As illness prevented Francis from attending COP28, he deputed Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Parolin (pictured) to deliver his speech.

Francis, who has made defending the environment central to his papacy's social teaching, is the first Pope to address the Conference of the Parties (COP).

Lamenting the lack of progress in fighting climate change, he repeated appeals for multilateralism, calling the world to action. Divisions between people are preventing progress.

"The climate, run amok, is crying out to us to halt this illusion of omnipotence.

"The destruction of the environment is an offence against God, a sin that is not only personal but also structural."

It is a sin "that greatly endangers all human beings, especially the most vulnerable in our midst and threatens to unleash a conflict between generations.

"Are we working for a culture of life or a culture of death? To all of you, I make this heartfelt appeal: Let us choose life! Let us choose the future!"

Destructive fuels

Global leaders must end using coal, oil and gas, Parolin read on the Pope's behalf.

Embracing renewable energy would help, Francis wrote. This involves "the elimination of fossil fuels and education in less dependent lifestyles.

"Climate change signals the need for major political change. COP28 must be a turning point."

Francis's message resonated with COP28's growing political momentum regarding fossil fuel use - the main source of harmful global warming.

Human activity is responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, he said.

The obsessive drive for production has caused "an inordinate greed that has made the environment the object of unbridled exploitation".

There is some tension however between accepting fossil fuel's damaging effects and stopping their production and use.

For example COP28's president, Sultan Al-Jaber, is faced with supporting the ecological evidence showing the damage fossil fuels are wreaking on the environment, contrary to his personal business interests.

Phasing out these fuels is "inevitable" he says - even though the oil company he runs has embarked on a major expansion of production.

User pays for poor

Blaming the world's ecological and climate crises on the poor and saying high birth rates are the main problem is unfair, Francis said. The biggest carbon-emitting countries are "responsible for a deeply troubling ecological debt".

It would be fair for these countries to cancel poor nations' financial debts, Parolin read. These debts exist only because of big carbon-emitting countries' excessive use of fossil fuels.

Cafod* responds

"The Pope's message is very well timed as we move into discussions on a global stocktake at COP28" says the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development*.

Leaders must heed his call "not for a partial change, but a new way of making progress together, and for choosing a culture of life over a culture of death."

Source

• BBC
• Crux Now
• Reuters
• Vatican
• CNA

Green hydrogen offers a solution to decarbonising "hard-to-abate" industries such as steel and fertiliser production, heavy-duty transport and shipping.

Recent announcements by high-emitting countries suggest the switch to green hydrogen might be greater and come sooner than expected.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a US$2.3 billion green hydrogen mission, expected to increase 400% by 2050.

India's steel industry and heavy-duty transport will consume about half of this production.

According to its latest government plan, China would produce 100,000-200,000 tons of renewable-based hydrogen annually and have a fleet of 50,000 hydrogen-fuelled vehicles by 2025.

The Biden administration announced an investment of US$750 million in green hydrogen.

It's expected to generate 700,000 new jobs and leverage further investment of US$140 billion.

New Zealand's national grid is far more renewable than the Australian grid, which is still dependent on coal.

Nevertheless, both countries are investing in green hydrogen as a future fuel.

The Australian government has allocated A$2 billion in its 2023 budget to accelerate large-scale green hydrogen projects.

The proposed Southern Green Hydrogen project in New Zealand has moved to the development stage. Final investment decisions are expected later this year.

Green hydrogen transition

Green hydrogen is produced by using renewable energy sources to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, either through electrolysis or photolysis.

The former technology is more advanced at this stage.

At present, 98% of all hydrogen is produced using fossil fuels ("grey hydrogen" or "blue hydrogen" if carbon is scrubbed).

To meet Paris Agreement targets, hydrogen production needs to be decarbonised. Installed production capacity for green hydrogen will need to increase 75 times before 2030.

The good news is that green hydrogen costs are projected to fall to US$2-3 per kilogram by 2030 due to improved production methods and economies of scale.

The falling cost of renewables, the increasing demand for energy and the climate change emergency has created unprecedented momentum for clean hydrogen.

Grey and blue hydrogen have their existing industrial uses but will be transition fuels.

