Will These Five High Profile Catholics Head For Confession Over Pope’s Climate Encyclical?

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Series: Koch vs Pope

The Roman Catholic Church did some catching up last week with a clear and definitive statement calling for decisive action on global greenhouse gasย emissions.

In Pope Francisโ€™ โ€œencyclicalโ€, the head of the worldโ€™s one billion or so Catholics described climate change as โ€œone of the principal challenges facingย humanityโ€.

In Laudato Siโ€™ โ€“ On Care For Our Common Home, the Pope set out the strong moral case for action.ย He wrote: โ€œWe know that technology based on the use of highly polluting fossil fuels โ€“ especially coal, but also oil and, to a lesser degree, gas โ€“ needs to be progressively replaced withoutย delay.โ€

The Pope quoted Patriarch Bartholemew, spiritual leader of the worldโ€™s 300 million Orthodox Christians, who had described acts of polluting the environment and causing climate change asย โ€œsinsโ€.

The Popeโ€™s 183-page document even issued a thinly-veiled attack on the fossil fuel industry and governments siding with them when he wrote that โ€œtoo many special interests, and economic interestsโ€ were โ€œtrumping the common good and manipulating information so that their own plans will not be affectedโ€.ย Heย wrote,

Regrettably, many efforts to seek concrete solutions to the environmental crisis have proved ineffective, not only because of powerful opposition but also because of a more general lack of interest. Obstructionist attitudes, even on the part of believers, can range from denial of the problem to indifference, nonchalant resignation or blind confidence in technicalย solutions.

But there are some high profile and influential Catholics around the globe who will have been shifting uncomfortably on their pews after reading the Pope’s message โ€” especially those who still deny that human-caused climate chnage is even aย thing.

Letโ€™s hear their confessions (not actualย confessions).

Cardinal Georgeย Pell

One can only guess what Cardinal Pell thinks of his Popeโ€™s statements on tackling climate change, but perhaps he muttered something about pagans under his breath.

Pell,ย who heads the Vaticanโ€™s financial secretariat,ย once said that the kind of concerns about the urgent threat of climate change expressed by the Pope were, in his view, a โ€œsymptom of paganย emptinessโ€.

In a 2011 speech to UK-based climate science denial group the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Pell said: โ€œSome of those campaigning to save the planet are not merely zealous but zealots. To the religionless and spiritually rootless, mythology โ€” whether comforting or discomforting โ€” can be magnetically, even pathologically,ย attractive.โ€

In the speech, Pell claimed the science linking climate change to rising carbon dioxide emissions lacked empirical support and said that CO2 was โ€œnot a pollutant, but the stuff ofย lifeโ€.

Climate scientists described Pellโ€™s speech as โ€œutter rubbishโ€ andย โ€œflawedโ€.

Pellโ€™s Confession: ย Forgive me Holy Fatherโ€ฆ I donโ€™t really think youโ€™re a pagan, or religionless, or spiritually rootless, or aย zealot.

Marcoย Rubio

Marco Rubio has dabbled with Mormonism, evangelical Christianity and more recently, appears to have settled into Roman Catholicism.

The 2016 hopeful for the Republican presidential nomination looks to be trying to play to the climate science denialists in the Republican ranks when he chooses to dodge the question of whether humans cause climate change and if something should be done about it.ย The Florida Senatorโ€™s position was described by the Washington Post as โ€œintellectually hollowโ€.ย 

Earlier this year, Rubio joined other Republicans to vote against an amendment stating that humans caused climate change.

Another Catholic in the race for the Republican presidential nomination is Jeb Bush, who also has a history of denying the science of climateย change.

A rhetorical question comes to mind.ย  Is the Pope Catholic?ย  Do Republicans deny climate changeย science?

GOP Confession: Forgive us Holy Fatherโ€ฆ we accepted 78 per cent of all the donations made by coal and oil companies in the current US congress soโ€ฆ youย know.

