Thursday 9 July 2009

Who's under your carbon footprint? - US Catholic climate campaign


The Catholic Coalition on Climate Change is a major campaign, launched in April 2009, urging the faithful to take the St Francis Pledge - to pray, care for God's creation and the poor, assess personal habits, act and advocate on the moral dimensions of climate change.

Environmental pollution is making particularly unsustainable the lives of the poor of the world … we must pledge ourselves to take care of creation and to share its resources in solidarity.
-- Pope Benedict XVI.

At the same time, the Pope's new encyclical Caritas et Veritate (Charity in Truth) calls on the rich G8 nations to recognize that the economy must serve humanity, and that global climate governance is needed. Under great pressure, the G8 have just agreed to a science-based target (2°C) for climate action, but still prevaricate and delay about helping the world's poor with adequate "mitigation funds" to cope with environmental impacts.

Full text
of the encyclical; Catholic Culture's round-up of reactions to it by US Catholic progressives and rightwingers.

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