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.
He lamented that “the necessary transition towards clean energy sources, such as wind and solar energy, and the abandonment of fossil fuels is not progressing at the necessary speed.”Thanks for signing up!The next issue of Afternoon Headlines will soon be in your inbox.
In that text, which has been cited by presidents, patriarchs and premiers and spurred an activist movement in the the church, Francis called for a bold cultural revolution to correct a “structurally perverse” economic system where the rich exploit the poor, turning Earth into an “immense pile of filth.”
“Small changes can cause greater ones, unforeseen and perhaps already irreversible, due to factors of inertia,” he noted. “This would end up precipitating a cascade of events having a snowball effect. In such cases, it is always too late, since no intervention will be able to halt a process once begun.”The document was unusual for a papal exhortation and read more like a U.N. scientific report or a speech to a “Fridays for Future” youth climate rally.
Francis said that it was clear that the Paris target will be breached and will soon reach 3 degrees Celsius, and that already the effects are obvious, with oceans warming, glaciers melting and the world registering record heat waves and extreme weather events.
And in the United States alone, there have been 152 climate or weather disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damage since the pope’s first climate message, with costs adjusted for inflation, according to NOAA.Francis devoted an entire section of his document on upcoming climate negotiations in Dubai, saying a switch in the way the world gets its energy has to be obligatory, “drastic, intense and count on the commitment of all.
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