Vatican Finding on Climate Change – Amazingly Articulate
Just a few months ago, the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences published a paper in which it assessed climate change and what mankind should do about it. It may not have received enough attention due to an innocuous title, “Fate of Mountain Glaciers in the Anthropocene.” (PDF download above.)
This document may be the most succinct and articulate statement to date, about the profoundness of the change happening to our environment. In about a page — quoted below — they state their conclusions with clarity and authority, in very plain English.
From the Report: (Italics and Boldface are from the actual document)
“The primary triggers for ice ages and inter-glacials are well understood to be changes in the astronomical parameters related to the motion of our planet within the solar system and natural feedback processes in the climate system. The time scales between these triggers are in the range of 10,000 years or longer. By contrast, the observed human-induced changes in carbon dioxide, other greenhouse gases, and soot concentrations are taking place on 10-100 year timescales –at least a hundred times as fast. It is particularly worrying that this release of global warming agents is occurring during an interglacial period when the Earth was already at a natural temperature maximum.
Three Recommended Measures: Human-caused changes in the composition of the air and air quality result in more than 2 million premature deaths worldwide every year and threaten water and food security — especially among those “bottom 3 billion” people who are too poor to avail of the protections made possible by fossil fuel use and industrialization. Since a sustainable future based on the continued extraction of coal, oil and gas in the “business-as-usual mode” will not be possible because of both resource depletion and environmental damages (as caused, e.g., by dangerous sea level rise) we urge our societies to:
I. Reduce worldwide carbon dioxide emissions without delay, using all means possible to meet ambitious international global warming targets and ensure the long-term stability of the climate system. All nations must focus on a rapid transition to renewable energy sources and other strategies to reduce CO2 emissions. Nations should also avoid removal of carbon sinks by stopping deforestation, and should strengthen carbon sinks by reforestation of degraded lands. They also need to develop and deploy technologies that draw down excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. These actions must be accomplished within a few decades.
II. Reduce the concentrations of warming air pollutants (dark soot, methane, lower atmosphere ozone, and hydrofluorocarbons) by as much as 50%, to slow down climate change during this century while preventing millions of premature deaths from respiratory disease and millions of tons of crop damages every year.
III. Prepare to adapt to the climatic changes, both chronic and abrupt, that society will be unable to mitigate. In particular, we call for a global capacity building initiative to assess the natural and social impacts of climate change in mountain systems and related watersheds.
The cost of the three recommended measures pales in comparison to the price the world will pay if we fail to act now.”
Amen. The above conclusion is the end of their two and a half page summary; the entire report is just 15 pages. I highly recommend that you download the PDF above, so that you can read the Summary or full report, and that you might have a hard copy to share with others.
Let’s give credit where credit is due. The Vatican has done, may I say, a divine job here. The Catholic church is typically known for conservatism is well remembered for the inquisition of Galileo for promoting the idea that Earth revolved around the Sun. Thus, this very modern scientific articulation is cause for particular attention.
Comments are welcome; please share with others.