Two more miracles and he’ll be a saint
Climate change has become one of the most ideological issues of the day, with beliefs hardened according to political attitudes. But Pope Francis appears to be pulling off the miracle of actually changing people’s minds, per the Christian Science Monitor:
In 2015, on the eve of the release of Pope Francis’s encyclical [on climate change], research showed that Catholics in the United States were divided over global warming. Their differences mirrored the partisan divide found among much of the population, with around 80 percent of Catholic Democrats claiming there is solid evidence that the Earth is warming, and only half of Catholic Republicans claiming the same. Meanwhile, around 60 percent of Catholic Democrats said that global warming is a serious, man-made problem, while just a quarter of Catholic Republicans agreed.
But over the past year, perceptions began to shift. Just 6 months after the release of Laudato Si, the percentage of American Catholics who thought climate change is a moral issue jumped from 34 percent to 42 percent, according to a study conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Meanwhile, a study released by the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at the Catholic University of America found that Catholic Republicans who read Laudato Si were 10 percent more likely to agree that human activities are responsible for climate change.
So we can add that to the arsenal of strategies for overcoming resistance to the science: get more religious authorities to speak out on climate change.
The issue is rightly framed as a moral one, given how vulnerable communities will be most likely to face the worst impacts of extreme weather wrought by a warming planet.
I’ll be on Warren Olney’s show tonight at 7pm on KCRW Radio (89.9 FM in Los Angeles), discussing the Pope’s apparent bashing of cap-and-trade as a means to address climate change. Joining the roundtable discussion will be David Baker from the San Francisco Chronicle, who wrote an article describing the Pope’s comments, and Scott Edwards of Food & Water Watch, who doesn’t like cap-and-trade and was pleased with the Pope’s position.
Meanwhile, here’s what the Pope wrote to stir this particular issue up:
171. The strategy of buying and selling “carbon credits” can lead to a new form of speculation which would not help reduce the emission of polluting gases worldwide. This system seems to provide a quick and easy solution under the guise of a certain commitment to the environment, but in no way does it allow for the radical change which present circumstances require. Rather, it may simply become a ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries and sectors.
Hope you can listen in or stream. I’ll post a link later.
UPDATE: you can listen to the show here.
