In a statement at COP28, the USCCB committee called decarbonisation of the economy the "preeminent environmental challenge faced by all nations" that must be addressed without burdening middle-and low-income citizens with increased costs.

However, according to Reuters, the US bishops continue to hold on to substantial investments in fossil fuel companies, directly benefiting from these industries.

"US dioceses hold millions of dollars of stock in fossil fuel companies through portfolios intended to fund church operations and pay clergy salaries, according to a Reuters review of financial statements.

"And at least a dozen are also leasing land to drillers, according to land records," reports Richard Valdmanis.

US Bishops stand firm

Despite Pope Francis' impassioned calls to shun highly polluting fuels, the USCCB stands firm in its reluctance to divest from these industries.

Reuters investigations into the financial reports of various American dioceses reveal substantial holdings in energy stocks and land leases with drillers.

While the Vatican and other global Catholic institutions embrace divestment strategies, the USCCB's investment guidance, guided by the Christian Brothers Investment Service, advocates active shareholder engagement with major oil and gas companies rather than wholesale divestment.

Media mirrors money

According to Sabrina Danielson, a professor at Creighton University, the bishops' financial engagement with major oil and gas companies is mirrored in the Catholic media they own.

Danielson has studied the media engagement of US bishops on the issue of climate change.

Fewer than 1% of the more than 12,000 columns by US bishops in official publications since 2014 mentioned climate change, Danielson found in a 2021 study.

She says that many of those mentioning climate change downplayed the urgency of global warming or described the topic as controversial.

Vatican continues to lead

The approach of the US Catholic bishops on Climate Change runs counter to the Vatican's lead.

In 2008 when Benedict XVI was pope, the first of 2,400 solar panels were installed on top of the papal audience hall in Vatican City.

Then, following this first move and several others in between, on 16 November 2023 the Vatican announced a new sustainability programme.

As part of the programme the Vatican

• will expand the number of charging stations for electric cars
• signed an agreement with German carmaker Volkswagen to replace the city-state's entire car fleet with electric vehicles by 2030
• ensure its electricity comes exclusively from renewable sources.
  

Sources

Crux Now

US News & World Report

Reuters

NBC

CathNews NZ

Rome Reports

Laudato Si' is medieval Italian for "Praise be to you."

It is a quote from St. Francis of Assisi's beautiful Canticle of the Creatures: "Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs."

Pope Francis, who took his papal name from St Francis, continues to be deeply inspired by this patron saint of ecology. So much so, that in 2015 he wrote the first ever environmental encyclical letter titled "Laudato Si', on Care for Our Common Home."

"St Francis of Assisi reminds us," writes the pope, "that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. …

"This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will."

Pope Francis explains, "Each year hundreds of millions of tons of waste are generated, much of it non-biodegradable, highly toxic and radioactive, from homes and businesses, construction and demolition sites, clinical, electronic and industrial sources. The earth, our home, is becoming increasingly like an immense pile of filth."

The Holy Father then weighs in on climate change.

Ignoring the weak scientific claims of those who deny the climate is changing and that the earth is warming - due principally to human pollution. He writes, "A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system."

Indeed, the scientific consensus is very solid.

According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), "97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities."

"The problem is dangerously aggravated by a model of development based on the intensive use of fossil fuels" - that is coal, oil, and gas.

The pope urgently calls for global conversion from the use of these fossil fuels to "clean renewable energy" - wind, solar and geothermal.

Francis astutely observes that living comfortable lifestyles far removed from the poor, often leads to a "numbing of conscience" and to a cold, impersonal analysis.

"At times this attitude exists side by side with a ‘green rhetoric.'

"Today, however, we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor."

Observing the connection between the degradation of the environment and war, Francis writes, "It is foreseeable that, once certain resources have been depleted, the scene will be set for new wars."

The earth and humanity are in trouble.

The dangers of climate change and accompanying global warming are nothing to take lightly. The scientific evidence is overwhelming. We don't have much time left to wake up.

Therefore, this all makes Laudato Si' Week a week that should not be ignored. Let's commit to celebrating it as soon as possible.

Watch the moving film featuring Pope Francis called "The Letter: A message for our Earth"

Share Pope Francis' Laudato Si'.

Pray with the Laudato Si' Prayer Book.

