Human Activities causing global warming

Pope Francis waves from the Popemobile during a July 2013 visit to Brazil.

A draft of Pope Francis’ long-awaited encyclical on climate change apparently links global warming to human activity, and exhorts all people – not just the faith’s roughly 1.2 billion Roman Catholics – to better respect the environment and act on climate change.

The letter – traditionally sent to bishops to address major issues of Catholic doctrine – had been scheduled to be made public by the Vatican on Thursday morning, but a 192-page draft written in Italian was leaked to the Italian magazine L’Espresso. A Vatican official told reporters that the document shared Monday was an “intermediate version, ” decrying the embargo break as a “heinous act.”

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The encyclical’s release was timed six months ahead of a major U.N. climate summit in Paris, suggesting it was meant to motivate nearly 200 countries participating in the talks to reach an international agreement to slow climate change and cut nations’ greenhouse gas emissions. It lambasts industry groups and lawmakers who deny science proves the existence of manmade global warming.

“Plenty of scientific studies point out that the last decades of global warming have been mostly caused by the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxide and others) especially generated by human action, ” the pope’s letter states, according to a partial translation by the Washington Post.

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An overwhelming number of scientists and peer-reviewed studies support the finding that heat-trapping carbon emissions generated by fossil fuel-burning power plants, vehicles and other human activities are behind the rise in global temperatures, causing more extreme storms and droughts.

The consequences pose an especially potent threat to the poor, the pope’s letter apparently argues, going on to say that they also stress nature and wildlife. Francis has made helping the poor an especially visible component of his papacy.

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Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and author of a book describing manmade climate change a “hoax, ” proved unimpressed last week ahead of the encyclical’s release.

“Everyone is going to ride the pope now. Isn’t that wonderful, ” Inhofe reportedly said Thursday during a conference hosted by climate-change denial group the Heartland Institute. “The pope ought to stay with his job, and we’ll stay with ours.”

Before joining seminary, Francis earned a degree as a chemical technician and worked in a chemical laboratory.

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