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ENVIRONMENT

Australia out of step with Pope's climate action mission

  • 27 January 2015

It is no coincidence that Pope Francis chose to visit the Philippines before he releases his encyclical on the environment, and that he made a point of visiting Tacloban in particular.

The people of the Philippines are 'at the doorstep of all major threat of climate change', as they describe it. Tacloban City in particular is, of course, ground zero for super typhoon Haiyan (pictured), an iconic victim of the worst that global warming can do to vulnerable populations. 

The visit became the occasion on which the Catholic Bishops’ Conference and civil society organisations in the Philippines handed the Pope a letter about the urgent need for climate action. 

There’s a palpable authenticity about their cries for justice. When Bishops and civil society in the Philippines call for 'the transformation of energy systems away from fossil fuels', it is all the more powerful because they know personally the 'catastrophic misery' caused by Haiyan. 

No doubt Pope Francis is predisposed to listening to their perspective. We know he is committed to listening to Catholic Bishops’ Conferences, and he is particularly interested in voices from the Global South.

It is most interesting that the Filipino Bishops call for, among other things, 'an end to investments in fossil fuel and ecologically-destructive projects’. This is the first time a national Catholic Bishops’ Conference has come out fully behind the message that 'if it’s wrong to wreck the planet, then it’s wrong to profit from that wreckage', as US environmentalist Bill McKibben famously put it. 

In a move that may further unsettle mining companies beset by rapidly-falling coal prices, the Bishops and civil society quote from a recent study published in the journal Nature. The study showed that '82 per cent of coal should be classified as un-burnable reserves', even if carbon capture and storage is widely deployed. 

That large proportions of the world’s coal, oil and gas are 'un-burnable' was first identified by the Carbon Tracker Initiative. CTI calculated the 'carbon budget' humanity now has left before going over the internationally agreed guardrail of 2°C warming. The amount is so limited, that the vast majority of it has to stay in the ground. 

The Catholic Bishops and civil society in the Philippines go so far as to say, 'Investing in fossil fuel companies and in eco-destructive projects is synonymous with supporting the destruction of our future.' Their message resonates strongly with that of the global 'Divest the Vatican' campaign.

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