Become a Laudato Si' animator.

Pick up the challenge: read the encyclical. It will inspire.

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated Catholic social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan or parish gatherings. Tony can be reached at tmag6@comcast.net.

That would seem to be good news, as the world tries to wean itself off fossil fuels that are wrecking the global climate. But as electric cars become more popular, some question just how environmentally friendly they are.

The batteries in electric vehicles, for example, charge on power that is coming straight off the electric grid — which is itself often powered by fossil fuels.

And there are questions about how energy-intensive it is to build an EV or an EV battery, versus building a comparable traditional vehicle.

Are electric vehicles greener?

The short answer is yes — but their full green potential is still many years away.

Experts broadly agree that electric vehicles create a lower carbon footprint over the course of their lifetime than do cars and trucks that use traditional, internal combustion engines.

Last year, researchers from the universities of Cambridge, Exeter and Nijmegen in The Netherlands found that in 95% of the world, driving an electric car is better for the environment than driving a gasoline-powered car.

Electricity grids in most of the world are still powered by fossil fuels such as coal or oil, and electric vehicles depend on that energy to get charged. Separately, EV battery production remains an energy-intensive process.

A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Energy Initiative found that the battery and fuel production for an EV generates higher emissions than the manufacturing of an automobile. But those higher environmental costs are offset by electric vehicles superior energy efficiency over time.

In short, the total emissions per mile for battery-powered cars are lower than comparable cars with internal combustion engines.

"If we are going to take a look at the current situation, in some countries, electric vehicles are better even with the current grid," Sergey Paltsev, a senior research scientist at the MIT Energy Initiative and one of the study's authors, told CNBC.

Paltsev explained that the full benefits of electric vehicles will be realized only after the electricity sources become renewable, and it might take several decades for that to happen.

"Currently, the electric vehicle in the U.S., on average, would emit about 200 grams of CO2 per mile," he said. "We are projecting that with cleaning up the grid, we can reduce emissions from electric vehicles by 75%, from about 200 (grams) today to about 50 grams of CO2 per mile in 2050."

Similarly, Paltsev said MIT research showed non-plug-in hybrid cars with internal combustion engines currently emit about 275 grams of CO2 per mile. In 2050, their projected emissions are expected to be between 160 to 205 grams of CO2 per mile — the range is wider than electric vehicles because fuel standards vary from place to place.

Decarbonization is the process of reducing greenhouse gas emissions produced by burning fossil fuels. Efforts to cut down pollution across various industries are expected to further reduce the environmental impact of EV production and charging over time.

"When you look forward to the rest of the decade, where we will see massive amounts of decarbonization in power generation and a massive amount of decarbonization in the industrial sector, EVs will benefit from all of that decarbonization," Eric Hannon, a Frankfurt-based partner at McKinsey & Company, told CNBC.

Batteries are the biggest emitter

EVs rely on rechargeable lithium-ion batteries to run.

The process of making those batteries — from using mining raw materials like cobalt and lithium to production in gigafactories and transportation — is energy-intensive, and one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions from EVs today, experts said.

Gigafactories are facilities that produce EV batteries on a large scale.

"Producing electric vehicles leads to significantly more emissions than producing petrol cars. Depending on the country of production, that's between 30% to 40% extra in production emissions, which is mostly from the battery production," said Florian Knobloch, a fellow at the Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance.

Those higher production emission numbers are seen as "an initial investment, which pays off rather quickly due to the reduced lifetime emissions."

China currently dominates battery production, with 93 gigafactories producing lithium-ion battery cells versus only four in the U.S., the Washington Post reported this year.

"I think the battery is the most complicated component in the EV, and has the most complex supply chain," George Crabtree, director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, told CNBC, adding that the energy source used in battery production makes a huge difference on the carbon footprint for EVs.

Batteries made in older gigafactories in China are usually powered by fossil fuels, because that was the trend five to ten years ago, he explained. So, electric vehicles that are built with batteries from existing factories are going to have large carbon footprints.

But that's changing, he said, as "people have realized that's a huge carbon footprint." Continue reading

But Bindi Chouhan and her family of seven, who generate less than five rubbish bins worth of waste per year, say that most sustainable things they do on a daily basis are mindless.

