Pope Francis: ‘Revolution’ needed to combat climate change

CNN:  “Many efforts to seek concrete solutions to the environmental crisis have proved ineffective, not only because of powerful opposition but also because of a more general lack of interest.”

“We have a situation here,” said Janos Pasztor, the U.N.’s assistant secretary-general for climate change, who was part of a team that convened with Vatican this April, “in which science and religion are totally aligned.

“Subtitled, “On Care for Our Common Home,” the encyclical was published Thursday, June 18th, in at least five languages during a news conference at the Vatican. The document was more than a year in the making, church officials say, and draws on the work of dozens of scientists, theologians, scholars from various fields and previous popes.

The Pope denounces big businesses, energy companies, short-sighted politicians, scurrilous scientists, laissez faire economists, callous Christians and myopic media professionals. Scarcely any area of society escapes his probing pen.

The encyclical published on Thursday goes well beyond any sermons, delving into fields familiar to any Catholic, such as Scripture and theology, but also wandering into sociology, politics, urban planning, economics, globalization, biology and other areas of scientific research.

Broken into six chapters, “Laudato Si” begins by cataloguing a host of ills wracking the planet: dirty air, polluted water, industrial fumes, toxic waste, rising sea levels and extreme weather.

The problem is “aggravated,” the Pope says, “by a model of development based on the intensive use of fossil fuels.”