Pope Francis urges rich countries to step up before U.N. climate talks

from WaPo

by Maxine Joselow and Vanessa Montalbano

Pope Francis wants wealthy nations to do more before COP28

Eight years after releasing a landmark text on the perils of global warming, Pope Francis today issued a renewed call to climate action, warning that “the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point,” our colleagues Anthony Faiola and Chico Harlan report.

Unlike his 2015 environmental encyclical, Laudato Si’, in which he scolded climate “deniers” and called for an “ecological conversion” among the faithful, the new document seeks to influence the next U.N. Climate Change Conference.

It specifically calls on the United States and other wealthy countries to do more to help poor nations, which have contributed least to the climate crisis, before the COP28 talks in Dubai next month.

“If we are confident in the capacity of human beings to transcend their petty interests and to think in bigger terms, we can keep hoping that COP28 will allow for a decisive acceleration of energy transition,” the pope wrote.

“This Conference can represent a change of direction, showing that everything done since 1992 was in fact serious and worth the effort, or else it will be a great disappointment and jeopardize whatever good has been achieved thus far,” he added.

The details

The pope’s calls in 2015 drew cheers from environmentalists who saw Laudato Si’ as aiding efforts to secure the Paris climate accord.

The new document — aimed at not only the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics but everyone on the planet — notes how little world leaders have accomplished since then.

• The world has already warmed by an average of 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, and it is on track to blow past the Paris agreement’s goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 C.
• The pope blamed this lack of progress on the “great economic powers” who seek “the greatest profit possible at minimal cost and in the shortest amount of time.”
• He singled out the United States, the world’s biggest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, for “irresponsible” Western excesses.

“If we consider that emissions per individual in the United States are about two times greater than those of individuals living in China, and about seven times greater than the average of the poorest countries, we can state that a broad change in the irresponsible lifestyle connected with the Western model would have a significant long-term impact,” he wrote.

Of course, the pope’s words may not shift the outcome of COP28, where rich countries are expected to continue resisting calls to help poor nations adapt to mounting climate disasters.

• At last year’s international climate summit in Egypt, known as COP27, negotiators agreed to establish a fund to help vulnerable nations cope with “loss and damage” — the irreversible, unavoidable harms of a warming world.
• But almost a year later, negotiators are still far apart on who should pay into the fund and who should benefit.
• In the United States, the Republican-controlled House is unlikely to appropriate any new international climate aid.

“There is an isolationist element, obviously, in the Republican Party that is pretty potent, and then there’s the overall skepticism about climate change and the need to address it urgently,” Alden Meyer, a senior associate at the climate think tank E3G, told The Climate 202. “And you put those things together and it’s not a good mix for U.S. participation in things like the loss and damage fund.”

Still, some experts said the pope’s warnings may resonate inside the Catholic Church, if not within the halls of the COP28 conference center.

According to the Pew Research Center, 54 percent of American Catholics say the planet is warming mostly because of human activity. That’s in line with the average among all American adults, but well behind the 90 percent figure among atheists.

“It is safe to say that many Catholics still do not view care for the environment as a central aspect of what it means to be a Catholic,” David Cloutier, a professor of moral theology at Catholic University, told Anthony and Chico.

“They view it as an optional activity that some Catholics might be involved in on the side, not a central commitment,” he said. “But Pope Francis clearly is trying to move the church in that direction.”