The fourth-generation Indian-Zimbabwean grew up in a micro village of extended family members, about 25 people, who lived in three houses next door to one another.

So the biggest shock Chouhan experienced upon moving to New Zealand with her parents and brother in 2003 was an introduction to convenience culture.

"There were a lot of adjustments we needed to make from living in a large family of more than twenty to being just four of us," she said.

"My mum used to cook most of the meals back in Africa, and the biggest thing she needed to readjust was the meal size.

"We would be eating leftovers for days."

In her eyes, there is a clear correlation between wealth and waste.

In Zimbabwe, the whole family ate a plant-based diet, primarily grown by Chouhan's grandmother on the property.

"My parents, grandparents, uncles, aunties and cousins were always making use of everything.

"Nothing was ever just thrown out."

Not having enough food, water, or power were real possibilities - so there was a staunch commitment to making the most of every resource.

If a tool broke, someone would find a way to fix it. If something was no longer useful, it got up or re-cycled.

"The irony is when you come into a first-world country, you think you're progressing in life- but our habits started to go backwards.

"You start imbibing the things that everyone is doing around you (like using plastic bags and ordering takeaways) and without even realising, you start living a life that is against the principles that you grew up with."

Now, Chouhan and her husband share a small cottage on a property in Titirangi, Auckland, that they built themselves.

Chouhan's mum and dad live in the main house with her brother, sister-in-law and their baby. Her mother-in-law also comes to stay for about a week out of every month, as do family friends. The household is always in flux, but always at least a headcount of seven.

Chouhan started work as a sustainability travel coordinator, acting on behalf of Auckland Transport within school communities, as well as a yoga/breathwork teacher.

Yoga is about helping people with their mental garbage, she said, so helping them with their actual garbage felt like a natural extension.

The first goal she set for her household was to reduce their kerbside rubbish bin - from going out fortnightly, to once a month.

Then she brought home a worm farm. This was not well-received, but she persisted.

The family has restarted growing their own food, something Chouhan believes is the simplest way to live a more sustainable life.

Start with herbs and the vegetables you buy the most often, she suggests, and don't do it alone. For renters, that might mean going in on a little benchtop or balcony garden with flatmates or sharing with neighbours.

Chouhan and her mum are experimental cooks. They like to take homegrown taro, curry leaves, spices and bitter gourd and figure out dishes: "This week we used broccoli leaves to make spicy rolls with chickpea flour."

Leftovers went to Chouhan's sister-in-law, who keeps them flush in lemons, limes and other fruits from her trees. Sharing and swapping produce and bulk buying keeps the grocery bills down.

Between the two houses, Chouhan estimates their weekly spend is about $100. That goes on lentils, grains and flour, the few veggies that aren't in the garden, and cheese. Continue reading

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

The approach, called recomposition, is currently being discussed by lawmakers and, if approved, could become a legal third option for after-death care by 2020.

"A lot of people might be reluctant to think or talk about death and might find the whole thing icky, but for the most part people are quite intrigued," said Sen. Jamie Pedersen, a Democrat who is sponsoring the legislative bill.

He said the world has been re-shaped by innovation, and funerals should be no different.

In Washington state, dead bodies can either be cremated or buried, but Pedersen said both are damaging to the environment and expensive.

"Cremation takes a gigantic amount of energy … and with traditional burial they typically embalm the bodies by draining blood and adding chemicals," he said. "There are environmental issues with both methods."

Recomposition is a natural process that breaks down the body by placing it in a reusable vessel, covering it with wood chips and aerating it, which creates an environment for microbes and necessary bacteria.

The process takes about 30 days, according to Recompose, the Seattle-based company behind the idea.

The soil that is created from the body can either be given to the families or they can donate it to conservation land.

"Recomposition allows us to give back to the earth that supports us all our lives," the company claims on its website.

Recompose plans to charge around $5,000 for its services.

The company recently co-sponsored a study, the Recomposition Science Project, at Washington State University and found that composting human bodies is environmentally sound. The study included examining and adapting techniques that have been developed for composting livestock.

"It is an understandable tendency to limit the amount of time we spend contemplating our after-death choices, but environmental realities are pressing us to develop alternatives to chemical embalming, carbon-generating cremation and the massive land use requirements of traditional cemeteries," Recompose founder and CEO Katrina Spade said in a news release.

