Pope Francis Calls for Action on Climate Change & Capitalism on a Planet "Exploited by Human Greed" | Democracy Now!

"Pope Francis is set to make history by issuing the first-ever comprehensive Vatican teachings on climate change, which will urge 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide to take action. The document will be sent to the world’s 5,000 Catholic bishops and 400,000 priests who will distribute it to their parishioners. Given the sheer number of people who identify as Catholics worldwide, the pope’s clarion call to tackle climate change could reach far more people than even the largest environmental groups.

And then the document will also link the deforestation, the destruction of the natural environment, to the particular economic model of which Pope Francis has been a very stern critic ever since he became pope, and indeed beforehand, a system which creates too much inequality, which regards the unemployed and the elderly as, as it were, to be dispensed with, as leftovers, as he calls them—so, in other words, an economic system which is dysfunctional in its impact on the world’s population. But he’ll also show that excessive consumerism and indeed the pattern of that global economic model is—as it were, the price is being paid by the environment. So it’s going to be a clarion call, as I understand it, for the church to work for changing the system which produces deforestation and climate devastation."

more in the conversation with Amy Goodman and Austin Ivereigh
Pope Francis Calls for Action on Climate Change & Capitalism on a Planet "Exploited by Human Greed" | Democracy Now!