Gregย Boyce

Greg Boyce is the executive chairman of Peabody Energy, the worldโ€™s largest privately owned coalย company.

Peabody has been trying harder than any other energy company in the world to recast their product as the answer to global energy poverty, rather than the key cause of climate change.

Appearing before a House of Representatives committee in April 2010, Boyce was evasive when asked repeatedly if carbon dioxide was causing climate change, choosing instead to talk about โ€œclean coalโ€ and โ€œgreenย coalโ€.

In Peabodyโ€™s annual reports for 2013 and 2014, the company refuses to endorse that its coal has an impact on the climate, describing those impacts as โ€œperceivedโ€ rather thanย reality.

In April 2015, Boyce again dismissed climate change, describing the issue as being โ€œpredicted by flawed computer modelsโ€.ย Boyce has repeatedly argued his companyโ€™s products are the only genuine answer to lifting the worldโ€™s poor out of poverty, an argument contradicted by the Pope’sย encyclical.

Peabody also launched the โ€œAdvanced Energy for Lifeโ€ advertising campaign to push thisย argument.

In exchanges with The Guardian newspaper, Peabodyโ€™s vice-president of corporate communications Viv Svec said climate change was a โ€œmodelled crisisโ€, adding: โ€œClimate concerns are a threat, to the extent that they lead to policies that hurtย peopleโ€.

Boyceโ€™s confession: Forgive me Holy Fatherโ€ฆ I tried to tell everyone our products were good news for the worldโ€™s poor, when theyโ€™re really theย opposite.

Tonyย Abbott

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott once said the science of climate change was โ€œabsolute crapโ€ and believes that โ€œcoal is good for humanityโ€.

From 1984 to 1987, Abbott studied to be a Catholic priest and has been described as one of the most overtly devout political leaders in Australiaโ€™sย history.

Abbott now claims to accept that carbon dioxide causes climate change, but doesnโ€™t accept that rising temperatures are linked to an increase in the risk of bushfires in his country.ย Abbott, who counts Cardinal George Pell as a mentor, has continued to defend his countryโ€™s powerful coalย industry.

Abbottโ€™s handpicked top business advisor Maurice Newman thinks climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the United Nations to help them impose a worldย government.

Earlier this month Abbott said that wind turbines were โ€œvisually awfulโ€ despite apparentlyย only ever seeing one single turbine upย close.

Abbottโ€™s Confession: Forgive me Holy Fatherโ€ฆ I said coal was โ€œgood for humanityโ€ and I gave Maurice Newman aย job.

Seanย Hannity

Devout Catholic and high profile conservative radio and television host Sean Hannity shares the disdain for climate science of many of his co-hosts on Foxย News.

Hannity has regularly argued that the science linking climate change to human activity is uncertain.ย 

On his radio show in January 2014, Hannity told one caller: โ€œI donโ€™t care what your liberal friends say. I think global warming is aย hoax.โ€

Hannity offered a conspiracy theory that scientists had altered temperature data โ€œso that they could make a politicalย pointโ€.

The Popeโ€™s encyclical on climate change is unlikely to have much of an impact on Hannity, who has reportedly rowed with the church previously over his support for birth control.

Hannity is just one of many climate science denying hosts on Fox News, owned by a company chaired by another climate science denier, Rupertย Murdoch.

Murdochโ€™s media outlets have been a key to spreading climate misinformation around the globe, providing forums to virulent climate science denial particularly in the US andย Australia.

While Murdoch is not Catholic, he did receive a so-called โ€œpapal knighthoodโ€ in 1998 from Pope John Paul II.

Hannityโ€™s confessional: Forgive me Holy Fatherโ€ฆ I really should have checked before promoting that guy who thought global cooling was coming.

Main Image: Flickr/Aleteia Image Department,ย Hannity and Rubio images: Flickr/Gage Skidmore,ย Pell image: Flickr/Catechista 2.0,ย Abbott image: Flickr/Troy, Boyce image: Flickr/United Way of Greater Stย Louis

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