Pope Francis made his strongest statements yet about climate change Wednesday, rebuking fossil fuel companies and urging countries to make an immediate transition to renewable energy.
In a new document titled “Laudate Deum,” or “Praise God,” the pope criticizes oil and gas companies for greenwashing new fossil fuel projects and calls for more ambitious efforts in the West to tackle the climate crisis. In the landmark apostolic exhortation, a form of papal writing, Francis says that “avoiding an increase of a tenth of a degree in the global temperature would already suffice to alleviate some suffering for many people.”
“Laudate Deum” is a follow-up to the pope’s 2015 encyclical on climate change, known as “Laudato Si’,” which lamented the exploitation of the planet and cast the protection of the environment as a moral imperative. When it was released, “Laudato Si’” was viewed as an extraordinary move by the head of the Catholic Church to address global warming and its consequences.
Nearly a decade later, the pope’s message has taken on new urgency.
Imagine being called too slow to accept new ideas by the fucking pope
Lol reminds me of the Louis ck classic
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based pope
If only the church had billions of dollars to fight the evils of the world like hunger, homelessness, and pedos just to name a few.
Or you had the power to publicly shame Catholic leaders and say “you can’t get into heaven until you stop sucking so bad”
it’s a case that even a broken clock ticks the right time now and then
Oil companies will default to doing anything that makes them money. Governments need to make climate forcing cost them more than their revenue.
Exactly. US oil companies won’t voluntarily “go green” unless it is more profitable to do so.
I was a production engineer at a US oil company for 5 years and each week I was instructed to calculate what the maximum amount of natural gas each well was allowed to flare while staying exactly below the legal limit. This is natural gas which cannot be sold so it is burned on-site which produces less greenhouse gases than just releasing it to the atmosphere.
Essentially, I was helping them pollute the maximum legal amount in order to maximize profit from the oil production. The gas pipelines hadn’t been built yet but the oil company didn’t want to wait for that since the oil is more valuable. This was A LOT of gas being burned. The fire balls were enormous and roared, sounding like a helicopter or jet engine at times.
Everything in the company worked this way. Old wells didn’t get plugged and cleaned up until the local state government threatened fines. Leaks and spills were only monitored as closely as they were because the state had inspectors going around issuing hefty fines.
Yeah, this is the truth that people are too emotional to accept. I do air permitting and also spend every day calculating the “maximum allowable pollution” a site can produce while keeping it within applicable regulatory limits. Even if the CEO was like “alright, time to go green!” and devotes 100% of the profits to operating “green”, they’ll just get sued by the shareholders and be bankrupt or go to jail. Even if there are no shareholders, their operating costs will skyrocket and they’ll be put out of business by the company next door, or even just Saud Arabia.
Passing government regulation is the only way. But we are also operating in a global economy, so you might just end up destroying your entire oil business in the process, sending all of that marketshare to places with even -worse- environmental regulation. Which just comes back to us anyways in the grand scheme of things.
Good points, it is certainly a fine line between controlling pollution and hampering a domestic industry which would otherwise be replaced by equally bad overseas industry. As bad as the pollution seemed, the wells were very clean compared to how things used to be done in the US not that long ago, and how I assume things are still done in many parts of the world.
I have a hard time blaming the oil company in isolation, they are just doing what they must do for shareholders, as you said. As long as there is demand for oil, there will be someone there to supply it. I mostly blame the government for not doing more to expedite the development of more economical green solutions.
BUT! Although the company I worked for was not one of the majors who hid climate change, they do have a substantial superPAC to influence politics and elections. The billionaire owner regularly flew to Washington to meet with people, even the president.
And when the state government wanted to increase taxes on oil to help the state pay for public services, the oil company printed lots of protest signs and bussed employees who volunteered to go to the state capital and protest. These types of interference in the government hinder progress and keep the oil companies in control. The gov needs to stop this behavior but I think it’s a feedback loop of corruption.
Fucking hell. All the simple minded people in these comments who have no sense of nuance or incremental benefits… nothing will ever be perfect enough for them and they will be just as helpful for fixing the messes of our society as the ones who deny it at this rate.
