The Energy Election
Joel Kotkin, Real Clear Politics
Blessed by Pope Francis, the drive to wipe out fossil fuels, notes activist Bill McKibben, now has “the wind in its sails.” Setting aside the bizarre alliance of the Roman Catholic Church with secularists such as McKibben, who favor severe limits of family size as an environmental imperative, this is a potentially transformational moment.
Vatican newspaper: analysis of recent Muslim statement on climate change
Catholic World News
Father Damian Howard, an English Jesuit, compares the declaration with Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ and writes that the declaration’s statement that “our planet has existed for billions of years” is noteworthy because this view is not universally accepted among Muslims.
On Climate Change, Listen to Pope Francis, Not Jeb Bush
John Nichols, The Nation
Before he chose to pursue the priesthood, the future pope trained as a chemical technician. Writers for the National Catholic Reporter reference “his training as a scientist” and point out that the young Jorge Mario Bergoglio “worked as a chemist prior to entering the seminary.”
Boston College holding conference on Pope Francis and climate change
WCVB
U.S. Sen. Edward Markey and White House Science Policy Chief John Holdren are coming to Boston College to discuss Pope Francis and the environment. The Massachusetts Democrat and Holdren are featured speakers Monday, the first day of BC’s conference on the pope’s sweeping climate change encyclical.
Pope’s environmental message inspires ‘Climate in the Pulpit’
Pamela Wood, The Baltimore Sun
At St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Annapolis, a small but dedicated “green team” is helping the congregation become more environmentally friendly. The members installed a rain garden to treat polluted stormwater runoff from the parking lot. Rain barrels are in the works to capture water from the roof. And though the church members are Episcopal, they are heeding the call from Pope Francis — leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics — to fight climate change.
Why the Pope is wrong about climate
Michael Grunwald, Politico
Still, as a modern environmental document, and especially as a call to climate action, Laudato Si is really problematic. Pope Francis makes an excellent case in paragraphs 23 through 25 that climate change is the eco-challenge of our time—and it’s great that he’s making that case to the world—but he fails to recognize that it’s a different kind of eco-challenge than the others he mentions in his encyclical, like toxic dumping and endangered species. The pope understandably puts great faith in the healing power of more moral and less selfish individual behavior, but that won’t save the climate. And while the pope doesn’t think much of capitalism or technology, those things are already helping to save the climate.
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