They'll eventually be replaced by green hydrogen, which will also meet a rapidly growing range of new uses, such as green steel.

Some hydrogen applications are well underway.

Airbus is involved in the development of electric planes that use a combination of hydrogen combustion for take-off power and hydrogen fuel cells for mid-flight power.

While most electric vehicles will continue to be powered by batteries, some car makers have had successful hydrogen-fuelled cars in commercial production.

The high cost of production is the main factor behind the low uptake of green hydrogen.

But a price of US$2/kg is considered a potential tipping point to make green hydrogen competitive against other fuel sources.

Once this tipping point has passed, projected for 2030, green hydrogen is expected to progressively displace fossil fuels across most sectors.

The cost of electrolysers has roughly halved over the past five years.

This trend is expected to continue.

The recent development of solid-oxide electrolysers that can deliver 100% efficiency at an elevated temperature range promises further growth.

Potential for developing countries

The immediate challenges for green hydrogen are that it will need to gain global acceptance and expand infrastructure urgently.

Future international hydrogen partnerships are expected to benefit both developing and developed economies.

An example is Africa, which is well positioned to develop green hydrogen projects given its renewable energy potential.

Africa also has rich platinum resources, which are needed for water-splitting catalysis.

North Africa's great potential to produce green hydrogen is linked to its exceptional solar radiation levels and large wind resource.

The World Bank estimates the total wind resource of Algeria is comparable to Europe's.

Global installations of electrolysers are set to expand by a factor of 120 from 2GW today to 242GW by 2030, according to analysis by BloombergNEF.

Major manufacturers include EvolOH, which plans to produce up to 3.75GW per year of electrolysers by 2025, and Plug Power gigafactory, which sources its power from hydroelectricity from the Niagara Falls.

Barriers to uptake

This new revolution in green hydrogen energy has some important residual barriers to resolve.

The first is that the water used in electrolysers must be free of contaminants. However, the increasing shortage of clean freshwater is a looming global problem.

To obviate this challenge, a research collaboration involving Australian and Chinese universities has demonstrated that seawater can be split using a commercial electrolyser.

This approach uses a non-precious catalyst with nearly 100% efficiency.

This technology needs further refinement, but it does seem to offer a viable solution.

A second problem is that hydrogen in the atmosphere behaves as an indirect greenhouse gas. Hydrogen reacts with OH radicals that would otherwise decompose the potent greenhouse gas methane.

The net effect is that methane persists longer in warming the atmosphere than if hydrogen were not present.

The quantification of hydrogen's indirect greenhouse gas effect hinges on the extent of leakage.

This urgently needs more detailed evaluation.

The remaining related problem is pipeline leakiness, estimated at between 2.9% and 5.6%. In an important pipeline test, China's Sinopec plans to build the first green hydrogen pipeline from Inner Mongolia to Beijing to test hydrogen leakiness under practical conditions.

In parallel developments, the conversion of green hydrogen to green ammonia via a Haber-Bosch type process is the key to using green ammonia as a more easily transported fuel for high-power transportation, as well as a green fertiliser.

In 2100 a person reviewing the emergence of hydrogen may see a link between the coal and steam revolution of the previous centuries that created the climate crisis and the hydrogen revolution that helped resolve it.

• Ralph Cooney is Professor Emeritus in Advanced Materials, University of Auckland.
• First published in The Conversation. Republished with permission.

The Christian youths have been at the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) with an agenda of their own: to dramatise the hurt the environment is suffering and and, with it, the entire human race.

,Joe Bongay says the protests aim to draw attention to the need to care for the earth, in line with Pope Francis's encyclical "Laudato Si': on Care for Our Common Home."

"When you sing about it, when you clap about it, it reminds people of their moral obligations toward caring for what we all share, which is the common earth that we all live in," he says. The changing climate is affecting ordinary people across Africa.

The United Nations has predicted the drought in East Africa alone will cause over 50 million people to suffer from acute hunger by the end of the year.

"We are struggling to survive in terms of food, in terms of hunger, and so many other problems brought about by climate change. Africa is at a point where it can't even feed itself," Bongay says.

