Pope Francis and Other Christian Leaders Are Calling for Bold Climate Action

Hot take: it doesn&#x27;t matter who comes out in favour of stronger action on climate change. The only way we&#x27;ll get significant change is when it becomes economic to do so. The world population or even a significant percentage of it won&#x27;t change their behaviour altruistically even for a minor inconvenience and risk.<p>New coal plants aren&#x27;t built (mostly) and old ones are closing not because of altruism or a genuine concern for climate change. It&#x27;s because other options are more economic, specifically LNG and solar. Now LNG isn&#x27;t much better but it is better. Solar is definitely better. But what drove solar adoption over the last decade is the plunging price of panels, not altruism.

Great. Now tell the American bishops to call off the culture war.<p>Catholics have instructions on how to resolve the dilemma where one candidate supports doctrine A, and the other candidate supports doctrine B. In plain terms, it&#x27;s basically &quot;choose your battles.&quot; This came to light when the dilemma of the day was abortion versus capital punishment and the poor.<p>Owing largely to the culture war, American Catholics have provided decisive support to the party that calls global warming a hoax. This isn&#x27;t a political statement on my part, but just a statistical one.<p>My view is that the Church has quietly held a token position on global warming while concentrating its social influence on other matters. I don&#x27;t have a definitive answer on this, and could of course be wrong, but choosing the wrong battle is a moral failure.

I&#x27;m not sure how valuable this is really. Most people, I assume, would wholeheartedly agree but since the CC culprits are not &#x27;Christians who cause climate change&#x27;, then the pope or Archbishop saying what loads of other people are saying is neither surprising nor worth it.<p>Personally, I would like to see practical ways of acually reducing fossil fuel demands but this is much harder for the church, except in their own properties, and easier for governments.

Cool, maybe these Christian leaders will finally be accepting of voluntary birth control as a wise form of choosing life — e.g., by acting as a steward of nature and reducing poverty?<p>(Ok, well, even if not, the gesture in support of environmental justice is appreciated)

That&#x27;s big news. I&#x27;m atheist, but worldwide, the word of the pope always holds a lot of power.<p>Climate change is mostly a large political issue, much more than racism or inequality, it&#x27;s a much more large scale issue, which requires that people with a lot of influence need to speak.<p>Not to mention that the Vatican, even with all the evils of religion, is still a place with a lot of thinkers.

Joe Manchin argues: &quot;If they&#x27;re eliminating fossils, and I&#x27;m finding out there&#x27;s a lot of language in places they&#x27;re eliminating fossils, which is very, very disturbing,&quot; he said, &quot;because if you&#x27;re sticking your head in the sand, and saying that fossil has to be eliminated in America, and they want to get rid of it, and thinking that&#x27;s going to clean up the global climate, it won&#x27;t clean it up all.&quot;<p>How is that coherent at all?

How many CEOs are Catholic? :&#x27;)

Four words from the Pope could have the greatest effect per effort of any act on our environmental problems: &quot;You can use contraception.&quot;<p>It won&#x27;t solve all problems, but it will help a lot.<p>There is plenty of scripture he could call on to justify it. One, for example, is that the prophecy of having as many descendants as grains of sand on the beach couldn&#x27;t have meant <i>all at once</i>, because we wouldn&#x27;t all fit. Decreasing the chance of that many descendants undermines the prophecy.<p>Italy&#x27;s low birth rate means Catholics are using birth control anyway, so people have figured it out.

Maybe equating Satan with global warming is the way here.

&gt; Getting Biden&#x27;s climate proposal done, though, will require the support of all 50 Democratic senators, including fellow Catholic Manchin.<p>This appears to assume that all Republican senators will vote against the climate proposal, which I find overly pessimistic.