Quite a Moment: Pope Francis To Address Impressive Phalanx of Climate Change Deniers in U.S. Congress
In September, Pope Francis will deliver an address to the U.S. Congress on humankind’s responsibilities vis-à-vis the environment. I have to say that the very concept of this presentation to a room packed with a large number of climate change deniers, each one a dancing monkey, a shill for the oil companies, makes me smile. I can just visualize (adamant denier) James Inhofe (R-OK, chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works–pictured left) and all the others, sitting there scowling.
On a more serious note, here’s an excerpt from a letter by Rodney M. Coenen, retired member of Institutional Planning and Architectural Concepts, to members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, particularly to those signatories of the Statement of the Joint PAS/PASS Workshop on Sustainable Humanity, Sustainable Nature: Our Responsibility:
Dear Sirs and Madams,
In anticipation of Pope Francis’s address to the Joint Meeting of the US Congress on Sept. 24, I encourage the Pontifical Academy of Sciences to contribute to the papal message certain remarks of your choosing pertaining to effective measures to reverse climate change. Such remarks are meant to invite Congress, and indeed all nations, to make an appropriate response to the papal encyclical: Laudato Si of the Holy Father Francis On Care For Our Common Home.
I observe your above referenced PAS statement contains the following (excerpted):
“The massive fossil fuel use at the heart of the global energy system deeply disrupts the Earth’s climate and acidifies the world’s oceans. The warming and associated extreme weather will reach unprecedented levels in our children’s life times and 40% of the world’s poor, who have a minimal role in generating global pollution, are likely to suffer the most.”
“…. the world’s governments called for the adoption by 2015 of new universal goals, to be called Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to guide planetary-scale actions after 2015. To achieve these goals will require global cooperation, technological innovations that are within reach, and supportive economic and social policies at the national and regional levels ….”
“The technological and operational bases for a true sustainable development are available or within reach.”
“Energy systems can be made much more efficient and much less dependent on coal, petrol and natural gas to avoid climate change, protect the oceans, and clean the air of coal-based pollutants.”
“Our message is one of urgent warning, for the dangers of the Anthropocene are real and the injustice of globalization of indifference is serious.”
In the US there is no common agreement on these science qualified assertions. Today approximately one third of Americans still do not believe human activity is the primary cause of climate change. For political reasons and short term economic benefit to all but the poor, we postpone necessary action that would reverse climate change. Instead we here, pretend that solar, wind, conservation and efficiency combined with ineffective subsidy and a mythical “all of the above” energy policy will remove world societies from danger. The Academy knows, just as the carbon fuel industries know, these measures may slow but will not reverse planetary climate and ocean change.
The scale of the “injustice of the globalization of indifference” is immense. WorldWatch says one billion coastal people will be threatened by sea rise and loss of marine species for food. By year 2100 we may be well aware that global coastal abandonment will become chaotic migration of these billion souls, not a hoped for planned adaptation. We are about to run out of time.
