Culture

Pope Francis Calls The World “An Immense Pile Of Filth,” Wants Some Action On Climate Change Already

Tony Abbott's going to be heartbroken when he hears what the Pope thinks of coal mines.

by Alex McKinnon  19 June 2015

Want more Junkee in your life? Sign up to our newsletter, and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook so you always know where to find us.

Pope Francis dropped a bomb on the climate change debate late yesterday with the release of ‘Laudato Si’, a papal encyclical calling for swift, radical and fundamental changes to our societies, economies and priorities in order to meet the looming threat of global warming.

It’s difficult to overstate the potential impact of this, Francis’ first official encyclical — such documents are official papal releases spelling out the Church’s position on important theological matters to the world’s Catholics, but this one in particular is likely to have an immense political effect because of the subject matter and the timing.

Going beyond endorsing the scientific consensus on climate change and calling on the world’s leaders to act, Francis blamed a culture of rampant consumerism and faith in the primacy of the market and technology for our current predicament, blasted political apathy and cynicism on the issue and repeatedly drew a connection between environmental damage and global economic inequality:

“A politics concerned with immediate results, supported by consumerist sectors of the population, is driven to produce short-term growth. In response to electoral interests, governments are reluctant to upset the public with measures which could affect the level of consumption or create risks for foreign investment. The myopia of power politics delays the inclusion of a far-sighted environmental agenda within the overall agenda of governments…True statecraft is manifest when, in difficult times, we uphold high principles and think of the long-term common good. Political powers do not find it easy to assume this duty in the work of nation-building.”

Since the release of ‘Laudato Si’, Francis has been Tweeting out a kind of TL;DR version for anyone who doesn’t want to schlep through 180 pages, and it’s getting a lot of attention:

But ‘Laudato Si’ has been met with opposition from the usual suspects, especially conservative Catholic politicians in the United States. Republican Presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Jeb Bush have attacked the Pope over the encyclical, despite both being Catholics themselves, and closer to home the resident priest over at the Institute of Public Affairs and Teenage Libertarians magically found that this particular ruling doesn’t apply to Catholics, because Reasons. You gotta admire the chutzpah of someone who wants to explain Catholic doctrine to a fucking Pope, but some people are bold like that.

Somehow it’s unlikely Francis will get the memo:

Then came this pearler:

Impossible to know what he’s referencing there, though — maybe something about those unsightly wind farms that are cropping up all over the place. Except hold on, what’s this:

“We know that technology based on the use of highly polluting fossil fuels – especially coal, but also oil and, to a lesser degree, gas – needs to be progressively replaced without delay.”

No one tell Tony Abbott about this thing. It’ll break his little heart.