She added that, if every Washington state resident chose recomposition, it would save more than .5 million metric tons of CO2 within 10 years — enough to let 13 million seedlings grow into trees for 10 years.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, about 2.7 million people die annually in the U.S. More than half (53.5 percent) are cremated.

The National Funeral Directors Association, though, reports that more people are showing an interest in green burials.

Green burials, also called natural burials, minimize environmental impacts by not embalming, re-thinking burial containers and protecting the natural habitat with the goal of limiting waste and reducing the carbon footprint. Continue reading

In the name of profit and convenience, corporations are literally choking our planet with a substance that does not just "go away" when we toss it into a bin.

Since the 1950s, some 8.3bn tons of plastic have been produced worldwide, and to date, only 9% of that has been recycled.

Our oceans bear the brunt of our plastics epidemic - up to 12.7m tons of plastic end up in them every year.

Just over a decade ago, I launched the Story of Stuff to help shine a light on the ways we produce, use and dispose of the stuff in our lives.

The Story of Stuff is inextricably linked to the story of plastics - the packaging that goes along with those endless purchases.

We buy a soda, sip it for a few minutes, and toss its permanent packaging "away".

We eat potato chips, finish them, then throw their permanent packaging "away".

We buy produce, take it out of the unnecessary plastic wrap, then throw its permanent packaging "away".

The cycle is endless, and it happens countless times every single day.

But here's the catch - there is no "away".

As far as we try to toss a piece of plastic - whether it's into a recycling bin or not - it does not disappear. Chances are, it ends up polluting our communities, oceans or waterways in some form.

For years, we've been conned into thinking the problem of plastic packaging can be solved through better individual action.

We're told that if we simply recycle we're doing our part.

We're told that if we bring reusable bags to the grocery store, we're saving the world.

We think that if we drink from a reusable bottle, we're making enough of a difference. But the truth is that we cannot recycle our way out of this mess.

Recycling alone will never stem the flow of plastics into our oceans; we have to get to the source of the problem and slow down the production of all this plastic waste.

Think about it: if your home was flooding because you had left the faucet on, your first step wouldn't be to start mopping.

You'd first cut the flooding off at its source - the faucet. In many ways, our plastics problem is no different. Continue reading

• Image: Inhabit

"Due to an ill-considered exploitation of nature, humanity runs the risk of destroying it and becoming in turn a victim of this degradation," he wrote.

In Saint Pope John Paul II's first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, the Pope also wrote about man's role as a steward of the earth.

"Man often seems to see no other meaning in his natural environment than what serves for immediate use and consumption," John Paul II wrote "Yet it was the Creator's will that man should communicate with nature as an intelligent and noble "master" and "guardian", and not as a heedless "exploiter" and "destroyer".

So what does it mean to be an environmentally-friendly Catholic? Let's take a look at the recent writings of the past two popes to gain a clearer definition of a green Catholic.

While Pope Francis has written extensively on how we are called to be good stewards of the earth (don't worry, we'll check out his writings in a minute), the original green Pope is Pope Benedict XVI.

The lasting legacy of his papacy was how he shifted the global conversation on the earth's climate and our responsibility for its care.

In his very first homily as the pope, Benedict alluded to his passions for human and environmental ecology.

Here's what he said about the deserts in our world (and in our souls!) today:

"There is the desert of poverty, the desert of hunger and thirst, the desert of abandonment, of loneliness, of destroyed love. There is the desert of God's darkness, the emptiness of souls no longer aware of their dignity or the goal of human life.

"The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast. Therefore the earth's treasures no longer serve to build God's garden for all to live in, but they have been made to serve the powers of exploitation and destruction.

"The Church as a whole and all her Pastors, like Christ, must set out to lead people out of the desert, towards the place of life, towards friendship with the Son of God, towards the One who gives us life, and life in abundance." Continue reading

Sources

• epicPew article by Chloe Langr
• Image: The Catholic World Report

Today we live in a world where, in the words of Pope Francis, "any genuine attempt by groups within society to introduce change is viewed as a nuisance based on romantic illusions or an obstacle to be circumvented."

It is in this context that vowed Catholic religious—accustomed to working on the fringes for unpopular causes—have been quietly leading the charge for environmental sustainability.

