The silver lining

There is one valuable benefit that the shutdown has produced: Our air is purer: the practices warming our environment have been drastically cut back. Will we manage to maintain this when normal life resumes? It will require a massive change of heart and a totally different approach to politics, commerce, banking and social life. The austerity forced on us has given a glimpse of what we can do. It is a time to go back to Pope Francis’

Laudato Si

“A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system… This warming has been accompanied by a constant rise in the sea level and by an increase of extreme weather events. Most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases released mainly as a result of human activity. Concentrated in the atmosphere these gases do not allow the warmth of the sun’s rays reflected by the earth to be dispersed in space.

Humanity is called to recognise the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it... The problem is aggravated by a model of development based on the intensive use of fossil fuels which is at the heart of the worldwide energy system.

Para 23 Laudato Si