Rita Uwaka expressed discomfort with the presence of fossil fuel lobbyists at the COP27 event.

"The so-many corporations taking over the climate space are hijacking and manipulating the negotiation process, and we feel that these criminals fuelling climate crises need to be kicked out.

"It's high time that there is sanity in COP. And the only way we can get sanity and justice is to make sure that these polluters pay but also (are) kicked out of the climate negotiations," she says.

Uwaka is angry with leaders for seeking "false solutions" to the climate emergency.

"Take carbon credits for instance. It means you have to keep polluting in the developed countries, and then you come to Africa to plant trees to absorb the carbon, but you are not stopping pollution at the source. That is a false solution, and we reject it," she says.

Agro-commodities companies "are in the negotiation space; they are fuelling a lot of land grabs in Africa - taking over forests, cutting them down and replacing them with plantations," Uwaka points out.

"And this increase in deforestation as a result of agro-commodities expansion is fuelling climate change. But here, they are putting it as a solution.

Uwaka says local communities in Africa and other developing countries should be leading the search for solutions in which accessible and affordable renewable energy is encouraged.

"We want solutions like agro-ecology, where you put food production in the hands of the people. We want community forest management methods that put the management of our forests in the hands of communities."

Bongay says he is opposed to the proposal that some kind of carbon insurance should be instituted.

"We can't afford it.

"Developed nations that are getting the profits at the expense of humanity and the environment should be able to pay their climate debts and reparation to those who are most vulnerable."

Source

• UCA News

Coal emits about 30 percent more carbon dioxide than the next worst fossil fuels, diesel and petrol.

MBIE's Quarterly Energy Statistics say between January and March this year New Zealand used the same amount of coal to generate electricity as in 2016 and 2017 combined.

Four years ago the country had a 90% rate of renewable energy, but now we have just 70%; and the country is burning imported coal to keep the lights on.

Climate campaigners are appalled we're still burning coal at such a scale - despite Prime Minister's statements that climate action is imperative.

"The issues that have been going on - low hydro-lakes, but also lots of outages and lack of reliability at the gas fields - [mean] we've been burning coal as a back-up fuel," Greenpeace says.

Energy Minister Megan Woods says our reliance on fossil fuel for electricity generation during dry hydrological years is the reason the government is investigating the NZ Battery project.

"Being able to store more renewable energy like wind and solar is key to a low-emissions electricity system, would encourage even more investment in renewables and provide more opportunities for the transport and industrial sectors to switch to cleaner energy use," she says.

Despite evidence against the use of fossil fuels, not everyone is in favour of dispensing with coal. They say it's practical and we'll be using it for decades to come.

Westland mayor Bruce Smith thinks coal will be around for some time as a backup energy source.

"It's easy to talk about renewable energy but at the end of the day we can't govern the level of the lakes.

"There's a degree of common sense, a practical aspect that needs to be looked at.

"It's simply that the best form of heating that we've got at the moment and the best form of energy is coal, and I don't see that changing."

Smith wants more electricity generation from rivers.

"We have 206 rivers on the West Coast. I can't believe that run-of-the-river hydro is not an absolute priority."

The Coal Action Network says profit-driven retail electricity companies, of which the government owns over 50 per cent, use whatever fuel is needed, and economics - not the environment - is the major factor.

Genesis Energy, for instance, is still using its coal boilers at its Huntly Power Station, despite aiming to close them in 2018.

To March this year, 44 per cent of its total electricity generation came from coal.

Keeping global warming in check need to consign coal power to history, says Alok Sharma, who is the British president of this year's U.N. climate conference (COP 26).

The Group of Seven (G7) nations have pledged to scale up technologies and policies that accelerate the transition away from unabated coal capacity.

Sharma says island nations want the Group of 20 rich and emerging nations (G20) biggest emitters to follow suit.

Source

• NCR Online
• Stuff
• CathNews
• Image: Greenpeace

That's how facing down climate change can often feel.

Governments convene, agree there's a problem and that it's increasingly urgent - and then, most of the time, shy away from the short-term economic and political costs of acting.

But what if someone did take a big, bold stride off the track we're all on?

That's how Unilever sees its new Clean Future project.

