{"id":904,"date":"2015-06-15T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2015-06-15T10:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/?p=904"},"modified":"2015-10-16T12:03:05","modified_gmt":"2015-10-16T10:03:05","slug":"pope-francis-blasts-global-warming-deniers-in-leaked-draft-of-encyclical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/?p=904","title":{"rendered":"Pope Francis blasts global warming deniers in leaked draft of encyclical"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Michelle Boorstein, Anthony Faiola and Chris Mooney \/\u00a0Faiola reported from Berlin. Stefano Pitrelli in Rome and Sarah Pulliam Bailey in Washington contributed to this report<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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A draft of a major environmental document by Pope Francis says \u201cthe bulk of global warming\u201d is caused by human activity and calls on people \u2014 especially the world\u2019s rich \u2014 to take steps to mitigate the damage by reducing consumption and reliance on fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

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In words likely to anger some of his conservative critics, the pope backs the science of climate change, saying \u201cplenty of scientific studies point out that the last decades of global warming have been mostly caused by the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxide and others) especially generated by human action.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe poor and the Earth are shouting,\u201d reads the draft of the encyclical, the first of its kind dedicated to the environment. The Washington Post translated portions of the draft.<\/p>\n

The encyclical release had been planned for Thursday and was highly anticipated, given Francis\u2019s enormous popularity and what many see as his potential to significantly affect policy in such areas as energy use and economic globalization.<\/p>\n

It was timed to influence global meetings later this year about climate, unusual for such a high-level document. It was also seen as an opening salvo on the topic before the pope\u2019s planned trip to the United States in late September.<\/p>\n

Then the Italian magazine L\u2019Espresso leaked the draft on its Web site, linking to it in a piece by conservative analyst Sandro\u00a0Magister<\/a>. The leak set off a global scurry by environmentalists, theologians, reporters and others attempting to translate it.<\/p>\n

A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, told journalists Monday that the document was an \u201cintermediate version\u201d and warned that some provisions contained in the leaked draft may be different from those in the final version.<\/p>\n

Many religious and environmental experts \u2014 particularly those more aligned with the pope\u2019s views on climate \u2014 declined to comment until the official document is released, in some cases voicing concern about offending the Vatican.<\/p>\n

<\/b>The draft reveals Francis as part policy wonk, part lyricist, calling explicitly in places for more investment in renewable energy and in others for evening the \u201cecological debt\u201d between the Northern and Southern hemispheres, wealthy and poor countries.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnlighten the masters of power and money so that they should not fall prey to the sin of indifference, so that they should love the common good, support the weak, and care about this world that we inhabit,\u201d the draft reads.<\/p>\n

Part of the reason for managing the document\u2019s release so tightly \u2014 even close allies of the pope said they hadn\u2019t seen it \u2014 was because of its potentially explosive content. And translated portions of the document seemed to confirm economic conservatives\u2019 fears that Pope Francis would frame the issue as one defined by sinful overconsumption, unrestrained free markets and unending reliance on fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

Rumors of sabotage<\/p>\n

The leak by Magister immediately fueled rumors about schemes to take down a pope many see as left-leaning on some issues.<\/p>\n

The Rev. Bernd Hagenkord, head of the German-speaking section of Vatican Radio, blogged that the leak was \u201csabotage \u2014 somebody wants to actively undermine the pope\u2019s message.\u201d Citing Vatican sources, the Italian news outlet La Stampa described the leak as an attempt by elements within the Holy See to harm the pope and dull the impact of the encyclical.<\/p>\n

In the draft encyclical, the pope states that there may be some natural reasons for global warming but strongly chastises climate skeptics.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe attitudes hindering the paths toward a solution, even amongst the believers, go from negating the problem to indifference, to an easy resignation, or to a blind faith in technical solutions,\u201d he writes in the draft.<\/p>\n

