Pope frames climate change argument as moral imperative

“LAUDATO SI (Praised be) on the care of our common home,” Pope Francis’ new encyclical on the environment and its impact on humanity, especially the poor, is a most inspiring development. It shifts the focus of concern from the scientific and political dimension to an all-embracing moral appreciation. With the new encyclical, Pope Francis luminously explains that man is damaging God’s creation. For him, as it was for St. Francis of Assisi from whom he took his papal name, the environment is very important to him.

The poor are also very important to him. We saw this in his visit to the Philippines, where he shunned the trappings of wealth and wanted to be at all times—everywhere

he went—with the densely huddled poor.

And the poor suffer most bitterly from climate change. Very recently, the Philippines was hit with temperatures that rose above 40 degree Celsius. While well-to-do Filipinos had their air conditioners, the poor could only bake in extreme heat, literally sweated to get some much-needed rest and, without refrigerators, just had to bear the likelihood of their little food getting spoiled easily. Add to that the impact of extreme rainfall and wind and supertyphoons and life for the poor promises to worsen all the more in the next decades.

But even if we already know that we are one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, our carbon footprint continues to rise because our business and industry leaders continue to use electricity from dirty fossil fuels. We continue to build many coal plants, while we meagerly and disproportionately grow power supply from solar, wind and other renewable energy sources in meeting our country’s demand.

In “Laudato Si” Pope Francis said, “international negotiations cannot progress in a significant way because of the positions of the countries which privilege their own national interests rather than the global common good.” The poor—for whom he has a special warmth, he says—“who will suffer the consequences which we are trying to hide, will remember this lack of conscience and responsibility.”

Pope Francis said that many scientific studies show that “the greater part of global warming in the last decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxide and others) emitted above all due to human activity.”

With the Pope framing the climate change argument as a moral imperative, let us hope that in our dominantly Christian community, we can make climate change mitigation (and adaptation, too) a deeply felt priority. We must build on the will to build more renewable energy plants for our growing economy.

Six years ago, we convened the first “Interfaith Dialogue on Climate Change” in Manila. “Laudato Si” makes our hopes in that dialogue more fulfilling.

We are triumphantly jubilant with the Pope for raising those hopes to a new level for all generations of all nations.

—HEHERSON T. ALVAREZ,

commissioner,

Climate Change Commission