[With his latest missive, he has moved from grief and exhortation
to a more strident position ]
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THE POPE’S JOURNEY TO CLIMATE OUTRAGE  
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David Wallace-Wells
October 11, 2023
New York Times
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_ With his latest missive, he has moved from grief and exhortation to
a more strident position _

, Image by Ibrahim Rayintakath

 

In 2015, Pope Francis came out as an environmentalist, with his
landmark encyclical Laudato Si,
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called by Bill McKibben “the most important document yet of this
millennium” and by Pankaj Mishra “arguably the most important
piece of intellectual criticism in our time.”

Last week, with a follow-up apostolic exhortation called Laudate Deum
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the pope came even further out — as a climate alarmist, a
techno-skeptic and a degrowther, sympathetic to activists and, most
improbably, a reader of the feminist futurist Donna Haraway, the
author of “A Cyborg Manifesto.” He also emphatically endorsed the
“abandonment” of fossil fuels — outing himself as a “keep it
in the ground” guy as well.

He is also much angrier than he was eight years ago. Since Laudato Si,
the pope writes, “I have realized that our responses have not been
adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be
nearing the breaking point.” In his new exhortation, he invokes the
immediate urgency of faster action, takes pains to offer
point-by-point rebuttals of climate denial and climate complacency,
including corporate complicity and widespread greenwashing, attacks
the “technocratic” worldview he sees behind planetary
exploitation, defends climate protesters by describing them as filling
a vacuum of global leadership, and calls out “the ethical decadence
of real power.” He describes unignorable episodes of extreme weather
as the “cries of protest on the part of the earth that are only a
few palpable expressions of a silent disease that affects everyone.”
And he returns to a two-part mantra he says he reiterates often:
“Everything is connected” and “No one is saved alone.”

This is quite radical language, even for a pope who has long plotted
his own complicated course as an outspoken progressive, alienating
many Catholics along the way. But he is also on a journey familiar to
many of those most concerned about climate, from grief and lamentation
through exhortation to a position of more strident and more pointed
outrage. Last month, I wrote about the change in tone from activist
groups and climate establishmentarians toward the fossil-fuel
industry. In Laudate Deum, Pope Francis channels that frustration,
too, but he is more focused and withering on the failures of climate
geopolitics since the publication of Laudato Si.

A lot has changed between 2015 and 2023 when it comes to climate, and
yet an awful lot hasn’t as well. Emissions from the global
electricity sector may soon be reaching their peak
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the energy research group Ember just announced, and the International
Energy Agency recently declared
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there was still a workable pathway to net zero emissions in 2050 —
and that following it would save the world $12 trillion
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On the other hand, emissions are still setting records, and climate
extremes and disasters, often powered or supercharged by warming, have
come to seem like so many features of our news wallpaper.

Eight years ago, when Laudato Si was published, most anyone looking
soberly at the state of the climate from any perspective would see the
same story: massive changes to come and yet little being done, at any
scale, to mitigate warming and limit the damage. Today, energy
optimism is, broadly speaking, warranted. But so is some climate
pessimism.

This is where the pope is. And he is not shy about saying so. “The
necessary transition,” he writes, “is not progressing at the
necessary speed. Consequently, whatever is being done risks being seen
only as a ploy to distract attention.” To expect technical
interventions alone to resolve the climate crisis is “a form of
homicidal pragmatism, like pushing a snowball down a hill.”

If in Laudato Si, Pope Francis wrapped concern for the future of the
planet in the plaintive language of spiritual sickness, here he wields
a much more political, even legalistic tone. In his short exhortation,
Francis devotes long stretches of text to “rethinking our use of
power,” “the weakness of international politics” and “climate
conferences: progress and failures,” before devoting an entire
section to the question: What to expect from COP 28 in Dubai?

His answer? “To say that there is nothing to hope for would be
suicidal, for it would mean exposing all humanity, especially the
poorest, to the worst impacts of climate change.” But based on the
recent past and the conditions of this U.N. climate conference in the
United Arab Emirates and run by the head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil
Company, he does not seem especially hopeful.

“We must move beyond the mentality of appearing to be concerned but
not having the courage needed to produce substantial changes,” he
writes.

Once and for all, let us put an end to the irresponsible derision that
would present this issue as something purely ecological, “green,”
romantic, frequently subject to ridicule by economic interests. Let us
finally admit that it is a human and social problem on any number of
levels. For this reason, it calls for involvement on the part of all.
In conferences on the climate, the actions of groups negatively
portrayed as “radicalized” tend to attract attention. But in
reality, they are filling a space left empty by society as a whole,
which ought to exercise a healthy pressure, since every family ought
to realize that the future of their children is at stake.

For those who have left that space empty, he is especially
unforgiving. “To the powerful, I can only repeat this question:
‘What would induce anyone, at this stage, to hold on to power, only
to be remembered for their inability to take action when it was urgent
and necessary to do so?’”

_David Wallace-Wells is an opinion writer for the New York Times._

* Pope Francis I
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* Environmentalism
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