The global food and home products giant (2019 revenue: 50 billion Euros) has undertaken to eliminate fossil-derived carbon from all of its cleaning products by 2030.

The story Unilever wants to write into its next decade actually began a decade ago in 2010, when it launched the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan.

That was an undertaking to support the UN Sustainable Development Goals by taking action on health and wellbeing (including by sponsoring handwashing and oral health programmes), enhancing livelihoods (introducing new employment practices and creating more opportunities for women) - and halving the company's environmental impact.

Clean Future is easily the largest stride so far towards that third commitment.

The role of carbon in cleaning products is bigger than you might think.

Stain removers in laundry products, for example, have long been petrochemical derived.

Like many homecare manufacturers around the world, the ingredients in Unilever's cleaning products account for a significant proportion of its carbon footprint - 40%, in fact.

And yet those ingredients are currently key to the products' effectiveness.

No one wants cleaning products that don't clean.

The solution, as Unilever's president of home care products Peter ter Kulve put it recently, is to "stop pumping carbon from under the ground when there is ample carbon on and above the ground if we can learn to utilise it at scale."

It's a significant shift for an industry that needs to clean up its act.

At the centre of the Clean Future initiative is the "Carbon Rainbow", a schematic designed to guide the company's move away from non-renewable fossil sources of carbon (black carbon) towards carbon from plant and biological sources (green carbon), marine sources such as algae (blue), captured Co2 (purple) and carbon recovered from waste materials (grey).

The science for making some of those substitutions at scale doesn't exist yet, which is why Unilever has put up a NZD$1.77 billion research fund to make it work. Continue reading

Although the general assembly voted to "recognise and affirm the declarations of the Scottish government, UK parliament and others that we are experiencing a climate and ecological emergency" on Wednesday morning, a counter-motion to disinvest from oil and gas companies by 2020 was narrowly defeated. Read more

Gathering the heads of some of the world's largest oil and gas corporations - including ExxonMobil, BP, and Royal Dutch Shell - to the recent "Energy Transition and Care for our Common Home" Vatican conference, the pope told the CEOs that meeting the energy needs of everyone, especially the more than 1 billion people without electricity, must urgently be undertaken, but in ways "that avoid creating environmental imbalances resulting in deterioration and pollution gravely harmful to our human family, both now and in the future."

The pontiff appealed to the energy executives to see the necessary moral interconnectedness of the elimination of poverty and hunger - including providing "energy for all" - with "sustainable development of renewable forms of energy" to replace dirty fossil fuels that are greatly contributing to a dangerous rise in global temperatures thus leading to harsher environments, and not surprisingly, increased poverty.

"Temperatures over the planet as a whole continue the rapid warming trend we've seen over the last 40 years," said NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt.

According to NASA, during the past century the Earth's average surface temperature has risen about 2 degrees Fahrenheit - largely due to increased human-made global warming emissions like carbon dioxide.

Hottest since 1880

And the past four years are the hottest years on record - since 1880.

"Our common home," as Pope Francis likes to call our planet, is indisputably warming up causing more frequent, more intense hurricanes, wildfires, floods, droughts and heat waves.

The Holy Father reminded corporate oil executives that the 2015 Paris climate agreement signed by 196 nations to make the necessary changes to limit global warming was not on track, and that there is real concern that carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases still remain dangerously high.

Here it is important to note that President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement, despite the fact that historically the U.S. has put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than any country, and is currently the world's second largest emitter of heat trapping gases.

Poor countries suffer most

And the world's poor nations, which have generated the least amount of global warming gases, are the countries that are, and will, suffer the most. Here Pope Francis laments, "It is the poor who suffer most from the ravages of global warming, with increasing disruption in the agricultural sector, water insecurity, and exposure to severe weather events.

"The transition to accessible and clean energy is a duty that we owe towards millions of our brothers and sisters around the world, poorer countries and generations yet to come.

"There can be no renewal with our relationship with nature without a renewal of humanity itself."

Appeal to oil and gas leaders

In a heartfelt appeal to oil and gas corporate leaders, the Holy Father asked them to put their skills and privileged positions to "the service of two great needs in today's world: the care of the poor and the environment."

