01- POPE FRANCIS ON ENVIRONMENT ISSUES

19-6-2015

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With a poet's lyricism, a former chemist's precision and a pontiff's moral thunder, Pope Francis recast humanity's relationship with nature in stark ethical terms, hoping to spur a warming, filthy world to clean up its act "before it's too late."

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In issuing "Laudato Si," his much-anticipated encyclical on climate change, the pope on Thursday took an extraordinary approach to an environmental issue often framed in the dry language of science. Francis' teaching document is a melodic yet radical indictment, depicting a materialistic and wasteful society that is hurting the planet and its poorest people.

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He challenges the world to stop pollution, to recycle and carpool and to do without air conditioning — and makes it a moral imperative. "The exploitation of the planet has already exceeded acceptable limits and we still have not solved the problem of poverty," he writes.

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The encyclical covers all sorts of environmental issues, including waste, extinctions, genetically modified organisms and the lack of clean water. Addressing "every living person on this planet," Francis calls for a bold cultural revolution to correct what he said was a "structurally perverse" economic system in which the rich exploited the poor.

"The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth," he wrote. He praised a "less is more" lifestyle, one that shuns air conditioners and gated communities in favor of car pools, recycling and being in close touch with the marginalized. He called 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.

Francis argues that there really is no distinction between human beings, their faith and the environment: They are all part of a single integral ecology. "Everything is related, and we human beings are united as brothers and sisters on a wonderful pilgrimage, woven together by the love God has for each of his creatures and which also unites us in fond affection with brother sun, sister moon, brother river and mother earth," he writes.

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