Pope lends his prestige to the UN climate conference – 04/11/2023 – Reinaldo José Lopes

I never thought I would feel the need to refer to the unmistakable vocals of Gaucho rocker Humberto Gessinger in this column, but this is the way: everything indicates that, this year, the pope will not only be pop, in the words of that old song, but will also be at the COP.

As reported this Sheet, Francis will most likely be the first head of the Catholic Church to attend the annual climate conference organized by the United Nations, which is in its 28th edition and will be held from the end of this month in Dubai. COP is the acronym for “conference of the parties” (that is, the countries that are signatory parties to the UN Climate Convention), in addition to allowing my admittedly infamous rhyme with “pop”.

I ask for the reader’s patience for one last musical pun: Francisco’s problem is that the COP doesn’t spare anyone. After almost 30 years of meetings, the situation is unfortunately the following: 1) the scientific diagnosis of the severity of the climate emergency has never been so precise; 2) the disasters probably resulting from it continue to multiply; 3) action against the problem, however, remains far below what is necessary.

The most skeptical would say, possibly rightly, that not even Saint Peter’s successor would be able to change this scenario. The Argentine pontiff would only add his voice to the endless blah-blah-blah of heads of state with little capacity and/or real political will to face climate challenges.

If it is unwise to expect Francis to single-handedly produce a sudden change in global action against the climate emergency, I will allow myself the luxury of having some optimism – and, why not say, faith – in the role he has played. The game the Pope is playing has one eye on the diplomacy and politics of this moment and another on a much broader scenario.

The proof of this is in the two most innovative and important documents of his pontificate, the encyclical “Laudato Si'”, from 2015, and the apostolic exhortation “Laudate Deum”, from October this year. It is no small feat to package all the essential points of the scientific consensus on the environmental crisis in a format capable of dialoging with almost 1.4 billion Catholics, as these texts do. But Francis’ papal teaching goes beyond that.

First, he realized that climate and environmental risks put mainly the most marginalized populations against the wall, the same ones to whom he chose to dedicate most of his efforts as pontiff. Secondly, the pontiff has made it clear that mere economic and technological fixes are not enough to solve the problem. There is no way out other than recognizing that we live on a finite planet, which will not survive if we insist on the illusion of infinite consumption of resources.

Thirdly, perhaps the most difficult barrier to encouraging Christian engagement in the environmental cause is the ancient theological weight of a thought that inferiorizes all forms of life and places them at the service of human beings. The pontiff was willing to face this challenge in the spirit of the saint from whom he borrowed his papal name, Saint Francis of Assisi.

“The technocratic paradigm can isolate us from what surrounds us,” he writes in “Laudate Deum.” “The Judeo-Christian worldview defends the peculiar and central value of the human being, but today we are forced to recognize that it is only possible to defend a ‘situated anthropocentrism’, that is, to recognize that human life cannot be understood or sustained without others creatures. In fact, we and all beings in the Universe, being created by the same Father, are united by invisible bonds and form a kind of universal family.”

“Communism! Paganism!”, some priests corrupted by the Olavism virus will shout. The real name for this in Christian theology, however, is “metanoia” – conversion, change of mentality. Let it turn into action.

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