POPE FRANCIS I, "Laudato si'"

1. POPE FRANCIS I “Laudato si’” (1)

Gideon Polya, “Pope Francis Demands “Fully Borne” Cost of Pollution (Carbon Price) To Prevent “Millions Of Premature Deaths””, Countercurrents, 29 July, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya290715.htm

2. POPE FRANCIS I “Laudato si’” (2)

Gideon Polya, “Green Left Pope Francis Demands Climate Action “Without Delay” To Prevent Climate “Catastrophe””, Countercurrents, 10 August, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya100815.htm .

3. POPE FRANCIS I “Laudato si’” (3)

Gideon Polya, “Western Mainstream Media Censor Green Left Pope Francis' “Laudato Si'” Message For Urgent Action On Climate Change”, Countercurrents, 20 August, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya200815.htm .

4. Gideon Polya, “Papal encyclical to save planet” (2015)

[First published as Gideon Polya, “Papal encyclical to save planet”, MWC News, 5 August 2015: http://mwcnews.com/focus/analysis/53364-papal-encyclical-to-save-planet.html .]

5. Gideon Polya, “Pope decrees full carbon price”(2015).

[First published as Gideon Polya, “Pope decrees full carbon price”, MWC News, 28 July 2015: http://mwcnews.com/focus/analysis/53226-pope-decree.html ].

1. POPE FRANCIS I “Laudato si’” (1)

Gideon Polya, “Pope Francis Demands “Fully Borne” Cost of Pollution (Carbon Price) To Prevent “Millions Of Premature Deaths””, Countercurrents, 29 July, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya290715.htm

Pope Francis in his 2015 Encyclical Letter “Laudato si” demands that a “fully borne” Carbon Price be emplaced on greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution in order to prevent “millions of premature deaths”. Armed with this authoritative moral advice, the billions of Humanity must save themselves and the Biosphere by demanding that the polluters must pay in full by a Wealth Tax (for historical GHG pollution) and a Carbon Tax (for ongoing GHG pollution).

Pope Francis, quoting Pope Benedict XVI, essentially advocates Carbon Pricing in Section 195 of his 2015 encyclical “Laudato si”: ‘Yet only when the economic and social costs of using up shared environmental resources are recognized with transparency and fully borne by those who incur them, not by other peoples or future generations,' can those [economic] actions be considered ethical” [1].

This what Pope Francis said in context: “The principle of the maximization of profits, frequently isolated from other considerations, reflects a misunderstanding of the very concept of the economy. As long as production is increased, little concern is given to whether it is at the cost of future resources or the health of the environment; as long as the clearing of a forest increases production, no one calculates the losses entailed in the desertification of the land, the harm done to biodiversity, or the increased pollution. In a word, businesses profit by calculating and paying only a fraction of the costs involved. ‘Yet only when the economic and social costs of using up shared environmental resources are recognized with transparency and fully borne by those who incur them, not by other peoples or future generations,' [Benedict XVI] can those actions be considered ethical. An instrumental way of reasoning, which provides a purely static analysis of realities in the service of present needs, is at work whether resources are allocated by the market or by state central planning” (Section 195, [1]).

And this is what Pope Benedict XVI said in context in his Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate (2009): “This responsibility is a global one, for it is concerned not just with energy but with the whole of creation, which must not be bequeathed to future generations depleted of its resources. Human beings legitimately exercise a responsible stewardship over nature, in order to protect it, to enjoy its fruits and to cultivate it in new ways, with the assistance of advanced technologies, so that it can worthily accommodate and feed the world's population. On this earth there is room for everyone: here the entire human family must find the resources to live with dignity, through the help of nature itself — God's gift to his children — and through hard work and creativity. At the same time we must recognize our grave duty to hand the earth on to future generations in such a condition that they too can worthily inhabit it and continue to cultivate it. This means being committed to making joint decisions “after pondering responsibly the road to be taken, decisions aimed at strengthening that covenant between human beings and the environment, which should mirror the creative love of God, from whom we come and towards whom we are journeying”[120]. Let us hope that the international community and individual governments will succeed in countering harmful ways of treating the environment. It is likewise incumbent upon the competent authorities to make every effort to ensure that the economic and social costs of using up shared environmental resources are recognized with transparency and fully borne by those who incur them, not by other peoples or future generations: the protection of the environment, of resources and of the climate obliges all international leaders to act jointly and to show a readiness to work in good faith, respecting the law and promoting solidarity with the weakest regions of the planet [121]. One of the greatest challenges facing the economy is to achieve the most efficient use — not abuse — of natural resources, based on a realization that the notion of “efficiency” is not value-free” (Section 50, [2]).

Climate change economist Dr Chris Hope from 90-Nobel–Laureate University of Cambridge has estimated a damage-related Carbon Price of US$150-$250 per tonne CO2-e (CO2-equivalent) depending on location [3]. Based on a Carbon Price of $100 per tonne CO2-e, the World now has a Carbon Debt (in US dollars) from historical CO2 pollution (mostly from European countries) of $270 trillion that is increasing at $10 trillion each year, and Australia (a world leader in annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution) has a Carbon Debt of $5.6 trillion that is increasing at $300 billion per year (increasing at about $30,000 each year per head for under-30 year old Australians) [4]. Based on a Carbon Price of $200 per tonne CO2-e [3], the World now has a Carbon Debt (in US dollars) of $540 trillion that is increasing at $20 trillion each year and Australia has a Carbon Debt of $11 trillion that is increasing at $600 billion per year (increasing at about $60,000 each year per head for under-30 year old Australians) [4].

Now Carbon Debt - that reflects what Pope Francis and Pope Benedict XVI call “the economic and social costs of using up shared environmental resources” [1, 2] – differs from Government Debt in that Carbon Debt is inescapable. Thus Government Debt (e.g. the Greek Government Debt) can be forgiven or otherwise evaded by defaulting or printing money but Carbon Debt will inescapably have to be paid by future generations – man-made global warming will displace and kill literally billions of people unless we create forests, sea walls, hurricane shelters, irrigation systems, desalination plants, hydroponic farms, renewable energy systems, storm-resistant housing, storm shelters, heat wave refuges, and atmosphere carbon dioxide (CO2) draw-down systems. Indeed some climate change scientists have predicted that as few as 0.5 billion people might survive this century if man-made global warming is not requisitely addressed, these estimates translating to a climate genocide involving the deaths of 10 billion people this century, this including roughly twice the present population of particular mainly non-European groups, specifically 6 billion under-5 year old infants, 3 billion Muslims in a terminal Muslim Holocaust, 2 billion Indians, 1.3 billion non-Arab Africans, 0.5 billion Bengalis, 0.3 billion Pakistanis and 0.3 billion Bangladeshis [5, 6].

Indeed Pope Francis in his encyclical “Laudato si “ (“Praise be to You”) has quite exceptionally gone further than any other major leader by alluding to the “premature deaths” – also epidemiologically known as untimely deaths, avoidable deaths, excess deaths, avoidable mortality, excess mortality, deaths that need not have happened [7] – that are occasioned by pollution or poverty: “ 20. Some forms of pollution are part of people's daily experience. Exposure to atmospheric pollutants produces a broad spectrum of health hazards, especially for the poor, and causes millions of premature deaths … 48. The human environment and the natural environment deteriorate together; we cannot adequately combat environmental degradation unless we attend to causes related to human and social degradation… The impact of present imbalances is also seen in the premature death of many of the poor, in conflicts sparked by the shortage of resources, and in any number of other problems which are insufficiently represented on global agendas” (sections 20 and 48, [1]).

Pope Francis did not put figures on premature deaths from poverty or pollution in his 246-section encyclical letter “Laudato si”, but the numbers are readily available . Thus UN Population Division data [8] enable one to calculate that 17 million people die avoidably (prematurely) each year (half of them children) due to poverty in the Developing World (minus China) [7]. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 7 million people die from the effects of pollution each year [9].

The DARA 2012 Report commissioned by 20 countries states: “This report estimates that climate change causes 400,000 deaths on average each year today, mainly due to hunger and communicable diseases that affect above all children in developing countries. Our present carbon-intensive energy system and related activities cause an estimates 4.5 million deaths each year linked to air pollution , hazardous occupations and cancer. Climate changed caused economic losses estimated close to 1% of global GDP for the year 2010, or 700 billion dollars (2010, PPP).. The carbon-intensive economy cost the world another 0.7% of GDP in that year, independent of any climate change losses. Together, carbon economy- and climate change-related losses amounted to over 1.2 trillion dollars. The world is already committed to a substantial increase in global temperatures – at least another 0.5^oC (1^oF) due to a combination of the inertia of the world's oceans, the slow response of the carbon cycle to reduced CO2 emission and limitation on how fast emissions can actually be reduced. The world economy therefore faces an increase in pressures that are estimated to lead to more than a doubling in the costs of climate change by 2030 to an estimated 2.5% of global GDP. Carbon economy costs also increase over this same period so that global GDP in 2030 is estimated to be well over 3% lower than it would have been in the absence of climate change and harmful carbon-intensive energy practices. Continuing today's patterns of carbon-intensive energy use is estimated, together with climate change, to cause 5 million deaths per year by 2030, close to 700,000 of which would be due to climate change. This implies that a combined climate-carbon crisis is estimated to claim 100 million lives between now and the end of the next decade. A significant share of the global population would be directly affected by inaction on climate change” [10, 11].

Some conservative, effective climate change denialist Catholic and non-Catholic politicians and journalists have chided the Pope for straying from theology into the arena of politics , science and economics but their complaint is disingenuous, dishonest and fatuous. Pope Francis' job is to promote human happiness and morality and his “Laudato si” encyclical, informed by the overwhelming scientific consensus, chides a selfish and blinkered world for endangering the biosphere and the lives of billions through environment-destroying greed.

