One would have to be on another planet not to know that Pope Francis has weighed in on climate change. I came across a very good editorial in the Toronto Star recently and for those who may not be clear on what the Pontiff is saying, I will share some of it with you. Without admitting to following one personal religious belief or another, I agree wholeheartedly with him. He is calling for a moral awakening in every section of the letter.
Pope Francis has framed combating climate change as an urgent moral imperative, not merely an economic or technical challenge.1 In his eyes, it is also a profound theological issue warning that humans are overwhelmingly at fault for the unprecedented destruction of the environment. He also laments the growing gap between rich and poor, stressing that poor countries suffer the most at the devastating hands of climate change. Accordingly, he iterates it will require dramatic changes in energy consumption and lifestyles to avert grave consequences' by the end of the century.
More than an environmental critique, his encyclical describes the challenge in terms of religion and faith. It is summoning the 1.2 billion faithful - especially those in Canada and other rich countries - to take decisive action here and now' as custodians of the Earth to arrest climate change before it overwhelms the planet. This is more than green guidance to the faithful. It urges a call to arms, so to speak, in the way Christians and others relate to the world. It's a call for a return to a simpler, less wasteful lifestyle.
Never before has a pope issued such a universal call for political, economic, and personal transformation.
When asked in a CBC interview about Francis' letter Laudato Si' (mi' Signore) or Praise to you, my Lord, environmental writer and member of the board of directors of 350.org Naomi Klein put it this way:
"There will be big impacts particularly in Europe is my feeling. I think there will be a couple of pieces where for developing countries and governments having the Pope speak out so strongly about the moral crisis of climate change may embolden developing country governments at the negotiating table. But I also think Europe is going to play this really important role because he is bringing together inequality with climate change saying we need to solve those problems at the same time."
The braided historical threads of colonialism, coal, and capitalism shed significant light on why so many of us who are willing to challenge the injustices of the market system remain paralyzed in the face of the climate threat. Fossil fuels, and the deeper extractivist mind-set that they represent, built the modern world. If we are part of industrial or post-industrial societies, we are still living inside the story written in coal.2
Ever since the French Revolution, there have been pitched and ideological battles within the confines of this story: communists, socialists, and trade unions have fought for more equal distribution of the spoils of extraction, winning major victories for the poor and working classes. The human rights and emancipation movements of this period have also fought valiantly against industrial capitalism's treatment of whole categories of our species as human sacrifice zones, no more deserving of rights than raw commodities. These struggles have also won major victories against the dominance-based paradigm - against slavery, for universal suffrage, for equality under the law. There have been voices in all of these movements, moreover, that identified the parallels between the economic model's abuse of the natural world and its abuse of human beings deemed worthy of being sacrificed, or at least uncounted.3
Karl Marx, for instance, recognized capitalism's irreparable rift' with the natural laws of life itself.' For instance, feminist scholars have long recognized that patriarchy's dual war against women's bodies and against the body of the earth were connected to that essential, corrosive separation between mind and body - and between body and earth - from which both the Scientific Revolution and Industrial Revolution sprang.4
Christians of Francis' generation were raised to see themselves as masters' over creation, based on the Bible's references to humans having dominion over all the Earth' with a mandate to subdue' it. But that era has faded as the Earth has warmed and sea levels have risen. As the encyclical makes clear, careful stewardship not plunder is what the world needs to avoid becoming an immense pile of filth.'5
The encyclical goes on to say:
"I urgently appeal for a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet. Obstructionist attitudes, even on the part of believers, can range from denial of the problem to indifference, nonchalant resignation or blind confidence in technical solutions. We require a new and universal solidarity."
