ROME — Pope Francis told an environmental group this week that he has banned plastic in the Vatican and the small city-state is now “93 percent plastic-free.”
In his meeting with participants in the Green and Blue Festival celebrating World Environment Day, the pontiff said that battling climate change is “an immense and demanding challenge,” because it requires “a change of course, a decisive shift in the current model of consumption and production, all too often entrenched in the “throwaway” culture that is indifferent towards both the environment and people.”
The pope also praised the McDonald’s Corporation, asserting that they, too, “have abolished plastic and use only recyclable paper, for everything.”
“These are steps, real steps that we have to continue,” he added.
Francis argued that the Paris Climate Conference in 2015 had been a “very constructive meeting” because it was so “high level,” yet after Paris, “I am concerned.”
When it comes to saving the environment and protecting nature, “the impact of the choices and actions made in this current decade will be felt for thousands of years,” he contended.
The pope also said that the phenomenon of climate change “particularly affects the poorest and weakest who have contributed least to its occurrence,” which makes combating it “first a question of justice and then of solidarity.”
“Climate change also calls us to base our actions on responsible cooperation on the part of everyone, for our world is now thoroughly interdependent and cannot allow itself to be divided into blocs of countries that promote their own interests in an isolated or unsustainable way,” he declared.
The pope has been adopting stronger rhetoric to describe what he sees as a climate emergency around the globe, often employing the apocalyptic language encouraged by climate alarmists to frighten people into taking action.
In his 2019 Message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, for instance, he asserted that human beings have caused “a climate emergency that gravely threatens nature and life itself.”
“Too many of us act like tyrants with regard to creation,” he said. “Let us make an effort to change and to adopt more simple and respectful lifestyles!”
“Now is the time to abandon our dependence on fossil fuels and move, quickly and decisively, towards forms of clean energy and a sustainable and circular economy. Let us also learn to listen to indigenous peoples, whose age-old wisdom can teach us how to live in a better relationship with the environment,” he added.
In that message, the pope said that the environment itself is endangered by “egoism and self-interest.”
The devastating effects of climate change “testify to the urgent need for interventions that can no longer be postponed,” he declared.