'No coming back from this point,' Pope Francis warns the world about climate change

Climate change, according to Pope Francis, is the result of “the irresponsible lifestyle associated with the Western model.”

On Wednesday, Pope Francis encouraged world leaders to agree to binding commitments to reduce climate change before it’s too late, saying that God’s constantly heated creation is rapidly approaching a ‘point of no return.’

In an update to his landmark 2015 encyclical on the environment, Francis raised the alarm about the ‘irreversible’ harm already being done to people and the earth, and lamented that the world’s poor and most vulnerable are once again paying the heaviest price.

“We are now unable to halt the enormous damage we have caused. We barely have time to prevent even more tragic damage,” he said.

He singled out the United States, stating that its per-capita emissions are double that of China and seven times that of impoverished countries on average.

While individual and household efforts are beneficial, he believes that a broad adjustment in the careless lifestyle associated with the Western model would have a substantial long-term impact.

The letter, titled Praise God, was released on the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the pontiff’s nature-loving namesake, and was intended to persuade negotiators to commit to enforceable climate targets at the next round of United Nations talks in Dubai.

Francis addressed a moral necessity for the world to migrate away from fossil fuels to clean energy through measures that are ‘efficient, compulsory, and easily monitored,’ using precise scientific data, strong diplomatic arguments, and a sprinkling of spiritual reasoning.

“What is being asked of us is nothing more than a certain responsibility for the legacy we will leave behind once we depart this earth,” he said.

The 2015 encyclical ‘Praise Be’ by Pope Francis was a watershed moment for the Catholic Church, as it was the first time a pope used one of his most authoritative teaching writings to recast the climate debate in moral terms.

Francis called for a bold cultural revolution in that text, which has been cited by presidents, patriarchs, and premiers and sparked an activist movement in the church, to correct a ‘structurally perverse’ economic system in which the rich exploit the poor, turning Earth into a ‘immense pile of filth.’

Despite the fact that encyclicals are designed to be timeless, Francis stated that an update to his original was required since “our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point.”

He presented data demonstrating that rising emissions and the resulting rise in global temperatures have accelerated since the Industrial Revolution, notably in the previous 50 years.

‘It is no longer feasible to doubt the human – ‘anthropic’ – origins of climate change,’ he stated.

While admitting that ‘some catastrophic diagnoses’ may be unfounded, he stated that inaction is no longer an option.

He claims that the devastation is already underway, with some ‘irreversible’ damage to biodiversity and species loss that will only worsen unless immediate action is taken.