WelCom October 2020
Speaking from the Vatican on September 1, 2020, Pope Francis urged nations to fight global warming according to the 2015 Paris climate accord. Modern society has pushed the planet beyond its limits and the time to fix a climate emergency was running out, he said. ‘Our constant demand for growth and an endless cycle of production and consumption are exhausting the natural world. Forests are leached, topsoil erodes, fields fail, deserts advance, seas acidify and storms intensify. Creation is groaning!’
Pope Francis made his call in a message on the day Christian Churches mark the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. Pope Francis said biodiversity loss, climate disasters, and the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the poor and vulnerable were all a ‘wakeup call’ in the face of our rampant greed and consumption. ‘We need to do everything in our capacity to limit global average temperature rise under the threshold of 1.5°C enshrined in the Paris Climate Agreement, for going beyond that will prove catastrophic, especially for poor communities around the world,’ he said.
Read more: Covid is not just a disease – it’s a symptom of the global environment crisis