Pope Francis during a recent audience at the Vatican on November 29th. REMO CASILLI (Portal)
It is truly worrying that we continue to be surprised by the call for climate action from Pope Francis, who this Saturday once again called for more impetus from the countries gathered at the climate summit in Dubai to accelerate the ecological transition. What should shock us is not his words, but the decades-long absence of such speech from the leaders of an institution that claims to pursue the common good of humanity. What Bergoglio is proposing is nothing new to those who have been interested in the climate crisis for years, but it represents a revolution that comes from where it comes. In this case, the sender is almost as important in the communicative act as the message.
The encyclical Laudato Si, published in 2015, made a decisive contribution to consolidating the climate hegemony cemented in the Paris Agreement of the same year. It is worth remembering that Bergoglio’s call was not the only religious call for climate awareness and action, even if a Western and Eurocentric perspective shapes our memory. In the same year there were statements from spiritual leaders of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism, as well as various indigenous communities. Although it is true that none of them had the scope and depth of Pope Francis’ encyclical, we must place this in a global movement in which religions sided with science and understood that they were also part of the took responsibility for promoting collective transformation.
However, Pope Francis has found greater complicity among other spiritual leaders than among his own co-religionists. Apart from a few initiatives or communities that are particularly conscious for geographical or personal reasons, these words have hardly caught on in the rest of the Catholic Church. A Church that is anchored in anachronistic postulates in almost everything that concerns any knowledge or scientific certainty and that demands – in a veiled or impudent way – the voice of the same deniers and retards that the Pope condemns with his words. What did Bergoglio’s words mean for Christians in Spain? I dare say this was the case in one particular news event limited to 2015. And that also reinforces, in some cases, the cruel and self-serving perception of Francisco as the leader of an “evil globalist agenda,” a conspiracy that is…far-right waves. even from the presidency of parliaments and regional ministries.
For this reason, the Pope’s new Apostolic Exhortation from last October, Laudato Deum, could not be more welcome. This came at a crucial time, just before the climate summit (COP28) in Dubai, a conference in what was initially a very difficult oil country. The ever-increasing urgency to act against the climate crisis was also intended to be the occasion for another very symbolic gesture at this event: it was expected that for the first time a pope would personally take part in a climate summit. After all, it couldn’t be due to Francis’ health problems, but this Saturday the number two in the Vatican, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, read a letter on his behalf in the United Arab Emirates in which he called for an end to fossil fuels and a change of lavish lifestyle.
It must be reiterated that we cannot afford another COP that ends in abject failure and that we urgently need horizons of hope beyond the Paris Agreement. After 2015 and still with the feeling of having signed a great global pact, discontent began to take shape, which would manifest itself in 2018 in the plethora of protests, student movements, scientific rebellions and the ever-growing charismatic figure of Greta Thunberg. Only an emergency treated as such, the health emergency, could stop a social inertia that threatened to bring about major changes.
In fact, the Pope’s words in Laudato Deum could be equated and even confused with many of the speeches of the Swedish activist, militant scientist or major environmental NGOs. His will and his teaching skills arouse admiration; It clearly explains the difference between time and climate, illustrates the IPCC (Intergovernmental Group of Experts on Climate Change) scenarios and expresses concern about the exceedance of biophysical thresholds and the increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme phenomena. There is more climate science in this Pope’s exhortation than in a full day of programming broadcast on many television channels these days of COP28. Channels that continue to have deniers every time they discuss any topic related to the climate crisis, while the Pope vigorously discredits these positions by highlighting the human origin of warming and the lack of empirical evidence for anyone who dares to do so to deny.
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What’s even more shocking and commendable is how well it presents the (false) dilemma between collective and individual action, giving personal choices a key role in collective transformation, beyond the positive impact in grams of carbon dioxide they may have. I, who have repeatedly maintained for years that every individual action adds up but only collective action transforms, see myself reflected in Bergoglio’s words when he says: “I invite each individual to take this path of reconciliation with the world go to the one that hosts us.” and to embellish it with your own contribution, because your own commitment is about personal dignity and great values. However, I cannot deny the need to be sincere and recognize that the most effective solutions come not only from individual efforts, but above all from important decisions in national and international politics,” adding that “it is without cultural There are no permanent changes without a maturation in the lifestyles and beliefs of societies, and there is no cultural change without changes in people. It is an impeccable synthesis of a dilemma faced by everyone involved in one way or another in the fight against climate change, and especially those who dedicate their daily lives to environmental education and scientific dissemination.
Bergoglio also addresses techno-optimism, one of the major obstacles to action in the present. Why do something if we are convinced that a technical innovation will save us in the future? In the Pope’s words: “Assuming that every future problem can be solved with new technological interventions is murderous pragmatism, like kicking a snowball forward.” A very elegant and very visual way to destroy a wall of magical thinking, that prevents us from moving forward.
After all, what is our role in the world? It is possible that this and no other is the fundamental question that runs through the Pope’s speech and indeed all activism, not just climate activism. The Catholic religion is often – rightly – accused of having the control of nature in its DNA. In verse 26 of Genesis we read: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky, the cattle, the wild beasts of the earth, and every beast that creeps upon the earth shall be subject to him.” Although Pope Francis has already tried to reinterpret this quote in his 2015 encyclical , to take it away from the divine mandate of dominion over creation, it is in reality a vision that eludes the purely religious. The desire for domination is transversal and systemic. We live within an economic system, capitalism, that sees nature as a vast pantry and storehouse of raw materials, like a piece of land to be occupied and a landfill to be filled. The Gordian knot of the environmental crisis is our perception of ourselves as subjects separate from the natural world, which capitalism is responsible for reinforcing, and which separates us from what is alive in the tangible and also in its spiritual dimension. It’s not us and nature. It is us, nature. Bergoglio seems to get it, emphasizing the connection with the living world, the interdependence and the bonds that unite us into our “universal family,” but the tools at his disposal are limited. He tries to modulate the biblical message with the teachings of Jesus, who, in his opinion, “was able to invite others to pay attention to the beauty of the world because he himself was in constant contact with nature, paying attention to it with affection and affection. ” Wonder.” “.
These days it also became known that Queen Letizia spoke about the decline in a public forum. Although it is news that should be celebrated – more symbolically than structurally – we should ask ourselves whether the joy of these dialectical victories might not lead us to a certain self-indulgence. What is important is not that two figures as anachronistic and at the same time relevant as the Pope of the Catholic Church and the Queen of Spain address these issues. What is really crucial is that these mentions and speeches are translated into actions and changes in consciousness. That they are part of more than one individual verbalization, important as that may be. So that, as Jorge Mario Bergoglio wishes, “we end up with the idea of an autonomous, omnipotent, unlimited human being and rethink ourselves to understand ourselves more modestly and richly.”
Andreu Escriva He is an environmental scientist, biodiversity doctor and author. His latest book is Against Sustainability: Why Sustainable Development Won’t Save the World (and What to Do About It) (Arpa/Sembra).
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