After assembling a panel of experts on climate change, the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Science released a report strongly urging all countries of the world to take three crucial steps in addressing the upcoming climate crisis, including:
That we reduce worldwide carbon dioxide emissions without delay, reduce the concentrations of warming air pollutants (dark soot, methane, lower atmosphere ozone, and hydrofluorocarbons) by as much as 50 percent, and prepare to adapt to the climatic changes that society will be unable to mitigate.
The report also states:
We call on all people and nations to recognise the serious and potentially irreversible impacts of global warming caused by the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants, and by changes in forests, wetlands, grasslands, and other land uses. We appeal to all nations to develop and implement, without delay, effective and fair policies to reduce the causes and impacts of climate change on communities and ecosystems, including mountain glaciers and their watersheds, aware that we all live in the same home. By acting now, in the spirit of common but differentiated responsibility, we accept our duty to one another and to the stewardship of a planet blessed with the gift of life.
We are committed to ensuring that all inhabitants of this planet receive their daily bread, fresh air to breathe and clean water to drink as we are aware that, if we want justice and peace, we must protect the habitat that sustains us. The believers among us ask God to grant us this wish.
While this could make for some interesting new political alignments stateside if the call is heeded, we'll have to wait and see if having the Vatican's seal of approval makes a dent in the minds of skeptics or not. Perhaps a nun with a ruler would give it more bite.
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