “huge impact” on the rapidly evolving climate-change debate.
“It’s a scientific and morally valid call for action. This will reach beyond the church to a wide audience. I think we’re going to see this conversation pop up at a lot more dinner tables and a lot more water coolers across the country.”
The Pope’s statement on the environment will give encouragement to once-recalcitrant Canadian politicians and oilindustry officials, Bruce said, many of whom in the past year have started to acknowledge the future requires a sharp turn to renewable energy.
Bruce appreciated that the Argentine pontiff, who studied chemistry and has long expressed concern for the vulnerable, spelled out how climate change is leading to catastrophic droughts in the developing world, which not only cause starvation, but create refugees and armed conflict.
John Bennett, Ottawa-based director of the Sierra Club Foundation of Canada, said he’s pleased to see “the Pope talk about climate change and environmental degradation as the result of an exploitive economic system that punishes the poor for the sins of wealthy. It is a pretty sweeping indictment.”
The Pope’s letter adopts an urgent tone as it calls for “a cultural revolution” in thinking.
It is making international headlines at the same time as Francis’ popularity is soaring — as he plays down controversies over sexual morality and instead emphasizes matters of the common good.
More than two out of three Canadians now approve of Pope Francis, according to a recent Angus Reid Institute poll. The Pope’s approval ratings are even higher, according to Pew Research, in other strongly Catholic countries such as the U.S., Poland, Italy, France and the Philippines.
In condemning a global “culture of waste,” the pontiff stressed that abortion is not the answer to population growth or climate change, while urging “an open and honest debate” on what exactly is leading the planet to the precipice.
“Nobody is suggesting a return to the Stone Age,” Francis writes in his letter.
“But we do need to slow down and look at reality in a different way, to appropriate the positive and sustainable progress which has been made, but also to recover the values and the great goals swept away by our unrestrained delusions of grandeur.”
The Pope particularly called upon climate-change doubters to wake up.
“Obstructionist attitudes, even on the part of believers, can range from denial of the problem to indifference, nonchalant resignation or blind confidence in technical solutions. We require a new and universal solidarity.”
The pontiff’s letter, published in seven languages, criticizes “a structurally perverse” economic system in which rich countries are guilty of a “disproportionate use of natural resources” — while the worst impact of climate change is on fragile developing countries.
Allore, who belongs to the same Jesuit order in which Pope Francis was once a leader, said the pontiff is making clear in his letter that God is interested in providing more than “individual salvation” for people of faith in some sort of afterlife.
“God came into the world (in Jesus) for the benefit of the whole of Creation, not just individual human beings,” Allore said. “The world is filled with the grandeur of God. I don’t understand anyone who would say, ‘The Earth doesn’t matter.’ ”