- ‘We’re close to breaking point,’ he raises the alarm
- Says climate change is a ‘silent disease that affects everyone’
Pope Francis, the Holy Father has sounded the alarm over intensifying impacts of climate change, warning that co-responsibility and immediate action must be at the heart of efforts to tackle the current climate and environmental crisis. In his new Apostolic Exhortation entitled ‘Laudate Deum’ the Pope bemoaned insufficient commitment to combat climate change as he slammed the international community over its weak response. He didn’t spare some Catholic Churches either. He writes, “Eight years have passed since I published the Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’, when I wanted to share with all of you, my brothers and sisters of our suffering planet, my heartfelt concerns about the care of our common home. Yet, with the passage of time, I have realised that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point. In addition to this possibility, it is indubitable that the impact of climate change will increasingly prejudice the lives and families of many persons.”
Spiraling climate change obvious
The first paragraph of the 73 paragraph-document, a continuity of his 2015 encyclical Laudato si’ highlighted the increasing climate hazards. The Apostolic Exhortation reads in part, “Despite all attempts to deny, conceal, gloss over or relativize the issue, the signs of climate change are here and increasingly evident. No one can ignore the fact that in recent years we have witnessed extreme weather phenomena, frequent periods of unusual heat, drought and other cries of protest on the part of the earth that are only a few palpable expressions of a silent disease that affects everyone. “Nonetheless, it is verifiable that specific climate changes provoked by humanity are notably heightening the probability of extreme phenomena that are increasingly frequent and intense.”Pope Francis feared that with much more frequent heat waves and greater intensity, “the icecaps of Greenland and a large part of Antarctica will melt completely, with immensely grave consequences for everyone.” He challenged those who tend to play down climate change.
Hear the Holy Pontiff, “In recent years, some have chosen to deride these facts. They bring up allegedly solid scientific data, like the fact that the planet has always had, and will have, periods of cooling and warming. They forget to mention another relevant datum: that what we are presently experiencing is an unusual acceleration of warming, at such a speed that it will take only one generation – not centuries or millennia – in order to verify it. “The rise in the sea level and the melting of glaciers can be easily perceived by an individual in his or her lifetime, and probably in a few years many populations will have to move their homes because of these facts,” the Bishop of Rome stated. The Holy Pontiff clarified the notion that phasing out of fossils fuels causes job loss. “The magisterial document reads in part, “It is often heard also that efforts to mitigate climate change by reducing the use of fossil fuels and developing cleaner energy sources will lead to a reduction in the number of jobs. What is happening is that millions of people are losing their jobs, due to different effects of climate change: rising sea levels, droughts and other phenomena affecting the planet have left many people adrift. “Conversely, the transition to renewable forms of energy, properly managed, as well as efforts to adapt to the damage caused by climate change, are capable of generating countless jobs in different sectors. This demands that politicians and business leaders should even now be concerning themselves with it.”
Not the entire fault of the poor
Pope Francis exonerated the poor as the primary reason behind climate change as he substantiated the recent data from Oxham’s Research with Stockholm Environment Institute which stipulated that the wealthiest one percent of humanity is responsible for twice as many emissions as the poorest 50 percent. The Pope writes, “In an attempt to simplify reality, there are those who would place responsibility on the poor, since they have many children, and even attempt to resolve the problem by mutilating women in less developed countries. As usual, it would seem that everything is the fault of the poor. Yet, the reality is that a low, richer percentage of the planet contaminates more than the poorest 50% of the total world population, and that per capita emissions of the richer countries are much greater than those of the poorer ones. How can we forget that Africa, home to more than half of the world’s poorest people, is responsible for a minimal portion of historic emissions?” He also regrets that some parts of the Catholic have questioned climate change. The document recounts the data from various environmental studies to prove the ongoing challenge humanity is facing.
Human causes
According to the Pope, “It is no longer possible to doubt the human – “anthropic” – origin of climate change. He explains, “Let us see why. The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which causes global warming, was stable until the nineteenth century, below 300 parts per million in volume. “But in the middle of that century, in conjunction with industrial development, emissions began to increase. In the past fifty years, this increase has accelerated significantly, as the Mauna Loa observatory, which has taken daily measurements of carbon dioxide since 1958, has confirmed. While I was writing Laudato Si’, they hit a historic high – 400 parts per million – until arriving at 423 parts per million in June 2023. “More than 42% of total net emissions since the year 1850 were produced after 1990. At the same time, we 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. In this period, the trend was a warming of 0.15° C per decade; double that of the last 150 years.
From 1850 on, the global temperature has risen by 1.1° C, with even greater impact on the polar regions. At this rate, it is possible that in just ten years, we will reach the recommended maximum global ceiling of 1.5°C. “This increase has not occurred on the earth’s surface alone, but also several kilometres higher in the atmosphere, on the surface of the oceans and even in their depths for hundreds of metres. “Thus the acidification of the seas increased and their oxygen levels were reduced. The glaciers are receding, the snow cover is diminishing and the sea level is constantly rising. “It is not possible to conceal the correlation of these global climate phenomena and the accelerated increase in greenhouse gas emissions, particularly since the mid-twentieth century. The overwhelming majority of scientists specializing in the climate support this correlation, and only a very small percentage of them seek to deny the evidence. Regrettably, the climate crisis is not exactly a matter that interests the great economic powers, whose concern is with the greatest profit possible at minimal cost and in the shortest amount of time.” The Apostolic Exhortation further reads in part, “I feel obliged to make these clarifications, which may appear obvious, because of certain dismissive and scarcely reasonable opinions that I encounter, even within the Catholic Church. “Yet, we can no longer doubt that the reason for the unusual rapidity of these dangerous changes is a fact that cannot be concealed: the enormous novelties that have to do with unchecked human intervention on nature in the past two centuries. Events of natural origin that usually cause warming, such as volcanic eruptions and others, are insufficient to explain the proportion and speed of the changes of recent decades. “The change in average surface temperatures cannot be explained except as the result of the increase of greenhouse gases.
Damages and risks
“Some effects of the climate crisis are already irreversible, at least for several hundred years, such as the increase in the global temperature of the oceans, their acidification and the decrease of oxygen. Ocean waters have a thermal inertia and centuries are needed to normalize their temperature and salinity, which affects the survival of many species. This is one of the many signs that the other creatures of this world have stopped being our companions along the way and have become instead our victims. “The same can be said about the decrease in the continental ice sheets. The melting of the poles will not be able to be reversed for hundreds of years. As for the climate, there are factors that have persisted for long periods of time, independent of the events that may have triggered them. For this reason, we are now unable to halt the enormous damage we have caused. We barely have time to prevent even more tragic damage. “Certain apocalyptic diagnoses may well appear scarcely reasonable or insufficiently grounded. This should not lead us to ignore the real possibility that we are approaching a critical point.”
Climate Conferences: Progress and Failures
Pope Frances appraises climate conferences. He said, “For several decades now, representatives of more than 190 countries have met periodically to address the issue of climate change. The 1992 Rio de Janeiro Conference led to the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a treaty that took effect when the necessary ratification on the part of the signatories concluded in 1994. “These States meet annually in the Conference of the Parties (COP), the highest decision-making body. Some of these Conferences were failures, like that of Copenhagen (2009), while others made it possible to take important steps forward, like COP3 in Kyoto (1997). Its significant Protocol set the goal of reducing overall greenhouse gas emissions by 5% with respect to 1990. The deadline was the year 2012, but this, clearly, was not achieved.
