Laudato Si’ needs to shake politicians into action

The publication by Pope Francis of Laudato Si’: On the care of our common home is a huge contribution to the debate on the environment around the world.

Caritas aid agencies such as Sciaf, the Scottish Catholic bishops’ charity accompany people in poor countries through the daily hardships they face as they are hit by climate change. Unpredictable rains leave families not knowing when to plant their seeds, while flash floods can wash away their fledgling crops or a drought can destroy their harvest.

Through our international networks of Catholic charities such as Caritas and CIDSE, as well as through our national campaigning coalitions, we’ve been calling on world leaders to take action to promote the common good and address climate change for years. Unfortunately, to date, their actions have fallen well short of what’s needed.

Yesterday Sciaf, along with Cafod and many other groups, took part in a mass lobby of our new MPs to urge them to act on climate change. Today, reading Laudato Si’, I have renewed hope that the strength of language used by Pope Francis on the failure of leadership in this arena will spur leaders into acting for the common good and in solidarity with the poorest people.

Pope Francis brings together 50 years of Catholic teaching on creation, justice and the common good. He overlays this with a lyrical sense of the beauty of nature as a hymn to God, and a deep practical understanding of the impact a degraded environment has on the poorest people and on social cohesion. For me, his greatest insight is on the interconnectedness of all things and the inability of technology to address such complex problems. Only people, working and talking together, can find solutions to the challenges we face. There is no quick fix.

Pope Francis challenges us all to look at our lives and our actions in the light of the common good. He reminds us that it’s the world’s poorest people who are bearing the brunt of a problem created by the mass consumption of the rich, driven by our unbalanced global economic system which puts profit before people. We have a responsibility to live more simply.

The encyclical is carefully timed to have an impact in the short term as well as contributing to Catholic teaching in the long term. In December a United Nations Summit in Paris will aim to secure a new global deal to tackle climate change. This will be a vital step in setting all nations on a course to keep global temperatures from rising above 1.5oC. The summit must also result in poorer countries getting the help they need to adapt to the climate challenges they face and enable them to develop on a low-carbon path.

Re-invigorated by Pope Francis’ new encyclical, Sciaf will be joining people of goodwill worldwide to urge Prime Minister David Cameron and other leaders to ensure that every country does its bit to tackle climate change and global poverty.

Philippa Bonella is Sciaf’s Head of Communications and Education