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In recent talks at the Vatican, Pope Francis urged Donald Trump to meet the U.S. commitments on Climate change and gave the president a copy of his 2015 encyclical which calls for urgent and drastic cuts in fossil fuel emissions. The Pope’s choice of a gift situates him clearly among the many other figures already strongly advising Trump to rethink his position on Climate change.
The half-hour long meeting between the U.S. president and the head of Catholic church took place in Pope Francis’s private study. In its statement, the Vatican announced that the talks focused on international affairs and the promotion of peace, focusing especially on the issues of health care, education, and immigration.
After his infamous claims that Climate change might be a conspiracy perpetrated by the Chinese, Donald Trump is now willing to go back on the Paris accord which is the foundation of worldwide efforts to stop the very real and dangerous process of Climate change. The President is to travel to Brussels for a NATO meeting and is expected to say whether he will keep the U.S. in the Paris climate accord during the summit.
Trump will be pushed over the decision by French President Emmanuel Macron, as a part of a coordinated European effort to influence the U.S. leader. Trump is urged to stay by leaders from Germany, China, and many other nations. He is also being encouraged by business groups, including investors representing more than $17 trillion in assets, who recently released a statement saying that climate change must be now an “urgent priority,” warning Trump that pulling out of the pact would put U.S. companies at a disadvantage.
According to researchers, being the richest nation and the second largest polluter, U.S. decisions are central to keeping Climate change at bay and preventing it from hitting a point at which its effects would be irreversible and catastrophic.
“I won’t forget what you said,” Trump is reported to have said to the Pope after their meeting. We sincerely hope that Pope Francis’s intervention will, in fact, make a lasting impression on the president and cause him to finally rethink his stance on this severely burning issue, especially considering the disturbing and entirely irrefutable facts we now have access to.
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Image source: Long Thiên/Flickr + Joint Congressional Inauguration Committee/Wikimedia Commons
I can only hope that somehow Trump will listen to what this good man was telling him. I am not expecting it, but can only hope.
When is this Pope going to wake up and speak out on animal issues? All his focus is on climate change, why just that? "The indifferent way in which animals are treated–or completely ignored–in religious texts and traditions (and by the Pope) gives tacit permission to use and abuse them."
How many of you know that the late champion of animal rights, Tom Regan, tried and continued trying to enlist religious support for animal advocacy–TO NO AVAIL? In 2014 he published an Open Letter to Pope Francis, politely imploring "the holy father" to raise his voice on behalf of God\’s animals–WITHOUT SUCCESS. So what does that tell us?
Thanks a lot, Pope Francis!
I so agree with you Carola. It is a terrible oversight on the part of most of the major religions, and that is why I will not have anything to do with any church.
Good luck with that one! Trump thinks climate change is a hoax. I wish it was he who is a big big fat very bad joke.Well, he is but not the kind that one can pass off with a laugh. Thanks for trying, Pope Francis!