In his ongoing crusade to promote the scientifically discredited notion of human-caused global warming, Pope Francis has issued a joint statement in collaboration with world leaders who met April 28 in Vatican City for a climate conference hosted by the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences and the United Nations.
The 11-page document is packed with bureaucratic jargon that levels a frontal assault on industrialized prosperity, free-market capitalism, and human procreation. The statement begins: “Unsustainable consumption coupled with a record human population and the uses of inappropriate technologies are causally linked with the destruction of the world’s sustainability and resilience.” It asserts that climate change “is a global problem whose solution will depend on our stepping beyond national affiliations and coming together for the common good,” and that to save the world we must reach “a level and sustainable population.” The declaration urges that “all people of good will should encourage their governments to undertake these commitments to action.” It calls for “bold and humanitarian action by the world’s religions acting in unison” to bring about changes “as prioritized under UN’s sustainable development goals.”
In layman’s terms this might simply be restated as: Greedy capitalist pigs and unsterilized masses are destroying Mother Earth, and the only way to avert catastrophe is for everyone to bow to the exploitive decrees of the godless United Nations.
Karl Marx couldn’t have wished for more.
He would have been especially proud of the wealth redistribution scheme that the Pope’s confreres propose: a “system of national accounts that records movements in the true wealth of nations,” making it easy to fill “unacceptable gaps between the rich and the poor.” In this respect, these collectivists advise, “We should be prepared to accept a reallocation of the benefits and burdens that accompany humanity’s activities both within nations and between nations.”
The authors obviously borrowed heavily from Marxian economics and Machiavellian population theory, while the scientific background in the report is culled from previous Vatican environmental conferences, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the World Bank, and a propaganda piece published in 2014 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
But they did introduce another relatively novel idea that they say is “over and above” other suggested reforms in importance. They call for a “moral revolution” to “reorient our attitude toward nature.” The declaration raises radical environmentalism to the realm of moral virtue and even infers that our “greedy” and “unsustainable consumption of fossil fuels” is immoral. Our supposed destruction of Earth is “the sin for which our descendants will be least likely to forgive us.” They appeal to the Catholic Church to lead a union of world religions under the banner of sustainable development.
This declaration, entitled: Climate Change and the Common Good: A Statement of the Problem and the Demand for Transformative Solutions, is the brainchild of the 60 world religious leaders and climate alarmists who attended the pope’s day-long event — all of them left-wing notables such as United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who delivered the opening address, and bureaucrats from the UN’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network, which co-sponsored the conference. Other speakers and panel discussion leaders included eco-cheerleaders such as American economist Jeffrey Sachs, who directs the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Nobel laureate Mario Molina, famous for his scientifically dubious hypothesis that industrial chlorofluorocarbons deplete the ozone layer, and University of California professor Veerabhadran Ramanathan, who has called global warming “the most important environmental issue facing the world today.”
In a blatant and hypocritical disregard for honest debate, the pope excluded from his invitation list thousands of scientists worldwide who maintain that no shred of evidence supports the notion that human activity is wreaking havoc on climate and the environment. Press members who asked questions at the summit about the skeptical viewpoint were silenced.
So there are no surprises in the joint statement, as scandalous as it may be. It says exactly what you would expect from a fraternity of back-slapping climate alarmists and global collectivists. The pope has certainly made no secret of his environmentalist zeal, repeatedly calling it a sin to “exploit the Earth.” According to his climate change advisor Bishop Sanchez Sorondo, he hopes to influence the UN’s climate change talks scheduled in November and December this year. Pope Francis also plans in June to publish an encyclical, an important papal pronouncement. This will be the second of his papacy and his first on the environment. He’s been planning it for more than a year, and speculation over what it will hold runs rampant through Catholic and secular media. The April 28th joint statement leaves little doubt.