And with urgent warning to all of us Pope Francis concluded: "There is no time to lose: We received the earth as a garden-home from the Creator; let us not pass it on to future generations as a wilderness."

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan or parish gatherings about Catholic social teaching. His keynote address, "Advancing the Kingdom of God in the 21st Century," has been well received by diocesan and parish gatherings from Santa Clara, Calif. to Baltimore, Md. Tony can be reached at tmag@zoominternet.net.

The institutions which have joined a global faith-based environmental movement located on five continents include the Franciscan convent in Assisi, the Belgian bishops' conference, the Archdiocese of Cape Town, Newman University in the UK and two major financial institutions - one each in Germany and Belgium.

Although the value of the divestment in coal, gas and oil has not been revealed, the number of organisations behind the pledge is nearly four times bigger than it was in May when nine institutions announced a similar divestment.

The Global Climate Movement says it timed its announcement about the new signatories to coincide with the anniversary St. Francis of Assisi's death (4 October).

St Francis, the patron saint of the environment, inspired Pope Francis's landmark social encyclical in June 2015, Laudato Si': On Care for Our Common Home.

In the encyclical, Francis calls for investments in "production and transportation which consume less energy and require fewer raw materials, as well as in methods of construction and renovating buildings which improve their energy efficiency."

Attempts at promoting a sustainable use of natural resources "are not a waste of money, but rather an investment capable of providing other economic benefits in the medium term," he says.

"More diversified and innovative forms of production which impact less on the environment can prove very profitable."

The announcement was welcomed by Christiana Figueres, the former executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

"I hope we'll see more leaders like these 40 Catholic institutions commit because, while this decision makes smart financial sense, acting collectively to deliver a better future for everybody is also our moral imperative," she said.

Source

• Crux
• Vatican Radio
• CNBC
• The Guardian
• Image: SlideShare

They want to show the world it is not okay to keep polluting the environment.

As an example, nine Italian organisations divested from fossil fuel corporations in time to send a message to the G7 summit being held today and tomorrow in Taormina, Sicily.

Representatives of the organisations said earlier this month they were inspired to act by Pope Francis's encyclical, "Laudato Si, on Care for Our Common Home."

Several others in the US, Britain and Italy have joined the fossil fuel divestment movement.

Neil Thorns, who is the director of advocacy for the Catholic Agency For Overseas Development, said Catholics around the world are taking notice of Pope Francis's concern for the environment.

"Global temperatures last year were, for the third year running, the hottest on record," Thorns pointed out.

"Catholics around the world have recognized the impact this has on our sisters and brothers and are responding to the pope's call for us to take action."

A global divestment campaign that ran earlier this month saw many organisations withdrawing investments from companies involved in coal, oil and natural gas extraction.

Renewable energy is now receiving cash injections from Catholic investors.

Source

• National Catholic Reporter
• Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
• Image: The Earth Project

Catholic groups around the globe are divesting their financial interests in fossil fuels.

Their decision came hours before the European Union voted to ratify the Paris Agreement.

The Agreement sets up the global accord to address climate change to enter into force.

Divestment pledges came from groups in Brazil, Hong Kong, Canada, the US, Italy, Australia and Papua New Guinea.

Jesuit Fr. Peter Bisson, provincial of the Jesuits in English Canada says climate change is already affecting poor and marginalized communities globally.

They are experiencing drought, rising sea levels, famine and extreme weather.

"We are called to take a stand," Bisson said.

English Canadian Jesuits will halt future investments in fossil fuels.

They will remove them from their current portfolio within five years.

Umuarama Bishop João Mamede called divestment "a practical way to achieve" what Pope Francis calls for in "Laudato Si', on Care for Our Common Home."

"We can not accommodate and continue allowing economic interests that seek exorbitant profits before the well being of people ..." he said.

He pointed out these economic interests destroy biodiversity and ecosystems.

He also said "... we can't continue dictating our energy model based on fossil fuels."

One U.S. institution, SSM Health Care, with 20 hospitals in four states, said it will divest its funds from coal.

Founded by the Franciscan Sisters of Mary, SSM is among the 10 largest Catholic hospital systems in the country.

