Popes Francis and Leo Fight Global Warming
I am so glad that the Catholic Church’s Pope Leo—the first American pope and a native from Chicago—has strongly joined now deceased Pope Francis’ path of boldly fighting against climate change. In a cyclical delivered at the Vatican one week ago, Pope Leo advocated for the world’s abandoning of the burning of fossil fuels and moving to the transformation of clean energy to preserve our planet against destructive, manmade, global warming which harms the poor more than it harms the rich. America’s icon Arnold Schwarzenegger, also a strong advocate for clean energy, accompanied the pope in rendering remarks about it as well.
One week earlier, President Donald Trump had delivered an over one hour long speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York City that included chastising remarks against nations fighting climate change even though nearly all nations of the world are member of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement under the auspices of the UN in which its member nations have agreed to try to reduce global warming. President Trump had pulled the U.S. out of that agreement during his first term as president; President Biden renewed U.S. membership in it; and Trump withdrew the U.S. from it again as soon as he regained the While House this year.
Trump Chastises All for Fighting Global Warming
Trump said in his UN remarks that the notion of global warming “is the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” His motto has been “drill baby drill,” thus advocating for the oil the gas industry. And to prove this mantra, Trump has been canceling clean energy projects left and right in his second term as president.
In Pope Leo’s remarks last week, he seemed implicitly mindful of Trump’s denial of human induced global warming by saying, “Some have chosen to deride the increasingly evident sign of climate change, to ridicule those who speak of global warming and even to blame the poor for the very thing that affects them the most.” Pope Leo adopted Pope Francis’ description of this fight to preserve our planet, God’s creation, as “care for our common home.” Pope Francis had included this saying in the Laudato Si’ encyclical delivered ten years ago, which was the Catholic Church’s first comprehensive encyclical on destruction of the environment.
Protecting God’s Creation Vs. Serving the Dollar
It seems so sensible to me that if people believe in the God of creation that they would seek to preserve what God created rather than to destroy it. Yet Donald Trump is a guy who doesn’t listen to scientists and therefore disputes their studies on climate change by saying “there is no climate change.” I believe he does that because he is a narcissist. Such people are driven to think that whatever they perceive is what is true. But Donald Trump also is driven to serve the almighty dollar. As Pope Leo said in his remarks, quoting Jesus, “You cannot serve both God and mammon,” referring to money (Matthew 6.24).
Those Who Destroy the Earth Will Themselves Be Destroyed on the Day of Judgment
The Bible has an important text about destroying the earth. The apocalyptic, last book in the Bible says of the Day of Judgment that in heaven they will sing to God that it will be “the time for judging the dead, for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints and all who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying those who destroy the earth” (Revelation 11.18 NRSV).
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