Pope Francis calls on governments, individuals to protect the environment

Global warming is “mainly the result of human activity,” Pope Francis says in his climate change encyclical, warning that more needs to be done to combat its impact on Earth. 

After months of growing anticipation, the Vatican released Francis’s environment and climate change encyclical on Thursday, a 192-page call to action for nations and individuals to change their lifestyles to protect the environment before the Earth starts to “look more and more like an immense pile of filth,” Crux, a Boston Globe outlet focused on Catholic issues, reports. 

{mosads}The encyclical, rolled out after a draft version was leaked earlier this week, endorses a slate of proposals the pope says could help the environment, including replacing fossil fuels with cleaner energy, using more solar power, assessing the impact of future development on the environment, protecting ecosystems and cleaning up drinking water.

“I urgently appeal, then, for a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet,” Francis writes. 

Francis said the ill effects of humans’ impact on the environment are most likely to impact the poor. He called on wealthy nations to do more to address climate issues, including entering into treaties designed to protect the Earth.

“Developed countries ought to help pay this debt by significantly limiting their consumption of non-renewable energy and by assisting poorer countries to support policies and programs of sustainable development,” Francis writes, taking aim specifically at fossil fuels like oil, gas and “especially coal.”

Francis blames human greed for degrading the environment and calls for a renewed focus on improving it, not only among governments and nations but individuals, too. He suggested readers reduce their use of plastics and paper, or to car pool and take public transportation, to help reduce their impact on the Earth. 

“Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it,” he writes.