The document associates polluted environments with global inequality. \u201cI\u2019d like to point out that the problems that hit harder at those who are excluded are often not very clear. They are the majority of those who live on the planet, they\u2019re billions of people. They get mentioned during international political and economic debates, but their problems are mostly introduced as an addendum, something you add almost out of duty or as something peripheral.\u00ad\u00a0.\u2009.\u2009. But today we can\u2019t avoid stating that a true ecological approach must always become a social approach, integrating justice in the debate around environment, so that we listen to the cry of Earth as much as we listen to the one of the poor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reliance on papal teaching<\/p>\n

The encyclical follows centuries of papal teachings that care for creation is a core Catholic value. Francis drew on previous papal remarks on the environment almost as a Supreme Court ruling would cite legal precedent.<\/p>\n

\u201cPope Benedict proposed we should recognize that the natural environment is full of wounds produced by our irresponsible behavior,\u201d the document reads.<\/p>\n

In the draft, Francis openly lobbies for renewable energy and blames global warming in part on \u201ca model of development based on the intensive use of fossil fuels.\u201d The draft calls for \u201curgent action\u201d to develop policies to reduce greenhouse gases, including \u201csubstituting fossil fuels and developing renewable energy sources.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pope\u2019s encyclical has been widely anticipated by environmentalists and climate scientists as a possible victory in the climate debate that could finally help to break a political logjam and shift public opinion more strongly in favor of climate-change action.<\/p>\n

There has been much speculation about how the document could especially move Catholic voters in the United States.<\/p>\n

George Mason University\u2019s Center for Climate Change Communication found that about 70\u00a0percent of U.S. Catholics think global warming is happening, a slightly higher percentage than for Americans as a whole (63 percent). Francis was the most trusted individual leader on climate change,\u00a0according to the George Mason poll<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The encyclical also comes in a year with high potential for international climate action. At the end of 2015, nations will assemble in Paris for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, where they will try to hammer out a global agreement to ratchet down greenhouse gas emissions. During his U.S. visit, the pope is expected to speak at the United Nations and before Congress.<\/p>\n

A just-released report from the International Energy Agency has amped up the pressure by showing that nations\u2019 current pledges to reduce their emissions \u2014 without further action \u2014 would fall short of keeping warming below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a widely accepted international target. Beyond 2 degrees Celsius, it is feared, the impacts of climate change could become increasingly severe.<\/p>\n

Sam Gregg of the Acton Institute, a faith-based group that works to promote free markets, said the leak will focus attention on potential differences between the draft text and the actual encyclical.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this is indeed not the final text, as the Holy See\u2019s press office is stating, then much of the attention will be on differences between the draft text and the actual encyclical. That will fuel ultimately unprovable speculation on why the things that were changed were altered, thereby potentially distracting from the messages of the final text,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Although Francis is often assailed by Catholics who see his talk about income and climate coming at the expense of talk about issues such as abortion, some conservative theologians Monday praised the draft.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a metaphysical, poetic document,\u201d said Chad Pecknold, a Catholic University theologian. \u201cBeing in dominion can never mean like a slave owner owns a slave. It has to be a protector, a steward, a servant, one who cares [for] and cultivates the Earth so that we have something to pass on to the next generation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Papal biographer Austen Ivereigh called the document \u201ca lament for a lost connectedness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very powerful argument that much that has gone wrong in our world is the consequence of forgetting that we are creatures rather than masters,\u201d Ivereigh said Monday. \u201cThe pope is almost saying: \u2018You may not believe in God, but if you believe in ecology, you can\u2019t ignore this.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Michelle Boorstein, Anthony Faiola and Chris Mooney \/\u00a0Faiola reported from Berlin. Stefano Pitrelli in Rome and Sarah Pulliam Bailey in Washington contributed to this report. A draft of a major environmental document by Pope Francis says \u201cthe bulk of global warming\u201d is caused by human activity and calls on people \u2014 especially the world\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[27,92,15,48],"class_list":["post-904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-washpost","tag-ambiente","tag-papa-francesco","tag-religioni","tag-vaticano"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":905,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904\/revisions\/905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefanopitrelli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}