SSM Health has joined the Healthier Hospitals Initiative.

This involves committing to increase recycling, reduce medical waste, and cut energy use by 3 percent.

The joint divestment announcement, coordinated by the Global Catholic Climate Movement.

It has a network of 300-plus organizations worldwide.

Earlier this year, the Movement formed a working group on divestment.

Their aim was to help Catholic dioceses, congregations and organizations explore the feasibility of such a financial step.

Source

• National Catholic Reporter
• Image: www.treehugger.com

According to a Greenpeace Energydesk investigation, Vatican Bank board member Sir Michael Hintze is the chief executive of the private hedge fund CQS Cayman, registered on the Cayman islands.

The fund holds stocks worth $8.3 million in energy companies.

It is noted that Hintze previously maintained ties with energy sector-related companies.

Jean-Baptiste Douville de Franssu, the Vatican Bank board president, is an adviser to two funds that hold multimillion dollar shares in oil and gas companies, according to the investigation.

"One fund, Carmignac Gestion, holds stocks worth $675.2m in American company Anadarko Petroleum.

The firm was forced to pay $5.1 billion to settle a case around environmental damage caused by one its subsidiaries in 2014. Carmignac Gestion also holds stocks in Shell and Exxon," Greenpeace said.

The Australian-born hedge fund manager is also a trustee of the right-wing think-tank of the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has a history of backing climate sceptic research.

Hintz is reportedly a major financial backer of Nigel Lawson's controversial climate skeptic pressure group the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), Energydesk says.

In 2012, the Guardian obtained emails showing Hintze backing the foundation.

Hintze failed to respond to requests from Energydesk to clarify his relationship with GWPF and to discuss CQS's holdings in the energy sector.

Pope Francis warned in the encyclical that climate change threatens the environment as well as humanity.

He called for an urgent reduction in global carbon and encouraged the use of renewable energy sources. Fossil fuel is known to increase carbon emissions.

At the same time, financial power struggles inside the Vatican are ongoing, with Cardinal Pell facing tough opposition to his proposed financial reforms.

Source

• Global Pulse
• Inside the Vatican
• Catholic News Agency
• The Guardian
• Image: Pixabay

Kiribati has a population of just over 100,000. The Marshall Islands about 52,000. And Tuvalu close to 10,000.

The problem for small Pacific Island nations is that on a world scale they don't count.

The only leverage they have is morality and common humanity.

When Micronesians sought justice and redress, the then US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger is reported as saying "There are only 90,000 people out there. Who gives a damn?"

"Many of us from the Pacific Islands are old enough to remember how our small populations were used in the past to justify some of the worst environmental and human rights abuses in the form of atomic and nuclear testing," says Teresia Teaiwa.

Teaiwa is senior lecturer in Pacific Studies at Victoria University of Wellington.

"Today, all we have to challenge the giant perpetrators of climate change are moral arguments. And a bit of hyperbole," she says.

Recently the outgoing President of Kiribati, Anote Tong, compared climate change to trans-Atlantic slavery.

Was he really comparing climate change to nearly 400 years of brutalising enslavement of peoples stolen and sold out of Africa? Among them my maternal ancestors, Teaiwa asked.

Teaiwa is of Kiribati and African American ethnicity.

"Anote Tong's speech helped me focus my reflections in a way that I ended up appreciating."

"He made me think about slavery and climate change in simultaneously personal and systemic ways," she said.

Tong said slavery "was a system that was justified solely by its profitability."

"Morality was all that opponents of slavery had to argue against slave plantation economics."

This is the same with climate change, Tong argued.

Climate change is the consequence of a system justified solely by its profitability.

The fossil fuel and coal industries, for example, are profitable.

But they're also immoral.

They're reaping profits for the few, while spreading the costs around the world.

"If we are to learn anything additional about the abolition of slavery that might be useful to our struggle with climate change, it is probably this: abolition was achieved in what must have seemed like a glacial pace to slaves all around the world."

"And the most painful truth is that slavery has not been abolished."

"There are more trafficked and enslaved labourers today than there have ever been in human history."

