(Image: Andrzej Krauze)
IT IS probably not too late to contain the warming of our planet and the climate chaos that would ensue – scientific and technological solutions exist for us to do that. But people and institutions rarely change their behaviour when they believe that they stand to gain more, at least economically and politically, by carrying on as before.
What’s been missing is a moral compass. Not any longer, thanks to Pope Francis’s historic call for immediate action.
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Two of us helped organise a non-sectarian symposium at the Vatican in 2014, commissioned by the Pontifical Academies of Science and Social Science. Physicists, chemists, biologists, earth scientists, economists, sociologists, philosophers and theologians were in attendance.
We conveyed the science: the knowledge that if we keep pumping greenhouse gases into the air as we do now, by mid-century we won’t need to read news bulletins about distant events to become aware of the dangers of climate change. Climate shifts due to human activity are already apparent in some parts of the world, and by 2050 everyone would experience them: as , severe storms, mega-droughts, floods, heatwaves, beach erosion or sea-level rise depending on where they live.
The scale of change would become so large that climate disruption would be an established fact for all. But if we wait until then to take drastic action, it would be too late.
A complete halt to emissions after 2050 would help prevent the situation worsening further, but not take back the 2 trillion tonnes of accumulated anthropogenic greenhouse gases blanketing the planet by then. They will linger for centuries.
We would have subjected generations unborn to a warmer planet, with chaotic weather unlike any witnessed for millions of years. The poorest would be hardest hit. Yet the three billion with the lowest incomes are responsible for less than 10 per cent of emissions.
The symposium concluded that we need a fundamental change in our attitude towards nature and towards one another, rich or poor, to achieve a solution.
Faith leaders have a particular moral authority to call for such a transformational change. We are fortunate to have a global moral leader in Pope Francis.
We think his powerful “here and now” will have an impact on our collective awareness, an absence of which has led to our continual erosion of the natural capital we inherited, without concern for the poorest or future generations.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Papa do preach”
