'We are now unable to halt the enormous damage we have caused. We barely have time to prevent even more tragic damage.'
Pope Francis shamed and challenged world leaders on Wednesday to commit to binding targets to slow climate change before it's too late, warning that God's increasingly warming creation is fast reaching a"point of no return."before it’s too late, warning that God’s increasingly warming creation is fast reaching a “point of no return.
Francis weighed in on a key and contentious point of negotiations — whether countries should agree to a phase out of coal, oil and natural gas, the fossil fuels that are causingHe lamented that “the necessary transition towards clean energy sources, such as wind and solar energy, and the abandonment of fossil fuels is not progressing at the necessary speed.”
In that text, which has been cited by presidents, patriarchs and premiers and spurred an activist movement in the the church, Francis called for a bold cultural revolution to correct a “structurally perverse” economic system where the rich exploit the poor, turning Earth into an “immense pile of filth.”
“Small changes can cause greater ones, unforeseen and perhaps already irreversible, due to factors of inertia," he noted. “This would end up precipitating a cascade of events having a snowball effect. In such cases, it is always too late, since no intervention will be able to halt a process once begun.”
Francis said that it was clear that the Paris target will be breached and will soon reach 3 degrees Celsius, and that already the effects are obvious, with oceans warming, glaciers melting and the world registering record heat waves and extreme weather events.
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