"We have been and continue to be slaves to economic systems that are and always will be the ruin of us."

Source

• e-tangata.co.nz
• Image: itelegraph.co.uk

That is despite Pope Francis's call in his encyclical Laudato Si' for bold action to fight climate change and global warming, The Guardian reported.

At a press conference on July 1, Flaminia Giovanelli from the Pontifical Council for Peace and Justice spoke to the topic.

"I think that the Vatican bank may think of initiatives which are at the core of this change," Ms Giovanelli said.

"So we will see in the future . . . it [divestment] may be considered by the Vatican," she said.

The Guardian article theorised that Ms Giovanelli's hesitancy might reflect internal divisions about whether investment decisions by the Institute for Religious Works (known as the Vatican bank) ought to reflect Pope Francis's values.

Cardinal George Pell's climate-change scepticism was cited.

Canadian social activist Naomi Klein, who is Rome for a conference on Laudato Si', said she believed that a possible divestment policy was under discussion.

"It is my understanding that this is an issue that is being internally debated and that a lot of issues are up for review and this is being raised," Ms Klein told the Guardian.

A spokesman for the Vatican bank, Max Hohenberg, said the issue was largely irrelevant because "there really isn't much to divest".

He said about 95 per cent of the bank's assets were invested in government bonds, and the rest was invested in stocks held in investment funds, and that he had no knowledge of what specific stocks were held.

He added that the bank did not have any social investment policies in place, and that establishing one meant that it would likely be seen as a "model" within the Church, "which is obviously quite a big issue".

Earlier this year, the Church of England announced it would divest itself of 12 million pounds of investment in firms where more than 10 per cent of revenue comes from extracting thermal coal or the production of oil from tar sands.

Sources

• The Guardian
• BBC
• Image: The Telegraph

The parishes of Our Lady of Peace and Safe Journey Church in Chalan Pago and Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Agat have entered into a contract to purchase renewable energy for the next 20 years through a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA).

The Archdiocese of of Agaña's newspaper reports that with the two additional parishes on line the archdiocese can expect to save $US60,000 every year.

They say that over the course of the PPA contracts this savings will be measured in millions of dollars and value to the environment is priceless.

Under a PPA, an outside investor installs, owns and maintains the system while selling the power produced to the parishes as less than utility rates.

This is accomplished at no cost or liability to the parishes according to a news release from Pacific Solar and Photovoltaics Inc., which installed the system.

The Archdiocese of of Agaña (Guam) is pursuing a policy of reducing its dependence on fossil fuels.

The Archbishop, Anthony Sablan Apuron, says the their policy is to reduce energy expenses while at the same time being good stewards of the planet.

"Fossil fuels are a finite resource and no matter what the price, we will someday run out of these natural resources," he said.

Source

• umatuna.org
• Image: umatuna.org

The move has been hailed by climate campaigners as a major victory.

The WCC represents half a billion Christians in 345 member churches, including the Church of England, but not the Catholic Church.

It is not clear divestment in fossil fuels will apply only to the council itself, which has a comparatively small investment fund, or its members as well.

Continue reading

"We have sinned . . .", wrote Union Theological Seminary president Serene Jones in an article in Time magazine.

Fossil fuel investments constituted 11 per cent of Union's US$108 million endowment.

Removing such investments is an act of atonement for contributing to the "sin" of climate change, Ms Jones said.

"Climate change poses a catastrophic threat. As stewards of God's creation, we simply must act to stop this sin," she said.

Union's board voted unanimously for the change.

Ms Jones said Union is the first seminary in the country to take such a step

Union Theological Seminary, based in Manhattan in New York, bills itself as the flagship of American progressive Protestant theology.

It has been home to luminaries such as Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Union will host a conference called Religions for the Earth ahead of the United Nations' Climate Summit in September.

At least 100 other religious institutions, universities, cities, counties and other organisations have divested or started to divest from fossil fuel companies, according to Union.

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church in France has joined an interfaith initiative to fast on the first day of each month to highlight the issue of climate change.

Catholic, Orthodox Christian, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist leaders in France have all pledged support for the "Fast for the Climate" campaign.

The fasting on the first day of each month will last until a United Nations climate conference in Paris in December, 2015.

