Today Pope Francis issued an encyclical on climate change and human responsibility for the poor and the environment. I'll quote from The Guardian's report on the document.
Pope Francis has called on the world’s rich nations to begin paying their “grave social debt” to the poor and take concrete steps on climate change, saying failure to do so presents an undeniable risk to a “common home” that is beginning to resemble a “pile of filth”.
The pope’s 180-page encyclical on the environment, released on Thursday, is at its core a moral call for action on phasing out the use of fossil fuels.
But it is also a document infused with an activist anger and concern for the poor, casting blame on the indifference of the powerful in the face of certain evidence that humanity is at risk following 200 years of misuse of resources.
Hmmm... We have a "moral call for action on phasing out ... fossil fuels" and the "indifference of the powerful" to the risks posed by 200 years of "misuse" of resources, especially (I'm assuming) energy resources.
I do not want to get into this here, but I need to mention it—without fossil fuels, our precious global civilization would not exist. Let me repeat that—would not exist. Are we clear? At bottom, the rich nations do not want to phase out fossil fuels because without them, they wouldn't be rich anymore.
I do agree that the Earth, our “common home,” is beginning to resemble a “pile of filth”. That's certainly the polite way to say it.
Now, in what sense is the Pope pouring gasoline onto a raging fire? Here's more from The Guardian (emphasis added).
Francis, who was elected in 2013 and has put social justice and reform of the church at the heart of his papacy, said on Thursday that his text should not be read as a “green” manifesto, but instead as a “social” teaching.
“The foreign debt of poor countries has become a way of controlling them, yet this is not the case where ecological debt is concerned,” Francis wrote. “In different ways, developing countries, where the most important reserves of the biosphere are found, continue to fuel the development of richer countries at the cost of their own present and future.
“The developed countries ought to help pay this debt by significantly limiting their consumption of non-renewable energy and by assisting poorer countries to support policies and programs of sustainable development.” The question now is whether the pope’s sweeping statement will shake-up climate talks.
Why have all climate talks failed miserably up to now? I will quote again (as I did last week) from another Guardian story about the recent climate talks in Bonn. Those talks were supposed to finalize the exact language of the text to be decided on in Paris in December. The current negotiating round is exactly like all the previous ones (The Guardian, June 6, 2015, emphasis added).
The world’s least-developed countries have accused richer nations of failing to provide financial backing for a strong new global climate treaty.
With little negotiating time left ahead of the UN climate summit in Paris later this year, diplomats from nearly 200 countries meeting in Bonn have reportedly made little progress, raising the possibility of a last-minute diplomatic fiasco, as happened in Copenhagen in 2009.
The mistrust between countries that built up in Copenhagen now threatens the Paris talks, said Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu of the Democratic Republic of Congo, who is chairman of the 48-strong least-developed countries group.
“The [UN] process is flawed by a complete lack of trust and confidence between rich and poor countries,” he said. “We need time.
Because of this lack of trust we have no other way of proceeding. We have to go ahead with baby steps. We are not making much progress, but we are going in the right direction. There are so many issues. It’s a process of attrition.
“Every year there is a watering down of the commitments. It feels every year that we are losing out. Twenty countries contribute 80% of emissions, the rest 20%. Yet we in Africa are being asked to cut emissions. OK, we say, but help us. Give us finance, technology.”Concern is growing that rich countries, which have together pledged to mobilize $100bn a year to help countries adapt to climate change, are so far unwilling to discuss how the money will be raised, said Martin Khor, director of the South Center, a leading intergovernmental thinktank of developing countries. “The developing countries are disappointed that there seems to be little hope that the $100bn will materialize. They have no idea what will be available, so they cannot plan ahead. If countries really wanted a [strong] deal, they would be talking about finance by now,” said Khor.
Amjad Abdulla of the Maldives, chief negotiator for the 39-member Alliance of Small Island States – countries highly vulnerable to sea-level rises and extreme weather events – said: “We have an enormous task. We need to speed up the work. The ambition for a good deal has not gone. Our target is still to negotiate to hold temperatures to a 1.5C rise. But achieving it is going to be difficult and may require dramatic efforts by humanity.”
Jan Kowalzig, climate change policy officer with Oxfam, said: “The French government [which will chair the Paris meeting] is becoming extremely nervous. It has to show success.
Everyone recognizes the talks are going too slowly, but the US completely refuses to put anything on the table about finance. The developed countries are not ready to talk about it. Informally, they recognize they need to make concessions, but the big danger is that the $100bn becomes a clever accountancy plan. The developing countries would see through that.
A few powerful countries would be happy with a weak deal. The US, China, Japan and India are not very interested in a strong deal because they would be bound by it.”
And so on. That last sentence tells you just about everything you need to know.
Every round of international climate talks has failed, ostensibly, because humans can't help but inject politics—The Rich versus The Poor—into the discussion. Instead of talking about what humankind as a whole might do to mitigate climate change, the discussion always gets stuck in the ways described by The Guardian report on the Bonn preliminary talks.
The Paris talks will fail for the same reasons.
The Rich won't make binding concessions, and The Poor blame the rich for creating the problem. A truly global agreement is not possible. The problem, in a nutshell, is that the poor want to become rich, and the rich want to stay that way.
And what has the Pope done? Clearly, he has come down hard on the side of The Poor. He has blamed The Rich for failing to support The Poor and taking responsibility for the climate situation their emissions have created.
To be clear, the "rich" seems to include "the US, China, Japan and India." India?
Thus Pope Francis has thrown gasoline onto a raging fire of climate failure. There is a lot of confusion here.
My sympathies generally are with The Poor. The correct moral stance is clear. I have talked about humanity's skewed wealth distribution many times on DOTE. I don't particularly like raining on this parade because the Pope said some good things.
[Francis] rejects the belief that technology and “current economics” will solve environmental problems or “that the problems of global hunger and poverty will be resolved simply by market growth.” He cites finance as having a distorting influence on politics and calls for government action, international regulation and a spiritual and cultural awakening to “recover depth in life.”
Very good! On the other hand, I fail to see how redistributing some of humanity's collective wealth is going to mitigate climate change.
I don't see how giving solar panels and wind turbines to the Congo helps matters because it doesn't. I fail to see how giving beaucoup bucks to sub-Saharan African nations—is that for reparations?—is going to keep the average temperature increase below 2 degrees centigrade, or 3 degrees for that matter.
The Archbishop (video above) says that this encyclical "will have a worldwide effect on people's consciousness."
But we can see already that it had no effect whatsoever on people's consciousness. All it did was make an already bad situation worse.
Isn't that what TTP is for, to help those poor people afford Monsanto's GM crops and chemicals with a handy loan from the IMF?
But seriously I like this pope. I think it is entertaining when Santorum tells him to mind his own business and stick to indulgences for the over privileged and leave climate policy to Santorum.
Posted by: Tony Noerpel | 06/18/2015 at 04:34 PM