The "green sisters" are various Catholic religious orders that have integrated Catholicism with environmentalism.

Some are contemplatives who run retreat centers for prayer and re-engagement with nature, while others are activists who travel the world, teaching and ministering to those suffering the effects of climate change.

As the Sisters of Earth—their informal network—they come together for international conferences to share how different regions have been impacted by environmental degradation and discuss how they can work with indigenous cultures to seek solutions.

The green sisters have been doing this work for 20 years.

But while Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II expressed concern about the looming ecological crisis and its implications for humanity, it was Pope Francis who affirmed the value of these women's vocation with Laudato Si'.

Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Sister Janet Ryan says, "When Francis writes, ‘We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental,' and when he says that these problems ‘demand an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature,'—well, that's what we've been talking about all along."

A sense of vocation

Far from fading into obscurity, shuttering their mother-houses, or turning off their lights, the green sisters have gone outside, planted community gardens, and installed solar panels.

While the vocational crisis is all too real—the average age of vowed religious increases every year—the Sisters of Earth have found new energy and purpose in the environmental movement, and many of their communities are thriving, brought together with shared environmental and religious commitments.

The Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM) community in Monroe, Michigan is one such group of women religious.

In better times, the sisters ran a college and several high schools in southern Michigan. But by the late 1990s they had sold much of their property, and their Motherhouse, a 376,000-square-foot Depression-era behemoth, required either a complete overhaul or demolition.

Their situation was one all too familiar for many American Catholic religious.

However, the community reacted not by selling their land or closing the building but by becoming pioneers of eco-renovation.

"What had begun as a young, college-driven teaching community had become a senior community," says Ryan, who served as a member of the IHM Leadership Council from 2000-2012.

Selling the land and razing the house to create a smaller, cheaper, more manageable home for an aging population seemed like the most practical choice for the congregation.

But while this might have been the easier choice, the sisters eventually decided it wasn't the best decision for their future—or for the future of the community they served.

Monroe, like so many American cities, suffers from factory closures and the loss of major employers. Continue reading

• Image: US Catholic

Electric vehicles - or EVs for short - are certainly greener and the benefits speak for themselves. They don't require fossil fuels and they're cheaper to run, yet this doesn't seem to be enough to increase their adoption rate.

It's certainly not that we love our old fossil fuel cars. It's also not that we get disappointed when the cars aren't actually painted green. It's actually down to a number of different factors, as green vehicles don't always address the more pressing needs of today's drivers and consumers.

They're not as green as you might think

When we talk about EVs and other ‘green' cars, we are often primarily talking about the fuel source. This move away from fossil fuels ensures we don't use carbon-emitting sources to power our vehicles.

At least, that's the theory.

If you have an electric car, it is only as ‘green' as how this power is generated. Yet many countries still use fossil fuel. Looking at globalenergy consumption rates, it's clear the world still generates around (as of 2013), 81.2 percent of its power from fossil fuels.

Don't think that this is just because of other countries, as there are some surprising figures. The US? Still generates around 80% of its energy from fossil fuels, as does the U.K. If you're in a first world country, there's a good chance you're powering your car through the very means the car is meant to avoid.

The non-green parts

On a similar note, it takes plenty of materials to make a car. Metal, plastic, glass, rubber and more all go into making a vehicle. Many of these can be recycled, but that doesn't mean everything actively is.

This is one area that is, however, a little hopeful. Ford already uses enough recycled aluminium for 30,000 truck bodies each month. This doesn't change the fuel source, but it's certainly a move in the right direction.

As for EV's, there is also the battery. These use lithium-ion as a core component, just like your smartphone likely does, yet nobody refers to their latest iPhone as green and eco-friendly, do they?

Lithium-ion is not an unlimited resource, but it can be recycled. However, this is up to consumers to remember. There's also the case of supply and demand. Many devices already use lithium batteries, and it's not clear if the current recycling rates can keep up with increased demand.

The same can also be said for the various rare earth metals used in the magnetic and electronic components (it turns out electric cars have many electronic components). Until this is accounted for, this is another area where the ‘green' status of any given vehicle is still up in the air.

Green factors that are more relevant

People still want to be green, yet they aren't buying EVs in hordes… so what are the factors that do matter? In short, many people are looking to make their existing car more environmentally-friendly. It's much cheaper to make this change then put down $35,000 for a new Tesla.

