Pope calls for urgent action on climate change
Fri 19 June 2015
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In a 180-page encyclical Pope Francis said that the planet is facing "unprecedented destruction" and that "the earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth." The leader of the Catholic Church called for the phasing out of fossil fuels and concerted global action to be taken on tackling climate change.
The Pope issued a scathing attack on wealthy nations and big businesses that fail to act on climate change. He also called for action on tackling global water scarcity and adopting a circular economy.
The Pope's encyclical is a powerful moral call to action which was welcomed by many leading advocates of accelerated action to tackle climate change. The Pope said climate change was “a global problem with grave implications” and added “those who possess more resources and economic or political power seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms".
Pope Francis said technology was not the whole solution to the problems presented by pollution and climate change. “Technology, which, linked to business interests, is presented as the only way of solving these problems, in fact proves incapable of seeing the mysterious network of relations between things and so sometimes solves one problem only to create others.”
The Pope criticised how waste and atmospheric pollution was allowed to affect millions of people around the world. He wrote: “We have not yet managed to adopt a circular model of production capable of preserving resources for present and future generations.”
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