By way of example of Catholic politicians flagrantly ignoring and opposing Pope Francis' fiat on man-made climate change, climate criminal Australia with a Catholic Prime Minister (Tony Abbott) and a Catholic Leader of the Opposition (Bill Shorten) is a world leader in annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution with a Domestic plus Exported annual per capita GHG pollution of 89 tonnes CO2-e per person per year as compared to Bangladesh's 0.9 and a world average of about 7 [5]. Australia has an extreme right wing Liberal Party-National Party Coalition Government headed by Catholic Tony Abbott and a right-wing Opposition Australian Labor Party lead by Catholic Bill Shorten. The pro-coal, pro-gas, pro-iron ore, climate criminal Labor Opposition and the pro-coal, pro-gas, pro-iron ore climate criminal Coalition (aka COALition) Government have the same climate criminal policy of unlimited coal, gas and iron ore exports that will presently see Australia exceed by a factor of three (3) the whole world's Terminal Carbon Budget that must not be exceeded if we are to have a 75% chance of avoiding a catastrophic 2C temperature rise [12]. Indeed Australia used up its “fair share” of the world's Terminal Carbon Budget in 2011 and the whole World has only 3 years to go [13, 14].

The pro-renewable energy Catholic Australian Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten and the Australian Labor Party want a Cap-and-Trade Emissions Trading Scheme ( ETS)-based Carbon Price of circa $7 per tonne CO2-e and the anti-renewable energy and effective climate change denialist Catholic Prime Minister of Australia Tony Abbott was elected in part on the promise of “No Carbon Tax” i.e. a Carbon Price of $0 per tonne CO2-e. Yet the Head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, is demanding that the cost of pollution should be “fully borne” to save “millions of premature deaths” and this position translates to a Carbon Price of about $200 per tonne CO2-e [3].

This clear rejection by both Catholic Australian Opposition Leader Shorten and Catholic Australian Prime Minister Abbott of Pope Francis' “Laudato si” injunction that the cost of pollution should be “fully borne” to prevent “millions of premature deaths” is not just a venal sin like telling a fib, using a condom or eating lamb chops on` Friday - it is a mortal sin of immense proportions involving complicity in the deaths of millions each year and ultimately of billions , for as Pope Francis says in “Laudato si”: “Exposure to atmospheric pollutants… causes millions of premature deaths … The impact of present imbalances is also seen in the premature death of many of the poor” (sections 20 and 48, [1]).

Conclusions.

Pope Francis, quoting Pope Benedict XVI, essentially advocates Carbon Pricing in Section 195 of his 2015 encyclical “Laudato si”: “”Yet only when the economic and social costs of using up shared environmental resources are recognized with transparency and fully borne by those who incur them, not by other peoples or future generations,” can those [economic] actions be considered ethical” [1].

Pope Francis is further remarkable among world leaders in recognizing the concept of social policies causing “premature deaths” (untimely deaths, avoidable deaths, excess deaths, avoidable mortality, excess mortality, deaths that need not have happened [7]) , stating in “Laudato si”: “Exposure to atmospheric pollutants… causes millions of premature deaths … The impact of present imbalances is also seen in the premature death of many of the poor” (sections 20 and 48, [1]).

It is increasingly unlikely that we will avoid a global warming catastrophe this century [15, 16]. Nevertheless, all decent people who care for their children, future generations, Humanity and the Biosphere are obliged to do everything they can to ensure that the future is “less bad” for our children and future generations. “Doing everything they can” may mean Green tariffs, International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutions, International Court of Justice (ICJ) litigations, and Boycotts, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) against climate criminal people, politicians, parties, companies, corporations and countries disproportionately involved in the worsening climate genocide [14].

However fundamental to tackling climate change is imposition on polluters of a damage–related Carbon Price [4] as advocated by both Pope Francis and his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI. Greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution will only stop when we make the polluters pay. The One Percenters have half the wealth of the world and this has been essentially acquired by GHG pollution – this huge historical Carbon Debt can be obtained by an appropriate Wealth Tax [17]. Ongoing GHG pollution must stop if we are to return atmospheric CO2 concentration to a safe 300 ppm CO2 from the present dangerous and damaging 400 ppm CO2 (as advocated by numerous scientists [18]) - and this means that the full, damage-related cost of ongoing GHG pollution must be “fully borne” by the polluters.

References.

[1]. Pope Francis , Encyclical Letter “Laudato si”, 2015: http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html .

[2]. Pope Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter “Caritas in Veritate”, 29 June 2009: http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate.html .

[3]. Dr Chris Hope, “How high should climate change taxes be?”, Working Paper Series, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, 9.2011: http://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/fileadmin/user_upload/research/workingpapers/wp1109.pdf .

[4]. “Carbon Debt Carbon Credit”: https://sites.google.com/site/carbondebtcarboncredit/ ..

[5]. “Climate Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ .

[6]. Gideon Polya, “Germany's Per Capita Government Debt Plus Carbon Debt Greatly Exceeds Greece's”, Countercurrents, 8 July, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya080715.htm .

[7]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, that includes a history of every country from Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ .

[8]. UN Population Division: http://esa.un.org/wpp/unpp/p2k0data.asp .

[9]. World Health Organization (WHO), “7 million premature deaths annually linked to air pollution”: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollution/en/ .

[10]. DARA, “Climate Vulnerability Monitor. A guide to the cold calculus of a hot planet”, 2012, Executive Summary pp2-3: http://daraint.org/climate-vulnerability-monitor/climate-vulnerability-monitor-2012/ .

[11]. DARA report quoted by Reuters, ”100 mln to die by 2030 if world fails to act on climate”, 28 September 2012: http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/09/26/climate-inaction-idINDEE88P05P20120926 .

[12]. Gideon Polya, “Australia 's Huge Coal, Gas & Iron Ore Exports Threaten Planet”, Countercurrents, 15 May 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya150512.htm .

[13]. "Years left to zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relative to 2010": https://sites.google.com/site/carbondebtcarboncredit/years-left .

[14]. Gideon Polya, “25 Ways World-Leading Climate Criminal Australia Threatens Planet And Invites Boycotts, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS)”, Countercurrents, 6 June, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya060615.htm .

[15]. “Are we doomed?”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/are-we-doomed .

[16]. "Too late to avoid global warming catastrophe": https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/too-late-to-avoid-global-warming .

[17]. Gideon Polya, “4 % Annual Global Wealth Tax To Stop The 17 Million Deaths Annually”, Countercurrents, 27 June, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya270614.htm .

[18]. “300.org – return atmosphere CO2 to 300 ppm CO2”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/300-org---return-atmosphere-co2-to-300-ppm .

Dr Gideon Polya has been teaching science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/australian-complicity-in-iraq-mass-mortality/3369002#transcript ) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine ). When words fail one can say it in pictures - for images of Gideon Polya's huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .

POPE FRANCIS I “Laudato si’” (2)

Gideon Polya, “Green Left Pope Francis Demands Climate Action “Without Delay” To Prevent Climate “Catastrophe””, Countercurrents, 10 August, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya100815.htm .

In stark contrast to the terracidal One Percenters, Pope Francis recognizes a looming climate catastrophe and millions of premature deaths from carbon burning pollutants, demands massive decarbonisation and conversion to renewables starting without delay in the next few years, rejects Carbon Trading as a dishonest ploy, advocates a fully borne Carbon Price (Carbon Tax) on polluters, proposes boycotts of polluters, condemns loss of biodiversity and advises intergenerational solidarity.

Pope Francis' landmark, faith- and science-informed Encyclical “ Laudato si” (“Praised be”) runs to over 190 pages and has 246 sections [1] but the science-based, humane essence for a climate change-threatened world can be summarized by his extraordinary use of some key terms and phrases.

Jesus Christ-informed, science-informed and indeed scientifically- and specifically chemically-trained Pope Francis in his landmark 2015 Encyclical Letter “Laudato si” shows great moral and technical leadership in stark contrast to the greed-driven, pro-One Percenter, neoliberal leadership of the First World in:

(1) recognizing the worsening existential threat of a man-made climate change “catastrophe” for the Biosphere, Humanity, the poor and future generations (Section 4, [1]);

(2) recognizing that millions of “premature deaths” (avoidable deaths) already occur each year due to pollution and poverty (Sections 20 and 48, [1]);

(3) demanding urgent action “without delay” to start slashing fossil fuel burning and replacing it with renewable energy “in the next few years” (Sections 26 and 165, [1]);

(4) asserting that the environmental and social costs of pollution must be “fully borne” by those incurring them (i.e. a full Carbon Price) (Section 195, [1]);

(5) asserting that a market-based, Carbon Trading, Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) approach may simply become a “ploy” to permit continuing pollution (Section 171 , [1]);

(6) advocating individual and collective action through “boycotts” of those responsible for the worsening climate emergency (Section , [1]);

(7) decrying “the loss of biodiversity” and asserting that “we have no right” to do speciescide (Sections 32-42, especially 33, [1]), and

(8) advocating “intergenerational solidarity” in recognition of the appalling intergenerational injustice of climate change and environmental degradation (Section 159, [1]).