Economic driving can be done in a number of ways. Driving at an optimal driving speed of 55 mph offers the most fuel efficiency, while slowing down naturally and not running the motor in idle also help cut down consumption.

Likewise, cars can be modified to be more efficient. Reduced weight,correct tyre pressure and other fuel-efficient adjustments all help. Particularly adventurous drivers are even converting their diesel cars to take bio-fuel.

Similarly, what about the likes of carpooling? Roughly one in ten Americans carpool, yet this alone saves 85 million gallons of fuel, as well as $1.1 billion in costs. With the likes of Lyft and Uber making it easier to get a lift when you need it, the way people even view cars as a method of transportation is already changing.

If you give someone a choice between saving money by being green, or spending money to buy a new EV, it shouldn't be surprising to see which option many people are choosing. Continue reading.

"Preservation of the environment, promotion of sustainable development and particular attention to climate change are matters of grave concern for the entire human family."

"Too often, attention is diverted from the needs of populations, insufficient emphasis is placed on work in the fields, and the goods of the earth are not given adequate protection. As a result, economic imbalance is produced, and the inalienable rights and dignity of every human person are ignored."

After reading those statements, you might be thinking that Pope Francis has released his highly anticipated encyclical on the environment ahead of its projected June publication date, but that is not the case.

Nor do we have an advance copy.

These statements — each making a strong case for responsibly caring for God's creation — all were given by Pope Benedict XVI at various times during his pontificate. There is a reason our former pontiff earned the nickname "the green pope."

Yet despite his consistent voice on the issue, the environment remains one of the most politically charged and divisive issues facing the modern Church, particularly in the West.

This especially has been the case in recent weeks as the world awaits the release of Francis' encyclical.

The main bone of contention in this debate is climate change.

While we do believe that this is an issue that has serious implications on human welfare, we are not choosing to argue its merits today.

On the contrary, we acknowledge the right of all parties engaged in the debate to participate in a rational and responsible exchange of thoughts, ideas and information.

A line is crossed, however, when such rational exchange turns into venom-spewing, ideologically based commentary.

And this is what has taken place.

Well before the encyclical's release, a veritable campaign against its content has not only been initiated, but has been growing in intensity.

That these efforts presuppose the document's content is bad enough, but they have gone much further.

Some Catholic observers and commentators have recommended that their fellow members in faith completely ignore the work, calling it baseless and not a priority.

Others have even mocked the Holy Father and questioned his mental state.

It's shameful behavior, and hardly befitting a Church that calls itself "one, holy and apostolic."

That the majority of this vitriol should come at the hands of self-styled conservatives is as disappointing as it is ironic.

Just a few short years ago, with Pope Benedict at the helm of the Church, it was these same Catholics calling on their self-styled liberal counterparts to not ignore or berate the teachings or the office of the Holy Father — in short to not be "cafeteria Catholics" when they disagreed with Benedict.

Now the situation is reversed, and these offended Catholics are becoming the perpetrators of the same offensive abuse. Continue reading

"We think it's an important event, and an important opportunity, but more to try and put poverty reduction and poor people's livelihood at the center of the debate about greening development, about moving to more sustainable development models," said Sarah Wykes, CAFOD's lead analyst on environment and climate change.

"The hottest topic for discussion for both summits will be how to build a 'green economy' to help achieve sustainable development. But we are concerned that the green economy needs to also be fair and help lift millions of people out of poverty."

"We strongly believe that money will not change life on the planet," said Mario Nicacio from the Indigenous Council of Roraima, Brazil.

"To me, the phrase 'green economy' means a bag full of money ready to be used to transform the forest into a place without fresh air. If I had one minute to speak to all the world leaders, I would tell them that using a lot of money to preserve the Amazon is not enough, they must educate the world's population."

CAFOD, via a press statement, is concerned about the current vision for a 'green economy', saying it focuses too much on the economy, the economic interests of the rich and industrialised countries and not enough on the 'green' sustainable development in poor countries.

Sources

• Vatican Radio
• CAFOD
• Image: Relacoes Internacionais

Father Stephen Alathara, spokesman for the KCBC, said the council had finalized its ecological mission statement, which included the directive about confession, during its annual meeting in Kochi.

