Kathryn Brown finds much to commend in the latest papal offering on the environment.
On October 4 Pope Francis published an apostolic exhortation on climate change, following on from Laudato Si’, his 2015 encylical on the same subject. Laudate Deum entreats “all people of good will” to understand and address the cli- mate change crisis for what it is: one of the most significant threats to human life and the natur- al world that the human race has experienced.
This is a well-timed intervention in the run up to the 28th UN climate change conference which will take place in Dubai at the end of November. The period leading up to this critical meeting of countries has been described behind closed doors as “a nosedive into a hell-scape” with petty arguing amongst negotiators in the UN pre-meetings, governments ignoring the hard facts of climate change, and doing little to ensure that the public understand and are equipped to react to what is coming.
In the UK, we have witnessed the Prime Minister give an empty call for public discourse on net zero, while continuing to do nothing to ensure that information on climate risk and impacts is made available to households to help them prepare. We have seen increasing evidence that fossil fuel compan- ies, which have understood the seriousness of climate change for decades, have del- iberately hidden the facts from others. The Pope does not shy away from addressing the behaviour of sceptics head on: “Despite all attempts to deny, conceal, gloss over or relativise the issue, the signs of climate change are here and increasingly evident,” he writes.
The scientific basis of the exhortation is notably specific, and accurate. It is unusual to see the numbers given centre stage in a document such as this, but Pope Francis has considered this information in a way that could be lifted almost directly from the scientific reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He also directly targets problems within the Catholic Church. He says, “I feel obliged to make these clarifications, which may appear obvious, because of certain dismissive and scarcely reas- onable opinions that I encounter, even within the Catholic Church.” The message is clear: no one, with any moral or ethical compass, should deny or hide the seriousness of what we now face from climate change.
The remainder of the exhortation presents a different possibility – a different future which is close to what environmental NGOs also want to see. The Pope explains that our current global economic systems are not built to address the problems we are creating; rather, they are adding to and driving our “current process of environmental decay”. He warns against the entrenched ideology of no-limits economic and technological growth, and allowing power to rest in the hands of a few individuals who misuse it. He also rails against the idea that current action is too costly. The costs of not acting now are so high that they are impossible to calculate fully.
The Pope begins his exhortation by encouraging us to cherish God’s creatures – he is well known for his love of the natural world, and Francis is its champion. He chooses to set the tone for his discourse against this backdrop and goes on to write of our broken relationship with nature. It is the healing and resetting of this relationship that could have some of the most profound and positive effects on our ability to solve climate change.
He states: “Contrary to this technocratic paradigm, we say that the world that surrounds us is not an object of exploitation, unbrid-led use and unlimited ambition. Nor can we claim that nature is a mere ‘setting’ in which we develop our lives and our projects. For ‘we are part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it’, and thus ‘we [do] not look at the world from without but from within’”.
The Pope is calling for the same thing that The Wildlife Trusts and many others are: new economic models that value the very existence of the planet’s natural assets and not just their exploitation. He calls on us to use the global crises we have created as a catalyst for positive change rather than a retreat into isolationism; he urges a decisive and swift trans-ition towards renewable power, nature’s recovery and actions that aim to benefit humanity as a whole.
The Pope exhorts everyone – including Catholics, of course – to do whatever they can to stop the collapse of our world which is inevitable if we continue as we are. His latest apostolic exhortation is hard-hitting and emotional – and it needs to be. His final message is one of personal change, and this, above all, is the heart of the matter. He wants his readers to be moved, to reflect and to act.
Kathryn Brown OBE is director of Climate Change and Evidence at The Wildlife Trusts.
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