These 8 key assertions of Pope Francis are in agreement with expert scientific opinion as summarized below:

(1) Re Pope Francis' climate change “catastrophe”, it is now very unlikely that the world will avoid a catastrophic 2 degrees Centigrade temperature rise. The world may have only 3 years left at current rates of pollution before it exceeds a Terminal Carbon Budget that must not be exceeded if we are to have a 75% chance of avoiding a catastrophic 2C temperature rise [2] , the US used up its “fair share” of this budget in 2014 and a similarly climate criminal Australia used up its fair share of this Terminal Carbon Budget in 2011 [3, 4]. Indeed paleoclimatologists, climate scientists, glaciologists and ice sheet scientists inform us that over 90% of the extra heat in recent decades has gone into the ocean, the equilibrium consequence of 400 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere is a sea level rise of 20 metres, all Arctic summer sea ice may be gone within a decade, and the present worsening situation means a several metre sea level rise in the coming century with the real threat of non-linear changes, tipping points and relatively sudden catastrophic changes [5, 6]. Increased temperature has already contributed to increased sea level, storm intensity, flooding and droughts i.e. climate catastrophe has already arrived for Island Nations, low-lying mega-delta nations like Bangladesh and desert countries like those of the Sahel, North Africa and the Middle East.

(2) Re Pope Francis' “premature deaths” from poverty and climate change, the 3 key existential threats facing Humanity are nuclear weapons, climate change and poverty. Nuclear weapons can destroy all of Humanity with a nuclear terrorist rogue states now including (upper estimates of numbers of warheads in brackets) the US (7,315), Russia (8,000), Apartheid Israel (400), France (300), UK (250), China (250), Pakistan (120), India (100), and North Korea (less than 10) [7]. Already each year about 0.5 million people die from climate change [8], and 7 million die from air pollution [9]. In prosperous, educated, advanced Australia about 100 people die annually from heat stress and about 10,000 die from carbon burning pollutants, the breakdown being 5,000 (coal burning) , 2,000 (vehicle exhaust) and 3,000 (other burning) [10]. Poverty kills and each year about 17 million people (half of them children) die avoidably (prematurely) from deprivation or deprivation–exacerbated disease and 1.5 billion people have died thus since 1950 [11]. 10 billion people may perish prematurely (avoidably) this century, or an average of 100 million dying thus each year, if climate change is not requisitely addressed [12].

(3) Re Pope Francis' proposed massive decarbonisation commencing “without delay” and “in the next few years”, the world has already effectively run out of time to avoid a plus 2 degrees Centigrade catastrophe [2-6]. The World needs to (a) change societal philosophy to one of scientific risk management, biological sustainability and Christ-like social humanism, with complete cessation of species extinctions, and zero tolerance for lying; (b) urgently reduce atmospheric CO2 to a safe, pre-Industrial Revolution level of about 300 ppm CO2 as recommended by leading climate and biological scientists [13, 14]; and (c) effect a rapid switch to the best non-carbon and genuinely renewable energy (solar, wind, geothermal, wave, tide and hydro options that are currently roughly the same market price as coal burning-based power and much cheaper if the true cost of coal burning is “fully borne”) and to energy efficiency, public transport, needs-based production, re-afforestation and return of carbon as biochar to soils coupled with correspondingly rapid cessation of fossil fuel burning, deforestation, methanogenic livestock production and population growth (the latter being disputed by Pope Francis) [15-20]. Unfortunately greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and atmospheric CO2 are remorselessly increasing, and World Bank analysts have recently re-assessed the World's annual GHG pollution as 50% bigger than hitherto thought, with livestock contributing over 50% of the bigger figure [16]. In exact agreement with Pope Francis' call for urgent action “without delay”, the Synthesis Report of the 2,500-delegate March 2009 Copenhagen Scientific Climate Change Conference concluded that “Inaction is inexcusable” [21] and a 2010 Open Letter by 255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences, including 11 Nobel Laureates, concluded: “Delay is not an option” [22].

(4) Re Pope Francis' “fully borne” Carbon Price, Dr Chris Hope from 90-Nobel-Laureate University of Cambridge, UK, estimates a damage-related Carbon Price of $150-$250 per tonne CO2-equivalent [23] whereas in coal- and gas-rich Australia the Labor Opposition proposes a derisory, ETS-based Carbon Price of $7 per tonne CO2-equivalent and the “No Carbon Tax” Coalition Government insists on $0 per tonne CO2-equivalent, with both supporting unlimited coal, gas and iron ore exports that will see world-leading per capita GHG polluter Australia exceed the whole World's 2010-2050 Terminal Carbon Budget by a factor of 3 [24]. Applying a Carbon Price of US $200 per tonne CO2-equivalent, the World has an historical Carbon Debt of $540 trillion that is increasing at $20 trillion each year, and Australia has a Carbon Debt of $11 trillion that is increasing at $600 billion per year (increasing at about $60,000 each year per head for under-30 year old Australians) [3].

(5) Re Pope Francis' dismissal of Carbon Trading as a neoliberal “ploy”, the Cap and Trade, Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) approach (supported by the pro-fossil fuels Australian Labor Opposition and many in the pro-fossil fuels Australian Coalition Government) has been empirically unsuccessful, is accordingly counterproductive, currently applies to only 12% of World GHG pollution, and is fraudulent in that it involves rich countries selling licences to pollute the one common atmosphere and ocean of all peoples [25]. Effective legislative actions to stop GHG pollution would involve tough laws to stop climate crimes [26, 27] and effective market actions would involve divestment from fossil fuels [28].

(6) Re Pope Francis' assent to “boycotts”, people who care for Humanity, the Biosphere and future generations must (a) inform everyone they can, and (b) apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all those disproportionately involved in GHG pollution and the effective climate change denialism of climate change inaction. There is now massive global divestment in fossil fuels to avoid both Climate Genocide [12] and investment yielding unusable “stranded assets” [28]. Boycotts , Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) were effective against the minority Apartheid regime in South Africa and are currently being applied worldwide against the ongoing Palestinian Genocide by nuclear terrorist Apartheid Israel that has largely ethnically cleansed Palestine of Christian Palestinians and ethnically cleansed 90% of the land of Palestine [29, 30].

(7) Re Pope Francis' decrying the “loss of biodiversity”, it is estimated that the rate of species extinction is now 100-1,000 times greater than normal [31]. Life on Earth exists in defiance of the second Law of Thermodynamics that states that the entropy (or “disorder”) of the universe inevitably increases – but highly ordered life decreases entropy by feeding on free energy from the inanimate world. The fundamental dichotomy of “Beauty” and “truth” was succinctly stated by British poet John Keats in the conclusion to his poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn”: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty," – that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”. We simply cannot destroy things of beauty that we cannot replace. From an agnostic and secular Humanist perspective, if we have any “purpose” at all it is to defy the Second Law of Thermodynamics and promote and preserve the Beauty and Truth of evolving, self-aware, and self-replicating matter. The ongoing speciescide and ecocide are akin to egregious blasphemy and presage a catastrophic omnicide and terracide in an ongoing, greed-driven, neoliberal War on Terra. Indeed the immense destructive impact of Humanity on the Biosphere has led scientist to describe the present era as the Anthropocene.

(8) Re Pope Francis' call for “intergenerational solidarity”, an extraordinary aspect of the continuing climate crime by the remorselessly greedy One Percenters is that the Biosphere that belongs to present and future generations is being stolen for wilful destruction (speciescide, ecocide, omnicide and terracide) from future generations, this constituting egregious intergenerational theft, intergenerational inequity and intergenerational injustice [26, 27]. The huge historical Carbon Debt from a global Carbon Economy can be obtained by an appropriate Wealth Tax [32]. Ongoing GHG pollution must stop if we are to return atmospheric CO2 concentration to a safe 300 ppm CO2 from the present dangerous and damaging 400 ppm CO2 (as advocated by numerous scientists [18]) - and this means that the full, damage-related cost of ongoing GHG pollution must be “fully borne” by the polluters as recommended by Pope Francis [1, 33]

Summary.

Pope Francis' “Laudato si” is a landmark, faith-, science- and humanity-informed call to urgent global action on climate change for Humanity and the Biosphere [1, 33]. Pope Francis recognizes a looming climate “catastrophe” and “millions of premature deaths” from carbon burning pollutants, demands massive decarbonisation and conversion to renewables starting “without delay” and “in the next few years”, rejects Carbon Trading as a dishonest “ploy”, advocates a “fully borne” Carbon Price (Carbon Tax) on polluters, proposes “boycotts” of polluters, condemns “loss of biodiversity” and advises “intergenerational solidarity”.

In contrast to Pope Francis' science-informed agenda to seriously address man-made climate change, world leaders are paying lip-service to the worsening climate emergency and offering “too little too late”. Thus US President Obama has a Clean Power Plan involving “32% off 2005 coal plant pollution by 2030”. However, while Obama recognizes the seriousness of man-made climate change and pollution-based premature deaths (avoidable deaths), he deceptively and mendaciously offers too little too late by 2030 – in effect, a derisory 5% reduction in overall greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution in 2030 [34].

Pope Francis' position on climate change has been described as “Green Left” by both a supporter, Professor Robert Manne, writing in The Monthly [35], and by a detractor, Paul Kelly, writing in The Australian newspaper of the neoliberal, pro-war, extreme right-wing and effective climate change denialist Murdoch media empire [36]. In the current circumstances in which over 7 million people already die each year from climate change and air pollution [8, 9] and 17 million die annually from deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease [11], “Green Left' is a badge of honour and humanity.

It is now very likely that it is too late to avoid a catastrophic plus 2 degrees Centigrade temperature rise, but we are all obliged to do everything we can to make the future “less bad” than it otherwise will be for the Biosphere, our children and future generations. There are many things that decent folk – and especially young people - can do to help save Humanity, the Biosphere and the Planet [37, 38] but chief among these are to (a) inform everyone they can, (b) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all those climate criminal people, politicians, parties, companies, corporations and countries disproportionately complicit in the worsening climate crisis and climate change inaction, and (c) support Green Left politicians who want major action now and in Green Left Pope Francis' words “without delay”.