For Canadians, the words of the Pope carry an implicit but forceful repudiation of the recklessly exploitive stance for which the federal government has become notorious. Rather than be part of the global consensus' that Francis envisages to tackle' climate change, the ruling party is intent on pumping out the oilsands while paying only lip service to curbing our dependency on fossil fuels all the while enormous amounts of greenhouse gas emissions are being pumped into the atmosphere. Canada's environmental change targets are unambitious and we are nowhere close to meeting them. And to add insult, the best Canada's prime minister can do is to sign on to ending fossil fuel use by the end of this century - long after he will have left this earth. I guess you have to start somewhere. I am heartened, however, that the government leaders of the opposition parties have more credible approaches, such as carbon taxes, as Canadians head into a federal election cycle.
But Francis' demands that short-sighted politicians do more to curb fossil fuel use is just one aspect of a wider call for reform.
While the encyclical wisely steers clear of the complex details of carbon pricing, which experts agree is needed to deter use, it does rightly strike a note of concern over the speculative' buying and selling of carbon credits,' saying that shouldn't be a cover for letting rich countries and industries buy credits to keep on polluting. On this very subject and during the same CBC interview Naomi Klein goes on to say:
"Capitalism uses us. We don't steer capitalism. The point is we have delayed and delayed for two and a half decades and we now need to cut our emissions so deeply that it's clear we can't get off fossil fuels entirely by employing market mechanism within the time-frame. We are down to the wire. Governments and markets do have a strong role to play in policy - telling us where we need to go. The encyclical is very clear, however, that government does not believe market mechanisms will get us there. It's very critical of cap-and-trade and carbon trading as it will spur speculation and will encourage hyper consumption in some parts of the world using the argument that you are offsetting it in another part of the world."
Ambitiously, Pope Francis calls on the richer nations to begin paying down a grave social debt' to poorer ones they have exploited. The rich can help by significantly limiting their consumption of non-renewable energy and by assisting poorer countries to support policies and programs of sustainable development.'
The pope's words are politically very hot. Especially as it comes some six months before nearly 200 nations prepare to meet in Paris to try and hammer out a new' global deal to curb and/or cut fossil fuel use. Predictably, Francis already faces stiff pushback from conservative politicians and the resource industries. "Who is the Pope to set climate policy," some ask. "To question the economic system, or lecture consumers?"
Well, if the polls and surveys are to be believed Francis has more than enough credibility to stare them down. He is one of the world's most trusted figures, with a popularity that stretches beyond his own world congregations. He is not a voice crying in the wilderness. His call for more political action on global warming is endorsed by a majority of Canadians, the United Nations, and climate scientists.
Of course, nothing the Pope says will sway climate change skeptics or those content with a status quo that imperils the planet. But with this encyclical he has framed combating climate change as an urgent moral imperative, not just an economic and technical challenge. Millions will take that to heart. Enough, perhaps, to bend the curve in a better direction.6
In closing, I give you some words written by author Harry M. Caudill about the hills of Eastern Kentucky - a cautionary tale more than a century in the making.
Then, in the gigantic industrial growth which occurred throughout the Western World in the last half of the nineteenth century, coal came to its throne and reigned with a despotism as black as its own dusty lumps. Ships, locomotives, factories and newly built electric power plants were driven by coal and millions of people warmed by its sooty flame. Steel and coal production were the yardsticks by which the Victorian world measured its increasing power, and it was inevitable that the confident overlords of the nation's industrial empires should turn covetous eyes upon the mineral-rich highlands.
But other profiteers entered the mountains for the purpose of acquiring title to only the minerals underlying the land and the appurtenant right to mine and remove them.7
In the words of Pope Francis, "Yet all is not lost. Human beings, while capable of the worst, are also capable of rising above themselves, choosing again what is good, and making a new start."
1 OpEd. "The Pope's stirring call" Toronto Star (Saturday, June 30, 2015): IN6
2 Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything-Capitalism vs the Climate. Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2014
3 Ibid
4 Ibid
5 OpEd, op.cit.
6 OpEd, op.cit.
7 Caudill, Harry M. Night Comes to the Cumberlands-A Biography of a Depressed Area. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1962, 1963
