Pope calls for ‘action now’ to save planet, stem warming, help poor

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis demanded swift action on Thursday to save the planet from environmental ruin, urging world leaders to hear "the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor" and plunging the Catholic Church into political controversy over climate change.

In the first papal document dedicated to the environment, he called for "decisive action, here and now", to stop environmental degradation and global warming, squarely backing scientists who say it is mostly man-made.

In the encyclical "Laudato Si [Praise Be], On the Care of Our Common Home", Francis advocated a change of lifestyle in rich countries steeped in a "throwaway" consumer culture and an end to an "obstructionist attitudes" that sometimes put profit before the common good.

The most controversial papal pronouncement in half a century has already won him the wrath of conservatives, including several US Republican presidential candidates who have scolded Francis for delving into science and politics.

His appeal, however, won broad praise from scientists, the United Nations and climate change activists.

At a news conference presenting the landmark document, Cardinal Peter Turkson, one of Francis' key collaborators on the document, rejected pre-publication criticisms by US politicians.

"Just because the Pope is not a scientist does not mean he can't consult scientists," he said, adding with a sly smile that journalists write about many things after consulting experts.

Latin America's first Pope, who took his name from St Francis of Assisi, the patron of ecology, said protecting the planet was a moral and ethical "imperative" for believers and non-believers alike that should supersede political and economic interests.

The clarion call to his flock of 1.2 billion members, the most controversial papal document since Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae upholding the church's ban on contraception, could spur the world's Catholics to lobby policy makers on ecology issues and climate change.

Political myopia

The Argentine-born pontiff, 78, decried a "myopia of power politics" he said had delayed far-sighted environmental action. "Many of those who possess more resources and economic or political power seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms," he wrote.

Because Francis has said he wants to influence this year's key UN climate summit in Paris, the encyclical further consolidated his role as a global diplomatic player following his mediation bringing Cuba and the United States to the negotiating table last year.

Francis dismissed the argument that "technology will solve all environmental problems [and that] global hunger and poverty will be resolved simply by market growth".

Time was running out to save a planet "beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth" and which could see "an unprecedented destruction of ecosystems" this century.

"Once more, we need to reject a magical conception of the market, which would suggest that problems can be solved simply by an increase in the profits of companies or individuals."

Francis also dismissed the effectiveness of carbon credits, saying they seemed to be a "quick and easy solution" but could lead "to a new form of speculation" that maintained excessive consumption and did not allow the "radical change" needed.

"Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain. We may well be leaving to coming generations debris, desolation and filth," he wrote in the nearly 200-page work.

"The pace of consumption, waste and environmental change has so stretched the planet's capacity that our contemporary lifestyle, unsustainable as it is, can only precipitate catastrophes, such as those which even now periodically occur in different areas of the world," he said.

"We need to reflect on our accountability before those who will have to endure the dire consequences."

The release and a high-profile rollout including Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research were timed to precede the Pope's speeches on sustainable development in September to the United Nations and the US Congress.

Schellnhuber said "the science is clear: global warming is driven by greenhouse gas emissions."

Scientific consensus

Francis, saying he was "drawing on the results of the best scientific research available", called climate change "one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day" and said poor nations will suffer the most.

In several passages in the six-chapter encyclical, Francis confronted head on both climate change doubters and those who say it is not man-made.

"A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system," he said. "Humanity is called to recognise the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it."

He said greenhouse gases were "released mainly as a result of human activity".

Francis called for policies to "drastically" reduce polluting gases, saying technology based on fossil fuels "needs to be progressively replaced without delay" and sources of renewable energy developed.

In a passage certain to upset conservatives, he said "a legal framework which can set clear boundaries and ensure the protection of ecosystems has become indispensable".

One of the major themes of the encyclical was the disparity of wealth.

"We fail to see that some are mired in desperate and degrading poverty, with no way out, while others have not the faintest idea of what to do with their possessions, vainly showing off their supposed superiority and leaving behind them so much waste which, if it were the case everywhere, would destroy the planet," Francis said.

He criticised those who "maintain that current economics and technology will solve all environmental problems, and argue, in popular and non-technical terms, that the problems of global hunger and poverty will be resolved simply by market growth".