The mayor of Vancouver and the city’s Catholic archbishop teamed up Wednesday night to call for urgent action to combat climate change.
Mayor Gregor Robertson, who met this summer at the Vatican with Pope Francis to discuss ways to end environmental devastation, joined with Archbishop Michael Miller to press faith groups, businesses and politicians to dramatically reduce the use of fossil fuels.
“We have a common desire and intention to address the harm we have inflicted on the Earth. We have abused the gifts of God,” said Miller, who oversees more than 400,000 Roman Catholics throughout Metro Vancouver the Fraser Valley.
“The impacts of climate change are already taking place and are devastating,” Robertson told the roughly 250 aboriginals, environmentalists, charity group members and faith leaders who attended the symposium Wednesday evening at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre in Vancouver.
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The event was organized to draw attention to Pope Francis’ recent document on the environment, titled Laudato Si, which critiqued global capitalist greed and industry’s wanton disrespect for the environment and the poor, whom it maintained suffer the most because of climate change.
“We have a common desire and intention to address the harm we have inflicted on the Earth. We have abused the gifts of God,” said Archbishop Michael Miller.
Robertson, who was the only Canadian among 60 big-city mayors to be invited to the two-day July forum with Pope Francis, told the Vancouver audience that 2014 was the hottest year on record in modern history and that 2015 is shaping up to be hotter still.
Even though Robertson said the Pope had a devastating critique of capitalism and economic inequality, the mayor said he felt more hopeful after meeting the pontiff. He added he is encouraged by how green-energy industries are now contributing more to job creation and many economies than the fossil-fuel industry.
The archbishop, who emphasized that Catholicism has been engaged in a fruitful dialogue with scientists for many years, said it’s become painfully clear that humans are not meant to have “dominion” over nature, but to recognize they are “inter-related” with the Earth, which Pope Francis referred to as “our Sister-Mother.”
Both Robertson and Miller stressed that the world’s politicians need to make a bold commitment to combatting fossil-fuel pollution at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, which is set to begin in Paris in late November.
“We’re trying to get 1,000 mayors from around the world to go to Paris, which would be unprecedented,” Robertson said.
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NOTE TO READERS: This is just a quick report on last night’s meeting. I will be writing a more detailed analysis for Friday’s newspaper.
Filed under: The Search Tagged: Archbishop, Climate Change, global warming, Gregor Robertson, Mayor Gregor Robertson, Politics, Pope Francis, religion, Roman Catholicism, Roman Catholics, science, Vancouver
