On the Feast of St Francis of Assisi, Pope Francis promulgated his Apostolic Exhortation, Laudate Deum, expressly to complement his 2015 Encyclical, Laudato Si’. The encyclical was Francis’s admonition to address climate change. Laudate Deum is his much briefer complaint that we have not adequately heeded the charge of Laudato Si’. While he warns the Church that “certain apocalyptic diagnoses [are] scarcely reasonable”, this does not excuse us from taking responsible measures to care for the environment. “The world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point”. Indeed, “the situation is now even more pressing”.
Both in 2015 and 2023, the Holy Father has identified authentic crises and suggested valid theological principles for addressing them. I do not gainsay the empirical data he adduces or the implications he draws therefrom. Thermometers, barometers, and wind gauges do not lie. And the Pope should be credited for avoiding reductionist causal conclusions. “Admittedly, not every concrete catastrophe ought to be attributed to global climate change”, he rightly notes. Economic and political factors, having nothing to do with climate change, are responsible for many global calamities, including those related to poverty, migration, and refugee crises.
Moreover, Francis does not deny that long-term cyclical climate change must also be considered. That does not, however, excuse us from recognising more immediate impacts on climate change and thus from taking more direct measures to address its more proximate causes. And I applaud the Holy Father for his strong invocation of the social doctrine of solidarity, in declaring that environmental concerns are global and thus require international cooperation. “[W]hat happens in one part of the world has repercussions on the entire planet” he observes. “Everything is connected.” Thus, the Pope is quite correct to admonish “all people of good will” properly to care for the earth and its inhabitants.
Thus, I give two cheers for Laudate Deum. I withhold a third, however, for two reasons.
First, Pope Francis seems to think that the entire panacea for climate change, and thus the sole principle of sound ecological stewardship, is for highly developed economies to consume less. He summarises this attitude in the penultimate paragraph: “If we consider that emissions per individual in the United States are about two times greater than those of individuals living in China, and about seven times greater than the average of the poorest countries, we can state that a broad change in the irresponsible lifestyle connected with the Western model would have a significant long-term impact”.
Of course, this completely ignores the correlation of emissions to the manufacturing and distribution of the goods. In many cases, “emissions per individual” are a measure of efficiency and development rather than consumption and waste. It is the sort of reductionist assertion that gives ammunition to Pope Francis’s critics.
Second, the Holy Father does not address the theological problem at the heart of the crises of stewardship and conservation …
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