References

[1]. Pope Francis , Encyclical Letter “Laudato si”, 2015: http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html .

[2]. Gideon Polya, " Doha climate change inaction. Only 5 years left to act", MWC News, 9 December 2012: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/23373-gideonpolya-climate-change.html .

[3]. “Carbon Debt Carbon Credit”: https://sites.google.com/site/carbondebtcarboncredit/ .

[4]. “Years left to zero greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution relative to 2013”: https://sites.google.com/site/carbondebtcarboncredit/years-left-to-zero .

[5]. “Are we doomed?”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/are-we-doomed .

[6]. "Too late to avoid global warming catastrophe": https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/too-late-to-avoid-global-warming .

[7]. “Nuclear weapons ban , end poverty & reverse climate change”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/nuclear-weapons-ban .

[8]. DARA, “Climate Vulnerability Monitor. A guide to the cold calculus of a hot planet”, 2012, Executive Summary pp2-3: http://daraint.org/climate-vulnerability-monitor/climate-vulnerability-monitor-2012/ .

[9]. . World Health Organization (WHO), “7 million premature deaths annually linked to air pollution”: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollution/en/ .

[10]. “Australian carbon burning-related deaths and carbon burning subsidies”, Yarra Valley Climate Action Group: https://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/2011-carbon-burning .

[11]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, that includes a history of every country from Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ .

[12]. “Climate Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ .

[13]. 300.org: . https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/300-org .

[14]. “300.org – return atmosphere CO2 to 300 ppm CO2”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/300-org---return-atmosphere-co2-to-300-ppm .

[15]. “2011 climate change course”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/2011-climate-change-course .

[16]. Robert Goodland and Jeff Anfang. “Livestock and climate change. What if the key actors in climate change are … cows, pigs and chickens?”, World Watch, November/December 2009: http://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/Livestock%20and%20Climate%20Change.pdf .

[17]. “Cut carbon emissions 80% by 2020”: https://sites.google.com/site/cutcarbonemissions80by2020/ .

[18]. “100% renewable energy by 2020”: https://sites.google.com/site/100renewableenergyby2020/ .

[19]. “Gas is not clean energy”: https://sites.google.com/site/gasisnotcleanenergy/ .

[20]. “Biofuel Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/biofuelgenocide/ .

[21]. Synthesis Report of the March 2009 Copenhagen Scientific Climate Change Conference: http://climatecongress.ku.dk/pdf/synthesisreport .

[22]. 2010 Open Letter by 255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences, “Open Letter: climate change and the integrity of science”, Guardian, 6 May 2010: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/06/climate-science-open-letter .

[23]. Dr Chris Hope, “How high should climate change taxes be?”, Working Paper Series, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, 9.2011: http://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/media/assets/wp1109.pdf .

[24]. Gideon Polya, “Australia 's Huge Coal, Gas & Iron Ore Exports Threaten Planet”, Countercurrents, 15 May 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya150512.htm .

[25]. “Science & economics experts: Carbon Tax needed NOT Carbon Trading”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/sciennce-economics-experts-carbon-tax-needed-not-carbon-trading/ .

[26]. “Climate Justice & Intergenerational Equity”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/climate-justice .

[27]' “Stop climate crime”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/stop-climate-crime .

[28]. “Divest from fossil fuels”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/divest-from-fossil-fuels .

[29]. “Boycott Apartheid Israel”: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottapartheidisrael/.

[30]. “Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/ .

[31]. Phillip S. Levin and Donald A. Levin, “The real biodiversity crisis”, Macroscope, January-February 2002: http://www.soc.duke.edu/~pmorgan/levin&levin.2002.the_real_biodiversity_crisis.html .

[32]. Gideon Polya, “4 % Annual Global Wealth Tax To Stop The 17 Million Deaths Annually”, Countercurrents, 27 June, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya270614.htm .

[33]. Gideon Polya, “Pope Francis Demands “Fully Borne” Cost of Pollution (Carbon Price) To Prevent “Millions Of Premature Deaths”, Countercurrents, 29 July, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya290715.htm .

[34]. Gideon Polya, “Obama's Clean Power Plan Will Only Cut 2030 US Greenhouse Gas Pollution By 5%”, Countercurrents, 7 August, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya070815.htm .

[35]. Robert Manne, “”Laudato si”: a political reading”, The Monthly, 1 July 2015: https://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/robert-manne/2015/01/2015/1435708320/laudato-si-political-reading .

[36]. Paul Kelly, “Green-Left Pope endorses flawed view of progress”, The Australian, June 2015.

[37]. Gideon Polya , “2015 A-to-Z Alphabetical List Of Actions And Advocacies For Climate Change Activists”, Countercurrents, 14 January, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya140115.htm

[38]. Gideon Polya, “100 Ideas For Climate Change Activists Trying To Save The Biosphere And Humanity”, Countercurrents, 10 August, 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya100813.htm .

Dr Gideon Polya has been teaching science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/australian-complicity-in-iraq-mass-mortality/3369002#transcript

) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine ). When words fail one can say it in pictures - for images of Gideon Polya's huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .

POPE FRANCIS I “Laudato si’” (3)

Gideon Polya, “Western Mainstream Media Censor Green Left Pope Francis' “Laudato Si'” Message For Urgent Action On Climate Change”, Countercurrents, 20 August, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya200815.htm .

Mainstream media lie as no better exampled by the extraordinary censorship of the powerful and radicalizing climate change action message of Green Left Pope Francis' Encyclical “Laudato si'” by US, UK and Australian Mainstream media, most notoriously by the UK BBC, the US CBS, the US Murdoch Media Empire's Fox News and The Australian, and the taxpayer-funded Australian ABC. Censorship, lying by omission and lying by commission will doom the planet.

Green Left Pope Francis' Encyclical “Laudato si'” (“Praise be to you”) with the sub-title “On care for our common home” was officially released on 18 June 2015. It runs to 192 pages including 246 Sections and is a powerful, science-informed statement of the need to urgently cease the destruction of the environment and cease pollution of the environment, particularly with fossil fuel burning-derived greenhouse gases (GHGs) that are causing global warming [1].

This science-informed Papal Encyclical has greatly upset the anti-science climate change deniers as well as neoliberal effective climate change deniers who are opposed to urgent action against fossil fuel burning, these anti-science neoliberals notoriously including some right-wing Catholic politicians, journalists, commentators and even clergy [2-4]. Thus Jeb Bush (a Catholic US presidential candidate) said: "I hope I'm not going to get castigated for saying this by my priest back home, but I don't get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinal or my pope” [2] and Cardinal George Pell (a conservative Australian cleric close to pro-coal Australian PM Tony Abbott): “It's got many, many interesting elements. There are parts of it which are beautiful… But the church has no particular expertise in science,the church has got no mandate from the Lord to pronounce on scientific matters. We believe in the autonomy of science” [3].

In contrast, “Laudato si'” has been greatly praised by scientists and other science-informed, honest and humane intellectuals [2, 5-7]. Some such views are quoted below:

Professor Robert Manne (a leading Australian intellectual and emeritus professor at Melbourne's La Trobe University): “In our own age we are faced with a crisis of civilisation of equivalent depth but of an altogether different kind – the gradual but apparently inexorable human-caused destruction of the condition of the Earth in which human life has flourished over the past several thousand years, at whose centre is the phenomenon we call either global warming or climate change. During the past decade I have read scores of books and thousands of articles, many outstanding, examining from every conceivable angle and also trying to explain the wreckage we are knowingly inflicting on the Earth. It was however not until last week that I read a work whose tone and scope seemed to me, like Arendt's Origins, fully adequate to its theme. That work was Pope Francis's encyclical Laudato Si': On Care for Our Common Home – in my opinion one of the most important documents of our era” [5].

Bill McKibben (founder of 350.org that seeks to return atmospheric CO2 to 350 parts per million, noting that 300.org backed by the latest science wants to return CO2 to 300 ppm CO2 from the current dangerous 400 ppm CO2): “Laudato Si' does not disappoint. It does indeed accomplish all the things that the extensive news coverage highlighted: insist that climate change is the fault of man; call for rapid conversion of our economies from coal, oil, and gas to renewable energy; and remind us that the first victims of the environmental crisis are the poor… My own sense, after spending the day reading this remarkable document, was of great relief … This marks the first time that a person of great authority in our global culture has fully recognised the scale and depth of our crisis, and the consequent necessary rethinking of what it means to be fully human” [6].

Professor Michael E, Mann (a leading US climate scientist and a Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Penn State University): “Pope Francis brings great moral authority to this matter… Indeed, 'urgency' is a word I have been using in my characterizations of the encyclical (which I have indeed read). There is certainly a tone of urgency, and rightfully so. We have little if any time for delay now if we are going to prevent potentially catastrophic climate change. The message couldn't come at a more important time, as we head towards the UN climate summit later this year in Paris. Many see that as a last-ditch opportunity for an agreement that will prevent dangerous and potentially irreversible changes in our climate” [7].

Despite the importance of the Pope's Encyclical Western Mainstream media have been quite deficient in their reportage as revealed by the internal Search Engines of major media, namely the UK BBC, Australian ABC, Washington Post, CBS and Fox News and The Australian. In particular, Mainstream media have been grossly deficient by not reporting just how strong the Pope's position is on climate change action.

Thus a scientifically-trained, chemically-trained and science-informed Green Left Pope Francis recognizes a looming climate “catastrophe” and “millions of premature deaths” from carbon burning pollutants, demands massive decarbonisation and conversion to renewables starting “without delay” “in the next few years”, rejects Carbon Trading as a dishonest “ploy”, advocates a “fully borne” Carbon Price (Carbon Tax) on polluters, proposes “boycotts” to bring neoliberal polluters to heel, and suggests “intergenerational solidarity” to address the worsening intergenerational injustice inherent in climate change inaction [8].