A spokesman for the French bishops' conference said the Church calls on state and local governments to take decisive steps against climate change.

The campaign is also an invitation to Christians to change their lifestyles, he said.

Earlier this month, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga confirmed that Pope Francis is writing an encyclical on environmental issues, including global warming.

Sources

• Religion News Service
• The Tablet
• National Catholic Reporter
• Source: Open House New York

Rod Oram, who moved the proposal, told synod that it "gives us the opportunity to offer leadership on, and to make a practical response to, climate change.

"Thus, it speaks to two marks of our Christian mission: care of creation and righting unjust social structures.

"Of all the ways in which we live unsustainably," he said, "it is climate change that is causing the gravest harm - right now, here and around the world - to the very ecosystem on which our existence depends."

And climate change, he said, is being driven "simply by pumping a rapidly rising volume of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases" into the atmosphere.

Oram is a journalist specialising in economic issues.

The motion drew impassioned support from Tikanga Pasefika speakers, most notably Bishop Api Qiliho, who said the survival of Pacific Island people was at stake.

There were notes of caution, however, from Mark Wilcox, General Manager of the Anglican Pension Board.

He told synod that the Pension Board manages $160 million of funds on behalf of its members, many of whom are retired or serving clergy.

Mr Wilcox said the Board took its ethical investment philosophy seriously, and had wrestled with how to respond "to the growing tide of sentiment around the world for divestment of fossil fuel investments."

But it also had to take its fiduciary obligations to its members equally seriously.

Source

• Anglican Taonga
• Pacific Scoop
• Image: Anglican Taonga

Youth organisation, Generation Zero, endorsed the moral leadership on climate change taken by the Diocese.

Generation Zero spokesperson, Kern Mangan-Walker, said "New Zealand has a strong history of taking moral leadership on the important issues of our time. And now again the Kiwi spirit is responding to our generation's issue of climate change, as organisations like the Auckland Diocese of the Anglican Church divest their funds in the fossil fuel industry."

The decision is a landmark event for action on climate change in New Zealand. The Auckland Diocese has become the first institutional body in New Zealand to join the global divestment movement.

The movement started in the US, where hundreds of universities, religious institutions and cities have divested their funds from fossil fuel companies.

"The move shows the Auckland Anglican Diocese living up to its responsibilities to young people and future generations by taking meaningful action on climate change" says Mr Mangan-Walker.

Generation Zero is supporting similar motions calling for fossil fuel divestment at other Anglican Synods across New Zealand in the coming week.

Source:

• voxy.co.nz
• Image: thinkprogress.org

On September 7, at the Anglican Diocese of Auckland Synod, the diocese voted overwhelmingly in favour of a motion calling on the diocese to withdraw its investments from companies whose main business is the extraction and/or production of fossil fuels.

In doing so it became the first institutional body in New Zealand to do so.

A spokeswoman for the Catholic bishops said Catholic Archbishop John Dew had already had an initial meeting with staff on the issue, reports the NZ Herald.

"They plan to ... undertake the [necessary] consultation before the conversation on this goes any further," she said.

Ethical investment adviser, Dr Rodger Spiller, said he was not aware of any other significant New Zealand investor that had sold out of fossil fuel investments on principle, but there was "a strong possibility" that others would follow the Anglican lead.

The Rev. Mathew Newton, of St Paul's Symonds Street, who introduced the synod motion, stressed in his speech the moral argument for fossil fuel divestment, saying "global climate change ... will have its greatest effect on those who have the least access to the world's resources and who have contributed least to its cause — not least in the Pacific islands where sea level rise already poses a grave threat."

The move to divest was a question of "moral consistency," Newton said.

"If we are making efforts to reduce our carbon emissions on the one hand, it doesn't make sense for us to be financing the fossil fuel industry through our investments on the other."

Sources

• NZ Herald
• Episcopal News Service
• Image: The Finance Pages

The synod has decided to move away from fossil fuels because it encourages companies to find and exploit more oil, gas and coal.

A spokesman said the church is concerned about the long term health of investments in the fossil fuel industry and also the effect of carbon emissions on climate change. Read More