Pope calls for change in Westerners’ ‘irresponsible lifestyle’
Pope Francis shamed and challenged world leaders on Wednesday to commit to binding targets to slow climate change before it’s too late, warning that God’s increasingly warming creation is fast reaching a “point of no return.”
In an unusually bleak update to his landmark 2015 encyclical on the environment, Francis heightened the alarm about the “irreversible” harm to people and planet already under way and lamented that once again, the world’s poor and most vulnerable are paying the highest price, according to Associated Press.
“We are now unable to halt the enormous damage we have caused. We barely have time to prevent even more tragic damage,” Francis warned.
He took square aim at the United States, noting that per-capita emissions in the U.S. are twice as high as China and seven times greater than the average in poor countries. While individual, household efforts are helping, “we can state that a broad change in the irresponsible lifestyle connected with the Western model would have a significant long-term impact,” he said.
The document, “Praise God,” was released on the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the pontiff’s nature-loving namesake, and was aimed at spurring negotiators to commit to binding climate targets at the next round of UN talks in Dubai.
Francis weighed in on a key and contentious point of negotiations – whether countries should agree to a phase out of coal, oil and natural gas, the fossil fuels that are causing climate change.
Using precise scientific data, sharp diplomatic arguments and a sprinkling of theological reasoning, Francis delivered a moral imperative for the world to transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy with measures that that are “efficient, obligatory and readily monitored.”
“What is being asked of us is nothing other than a certain responsibility for the legacy we will leave behind, once we pass from this world,” he said.
U.S. climate scientist Carlos Martinez, a committed Catholic who heads a multifaith committee for the American Meteorological Society, said it reads like a report card for Earth and its people and “it appears from the language that he would give students a D, like a D-. Because there has been some progress, but it’s not where it needs to be.”