Green Left Pope Francis' demand in his 2015 Encyclical “Laudato si'” for massive urgent action now is precisely that urged by scientists both individually and collectively. Thus the Synthesis Report of the March 2009 Copenhagen Scientific Climate Change Conference concluded that “Inaction is inexcusable” [9] and the 2010 Open Letter by 255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences, including 11 Nobel Laureates, concluded that “Delay is not an option” [10].

However the Western democracies have become perversions variously described as Plutocracies, Murdochracies, Lobbyocracies, Corporatocracies and Dollarocracies in which Big Money purchases people, parties, policies, presstitutes, public perception of reality and political power. We have a carbon burning-based economy and the 50% of global wealth that is owned by the richest One Percent of Humanity has been acquired through carbon burning. Indeed the One Percenters' proportion of annual income in Anglosphere countries is remorselessly increasing [11, 12]. This extraordinarily disproportionate One Percenter wealth is bad for economies (the 99% need to be able to buy goods that they produce) and is bad for democracy because Big Money buys political power.

Green Left Pope Francis' agenda for massive and urgent climate change action includes the proposition that the environmental and social cost of pollution should be “fully borne” by the polluters (Section 195, [1]) i.e. that a full, damage-related Carbon Price be emplaced on greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution in order to prevent “millions of premature deaths” (noting that dire estimates are that 10 billion people may die this century in an already worsening climate genocide if climate change is not requisitely addressed) [13] . Armed with this authoritative moral advice, the billions of Humanity might save themselves and the Biosphere by demanding that the polluters must pay in full by a Wealth Tax (for historical GHG pollution) and a Carbon Tax (for ongoing GHG pollution) [8, 14] with a consequent radical shift in wealth, economic power and democratic say that would be anathema to the terracidal One Percenters.

It is accordingly hardly surprising that One Percenter-controlled Mainstream media would seek to downplay the hard Green Left position of Pope Francis. As the leader of 1.2 billion Catholics, the Pope cannot be ignored and thus it has been generally reported that the Pope has come out in favour of action on climate change. However this general position is uncontroversial since all Western Governments, including the climate criminal US, Canadian and Australian Governments, are paying lip service to “tackling climate change”. Accordingly the One Percenter-controlled Mainstream media needed to be more subtle than a blanket censorship of “Laudato si'” and have adopted an approach of censoring the radical details of the Pope's Green Left climate action message as exampled below.

Fox News. A Search of the Murdoch Empire's Fox News for the term laudato yields 9 articles variously relating to the Pope's Encyclical and of which only 1 (from Associated Press) gets to the heart of the matter but only goes this far: “ He calls for courageous, radical and farsighted policies to transition the world's energy supply from fossil fuels to renewable sources, saying mitigation schemes like the buying and selling of carbon credits won't solve the problem and are just a "ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries and sectors" [15]. Of course the Murdoch Empire has an appalling record of explicit climate change denialism that has grudgingly shifted to effective climate change denialism through opposition to climate change action.

US CBS News. A Search of the US CBS News for “Laudato si” yields only 3 articles, one dealing with the “leaking” of the Encyclical, another dealing with related comments by his predecessors, and a third briefly summarizing the Encyclical and negative and positive reactions to it. This is essentially all CBS News had to say about the crux of Pope Francis' climate change action proposals and in doing so follows Fox News in reporting Associated Press: “He calls for courageous, radical and farsighted policies to transition the world's energy supply from fossil fuels to renewable sources, saying mitigation schemes like the buying and selling of carbon credits won't solve the problem and are just a "ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries and sectors” [16].

The Australian. A Search of the Murdoch Empire flagship Australian newspaper “The Australian” for the term “laudato si” yields 14 results and the coverage is overwhelmingly negative and condemnatory as seen from the following 9 headlines (noting that “Green” and “Left” are dirty words for this newspaper's neoliberal readers and that you need to pay to actually read the full text of these anti-environment articles): “The Pope can have his climate say, but”, “Pope Francis turns left on the environment with encyclical”, “Papal prescription for flawed economic order”, “Pope talking “drivel”: Catholic economist”, “An abhorrent mix of symbols”, “Pope's climate change encyclical isn't the Gospel for Catholics”, “”Pope's straying too far with climate message: will flock follow?”, “Green Left Pope Francis endorses flawed view of progress” and “It is time Pope Francis caught up with the rest of us”. Another way of gauging the position of The Australian is to Search The Australian for key terms used by the Pope in “Laudato si'”, this yielding the following number of results (in brackets) relating to the encyclical: “ecological catastrophe” (0), “millions of premature deaths” (0), “premature deaths of many” (0), “in the next few years the emission” (1), “replaced without delay” (2), “fully borne” (0), “may simply become a ploy” (0), “boycotting certain products” (0), “loss of biodiversity” (1), and “intergenerational solidarity” (0).

UK BBC. A Search of the UK BBC News for the term “Laudato si” yields only 4 results of which one is a sermon in a religious broadcast and 3 are articles about the encyclical that spectacularly avoid mentioning the key demands of the Pope for massive decarbonisation “without delay” and a “fully borne” Carbon Price. A Search of the BBC for key terms used by the Pope in “Laudato si'” yields zero (0) results for the terms “ecological catastrophe, “millions of premature deaths”, “premature deaths of many”, “in the next few years the emission”, “replaced without delay”, “fully borne”, “may simply become a ploy”, “boycotting certain products”, “loss of biodiversity”, and “intergenerational solidarity”.

The BBC, like the serial war criminal and climate criminal English Establishment it represents, has an appalling record of censorship [17, 18] but this censorship of Pope Francis really takes the cake. Brilliant English writer Jane Austen posed a germane series of questions that are directly relevant to this problem of public honesty. In her novel “Northanger Abbey” the heroine, Miss Catherine Morland, affected by the somewhat Gothic atmosphere of the Tilney family home and the romantic horrors of Mrs Radcliffe's Gothic novels, conceives the fantasy that General Tilney (the father of her beloved, Henry Tilney) has done away with the late Mrs Tilney. Henry reproves Catherine as follows: "If I understand you rightly, you have formed a surmise of such horror as I have hardly words to -. Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open?”" [19]. The answers to Henry Tilney's questions are surely “Yes! Yes! Yes!” [18].

Australian ABC. The ABC is the taxpayer-funded Australian equivalent of the UK BBC but does much better than the UK BBC in reporting the Pope's encyclical. Thus a Search of the ABC for the term “laudato si” yields 22 results as opposed to the BBC's paltry 4. However the ABC censorship of the Pope's message is exposed when one searches the ABC for the 8 key phrases identified above in the papal encyclical. Searching the ABC for these 8 key terms yields the following number of results (in brackets) in relation to the papal encyclical: “ecological catastrophe” (0), “millions of premature deaths” (0), “premature deaths of many” (0), “in the next few years the emission” (0), “replaced without delay” (3), “fully borne” (0), “may simply become a ploy” (1), “boycotting certain products” (2), “loss of biodiversity” (1), and “intergenerational solidarity” (2).

The standout omission by the cowardly ABC is the Pope's demand that the damage-related cost of pollution should be “fully borne” by the polluters i.e. that there should be a full Carbon Price (Carbon Tax) placed on pollution. This is a political hot potato in coal-rich, gas-rich, iron ore-rich Australia that is a world leader in annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution [13]. In relation to Pope Francis' demand for a “fully borne” Carbon Price, Dr Chris Hope from 90-Nobel-Laureate University of Cambridge, UK, estimates a damage-related Carbon Price of $150-$250 per tonne CO2-equivalent [20] whereas in coal- and gas-rich Australia the Catholic-lead Labor Opposition proposes a derisory, Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS)-based Carbon Price of $7 per tonne CO2-equivalent and the Catholic-lead, “No Carbon Tax” Coalition Government insists on $0 per tonne CO2-equivalent, with both supporting unlimited coal, gas and iron ore exports that will see world-leading per capita GHG polluter Australia exceed the whole World's 2010-2050 Terminal Carbon Budget by a factor of 3 [21]. Applying a Carbon Price of US $200 per tonne CO2-equivalent, the World has an historical Carbon Debt of $540 trillion that is increasing at $20 trillion each year, and Australia has a Carbon Debt of $11 trillion that is increasing at $600 billion per year (increasing at about $60,000 each year per head for under-30 year old Australians) [22]. The cowardly and Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-perverted and subverted Australian ABC, like the UK BBC [17], has an appalling record of censorship and lying by omission [23-25].

The Washington Post. A Search the Washington Post for the term “laudato si” yields 23 results. However a summary of 10 key excerpts [26] fails to quote any of the key points such as the need for a “fully borne” price on pollution, and starting ”in the next few years emissions ” from carbon burning to be “replaced without delay” by renewable energy in order to save “millions of premature deaths” from pollution. When one searches The Washington Post for the 8 key phrases quoted above from the papal encyclical one finds the following number of results (in brackets) in relation to the papal encyclical: “ecological catastrophe” (0), “millions of premature deaths” (0), “premature deaths of many” (0), “in the next few years the emission” (0), “replaced without delay” (2), “fully borne” (1), “may simply become a ploy” (2), “boycotting certain products” (0), “loss of biodiversity” (2), and “intergenerational solidarity” (0). The Washington Post does better than other media surveyed but incorrectly obfuscates the Pope's support for a “fully borne” Carbon Price while condemning carbon trading as a “ploy” [26]. In fact the Pope is quite correct in the opinion of top climate scientists and climate economists who say that a Carbon Tax is needed and not fraudulent Carbon Trading – the damage-related cost of pollution should be “fully borne” [20] and the Cap and Trade, Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) approach has been empirically unsuccessful, is accordingly counterproductive, currently applies to only 12% of World GHG pollution, and is fraudulent in that it involves rich countries selling licences to pollute the one common atmosphere and ocean of all peoples [27].

