Pope Francis: Climate Activist? : Consider This from NPR - NPR
Pope Francis: Climate Activist? : Consider This from NPR : NPR
Pope Francis: Climate Activist?
Pope Francis attends the welcoming ceremony of World Youth Day (WYD) in Lisbon on August 3, 2023. Pope Francis urged young people to focus on caring for the planet and fighting climate change, calling for an "integral ecology" that melds environmental protection with the fight against poverty and other social problems. Patricia de Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
Pope Francis attends the welcoming ceremony of World Youth Day (WYD) in Lisbon on August 3, 2023. Pope Francis urged young people to focus on caring for the planet and fighting climate change, calling for an "integral ecology" that melds environmental protection with the fight against poverty and other social problems. Patricia de Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images
Pope Francis says he will attend the COP28 climate conference in Dubai next month, which would make him the first pontiff to attend the annual UN gathering. The pope has made addressing the climate crisis an important focus since 2015, when he published an encyclical on climate change and the environment.
Last month, he doubled down on his stance with a new document – Laudate Deum. It's a scathing rebuke of the inaction by world leaders over the last eight years.
As Francis takes on an even bigger role in climate activism. What does he hope to achieve? And how does this all fit into his broader legacy as leader of the world's 1.3 billion Roman Catholics.
NPR's Scott Detrow spoke with Fordham professor Christiana Zenner, and Associated Press Vatican correspondent Nicole Winfield, about Pope Francis and his role in advocating for action on climate change.
Email us at considerthis@npr.org.
This episode was produced by Emma Klein and Marc Rivers. It was edited by Jeanette Woods and Bridget Kelley. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.