Writing in the journal Nature, a group of scientists have documented that temperatures in the Antarctic Peninsula have been falling steadily for the last 18 years at the rate of nearly one degree Fahrenheit per decade, countering earlier warming trends.
In a surprising turn of events, global warming doomsayers have turned their attention to cattle, as environmentalists have been compelled to acknowledge that “livestock emissions” are more dangerous for the environment than automobiles.
Cosmopolitan Magazine warns that 2016 will be a big year for shark attacks around the world and global warming is to blame. In a Cosmo essay shared with Esquire Magazine, Sarah Rense writes that last year saw “a record number
In a surprise visit Sunday to Rome’s Villa Borghese park for a celebration of Italy’s Earth Day, Pope Francis delivered an impromptu message, telling his audience to go through the world turning deserts into forests.
San Francisco’s Pier 96 is attracting worldwide attention to its recycling plant, Recology, which is one of the world’s most advanced.
On Saturday evening, Saint Peter’s Basilica will commemorate “Earth Hour” by switching off all the lights on its iconic façade and dome, joining a host of other world monuments in demonstrating “concern for the future of our planet.” From 8:30
On Thursday, Pope Francis met with Titanic star Leonardo DiCaprio in the Vatican, where the two reportedly discussed the care of the environment, among other things.
In an address before the United Nations Office in Nairobi Thursday, Pope Francis reiterated his environmental message, declaring that it would be “sad, and I dare say even catastrophic,” were particular interests to prevail over the common good at the
A major Italian weekly magazine, L’Espresso, is attributing mass migrations into Europe from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and North Africa to global warming, warning that a legally binding agreement at the upcoming climate conference in Paris is necessary in order to preserve world peace.
In a rare recognition of the abuses of radical environmentalism, Pope Francis condemned the immanentism of a form of ecology that refuses to look beyond creation to discover the glory of its Creator.
Long one of the world’s worst polluters, a large part of mainland China is now surrounded by a pall of unbreathable smog that at times reaches levels of particulates 50 times higher than the maximum levels set by the World Health Organization.
In the lead-up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris next month, a group of cardinals, patriarchs and bishops have called for a radical, legally binding international climate agreement that mandates, among other things, complete global decarbonization by 2050 and “an end to the fossil fuel era.”
A Reuters piece Tuesday accuses certain U.S. bishops of open opposition to Pope Francis’ call for respect for the environment, citing several new contracts for drilling rights to oil and gas companies.
In a meeting with environment ministers of the European Union, Pope Francis urged the adoption of UN sustainable development goals later this month as well as intensified preparation for the “COP21” in Paris.
In their write-up on the poll, Associated Press journalists Rachel Zoll and Emily Swanson wondered aloud how American bishops and priests could be so negligent in carrying the Pope’s words to their flocks. The writers lament that early on “questions arose about whether American bishops and parishioners would embrace the message with any enthusiasm.”
As Breitbart News reported in “Pot Tax: Sacramento Politicians ‘Jonesing’ for a Spending Fix,” the Democrat-controlled California Legislature is desperate for marijuana taxes, which could arise from a 2016 ballot initiative legalizing marijuana, in hopes of gaining a consistent new tax revenue source. But the California Department of Fish and Wildlife estimates that illegal pot growing is drying up watersheds and causing some at-risk fisheries to approach collapse.
A two-day Vatican workshop on climate change and human trafficking came to a close Wednesday after a like-minded group of some 60 mayors from around the world met with Church officials and United Nations representatives to discuss a coordinated response to environmental challenges.
California Governor Jerry Brown mounted his bully pulpit at the Vatican Tuesday, citing the Bible and excoriating climate change skeptics as greedy swindlers more interested in profits from oil than the well-being of humanity.
A city ordinance banning the use of horses to pull the traditional carriages around Rome went into effect Thursday, in response to a wave of 100+ degree weather that is said to threaten the horses’s lives.
The United States will be heavily represented at the workshop, with its eleven politicians making up nearly 20 percent of the total participants. There will be no one participating from some of the countries with the worst record of polluting the environment, including Russia, China and the former Soviet Republics.
The Fresno Bee has published an editorial blasting marijuana growers, noting the environmental impact of marijuana farms around the state of California and the catastrophic ecological impact effect of 18 years of medical marijuana legalization, including “exacerbating the drought.”
Naomi Klein, a Canadian environmental crusader who describes herself as a “secular Jewish Feminist,” addressed Vatican officials Wednesday, bashing “economic experts” who place “outsized value on protecting corporate profits and economic growth” rather than the poor, who she said will
In a recent interview, Bishop Mario Toso, who co-wrote the first draft of the papal encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si’, denied that Pope Francis had any intention of “canonizing” scientific theories regarding climate change, but only wished to assert his authority on the moral level.
Pope Francis’ controversial encyclical letter on the environment may already be having an effect on US politicians, according to Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski, who said Wednesday that the Pope’s words have softened the climate rhetoric of two Republican presidential hopefuls: Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio.
In a truly bizarre reversal of roles, in the course of just a week the New York Times has gone from being the Church’s most trenchant detractor to being an ardent enforcer of Catholic doctrine, polling Catholics to find out whether or not their parish priests are preaching about the Pope’s new encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si’.
Franco Prodi, a celebrated Italian atmospheric physicist and brother to former Italian Premier Romano Prodi, advises caution and humility when dealing with global warming, since we still know very little about the history of climate change and far less about its future.
Rarely has the Vatican reacted more swiftly to a journalistic fiasco than it did this week, banning veteran Italian journalist Sandro Magister from the Holy See Press Office and revoking his accreditation just hours after Magister published online a leaked version of the letter.
In no fewer than 17 tweets as of this printing, Pope Francis has begun e-blasting excerpts from his new encyclical letter on environmental stewardship, calling above all for an “honest debate” on the situation of the environment and what society can do about it.
Nothing ever happens in a vacuum. Pope Francis’ ongoing concern for environmental issues, which will attain its fullest expression with the release of his encyclical on human ecology Thursday, has deep roots in his own personal experience, especially as archbishop of Buenos Aires, home to one of the most polluted places on the planet.
There are still many organizations in the world that require employees to take an oath of secrecy regarding the information they are privy to, and the Vatican is one of them. It would seem that oath-taking, however, has come to mean little.
The Pope has insisted that the poor are the ones who suffer most from systematically trashing the environment, and there certainly does seem to be a remarkable correlation between poverty and pollution.
The Jesuit flagship publication La Civiltà Cattolica has released a prefatory essay on the theology of the environment to prepare Catholics—and the world—for the Pope’s upcoming encyclical on human ecology. Rather than seriously entertain the objections of climate change skeptics and others who have expressed concerns about the Pope’s letter, however, the article cavalierly dismisses them as unworthy of consideration.
A Vatican insider asserts that Pope Francis has scrapped the draft of his encyclical letter on the environment and sent it back for major revision. The letter was slated for publication in early summer, but now may not be ready until much later, he suggests.
Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga lambasted “movements in the United States” that have expressed criticism of the Pope’s upcoming encyclical letter on the environment, calling it “absurd” to disparage a document that has not yet been released.
A group of like-minded thinkers meeting at the Vatican for a workshop on climate change have issued a final statement, making a series of bold proclamations on the environment and issuing an alarming ultimatum that the climate summit in Paris later this year “may be the last effective opportunity” to keep global warming from reaching “devastating” levels.
The Pope gave further indications as to the content of his upcoming letter on the environment Saturday, as he addressed a group from the Italian National Farmers Confederation. Francis told his hearers that in their work of cultivating the land, they were responding to God’s commission “to till and keep” the earth.
