Mary Betz outlines Pope Francis’s newly released apostolic exhortation on the climate crisis, Laudate Deum, addressed to all people of good will.

On the Feast of St Francis, at conclusion to the Season of Creation, and upon the advent of the Synod on Synodality, Pope Francis released Laudate Deum (Praise God in Latin) as a follow-up document to his 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si' (Praise Be in Italian). He enjoins us to change because “the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point”.

So far, our collective response to climate change has been woefully inadequate, and in the words of the African bishops, manifests “a tragic and striking example of structural sin”. Laudate Deum, while lacking the breadth, synthesis and poetry of Laudato Si’, is nonetheless a grave and urgent call to transformation and action for individuals, communities and nations.

Climate Crisis

Well aware that many people, including Catholics, have attitudes toward climate change which are “dismissive and scarcely reasonable”, Francis reviews current climate science and its implications. He notes with sadness that “the climate crisis is not exactly a matter that interests the great economic powers [or even lesser economic powers like Aotearoa] whose concern is the greatest profit possible.”

Worth pondering is Francis’s observation that some climate effects “are already irreversible, at least for several hundred years”, like the increase in ocean temperature and acidity, and its decrease in oxygen, as well as continental and polar ice melt, deforestation and permafrost melting. These changes make many of our brother and sister species victims of our action and inaction: “What happens in one part of the world has repercussions on the entire planet” and “everything is connected” — lessons we well know from recent climate-influenced floods and cyclones.

The “Technocratic Paradigm”

Francis revisits this paradigm from Laudato Si’. The “technocratic paradigm" is a way of thinking which deludes us into believing that we can exploit the natural world for its minerals, water and other resources because there will always be a technological fix for what goes wrong. We even exploit other human beings, putting relentless economic growth before people’s health, homes, land and livelihoods. This paradigm is dangerous because a few people with money and technological knowledge can and do have “impressive dominance” over people, nations and Earth.

This paradigm sees creation as an object for resource use and human ambition, a mere setting for human endeavour. Often cloaked in terms of economic “reasonableness”, it has led to the destruction of much of the created world, as well as relationships between humans and with non-human creation. Indigenous cultures largely retain a respectful and harmonious relationship with nature, understanding our dependence on its life for our own. Only living this latter relationship will enable us to live long and peacefully with one another in our common home.

International Politics

Francis believes that respectful relationships with all creation which challenge the technocratic paradigm must constantly be worked at, as he observed in his last encyclical Fratelli Tutti (2020): “Goodness, together with love, justice and solidarity are not achieved once and for all: they have to be realised each day.”

He suggests that multilateral agreements between states are the best way to do this. Above all, we need “more effective world organisations, equipped with the power to provide for the global common good, the elimination of hunger and poverty and the sure defence of human rights.”

At the same time, a multilateralism “from below”, not determined by power elites, can rise where “activists from very different countries help and support one another” to pressure “the sources of power”.

Using the example of the Ottawa Process, through which nations committed to ban anti-personnel mines, Francis says that nations, civil society and citizens are often “capable of creating effective dynamics that the United Nations cannot.” And because our world “has become so multipolar and at the same time so complex … a different framework for effective cooperation is required”.

International Climate Conferences

For several decades, most nations have gathered each year at a Conference of the Parties (COP) to try to agree on targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, compensate vulnerable countries for loss and damage already suffered, and help developing nations adapt to climate change. While the COP21 Paris Agreement aimed to keep overall warming within 1.5°C of pre-industrial levels, there are no sanctions if countries do not live up to their commitments.

Concerns about the COP process are real: Earth is currently on track to heat to 2.7°C above pre-industrial levels by 2100 (www.climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures/). This high level of warming is projected because 1) each country’s voluntary targets for emissions reductions are collectively not enough to reduce warming, and 2) most countries have not committed to policies or legislation which would meet even those too-low targets.

The environmental and human consequences of such a temperature rise would be disastrous. As Francis points out, necessary changes will be financially costly, but costs will only increase the longer changes are delayed.

COP28

COP28 in Dubai begins at the end of this month. Francis hopes for recognition that climate change is a human and social issue, not simply an ecological one. He hopes for “binding forms of energy transition that meet three conditions: that they are efficient, obligatory and readily monitored”.

Francis asks conference participants to consider “the common good and the future of their children, more than the short-term interests of certain countries or businesses”. He asks a question — certainly pertinent to our politicians in Aotearoa — “What would induce anyone … to hold on to power, only to be remembered for their inability to take action when it was urgent and necessary to do so?”

Faith

Our faith, imbued with the goodness of the created world, gives us hope in the possibility of transformation for ourselves and our relationships with all creation: “Human life is incomprehensible and unsustainable without other creatures.” While so much needs to change at national and international levels, every little bit we can do also makes a difference.

Even if individual and community efforts seem small in their ability to slow climate change, they “generate indignation at the lack of interest shown by the powerful” and create “a new culture” which demands political change. Transformation can thus arise “from deep within society”.

In a pointed penultimate paragraph, Francis notes that per capita emissions in the USA are twice that of China, and seven times the average in the poorest countries. Along with political change, he begs each of us to change the “irresponsible lifestyle connected with the Western model” to “genuine[ly] care for one another”. Will we be able to tell our grandchildren, truthfully, that we have done all in our power to protect their future from catastrophic climate change? 

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 287 November 2023: 14-15