Warning before the world climate conference
Pope Francis: “The world that surrounds us is crumbling”
October 4, 2023, 5:29 p.m
His climate encyclical is said to have had a significant influence on the World Climate Conference in Paris. Before COP 28, the head of the church is upping the ante. The world is “perhaps facing a deep turning point”. Climate protection must urgently be increased. He also castigates climate deniers in the church.
A few weeks before the UN World Climate Conference COP 28, Pope Francis called on the international community to take a much more decisive fight against the climate crisis. Over time it becomes clear to him “that we are not reacting sufficiently while the world that surrounds us is crumbling and perhaps facing a deep turning point,” Francis wrote in one apostolic letters entitled “Laudate Deum” (Praise God). Francis sharply criticized the denial of climate change, which can also be found in the Catholic Church itself.
In the letter, published eight years after his climate encyclical and a few weeks before COP 28, which begins in Dubai at the end of November, Francis called for “binding forms of energy transition” that are “efficient”, “mandatory” and easy to monitor, in view of increasing extreme weather events should be.
“Signs of climate change are there”
The head of the Catholics directed clear criticism at deniers of man-made climate change. In the text, which is twelve pages long in the Spanish-language original, Francis writes of “derogatory” and “unreasonable opinions” that he finds “even within the Catholic Church.” “No matter how hard one may try to deny, hide, conceal or relativize them, the signs of climate change are there and are becoming increasingly clear,” the Pope added.
At the end of August, Francis announced an update to his climate encyclical published in 2015. The Pope published the approximately 200-page letter called “Laudato Si” (in German: Praise be to you) in 2015 before the World Climate Summit in Paris. In it, Francis underlined humanity’s responsibility for climate change.
The text is now seen as having an influence on the negotiations on the Paris climate protection agreement, which were later successfully concluded. It was also the subject of discussion in academic journals, which is extremely rare for religious texts.
Warning against discouragement
The world climate conference in Dubai, which begins on November 30th, could be “a turning point,” writes Francis in “Laudate Deum.” Such a turning point could prove that everything that has been done since the first environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 “was serious and worth it.”
The Pope also expressed his hope that COP 28 would lead to “a significant acceleration of the energy transition with effective commitments.” “With such a process alone it would be possible to regain the credibility of international politics,” Francis writes. Only in this “concrete way” will it be possible to “significantly reduce carbon dioxide and avoid the worst evils in a timely manner”.
With regard to the widely criticized COP 28 host country, the United Arab Emirates, Francis writes that the Gulf state is considered a “major exporter of fossil energy” but has made “significant investments in renewable energies.”
Francis warned against discouragement when it comes to climate change. “To say that you don’t have to expect anything is like self-mutilation,” writes the pontiff. “Because it would mean exposing all of humanity, especially the poorest, to the worst effects of climate change.”