Conclusions.

The reader can apply the same sort of analysis to his/her local media. The dangerous reality is that Big Money-subverted and perverted Mainstream media routinely obfuscate, censor, lie by omission or lie by commission [ 17, 23-25, 28-34]. As major American science fiction writer Robert Heinlein put it: “Secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy… censorship” [35].

Decent people are obliged to speak out for Humanity and the Biosphere, whether at the level of individuals or specific species and ecosystems or at the global level in relation to “premature deaths” ( avoidable deaths, avoidable mortality, excess deaths, excess mortality, untimely deaths, deaths that should not have happened) from violence or violently-imposed deprivation, or man-made climate change and worsening climate genocide [13]. Telling the truth is the core of science-based rational risk management that is crucial for societal safety and which successively involves (a) accurate data, (b) scientific analysis (this involving the critical testing of potentially falsifiable hypotheses), and (c) informed systemic change to minimize risk [36].

In his encyclical “Laudato si'” scientifically-trained, chemically –trained and science-informed Green Left Pope Francis has spoken out truthfully and forthrightly about the worsening climate emergency on behalf of the poor and the planet but his message has been censored and obfuscated by Big Money-perverted Mainstream media in the Western democracies that have become Lobbyocracies and Corporatocracies. What can decent people do? Decent, science-informed people must (a) inform everyone they can , (b) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all those climate criminal people, politicians, parties, companies, corporations and countries disproportionately complicit in the worsening climate crisis and climate change inaction, and (c) support Green Left politicians who want major action now and in Green Left Pope Francis' words “without delay”.

References.

[1]. Pope Francis , Encyclical Letter “Laudato si”, 2015: http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html .

[2]. “Laudato si'”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laudato_si' .

[3]. “Pell criticizes the “Laudato si'” encyclical”,, Vatican Insider, 20 June 2015: http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/the-vatican/detail/articolo/42448/ ,

[4]. Dominic Kelly, “Conservatives' collective tantrum over the pope has been a wonder to behold”, The Guardian, 8 July 2015: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/08/conservatives-collective-tantrum-over-the-pope-has-been-a-wonder-to-behold .

[5]. Robert Manne, “Laudato si': a political reading”, The Monthly, 1 July 2015: https://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/robert-manne/2015/01/2015/1435708320/laudato-si-political-reading .

[6]. Bill Mc Kibben, “The Pope and the Planet”, The New York Review of Books”, 13 August 2015: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/aug/13/pope-and-planet/ .

[7]. Ivey De Jesus, “The pope, the climate scientist and the important document”, Penn Live, 18 June 2015: http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2015/06/pope_francis_climate_change_pe.html .

[8]. Gideon Polya, “Green Left Pope Francis Demands Climate Action “Without Delay” To Prevent Climate “Catastrophe””, Countercurrents, 10 August, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya100815.htm .

[9]. Synthesis Report of the March 2009 Copenhagen Scientific Climate Change Conference: http://climatecongress.ku.dk/pdf/synthesisreport .

[10]. 2010 Open Letter by 255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences, “Open Letter: climate change and the integrity of science”, Guardian, 6 May 2010: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/06/climate-science-open-letter .

[11]. Thomas Piketty, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” ( Harvard University Press, 2014).

[12]. Gideon Polya, “Key Book Review: “Capital In The Twenty-First Century” By Thomas Piketty”, Countercurrents, 1 July, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya010714.htm .

[13]. “Climate Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ .

[14]. Gideon Polya, “4 % Annual Global Wealth Tax To Stop The 17 Million Deaths Annually”, Countercurrents, 27 June, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya270614.htm .

[15]. Associated Press, “Pope urges “bold cultural revolution” to save planet, fix “perverse” economy that harms poor”, Fox News, 18 June 2015: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/06/18/pope-urges-bold-cultural-revolution-to-save-planet-fix-perverse-economy-that/ .

[16] “Pope: Earth has turned into “an immense pile of filth”, CBS News, 18 June 2015: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pope-francis-calls-for-revolution-says-earth-has-turned-into-an-immense-pile-of-filth/ .

[17]. "Censorship by the BBC": https://sites.google.com/site/censorshipbythebbc/ .

[18]. Gideon Polya (2008), “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2008 edition that is now available for free perusal on the web: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ .

[19]. Jane Austen, “Northanger Abbey”, published posthumously, 1818.

[20]. Dr Chris Hope, “How high should climate change taxes be?”, Working Paper Series, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, 9.2011: http://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/media/assets/wp1109.pdf .

[21]. Gideon Polya, “Australia 's Huge Coal, Gas & Iron Ore Exports Threaten Planet”, Countercurrents, 15 May 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya150512.htm .

[22]. “Carbon Debt Carbon Credit”: https://sites.google.com/site/carbondebtcarboncredit/ .

[23]. “Censorship by ABC Late Night Live”: https://sites.google.com/site/censorshipbyabclatenightlive/ .

[24]. "Censorship by ABC Saturday Extra": https://sites.google.com/site/censorshipbyabclatenightlive/censorship-by-abc-sat .

[25]. “ABC fact-checking unit & incorrect reportage by the ABC (Australia's BBC)”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/abc-fact-checking-unit .

[26]. Stephen Stromberg, “What Pope Francis gets wrong about climate change”, The Washington Post, 18 June 2015: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/06/18/what-pope-francis-gets-wrong-about-climate-change/ .

[27]. “Science & economics experts: Carbon Tax needed NOT Carbon Trading”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/sciennce-economics-experts-carbon-tax-needed-not-carbon-trading/ .

[28]. “Boycott Murdoch media”: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottmurdochmedia/ .

[29]. “Censorship by The Conversation”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by .

[30]. “Mainstream media censorship”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/home .

[31]. “Mainstream media lying”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/ .

[32]. “Censorship by The Age”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by-the-age .

[33]. "Censorship by The Guardian UK": https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by-the-guardian-uk .

[34]. "Censorship by The Guardian Australia": https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/home/censorship-by-the-guardian-a .

[35]. Robert A. Heinlein, quoted by Fijileaks: http://www.fijileaks.com/home/october-15th-2014 .

[36]. “Gideon Polya”: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/home .

Dr Gideon Polya has been teaching science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/australian-complicity-in-iraq-mass-mortality/3369002#transcript

) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine ). When words fail one can say it in pictures - for images of Gideon Polya's huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .

4. Gideon Polya, “Papal encyclical to save planet” (2015)

[First published as Gideon Polya, “Papal encyclical to save planet”, MWC News, 5 August 2015: http://mwcnews.com/focus/analysis/53364-papal-encyclical-to-save-planet.html .]

The following detailed analysis is the transcript of an address I was recently invited to give to a Catholic women’s college at a top Australian university. I believe it would be useful reading for many people with backgrounds ranging from the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam and Judaism), Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Hinduism and shamanism to secular humanism.

Pope Francis’ landmark, faith- and science-informed Encyclical “ Laudato si” (“Praise be”) runs to over 190 pages and has 246 sections but the humane essence for a climate change-threatened world can be summarized by his extraordinary use of some key terms.

Jesus Christ-informed, science-informed and indeed scientifically- and specifically chemically-trained Pope Francis in his landmark 2015 Encyclical Letter “Laudato si” shows great moral and technical leadership in stark contrast to the frozen, spin-driven, pro-One Percenter leadership of the First World in:

(1) recognizing the worsening existential threat of a man-made climate change “catastrophe” for the Biosphere, Humanity, the poor and future generations;

(2) recognizing that millions of “premature deaths” (avoidable deaths) already occur each year due to pollution and poverty;

(3) demanding urgent action to start slashing fossil fuel burning and replacing it with renewable energy “in the next few years”;

(4) asserting that the environmental and social costs of pollution must be “fully borne” by those incurring them (i.e. a full Carbon Price);

(5) asserting that a market-based Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) approach may simply become a “ploy” to permit continuing pollution; and

(6) advocating individual and collective action through “boycotts” of those responsible for the worsening climate emergency.

Pope Francis’ assertions are in full agreement with the opinions of relevant scientific experts that I have summarized in a number of key websites that you can readily access by Google Searching the titles in parentheses. Thus:

(1) Re Pope Francis’ climate change “catastrophe”, it is now very unlikely that the world will avoid a catastrophic 2 degrees Centigrade temperature rise. The world may have only 3 years left at current rates of pollution before it exceeds a Terminal Carbon Budget that must not be exceeded if we are to have a 75% chance of avoiding a catastrophic 2C temperature rise. Australia used up its fair share of this Terminal Carbon Budget in 2011. Indeed paleoclimatologists, climate scientists, glaciologists and ice sheet scientists inform us that over 90% of extra heat in recent decades has gone into the ocean, the equilibrium consequence of 400 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere is a sea level rise of 20 metres, all Arctic summer sea ice may be gone within a decade, and the present worsening situation means a several metre sea level rise in the coming century with the real threat of non-linear changes, tipping points and relatively sudden catastrophic changes. Increased temperature has already contributed to increased sea level, storm intensity, flooding and droughts i.e. climate catastrophe has already arrived for Island Nations, mega-delta nations like Bangladesh and desert countries like those of the Sahel (Google “Are we doomed?” and “Too late to avoid global warming catastrophe”).

