Pope urges world to act before climate change destroys planet

Yahoo – AFP, Angus MacKinnon, 18 June 2015

Pope Francis says fossil fuel-based technology needs to be "progressively

replaced without delay" (AFP Photo/Ermal Meta)

Vatican City (AFP) - Pope Francis on Thursday urged the world to act quickly to prevent "extraordinary" climate change from destroying the planet, saying rich countries must bear responsibility for creating the problem, and finance a solution.

In a near 200-page document, the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics blames human greed and consumerism but also business and political figures for the situation "Our Sister, mother Earth" now finds itself in.

"This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her," he writes in the long-anticipated Encyclical.

Pope Francis greets the crowd as he

 arrives for his general audience at 

St Peter's Square in the Vatican, on

 June 17, 2015 (AFP Photo/Alberto

Pizzoli)

Arguing that environmental damage is intimately linked to inequality, he says doomsday predictions can no longer be dismissed.

"The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth."

Activists hailed the charismatic Argentinian pontiff's intervention as a potential game-changer in the debate over what causes global warming and how to reverse it.

"Everyone, whether religious or secular, can and must respond to this clarion call for bold urgent action," said Kumi Naido, Greenpeace's international director.

Environmentalists hope the message will increase pressure for binding restrictions on carbon emissions to be agreed at global talks in Paris at the end of this year.

Christiana Figueres, the top UN climate change official, said Francis's call "should guide the world towards a strong and durable universal climate agreement in Paris."

But climate change sceptics dismissed the document's argument that the phenomenon is primarily man-made and that humanity can reverse it through lifestyle changes including an early phasing-out of fossil fuels.

US presidential candidate Jeb Bush, a Catholic, said the pope's guidance would not affect his policies should he be elected.

"I don't go to mass for economic policy or for things in politics," he said.

Christopher Monckton of the Heartland Institute said on Twitter that the pope's stance ignored the interest of the poor in having access to cheap energy, saying he "has sided with the rich profiteers of doom."

Separately, US government scientists on Thursday revealed figures showing that last month was the hottest May on record, with global air and sea surface temperatures 1.57 degrees Fahrenheit (0.87 Celsius) higher than the 20th century average.

Fast track to disaster

A man holds a copy of Pope Francis's 

encyclical on climate change titled

"Laudato Si'" during the official 

presentation at the Vatican, on June 18, 

2015 (AFP Photo/Vincenzo Pinto)

The Encyclical references the arguments of the sceptics by acknowledging that volcanic activity, variation in the Earth's movements and the solar cycle are factors in climate change.

But it maintains that "most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases released mainly as a result of human activity."

And it leaves no doubt that Francis believes the world is on a fast-track to disaster.

"If present trends continue, this century may well witness extraordinary climate change and an unprecedented destruction of ecosystems, with serious consequences for all of us," he writes.

Bemoaning the "remarkable" weakness of political responses to this, Francis accuses sceptics of cynically ignoring or manipulating evidence.

"There are too many special interests, and economic interests easily end up trumping the common good and manipulating information so that their own plans will not be affected," he writes.

"We know how unsustainable is the behaviour of those who constantly consume and destroy, while others are not yet able to live in a way worthy of their human dignity," he adds, saying the time has come for parts of the world to accept decreased growth.

The consequences of climate change, he argues, will include a rise in sea levels that will directly threaten the quarter of the world's population that lives near or on coastlines, and will be felt most acutely by developing countries.

Highlighting warnings that acute water shortages could arise within decades, he writes that "the control of water by large multinational business may become a major source of conflict in this century".

"It is foreseeable that, once certain resources have been depleted, the scene will be set for new wars," with the ever-present risk that nuclear or biological weapons could be used.

'Structurally perverse'

Santo Domingo residents get

 government-supplied potable water

 to mitigate one of country's worst

 droughts in the last 20 years, May 12,

2015 (AFP Photo/Erika Santelices)

One of the strongest themes in the encyclical is that rich countries must accept responsibility for having caused climate change and should "help pay this debt" by cutting their carbon emissions while helping the developing world adopt sustainable forms of energy generation.

"The land of the southern poor is rich and mostly unpolluted, yet access to ownership of goods and resources for meeting vital needs is inhibited by a system of commercial relations and ownership which is structurally perverse," the pope writes in perhaps the most radical passage of the document.

Francis says fossil fuel-based technology needs to be "progressively replaced without delay."

Developing countries will need financing to do this from "countries which have experienced great growth at the cost of the ongoing pollution of the planet" and this pact has to be enshrined in binding accords.

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"Recalibration of Free Choice"–  Mar 3, 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Caroll) - (Subjects: (Old) Souls, Midpoint on 21-12-2012, Shift of Human Consciousness, Black & White vs. Color, 1 - Spirituality (Religions) shifting, Loose a Pope “soon”, 2 - Humans will change react to drama, 3 - Civilizations/Population on Earth,  4 - Alternate energy sources (Geothermal, Tidal (Paddle wheels), Wind), 5 – Financials Institutes/concepts will change (Integrity – Ethical) , 6 - News/Media/TV to change, 7 – Big Pharmaceutical company will collapse “soon”, (Keep people sick), (Integrity – Ethical)  8 – Wars will be over on Earth, Global Unity, … etc.) - (Text version)

“…  4 - Energy (again)

The natural resources of the planet are finite and will not support the continuation of what you've been doing. We've been saying this for a decade. Watch for increased science and increased funding for alternate ways of creating electricity (finally). Watch for the very companies who have the most to lose being the ones who fund it. It is the beginning of a full realization that a change of thinking is at hand. You can take things from Gaia that are energy, instead of physical resources. We speak yet again about geothermal, about tidal, about wind. Again, we plead with you not to over-engineer this. For one of the things that Human Beings do in a technological age is to over-engineer simple things. Look at nuclear - the most over-engineered and expensive steam engine in existence!

Your current ideas of capturing energy from tidal and wave motion don't have to be technical marvels. Think paddle wheel on a pier with waves, which will create energy in both directions [waves coming and going] tied to a generator that can power dozens of neighborhoods, not full cities. Think simple and decentralize the idea of utilities. The same goes for wind and geothermal. Think of utilities for groups of homes in a cluster. You won't have a grid failure if there is no grid. This is the way of the future, and you'll be more inclined to have it sooner than later if you do this, and it won't cost as much.

Water

We've told you that one of the greatest natural resources of the planet, which is going to shift and change and be mysterious to you, is fresh water. It's going to be the next gold, dear ones. So, we have also given you some hints and examples and again we plead: Even before the potentials of running out of it, learn how to desalinate water in real time without heat. It's there, it's doable, and some already have it in the lab. This will create inexpensive fresh water for the planet. 

There is a change of attitude that is starting to occur. Slowly you're starting to see it and the only thing getting in the way of it are those companies with the big money who currently have the old system. That's starting to change as well. For the big money always wants to invest in what it knows is coming next, but it wants to create what is coming next within the framework of what it has "on the shelf." What is on the shelf is oil, coal, dams, and non-renewable resource usage. It hasn't changed much in the last 100 years, has it? Now you will see a change of free choice. You're going to see decisions made in the boardrooms that would have curled the toes of those two generations ago. Now "the worst thing they could do" might become "the best thing they could do." That, dear ones, is a change of free choice concept. When the thinkers of tomorrow see options that were never options before, that is a shift. That was number four. ….”