Before the next United Nations world conference on climate, representatives from the Church Catholic on each continent have signed this declaration. They ask the international community to take urgent measures to stop global warming.
The declaration has been promoted by Caritas Internationalis, The Global Catholic Climate
Movement, and CIDSE, a group of Catholic aid agencies.
MSGR. JEAN-CLAUDE HOLLERICH
Archbishop of Luxembourg
“You know how politics function, no? Politicians do things if they are elected. So we have to show that electors are very sensitive to all questions of ecology. This is because these are the real and urgent problems; and we have to address, and the politicians have to address these problems.”
MARTINA LIEBSH
Caritas Internationalis
'We still need to reinforce the message. We have Laudato si' as our inspiration, but I think there are still steps to be taken to truly reach the consciousness of the faithful.'
The world conference will be in December in Poland. Its goal is to limit the increase in global temperature to less than 2.7ºF. This requires a financial structural change. U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew his signature from the Paris Agreement, but other companies and institutions are applying on their own.
According to Germanwatch’s Global Climate Risk Index of 2017, the consequences will be disastrous in some corners of the planet.
Southeast Africa and the Caribbean are regions especially affected by the environmental changes. In India in 2015, heat waves claimed the lives of more than 2,000 people. They assure that high temperatures ruined their crops, which led to desperation. More than 60,000 peasants have suicide as a result in the last 30 years.