Yeah it’s a little and yeah it’s late but it’s something and he can be right about this and problematic elsewhere. Not everything can be solved with the mindset of an 8 year old who thinks people are either good or evil
I think all the hate is justified. Pope has been quick to point fingers in various directions for a while now but he never moved a step to fix issues in his own yard making whole church extremely hypocritical.
Is he the same guy who refused to condemn Russia for invasion?
Nah, I’m pretty sure he was feuding with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church over it, even called him an alter boy.
even called him and alter boy.
That is a real pain in the ass insult.
Real pain! And he knows what kind of… Well, orthodox priests are allowed to have wives so he might not be as horny as this guy.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was running for reelection.
Way too little, way too late.
“POPE CALLS FOR NATIONS TO IMPOSE 1000% TAX ON CARBON, ACCELERATE TRANSITION TO RENEWABLES”, said no pope ever, to anyone.
So much for God giving the Pope a heads up on this one…
Weak sauce from pontifex…… needs to be more biblical.
“Plagues floods etc - something something Almighty vengeance …. Blah blah…. Shaming not only us but god himself…… bathe in holy fires etc etc. ……purge before resetting Amen “”
That got shit done in the olden days .
Why do the press even care what the pope says.
Because millions and millions of people care?
Same could be said about his religions action on molestation.
Good for Pope Francis.
How is that dude’s opinion relevant to anything outside his weird cult? Stop kid raping in your cult first, then you can try having opinions on things outside of it.
Cause there’s billions of people who claim to be his followers, and climate change is the biggest issue humanity has ever faced.
Having the leader of one of the largest religions pushing for ecological improvements is a good thing.
Who claim to be his followers as long as it suits them.
Not every Catholic is a liar, lol
To be fair, I was implying they are hypocrites.
“His weird cult”
Dude, it’s the main religion here in Latin America. 🌎
Doesn’t make it any less weird or any less of a cult.
Genuinely curious why you think it’s a cult. Not even Catholic or Christian I just wanna get your reasoning
Not that guy, but the difference between the Catholic Church and Heavens Gate or Charles Manson is that its socially accepted with enough of a population to reach critical mass of speakers and followers to where it’s assumed normal.
The different between a cult and a religion is how many followers it has.
That’s a bit reductionist, not all religious organizations are high control groups, though many are (like JW’s.)
Oh, ok then, the pope had called it guys - time to pack it up and switch to renewables.
Fossil Fuel Companies: “Did someone say something?”
This is part of the reason why I say that people who claim that church is anti-science, have never actually sat down and listened to the Pope.
While it’s important to note all the harm that has been done by bad actors in its ranks, the Roman Catholic Church has been a huge supporter of science for a long time now.
The anti-intellectualism movements in many churches right now are a fairly recent trend. Many of the world’s most-prestigous institutions of education and science were founded as religious institutions.
Understanding the natural world was long seen as examining the majesty of creation. The more people learned about the universe the grander its scale.
But of course there have also been times in history where the powerful worked tirelessly to deny people education and opportunity as they hoarded wealth for themselves, and they coopted churches to convince the people that knowledge was evil and that suffering was a sign of Godliness.
It’s also important to note that even the Roman Catholic Church is not a monolith. There are certainly those in its hierarchy who are as bad as you might expect, and others who are far more progressive than you’d guess. And when most people (at least and especially in America) say christian, they mostly mean protestant, which is even far less monolithic than the Catholics since it’s a bunch of similar churches with their own or sometimes no hierarchical structures.
Francis is just running damage control for the absolute fascist that last pope was.
Good. We need damage control after fascists cause damage that’s the point.
Just to add, the current pope is a chemist technician
The Church was definitely anti-science when it threatened to undermine their authority, i.e., when it contradicted some article of faith. This started in the Renaissance and continued up until very recently. The Catholic Church was still fighting against evolutionary theory in the 1980s!
So, if they only believe in science when it doesn’t contradict their superstition, and criticize and persecute scientists when it does… does that make them pro-science?
Things that make you go, “Hmmm…”
Actions, that’s what counts. Words are empty, especially from catholic church.
You dropped this:
/s
