Pope Francis convened a climate change summit at the Vatican on Tuesday to build support for an encyclical on the environment, in which the Roman Catholic Church is expected to position confronting a warming planet in biblical terms.
The encyclical, an official document delivered to bishops that is meant to guide the church’s teachings, is expected in June. Francis, dubbed the “Pope for the Poor,” is rumored to be advocating for climate action on the grounds of being good stewards of the Earth and protecting impoverished communities from the effects of climate change.
Francis has said he wants to put the weight of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics behind United Nations climate negotiations that begin in December in Paris. Nations are looking to cement a framework governing greenhouse gas emissions post-2020 in hopes of keeping temperatures from rising 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon praised the pope’s push in comments to Vatican Radio.
“It is a moral issue. It is an issue of social justice, human rights and fundamental ethics. We have a profound responsibility to the fragile web of life on this Earth, and to this generation and those that will follow,” Ban said. “That is why it is so important that the world’s faith groups are clear on this issue — and in harmony with science.”
The summit has stirred religious circles — some faith groups have praised the effort, as have environmental organizations. They have noted that climate change disproportionately affects the world’s poor when food prices rise due to drought, agricultural yields shift because of changing temperatures and storms batter densely populated coastal communities.
“When climate change supercharges weather patterns, the disadvantaged often suffer first and most,” Frances Beinecke, the former president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, wrote on Huffington Post. “Latino farm workers in California have had their livelihoods crushed by ongoing drought. Impoverished laborers in eastern India became homeless this month when heavy rains destroyed thousands of huts. And women around the globe are 14 times more likely to die than men are when extreme weather hits.”
Issuing a call for environment action on moral pretenses isn’t without precedent. Pope Benedict XVI did so fairly regularly. And in the United States, politicians such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a Southern Baptist who is considering a 2016 White House run, told Politico that he believes something must be done to address climate change because “we were counseled by God to be good stewards of the environment.”
But others have said the pope is injecting the church into politics and on a matter in which some skeptics believe the science is not settled, although most climate scientists say climate change is largely human-caused. Some evangelicals also contend that extreme weather, drought and other events linked to climate change are a manifestation of a nearing “end of days.”
“Now, I would wager 99 percent of Catholics have no problem agreeing with preserving the environment and promoting sustainable development. All the controversy hinges on climate change, whether it is caused by human industrial carbon emissions, and if so, how to properly address it,” wrote Thomas Peters on CatholicVote.org, a popular advocacy organization.
Many lawmakers are uncomfortable talking about the pope’s action on climate.
For example, Sen. Pat Toomey, a Catholic Republican from Pennsylvania, told the Washington Examiner simply, “I’m not going to comment on that.” Several Republican presidential hopefuls who are Catholic, such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and current New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, aren’t entirely convinced that humans are playing a role in warming the planet.
Indeed, some conservative groups are pushing back on the pope’s climate change message. The conservative Heartland Institute, which is skeptical of the link between burning greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels and a warming planet, sent some of its members to Rome to “advise Pope Francis on climate policy.”
Conservative groups such as Heartland said a better policy for helping the poor would include expanding access to fossil fuels, such as coal-fired electricity, in places where people don’t have reliable electricity.
“Attributing allegedly unnatural warming to the use of fossil fuels to obtain energy essential for human flourishing, these voices demand that people surrender their God-given dominium, even if doing so means remaining in or returning to poverty,” a group of 90 academics and faith leaders wrote to Francis in an open letter.
