With Laudato Si in 2015, Pope Francis made one of the most important interventions in the climate debate. Alongside Al Gore and Greta Thunberg, he is one of a handful of people who genuinely moved the needle on climate change.
That’s what everyone remembers, though if you’ve read Laudato Si you’ll know it is much more than a climate intervention. It’s about how we live together, about social justice and power, poverty and technocracy. Climate was one of several important themes.
Last week Pope Francis published a new essay and this time it is specifically about climate change – a first from the Vatican. It’s called Laudate Deum and you can find it in full here.
As before, the essay deals with climate change in a broader ethical context. After summarising the science and the effects of climate change, the document turns to underlying causes and our failure to act with the urgency the crisis deserves. “Regrettably, the climate crisis is not exactly a matter that interests the great economic powers, whose concern is with the greatest profit possible at minimal cost and in the shortest amount of time.”
Francis identifies the drive for profit and for power as underlying causes of our ongoing failure. We seek infinite human power despite living in a world of limits.
“Without a doubt, the natural resources required by technology, such as lithium, silicon and so many others, are not unlimited, yet the greater problem is the ideology underlying an obsession: to increase human power beyond anything imaginable, before which nonhuman reality is a mere resource at its disposal. Everything that exists ceases to be a gift for which we should be thankful, esteem and cherish, and instead becomes a slave, prey to any whim of the human mind and its capacities.”
This drive for power animates our economics as well:
“This situation has to do not only with physics or biology, but also with the economy and the way we conceive it. The mentality of maximum gain at minimal cost, disguised in terms of reasonableness, progress and illusory promises, makes impossible any sincere concern for our common home and any real preoccupation about assisting the poor and the needy discarded by our society.”
The letter concludes with hopes for the upcoming COP28 talks, and how Catholics can respond to the challenge of the crisis. He invites us to participate in a “pilgrimage of reconciliation with the world that is our home.”
I have picked a few highlights that speak to the new economics that we explore here at Joy in Enough, but there is a richness of thought to Laudate Deum that is worth reading and considering in more detail. Take some time to read it, and let us know what struck you most, and what you will be taking away to think about some more.
Joy in Enough 