(2) Re Pope Francis’ “premature deaths” from poverty and climate change, the 3 key existential threats facing Humanity are nuclear weapons, climate change and poverty. Nuclear weapons can destroy all of Humanity. Already each year about 0.5 million people die from climate change, and 7 million die from air pollution. In Australia about 100 people die annually from heat stress and about 10,000 die from carbon burning pollutants, the breakdown being 5,000 (coal burning) , 2,000 (vehicle exhaust) and 3,000 (other burning). Poverty kills and each year about 17 million people (half of them children) die avoidably (prematurely) from deprivation or deprivation–exacerbated disease and 1.5 billion people have died thus since 1950. 10 billion people may perish thus this century if climate change is not requisitely addressed (Google “Climate Genocide”, “Nuclear weapons ban, end poverty & reverse climate change” and my book “Global avoidable mortality since 1950’).

(3) Re Pope Francis’ proposed massive decarbonisation “in the next few years”; the world has already effectively run out of time to avoid a plus 2 degrees Centigrade catastrophe. The World needs to (a) change societal philosophy to one of scientific risk management, biological sustainability and Christ-like social humanism with complete cessation of species extinctions, and zero tolerance for lying; (b) urgently reduce atmospheric CO2 to a safe, pre-Industrial Revolution level of about 300 ppm CO2 as recommended by leading climate and biological scientists; and (c) effect a rapid switch to the best non-carbon and genuinely renewable energy (solar, wind, geothermal, wave, tide and hydro options that are currently roughly the same market price as coal burning-based power and much cheaper if the true cost of coal burning is “fully borne”) and to energy efficiency, public transport, needs-based production, re-afforestation and return of carbon as biochar to soils coupled with correspondingly rapid cessation of fossil fuel burning, deforestation, methanogenic livestock production and population growth (the latter being disputed by Pope Francis). Unfortunately greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and atmospheric CO2 are remorselessly increasing, and World Bank analysts have recently re-assessed the World’s annual GHG pollution as 50% bigger than hitherto thought, with livestock contributing over 50% of the bigger figure (Google “2011 climate change course”, “300.org”, “300.org – return atmosphere CO2 to 300 ppm CO2”, “Cut carbon emissions 80% by 2020”, “100% renewable energy by 2020”, “Biofuel Genocide” and “Gas is not clean energy”).

(4) Re Pope Francis’ “fully borne” Carbon Price, Dr. Chris Hope from 90-Nobel-Laureate University of Cambridge estimates a damage-related Carbon Price of $150-$250 per tonne CO2-equivalent whereas in coal- and gas-rich Australia the Labor Opposition proposes a derisory, ETS-based Carbon Price of $7 per tonne CO2-equivalent and the “No Carbon Tax” Coalition Government insists on $0 per tonne CO2-equivalent, with both supporting unlimited coal, gas and iron ore exports that will see world-leading per capita GHG polluter Australia exceed the whole World’s Terminal Carbon Budget by a factor of 3. Applying a Carbon Price of US $200 per tonne CO2-equivalent, the World has an historical Carbon Debt of $540 trillion that is increasing at $20 trillion each year, and Australia has a Carbon Debt of $11 trillion that is increasing at $600 billion per year (increasing at about $60,000 each year per head for under-30 year old Australians) (Google “Carbon Debt Carbon Credit”).

(5) Re Pope Francis’ dismissal of Carbon Trading as a neoliberal “ploy”, the Cap and Trade, Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) approach (supported by the Australian Labor Opposition and many in the Coalition Government) has been empirically unsuccessful, is accordingly counterproductive, currently applies to only 12% of World GHG pollution, and is fraudulent in that it involves rich countries selling licences to pollute the one common atmosphere and ocean of all peoples (Google “Science & economics experts: Carbon Tax needed NOT Carbon Trading”, “Stop Climate Crime” and “Climate Justice & Intergenerational Equity”).

(6) Re Pope Francis’ assent to “boycotts”, people who care for Humanity, the Biosphere and future generations must (a) inform everyone they can, and (b) apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all those disproportionately involved in GHG pollution and the effective climate change denialism of climate change inaction. There is now massive global divestment in fossil fuels (to avoid both Climate Genocide and investment yielding unusable “stranded assets”) (Google “Divest from fossil fuels”).

To conclude, Pope Francis’ “Laudato si” is a landmark, faith-, science- and humanity-informed call to urgent global action on climate change for Humanity and the Biosphere. It is now very likely that it is too late to avoid a catastrophic plus 2 degrees Centigrade temperature rise, but we are all obliged to do everything we can to make the future “less bad” than it otherwise will be for the Biosphere, our children and future generations.

2. 5. Gideon Polya, “Pope decrees full carbon price”(2015).

[First published as Gideon Polya, “Pope decrees full carbon price”, MWC News, 28 July 2015: http://mwcnews.com/focus/analysis/53226-pope-decree.html ].

A full Carbon Price (Carbon Tax) on greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution is required to stop GHG pollution that is killing the Biosphere and threatening Humanity. Pope Francis in his 2015 Encyclical Letter “Laudato si” demands that a “fully borne” Carbon Price be emplaced on greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution in order to prevent “millions of premature deaths”.

Armed with this authoritative moral advice, the billions of Humanity must save themselves and the Biosphere by demanding that the polluters must pay in full by a Wealth Tax (for historical GHG pollution) and a Carbon Tax (for ongoing GHG pollution).

Pope Francis, quoting Pope Benedict XVI, essentially advocates Carbon Pricing in Section 195 of his 2015 encyclical “Laudato si”: ‘Yet only when the economic and social costs of using up shared environmental resources are recognized with transparency and fully borne by those who incur them, not by other peoples or future generations,’ can those [economic] actions be considered ethical” [1].

This what Pope Francis said in context: “The principle of the maximization of profits, frequently isolated from other considerations, reflects a misunderstanding of the very concept of the economy. As long as production is increased, little concern is given to whether it is at the cost of future resources or the health of the environment; as long as the clearing of a forest increases production, no one calculates the losses entailed in the desertification of the land, the harm done to biodiversity, or the increased pollution. In a word, businesses profit by calculating and paying only a fraction of the costs involved. ‘Yet only when the economic and social costs of using up shared environmental resources are recognized with transparency and fully borne by those who incur them, not by other peoples or future generations,’ [Benedict XVI] can those actions be considered ethical. An instrumental way of reasoning, which provides a purely static analysis of realities in the service of present needs, is at work whether resources are allocated by the market or by state central planning” (Section 195, [1]).

And this is what Pope Benedict XVI said in context in his Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate (2009): “This responsibility is a global one, for it is concerned not just with energy but with the whole of creation, which must not be bequeathed to future generations depleted of its resources. Human beings legitimately exercise a responsible stewardship over nature, in order to protect it, to enjoy its fruits and to cultivate it in new ways, with the assistance of advanced technologies, so that it can worthily accommodate and feed the world's population. On this earth there is room for everyone: here the entire human family must find the resources to live with dignity, through the help of nature itself — God's gift to his children — and through hard work and creativity. At the same time we must recognize our grave duty to hand the earth on to future generations in such a condition that they too can worthily inhabit it and continue to cultivate it.

This means being committed to making joint decisions “after pondering responsibly the road to be taken, decisions aimed at strengthening that covenant between human beings and the environment, which should mirror the creative love of God, from whom we come and towards whom we are journeying”[120]. Let us hope that the international community and individual governments will succeed in countering harmful ways of treating the environment. It is likewise incumbent upon the competent authorities to make every effort to ensure that the economic and social costs of using up shared environmental resources are recognized with transparency and fully borne by those who incur them, not by other peoples or future generations: the protection of the environment, of resources and of the climate obliges all international leaders to act jointly and to show a readiness to work in good faith, respecting the law and promoting solidarity with the weakest regions of the planet [121]. One of the greatest challenges facing the economy is to achieve the most efficient use — not abuse — of natural resources, based on a realization that the notion of “efficiency” is not value-free” (Section 50, [2]).

Climate change economist Dr. Chris Hope from 90-Nobel–Laureate University of Cambridge has estimated a damage-related Carbon Price of US$150-$250 per tonne CO2-e (CO2-equivalent) depending on location [3]. Based on a Carbon Price of $100 per tonne CO2-e, the World now has a Carbon Debt (in US dollars) from historical CO2 pollution (mostly from European countries) of $270 trillion that is increasing at $10 trillion each year, and Australia (a world leader in annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution) has a Carbon Debt of $5.6 trillion that is increasing at $300 billion per year (increasing at about $30,000 each year per head for under-30 year old Australians) [4]. Based on a Carbon Price of $200 per tonne CO2-e [3], the World now has a Carbon Debt (in US dollars) of $540 trillion that is increasing at $20 trillion each year and Australia has a Carbon Debt of $11 trillion that is increasing at $600 billion per year (increasing at about $60,000 each year per head for under-30 year old Australians) [4].

Now Carbon Debt - that reflects what Pope Francis and Pope Benedict XVI call “the economic and social costs of using up shared environmental resources” [1, 2] – differs from Government Debt in that Carbon Debt is inescapable. Thus Government Debt (e.g. the Greek Government Debt) can be forgiven or otherwise evaded by defaulting or printing money but Carbon Debt will inescapably have to be paid by future generations – man-made global warming will displace and kill literally billions of people unless we create forests, sea walls, hurricane shelters, irrigation systems, desalination plants, hydroponic farms, renewable energy systems, storm-resistant housing, storm shelters, heat wave refuges, and atmosphere carbon dioxide (CO2) draw-down systems. Indeed some climate change scientists have predicted that as few as 0.5 billion people might survive this century if man-made global warming is not requisitely addressed, these estimates translating to a climate genocide involving the deaths of 10 billion people this century, this including roughly twice the present population of particular mainly non-European groups, specifically 6 billion under-5 year old infants, 3 billion Muslims in a terminal Muslim Holocaust, 2 billion Indians, 1.3 billion non-Arab Africans, 0.5 billion Bengalis, 0.3 billion Pakistanis and 0.3 billion Bangladeshis [5, 6].

