Participants included the CEOs of Italian oil giant ENI, British Petroleum, ExxonMobil and Norway’s Statoil as well as scientists and managers of major investment funds. Their remarks on the first day of the closed-door conference were not released by the Vatican.
While Francis lauded the oil executives for embedding an assessment of climate change risks into their planning strategies, he also put them on notice for their “continued search for fossil fuel reserves,” 2½ years after the Paris climate accord “clearly urged keeping most fossil fuels underground.”
“Civilization requires energy, but energy must not destroy civilization,” he implored.
Energy experts and those who advocate fighting climate change expressed doubts before the conference that it would amount to anything other than a PR opportunity for the companies to burnish their image without making meaningful changes.
In his remarks, the pope said he hoped the meeting gave participants the chance to “re-examine old assumptions and gain new perspectives.”
Francis said that modern society with its “massive movement of information, persons and things requires an immense supply of energy.” And still, he said, as many as one billion people still lack electricity.
The pope said meeting the energy needs of everyone on the planet must be done in ways “that avoid creating environmental imbalances, resulting in deterioration and pollution that is gravely harmful to our human family, both now and in the future.”
Frances also recalled his own appeal in the “Laudato Si” encyclical for an energy policy “aimed at averting disastrous climate changes that could compromise the well-being and future of the human family, and our common home.” That includes transitioning to efficient, clean energy sources.
“This is a challenge of epochal proportions,” he said Saturday. “At the same time it is an immense opportunity to encourage efforts to ensure fuller access to energy by less developed countries … as well as diversifying energy sources and promoting the sustainable development of renewable forms of energy.”
The pope called for a “long-term global strategy to provide energy security,” along with “precise commitments” to tackle the challenge of climate change.
He said it was “disturbing and a cause for real concern” that the levels of carbon dioxide emissions and the concentrations of greenhouse gases remain high despite commitments taken in the 2015 Paris accord to fight global warming.
He urged participants to use their “demonstrated aptitude for innovation” to address “two of the great needs in today’s world: the care of the poor and the environment.” He noted that the poor pay the highest price for climate change, often being forced to migrate due to water insecurity, severe weather and an accompanying collapse in agriculture.
“The transition to accessible and clean energy is a duty that we owe toward millions of our brothers and sisters around the world, poor countries and generations yet to come,” the pope said.
Can he issue a similar notice on Dotard?
I’d even take a fatwa…
So long as there’s money to be made they won’t give a shit.
It’s like an illness.
He’s taking his job seriously. And he’s giving these people some rope. I expect that at some point he will come out with a statement that says that working to destroy the planet is incompatible with a state of grace – which is meaningless for the vast majority of us, but very meaningful for the remaining believers.
There was a study years ago that showed that when it comes to matters of policy, especially those that might limit our comfort in the here and now, few people have any commitment to future generations,or any ability to imagine beyond their own or perhaps their children’s generation: and that one of the measures of conscience is the ability of an individual to feel authentic concern for those not yet born.
His Holiness is clearly one of those rare souls.
What he needs to understand is that Charles Koch and his confreres among the fossil fuel, mining and extraction oligarchy are not.
For them, the whole thing is, Après nous, le déluge.
These are not stupid men: some of them are very clever indeed,
They’ve known for decades that their almost inconceivably huge wealth (hence political power) came at the expense of future generations, that oil is, ultimately, a form of mass murder, that in addition to political instability (ranging from local corruption all the way up the scale to genocide and world war) the fossil fuel sector has promoted death on an unprecedented scale, with whole species having already been wiped out and others—including our own—very much in the bullseye.
Knowing all this, they’re quite indifferent. Charles Koch, now in his eighties, and fundamentally in control of the fate of the nation (his reach into this administration, from the Vice President on down, is really quite remarkable) knows that the consequence of removing all limits from his power will be devastating for future generations.
And he does not care.
At some level, this octogenarian trust fund brat clearly reasons, If I must die one day, then why should anything or anyone be allowed to live?
That’s what His Holiness is up against: an evil and anomie so profound that even the devil weeps at the spectacle.
And the world’s energy conglomerates immediately said, “OK!”
Mr. Pope, there are no christians in government or big business, else they’d be heeding that funny little line about camels and eyes of a needle.
It is up to us.
Register people to vote. Get to the polls. We can put a stop to this.
RESIST!