ROME — In his annual Christmas message, Pope Francis has warned of the “devastating effects of climate change” while decrying the “extremely grave” humanitarian situation in Gaza.
The pontiff pronounced his yearly Christmas Urbi et Orbi message and blessing in Saint Peter’s Square Wednesday, calling for international debt forgiveness and an end to war in Ukraine and the Middle East.
He also denounced the humanitarian crisis facing Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and Mozambique.
The cause of the crisis is mainly “armed conflicts and the scourge of terrorism,” Francis said, but then added that the ordeal is aggravated by “the devastating effects of climate change.”
He went on to make the astonishing claim that climate change has resulted in “the loss of life and the displacement of millions of people,” a contention for which there is no evidence whatsoever.
The pope is a firm believer in the alleged “climate crisis,” insisting that global warming presents a significant risk to all “life on earth.”
Last May, Francis warned that climate change has become a “planetary crisis,” claiming that billions face “an extremely high risk of climate-related devastation.”
The data on climate change “is getting worse every year,” putting “all human beings in grave danger,” he told a group gathered in the Vatican for a climate conference.
Climate change — together with biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, global disparities, and food insecurity — poses “existential threats to humanity, to other living beings, and to all ecosystems,” the pope argued.
“The specter of climate change looms over every aspect of existence, threatening water, air, food and energy systems,” he maintained, adding that more than three and a half billion people “live in regions that are highly sensitive to the ravages of climate change.”
This “planetary crisis” demands “a universal approach and swift and decisive action, capable of producing political change and decisions,” he urged.
We need to “aim for global decarbonization, eliminating dependence on fossil fuels,” he exhorted.
“We need to act urgently – urgently!” he concluded, “because the stakes couldn’t be higher.”
In August, 2023, however, a group of over 1,600 prominent scientists, including two Nobel Prize winners, issued the “World Climate Declaration,” denying the existence of a so-called “climate emergency.”
Among other things, the Declaration asserted that climate models have proven inadequate for predicting global warming, that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant, and that climate change has not aggravated natural disasters.
The world has warmed “significantly less than predicted by IPCC on the basis of modeled anthropogenic forcing,” the text stated, and the gap between the real world and the modeled world “tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.”
“There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent,” the document declared. “However, there is ample evidence that CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly.”
“There is no climate emergency,” it concluded. “Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm.”
“We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. Go for adaptation instead of mitigation; adaptation works whatever the causes are,” it added.