The Vatican’s Secretary of State has made an impassioned appeal to the international community to tackle global warming.
Cardinal Pietro Parolin sent a message to a UN summit on climate change, which was delivered by the Holy See’s Permanent Observer at the United Nations, Archbishop Francis Chullikatt.
The archbishop said that the evidence for global warming in the world was unequivocal and that climate change was principally the result of human behaviour.
“Prudence must prevail”, the Indian-born archbishop said.
He called for “a great political and economic commitment” to tackling levels of greenhouse gas emissions.
“There is no room for the globalisation of indifference, the economy of exclusion or the throwaway culture so often denounced by Pope Francis,” he said.
He called for “a profound and far-sighted revision of models of development and lifestyles”.
He also highlighted the “significant efforts” the Vatican City state had already made to reduce its consumption of fossil fuels through diversification and through energy efficiency projects.
But he said that such measures alone were not enough, adding that respect for the environment depended on respect for human dignity within society.