Indeed Pope Francis in his encyclical “Laudato si “ (“Praise be to You”) has quite exceptionally gone further than any other major leader by alluding to the “premature deaths” – also epidemiologically known as untimely deaths, avoidable deaths, excess deaths, avoidable mortality, excess mortality, deaths that need not have happened [7] – that are occasioned by pollution or poverty: “ 20. Some forms of pollution are part of people's daily experience. Exposure to atmospheric pollutants produces a broad spectrum of health hazards, especially for the poor, and causes millions of premature deaths … 48. The human environment and the natural environment deteriorate together; we cannot adequately combat environmental degradation unless we attend to causes related to human and social degradation… The impact of present imbalances is also seen in the premature death of many of the poor, in conflicts sparked by the shortage of resources, and in any number of other problems which are insufficiently represented on global agendas” (sections 20 and 48, [1]).

Pope Francis did not put figures on premature deaths from poverty or pollution in his 246-section encyclical letter “Laudato si”, but the numbers are readily available . Thus UN Population Division data [8] enable one to calculate that 17 million people die avoidably (prematurely) each year (half of them children) due to poverty in the Developing World (minus China) [7]. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 7 million people die from the effects of pollution each year [9].

The DARA 2012 Report commissioned by 20 countries states: “This report estimates that climate change causes 400,000 deaths on average each year today, mainly due to hunger and communicable diseases that affect above all children in developing countries. Our present carbon-intensive energy system and related activities cause an estimates 4.5 million deaths each year linked to air pollution , hazardous occupations and cancer. Climate changed caused economic losses estimated close to 1% of global GDP for the year 2010, or 700 billion dollars (2010, PPP)...

The carbon-intensive economy cost the world another 0.7% of GDP in that year, independent of any climate change losses. Together, carbon economy- and climate change-related losses amounted to over 1.2 trillion dollars. The world is already committed to a substantial increase in global temperatures – at least another 0.5^oC (1^oF) due to a combination of the inertia of the world’s oceans, the slow response of the carbon cycle to reduced CO2 emission and limitation on how fast emissions can actually be reduced. The world economy therefore faces an increase in pressures that are estimated to lead to more than a doubling in the costs of climate change by 2030 to an estimated 2.5% of global GDP. Carbon economy costs also increase over this same period so that global GDP in 2030 is estimated to be well over 3% lower than it would have been in the absence of climate change and harmful carbon-intensive energy practices. Continuing today’s patterns of carbon-intensive energy use is estimated, together with climate change, to cause 5 million deaths per year by 2030, close to 700,000 of which would be due to climate change. This implies that a combined climate-carbon crisis is estimated to claim 100 million lives between now and the end of the next decade. A significant share of the global population would be directly affected by inaction on climate change” [10, 11].

Some conservative, effective climate change denialist Catholic and non-Catholic politicians and journalists have chided the Pope for straying from theology into the arena of politics , science and economics but their complaint is disingenuous, dishonest and fatuous. Pope Francis’ job is to promote human happiness and morality and his “Laudato si” encyclical, informed by the overwhelming scientific consensus, chides a selfish and blinkered world for endangering the biosphere and the lives of billions through environment-destroying greed.

By way of example of Catholic politicians flagrantly ignoring and opposing Pope Francis’ fiat on man-made climate change, climate criminal Australia with a Catholic Prime Minister (Tony Abbott) and a Catholic Leader of the Opposition (Bill Shorten) is a world leader in annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution with a Domestic plus Exported annual per capita GHG pollution of 89 tonnes CO2-e per person per year as compared to Bangladesh’s 0.9 and a world average of about 7 [5]. Australia has an extreme right wing Liberal Party-National Party Coalition Government headed by Catholic Tony Abbott and a right-wing Opposition Australian Labor Party lead by Catholic Bill Shorten. The pro-coal, pro-gas, pro-iron ore, climate criminal Labor Opposition and the pro-coal, pro-gas, pro-iron ore climate criminal Coalition (aka COALition) Government have the same climate criminal policy of unlimited coal, gas and iron ore exports that will presently see Australia exceed by a factor of three (3) the whole world’s Terminal Carbon Budget that must not be exceeded if we are to have a 75% chance of avoiding a catastrophic 2C temperature rise [12]. Indeed Australia used up its “fair share” of the world’s Terminal Carbon Budget in 2011 and the whole World has only 3 years to go [13, 14].

The pro-renewable energy Catholic Australian Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten and the Australian Labor Party want a Cap-and-Trade Emissions Trading Scheme ( ETS)-based Carbon Price of circa $7 per tonne CO2-e and the anti-renewable energy and effective climate change denialist Catholic Prime Minister of Australia Tony Abbott was elected in part on the promise of “No Carbon Tax” i.e. a Carbon Price of $0 per tonne CO2-e. Yet the Head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, is demanding that the cost of pollution should be “fully borne” to save “millions of premature deaths” and this position translates to a Carbon Price of about $200 per tonne CO2-e [3].

Some conservative, effective climate change denialist Catholic and non-Catholic politicians and journalists have chided the Pope for straying from theology into the arena of politics , science and economics but their complaint is disingenuous, dishonest and fatuous.

This clear rejection by both Catholic Australian Opposition Leader Shorten and Catholic Australian Prime Minister Abbott of Pope Francis’ “Laudato si” injunction that the cost of pollution should be “fully borne” to prevent “millions of premature deaths” is not just a venal sin like telling a fib, using a condom or eating lamb chops on` Friday - it is a mortal sin of immense proportions involving complicity in the deaths of millions each year and ultimately of billions , for as Pope Francis says in “Laudato si”: “Exposure to atmospheric pollutants… causes millions of premature deaths … The impact of present imbalances is also seen in the premature death of many of the poor” (sections 20 and 48, [1]).

Summary

Pope Francis, quoting Pope Benedict XVI, essentially advocates Carbon Pricing in Section 195 of his 2015 encyclical “Laudato si”: “”Yet only when the economic and social costs of using up shared environmental resources are recognized with transparency and fully borne by those who incur them, not by other peoples or future generations,” can those [economic] actions be considered ethical” [1].

Pope Francis is further remarkable among world leaders in recognizing the concept of social policies causing “premature deaths” (untimely deaths, avoidable deaths, excess deaths, avoidable mortality, excess mortality, deaths that need not have happened [7]) , stating in “Laudato si”: “Exposure to atmospheric pollutants… causes millions of premature deaths … The impact of present imbalances is also seen in the premature death of many of the poor” (sections 20 and 48, [1]).

It is increasingly unlikely that we will avoid a global warming catastrophe this century [15, 16]. Nevertheless, all decent people who care for their children, future generations, Humanity and the Biosphere are obliged to do everything they can to ensure that the future is “less bad” for our children and future generations. “Doing everything they can” may mean Green tariffs, International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutions, International Court of Justice (ICJ) litigations, and Boycotts, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) against climate criminal people, politicians, parties, companies, corporations and countries disproportionately involved in the worsening climate genocide [14].

However fundamental to tackling climate change is imposition on polluters of a damage–related Carbon Price [4] as advocated by both Pope Francis and his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI. Greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution will only stop when we make the polluters pay. The One Percenters have half the wealth of the world and this has been essentially acquired by GHG pollution – this huge historical Carbon Debt can be obtained by an appropriate Wealth Tax [17]. Ongoing GHG pollution must stop if we are to return atmospheric CO2 concentration to a safe 300 ppm CO2 from the present dangerous and damaging 400 ppm CO2 (as advocated by numerous scientists [18]) - and this means that the full, damage-related cost of ongoing GHG pollution must be “fully borne” by the polluters. A full Carbon Price on greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution is required to stop GHG pollution that is killing the Biosphere and threatening Humanity.

References

1. Pope Francis , Encyclical Letter “Laudato si”, 2015: http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html .
2. Pope Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter “Caritas in Veritate”, 29 June 2009.
3. Dr. Chris Hope, “How high should climate change taxes be?”, Working Paper Series, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, 9.2011.
4. “Carbon Debt Carbon Credit”.
5. “Climate Genocide”.
6. Gideon Polya, “Germany's Per Capita Government Debt Plus Carbon Debt Greatly Exceeds Greece's”, Countercurrents, 8 July, 2015.
7. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” that includes a history of every country from Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal on the web.
8. UN Population Division.
9. World Health Organization (WHO), “7 million premature deaths annually linked to air pollution” .
10. DARA, “Climate Vulnerability Monitor. A guide to the cold calculus of a hot planet”, 2012, Executive Summary pp2-3 .
11. DARA report quoted by Reuters, ”100 mln to die by 2030 if world fails to act on climate”, 28 September 2012.
12. Gideon Polya, “Australia 's Huge Coal, Gas & Iron Ore Exports Threaten Planet”, Countercurrents, 15 May 2012 .
13. "Years left to zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relative to 2010" .
14. Gideon Polya, “25 Ways World-Leading Climate Criminal Australia Threatens Planet And Invites Boycotts, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS)”, Countercurrents, 6 June, 2015.
15. “Are we doomed?” .
16. "Too late to avoid global warming catastrophe" .
17. Gideon Polya, “4 % Annual Global Wealth Tax To Stop The 17 Million Deaths Annually”, Countercurrents, 27 June, 2014 .
18. “300-org – return atmosphere CO2 to 300 ppm CO2” .