Pope Francis Rides an Encyclical
This could be big. Religious and ethical impulses are powerful shapers of human behavior. That’s why, here in the US, corporate leaders long ago found ways to use religion to Continue Reading
Alaska’s glaciers are now losing 75 billion tons of ice every year
In a new study , scientists with the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and several other institutions report a staggering finding: Glaciers of the United States’ largest — and only Arctic — state, Alaska, have lost 75 gigatons (a gigaton is a billion metric tons) of ice per year from 1994 through 2013. For comparison, that’s roughly half of a recent estimate for ice loss for all of Antarctica (159 billion metric tons). It takes 360 gigatons of ice to lead to one millimeter of sea level rise, which implies that the Alaska region alone may have contributed several millimeters in the past few decades. “Despite Greenland’s ice covered area being 20 times greater than that of Alaska, losses in Alaska were fully one third of the total loss from the ice sheet during 2005-2010,” wrote the authors, led by Chris Larsen of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks’s […]
60 Million People Fleeing Chaotic Lands, U.N. Says
Photo Syrian children crossing into Turkey this week. The U.N. says the war in Syria is the world’s biggest source of displacement. Credit Bulent Kilic/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images UNITED NATIONS — Nearly 60 million people have been driven from their homes by war and persecution, an unprecedented global exodus that has burdened fragile countries with waves of newcomers and littered deserts and seas with the bodies of those who died trying to reach safety. The new figures, released Thursday by the United Nations refugee agency, paint a staggering picture of a world where new conflicts are erupting and old ones are refusing to subside, driving up the total number of displaced people to a record 59.5 million by the end of 2014, the most recent year tallied. Half of the displaced are children. Nearly 14 million people were newly displaced in 2014, according to the annual report by […]
How the Pope Got Religion on Climate Change
The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is the modern descendent of the Vatican’s first scientific advisory, which began in 1603 and included Galileo among its members. Since 1923, academy scientists have met in Casina Pio IV, a palace built in 1561 for Pope Pius IV. Photographer: Gabriella C. Marino/Creative Commons Several dozen of the world’s most prominent scientists sprang from their seats and left the Vatican hall where they were holding a conference on the environment in May 2014. They were bound for a meet-and-greet with Pope Francis at the modest Vatican hotel where he lives, the Domus Sanctae Marthae. Among the horde was Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Since 2004, he has also been a member of a 400-year-old collective, one that operates as the pope’s eyes and ears on the natural world: the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. He had a message for […]
Leak of Pope’s Encyclical on Climate Change Hints at Tensions in Vatican
Photo Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Square on Saturday. The leak of his environmental encyclical has raised questions about whether those behind its publication had set out to embarrass him. Credit Alessandra Tarantino/Associated Press ROME — The unexpected leak of Pope Francis ’ much-anticipated environmental encyclical has meant the return of something that not long ago was fairly common around the Vatican but had become often dormant during the two-plus years of Francis’ mostly charmed papacy: intrigue. Who leaked it and why? Was this the work of frustrated conservatives in the Vatican , as some experts have speculated? Does it portend big fights at a pivotal October meeting in which church officials are expected to grapple with homosexuality and divorce? Or is it just a tempest in a teapot? “Somebody inside the Vatican leaked the document with the obvious intention of embarrassing the pope,” said Robert Mickens, a longtime […]
Americans Are Again Getting More Worried About the Climate
The financial crisis made Americans less worried about climate change . The Democrats’ attempt to pass sweeping climate legislation in 2009 and 2010 probably reduced Americans’ anxiety level as well, as paradoxical as that may sound. But now Americans are getting more worried again. About 69 percent of adults say that global warming is either a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” problem, according to a new Pew Research Center poll , up from 63 percent in 2010. The level of concern has still not returned to that of a decade ago; in 2006, 79 percent of adults called global warming serious. It’s impossible to know exactly why concern about the climate fell — and why skepticism that global warming was real increased — starting around 2008. Both economics and politics probably play a role. The financial crisis and recession made Americans more worried about the immediate condition of the […]
Pope’s Views on Climate Change Add Pressure to Catholic Candidates
Photo A coal-fired power plant near Bergheim, Germany. Pope Francis is expected to release a highly anticipated encyclical on the environment on Thursday. Credit Oliver Berg/European Pressphoto Agency WASHINGTON — As the steamy hurricane season descends on Miami, the city’s Roman Catholic archbishop, Thomas G. Wenski, is planning a summer of sermons, homilies and press events designed to highlight the threat that a warming planet, rising sea levels and more extreme storms pose to his community’s poorest and most vulnerable. His sermons and speeches are meant to amplify the message of Pope Francis ’ highly anticipated, highly controversial encyclical on the environment, which the Vatican is expected to unveil on Thursday. A papal encyclical, or teaching document, is among the strongest and most authoritative statements made by the Catholic Church. In a draft of the document leaked on Monday, Francis reiterated the established science that burning fossil fuels are […]
Stop using China as an excuse for inaction on climate change
China is the world’s excuse for cruelty and barbarism. If we don’t behave atrociously, politicians and columnists assure us, China will, so we had better do it first, before we are outcompeted. You want holidays, collective bargaining rights and fair conditions in the workplace? Forget it. When Chinese workers have none, such fripperies would “hamper British/US/Australian/Canadian industry”, making it uncompetitive. Columnists like Thomas Friedman at the New York Times, gleefully regaling us with tales of Chinese workers being turfed out of their dormitories at midnight , marched to a workstation and obliged to perform a 12-hour shift to meet a last-minute order from Apple, insist that we either compete on these terms or perish. France, he once claimed, is doomed if it seeks to preserve a 35-hour week, while people in Asia “ are ready to work a 35-hour day .” In fact French workers are doing fine : […]
Coal, Oil Must Decline to Curb Carbon Emissions by 2020, IEA Says
LONDON—Coal and oil use must begin declining after 2020, and natural gas, nuclear and renewable energy usage must rapidly increase, for the world to begin curbing emissions in the next decade, the International Energy Agency said in a report Monday. The IEA, a Paris-based energy monitor for industrialized countries, laid out a number policies that would lead to a peak in energy-related emissions by 2020, recommending profound changes in energy consumption ahead of a key U.N. climate change summit this year . According to the IEA, in order to cap emissions coal demand needs to gradually decline over the next 15 years, falling 13% between 2013 and 2030. Oil demand should also peak after 2020, gradually declining over the course of the next decade though it will still maintain the biggest share of the overall energy mix. Meanwhile, demand for nuclear energy should more than double from its 2013 […]
Papal Draft Blames Most Global Warming on Human Activity
Pope Francis after a mass in Tacloban in the Philippines in January. ROME—Pope Francis calls global warming a major threat to life on the planet, says it is due mainly to human activity and describes the need to reduce the use of fossil fuels as an “urgent” matter, in a published draft of an upcoming letter on the environment. The pope’s words appear in a draft copy of “Laudato Si’” (“Be praised”), his long-awaited encyclical on the environment. The draft was published online Monday by the Italian magazine L’Espresso, three days ahead of its scheduled publication date. The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said in a statement that the posted text wasn’t the final document, which would remain under embargo until Thursday. In the draft, Pope Francis wrote of a “very consistent scientific consensus that we are in the presence of an alarming warming of the climactic system.” […]