At a gathering of fossil fuel
executives at the Vatican, Pope Francis spoke much-needed common sense about
climate change
You kind of expect popes to
talk about spiritual stuff, kind of the way you expect chefs to discuss spices
or tree surgeons to make small talk about overhanging limbs.
Which is why it was so
interesting this week to hear Pope Francis break
down the climate debate in very practical and very canny terms, displaying far
more mathematical insight than your average world leader and far more strategic
canniness than your average journalist. In fact, with a few deft sentences, he
laid bare the hypocrisy that dominates much of the climate debate.
The occasion was the gathering
of fossil fuel executives at the Vatican, one of a series of meetings to mark
the third anniversary of Laudato Si, his majestic encyclical on global warming.
The meetings were closed, but by all accounts big oil put forward its usual
anodyne arguments: any energy transition must be slow, moving too fast to
renewable energy would hurt the poor by raising prices, and so forth.
In response, Francis
graciously thanked the oil executives for attending, and for “developing more
careful approaches to the assessment of climate risk”. But then he got down to
business. “Is it enough?” he asked. “Will we turn the corner in time? No one
can answer that with certainty, but with each month that passes, the challenge
of energy transition becomes more pressing.” Two and a half years after the
Paris climate talks, he pointed out, “carbon dioxide emissions and atmospheric
concentrations of greenhouse gases remain very high. This is disturbing and a
cause for real concern.” Indeed.
It’s odd to have the pope
schooling energy executives on the math of carbon
What’s really “worrying”,
though, “is the continued search for new fossil fuel reserves, whereas the
Paris agreement clearly urged keeping most fossil fuels underground”. And
in that small sentence he calls the bluff on most of what passes for climate
action among nations and among fossil fuel companies. Yes, Donald Trump
notwithstanding, most countries have begun to take some steps to reduce demand
for energy over time. Yes, oil companies have begun to grudgingly issue
“climate risk reports” and divert minuscule percentages of their research
budgets to renewables.
But no one has been willing to
face the fact that we have to leave more than 80% of known fossil fuel reserves
underground if we have any chance of meeting the Paris targets. No company has
been willing to commit to leaving the coal and oil and gas in the earth, and
almost no nation has been willing to make them do so. Instead, the big fossil
fuel countries continue to aid and abet the big fossil fuel companies in the
push for more mining and drilling. In Australia, the Turnbull government backs
a massive new coalmine; in Canada, the Trudeau government literally buys a
pipeline to keep the tar sands expanding; in the US, the federal government
might as well be a wholly owned subsidiary of the fossil fuel companies.
In fact, as Francis points
out, it’s not just that these companies and countries are committed to digging
up the reserves they currently have. Even more insanely, they’re out there
exploring for more. Companies like Exxon devote billions and billions of
dollars to finding new oil fields, even though we have far more oil than we
could ever safely burn.
All of this is morally wrong,
as Francis points out. “Decisive progress cannot be made without an increased
awareness that all of us are part of one human family, united by bonds of
fraternity and solidarity. Only by thinking and acting with constant concern
for this underlying unity that overrides all differences, only by cultivating a
sense of universal intergenerational solidarity, can we set out really and
resolutely on the road ahead,” he says.
Which is great – it’s the job
of religious leaders to remind us to think beyond our own self-interest.
But Francis also understands
that our current approach makes no mathematical sense. We can’t have
a nice, slow, easy transition because we can’t put barely any more carbon in
the atmosphere. We must solve the problem of energy access for the poor by
using renewables, not fossil fuel, because “our desire to ensure energy
for all must not lead to the undesired effect of a spiral of extreme
climate changes due to a catastrophic rise in global temperatures, harsher
environments and increased levels of poverty”. Above all, we’ve got to pay as
much attention to actual reality as we do to political reality: “Civilization
requires energy, but energy use must not destroy civilization!”
It’s odd to have the pope
schooling energy executives on the math of carbon. But actually, no odder
than NFL
quarterbacks schooling politicians on racial injustice, or high school
kids schooling a nation on the danger of guns. Amid the unprecedented wave of
nonsense coming from DC, it’s good to remember that there are still people of
all kinds able to pierce through the static and the shouting. Good common sense
speaks even more loudly when it comes from unexpected corners.
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