ROME — Pope Francis told CBS News this week that climate change deniers are “stupid” even in the face of compelling evidence of a climate emergency.
“Some people are stupid (necios), and stupid even if you show them research, they don’t believe it,” the pontiff told CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell when asked what he would say to the deniers of climate change.
“Why? Because they don’t understand the situation, or because of their interests, but climate change exists,” the 87-year-old pope asserted.
Pope Francis had never before sat down for an extensive interview, one-on-one, with a U.S. television network during the course of his 11-year pontificate.
CBS aired portions of the interview Wednesday night on the Evening News and has scheduled a longer version to air May 20 on “60 Minutes,” followed by an hourlong prime time special.
During the conversation, Francis was also asked what he thinks about those who describe the violence in Gaza as a “genocide.” The pontiff repeated the term “genocide” and then noted that he calls the Catholic parish in Gaza every evening at around 7:00pm Rome time for an update.
Pope Francis once again appealed for a concerted international effort to battle climate change Monday, insisting that no one is exempt from this task. https://t.co/sEkJne8tzj
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“There are about 600 people there, and they tell me what’s going on,” he said. “It’s very hard; it’s very hard.”
“Food goes in, but they have to fight for it,” he said. “It’s very hard.”
Pope Francis has been a vocal enthusiast for the war on climate change, calling global warming “one of the most serious and worrying phenomena of our time” and urging “drastic measures” to combat climate change.
“Now is the time to abandon our dependence on fossil fuels and move, quickly and decisively, towards forms of clean energy and a sustainable and circular economy,” he exhorted in September 2019. “Let us also learn to listen to indigenous peoples, whose age-old wisdom can teach us how to live in a better relationship with the environment.”
“While the situation is not good and the planet is suffering, the window of opportunity is still open,” he warned. “We are still in time. Let us not let it close.”
He has expressed his opinion that any skepticism regarding an alleged “climate emergency” is “perverse.”
The pope has also singled out the United States as particularly to blame for the “climate emergency,” despite the fact that it is one of the countries with the cleanest air in the world.
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“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,” he stated last October.
Among the “fools” denounced by the pope for their “perverse” skepticism of the climate crisis are a group of over 1,600 prominent scientists, including two Nobel Prize winners, who issued the “World Climate Declaration” last August, refuting the existence of a so-called “climate emergency.”
Among other things, the Declaration asserted that climate models have proven inadequate for predicting global warming, that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant, and that climate change has not increased natural disasters.
The world has warmed “significantly less than predicted by IPCC on the basis of modeled anthropogenic forcing,” the text states, and the gap between the real world and the modeled world “tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.”
“There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent,” the document declared. “However, there is ample evidence that CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly.”
“There is no climate emergency,” it concluded. “Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm.”
“We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. Go for adaptation instead of mitigation; adaptation works whatever the causes are,” it added.
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