Pope rips climate skeptics

POPE FRANCIS let global warming deniers and greedy plutocrats have it Thursday as he called for reforms of a “structurally perverse economic system” that is turning the Earth into an “immense pile of filth.”

Declaring that the fossil-fuel-based industrial model also enables the rich to exploit the poor, Francis, in his sweeping manifesto, called on people of all faiths to save God’s creation for “future generations.”

“It is not enough to balance, in the medium term, the protection of nature with financial gain or the preservation of the environment with progress,” he wrote.

Francis (photo) rebuked “obstructionist” climate doubters who “seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms.”

The Pope also called for capitalism with a conscience. “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,” he wrote.

It was Francis’ first encyclical on the environment, a direct challenge to Catholic Republicans eyeing the White House.

President Obama hailed Francis’ decision to use the “full moral authority of his position” to call for action on global warming. But Big Oil and its backers fired back at Francis. “The simple reality is that energy is the essential building block of the modern world,” said Thomas Pyle of the Institute of Energy Research, a conservative free-market group.

Francis, a former chemist, had an answer for that, too.

“Nobody is suggesting a return to the Stone Age,” he wrote.