"Any exploitation of nature amounts to sins against God," he said, adding that the directive would be included in a pastoral letter to be circulated among dioceses in February next year.

"The document on ecology aims to promote greater awareness among the faithful on how to follow green spirituality as a Christian," Alathara said.

However, he also pointed out that the statement does not encourage the worship of nature. "Nature is the gift of God. So we must minimize its exploitation and misuse."

Green activists welcomed the directive, which includes plans to adopt green architecture for Church educational buildings, promote solar energy and discourage the use of plastics.

"The Church has set a role model for others. Its initiative will have a great impact on our community," said KE Kunjikrishnan, a Hindu environmental activist.

Charlie Paul, a Catholic youth leader, said the new vision for environmentalism would help develop positive attitudes toward nature for a new generation.

Source

• ucanews.com
• Image: Green Travel

Rodriguez wants a deal on climate change that puts poor communities in developing countries first and provides for a sustainable future.

"Our climate is changing. This year we saw floods in Central America, South and South East Asia and drought across East Africa," Rodriguez said.

"Urgent action is necessary."

Rodriguez urged climate negotiators to be prompt with an international response to curb the threat of climate change and set the world on a path to a more just and sustainable future.

"The whole world is vulnerable to climate change but poor countries are affected more," he said.

Cardinal Rodriguez is leading a 20-strong Caritas delegation to the United Nations climate talks.

With the modification of climate patters seriously affecting agriculture, Caritas' key concern is peoples' right to food and ensuring the world, particularly the 1 billion people living in extreme poverty, can get access to sufficient safe and healthy food.

Sources

• Caritas
• Image: Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate

Benedict, dubbed the 'green pope' for his environmental concerns, launched his appeal on Sunday during his regular Angelus message.

He said the deal needs to take into account the poor and future generations.

"I hope that all members of the international community agree on a responsible and credible response to this worrisome and complex phenomenon, taking into account the needs of the poorest and future generations," he said.

Benedict denounced the failure of world leaders to agree to a successor treaty to Kyoto during a 2009 U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen.

World peace depends on safeguarding God's creation, Benedict said.

For Benedict, looking after the climate is not an optional extra, it's a moral issue.

Church teaching holds that humanity must respect creation because it's destined for the benefit of humanity's future.

The pope has repeatedly argued that climate change and natural catastrophes threaten people's rights to life, food, health and ultimately peace.

Benedict has regularly has voiced concern about protecting the environment in his writings, during foreign trips, speeches to diplomats and in his annual peace message.

Under Benedict's watch, the Vatican has installed photovoltaic cells on its main auditorium to convert sunlight into electricity and has joined a reforestation project aimed at offsetting its CO2 emissions.

Sources

• Vatican Radio
• Huffington Post
• Image: Green Canticle

According to the German weekly paper Wirtschaftswoche, it is expected the green Popemobile would be ready for Benedict's visit to Germany in September.

Vatican Spokesman Federico Lombardi told news agency AFP that the car, which is currently under development, will not be ready before the end of next year.

According to the report, the new Popemobile will be based on the four-wheel drive M Class Mercedes with a hybrid electric-petrol motor.

The rechargeable lithium-ion battery will allow it to drive 30 kilometres (16 miles) without any polluting emissions.

A move towards a hybrid car was first revealed in December when Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, president of the governorate of Vatican City State, suggested the pontiff was "prepared to use an electric Popemobile," as long as it was efficient and reliable.

The pope would not be allowed to use a purely electric-driven car as the Popemobile must have the capacity to take off swiftly in case of emergency, the paper said.

Source

• Deutche Welle
• Associated Press
• Image: Strange Harvest

One of the Vatican engineers says "The push came from the very top. When it comes to technology, there's a complete openness as long as it contributes towards good. And the environment is clearly good, in line with our Christian values, the Holy Father has said so many times."

Benedict has accompanied his focus on the environment with a renewed emphasis on natural theology, or the search for divine truth in the created world. In that sense, environmentalism may play a role in what Benedict sees as his core mission: the re-evangelization of the secular West.

Source
Stephan Faris in the Atlantic Monthly

Faris is working on a book about global immigration.

Photo Credit
onedigitallife.com