Point of no return: Pope challenges leaders at UN talks to slow global warming before it's too late

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VATICAN CITY (AP) — 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 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.

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. He is for it. As fast as possible even, he wrote. As it is, Francis' 2015 encyclical “Praise Be” was a watershed moment for the Catholic Church, the first time a pope had used one of his most authoritative teaching documents to recast the climate debate in moral terms.

Shaming them for their reliance on “allegedly solid scientific data,” he said the doubters’ arguments about potential job losses from a clean energy transition were bunk. And he cited data showing that increased emissions and the corresponding rise in global temperatures have accelerated since the Industrial Revolution, and particularly in the last 50 years.While acknowledging that “certain apocalyptic diagnoses” may not be grounded, he said inaction is no longer an option.

In the 2015 landmark Paris Agreement, countries of the world agreed to try to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or at least 2 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times. It’s already warmed about 1.1 degrees since the mid-1800s.

 

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