Pope Francis on Thursday urged the world to act quickly to prevent "extraordinary" climate change from destroying the planet, saying rich countries must bear responsibility for creating the problem, and finance a solution. In a near 200-page document, the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics blames human greed and consumerism but also business and political figures for the situation "Our Sister, mother Earth" now finds itself in.
"This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her," he writes in the long-anticipated Encyclical. Arguing that environmental damage is intimately linked to inequality, he says doomsday predictions can no longer be dismissed. "The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth."
Activists hailed the charismatic Argentinian pontiff's intervention as a potential game-changer in the debate over what causes global warming and how to reverse it. "Everyone, whether religious or secular, can and must respond to this clarion call for bold urgent action," said Kumi Naido, Greenpeace's international director. Environmentalists hope the message will increase pressure for binding restrictions on carbon emissions to be agreed at global talks in Paris at the end of this year.
Christiana Figueres, the top UN climate change official, said Francis's call "should guide the world towards a strong and durable universal climate agreement in Paris." But climate change sceptics dismissed the document's argument that the phenomenon is primarily man-made and that humanity can reverse it through lifestyle changes including an early phasing-out of fossil fuels. US presidential candidate Jeb Bush, a Catholic, said the pope's guidance would not affect his policies should he be elected. "I don't go to mass for economic policy or for things in politics," he said.
Christopher Monckton of the Heartland Institute said on Twitter that the pope's stance ignored the interest of the poor in having access to cheap energy, saying he "has sided with the rich profiteers of doom." Separately, US government scientists on Thursday revealed figures showing that last month was the hottest May on record, with global air and sea surface temperatures 1.57 degrees Fahrenheit (0.87 Celsius) higher than the 20th century average.
The Encyclical references the arguments of the sceptics by acknowledging that volcanic activity, variation in the Earth's movements and the solar cycle are factors in climate change. But it maintains that "most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases released mainly as a result of human activity." And it leaves no doubt that Francis believes the world is on a fast-track to disaster.
"If present trends continue, this century may well witness extraordinary climate change and an unprecedented destruction of ecosystems, with serious consequences for all of us," he writes. Bemoaning the "remarkable" weakness of political responses to this, Francis accuses sceptics of cynically ignoring or manipulating evidence. "There are too many special interests, and economic interests easily end up trumping the common good and manipulating information so that their own plans will not be affected," he writes.