Switch to alternative energy — ‘No time to lose’!

The world needs a new kind of leadership that believes in building up the whole human family and protecting the environment, Pope Francis told a group of energy and oil executives and global investors.

Jun 24, 2018

By Carol Glatz
The world needs a new kind of leadership that believes in building up the whole human family and protecting the environment, Pope Francis told a group of energy and oil executives and global investors.

That also means using alternatives to fossil fuels for meeting everyone’s energy needs and mitigating the effects of global warming, he said.

“Civilisation requires energy, but energy use must not destroy civilisation,” he said in his address June 9 at the Vatican.

The Pope spoke to leaders taking part in a conference June 8-9 on Energy Transition and Care for Our Common Home, sponsored by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business in the United States.

The private conference invited executives of leading energy, petroleum and natural gas companies as well as leaders in investment firms. Among those taking part in the conference were Laurence Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock, an American multinational investment management corporation, Darren Woods, chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil and Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental Petroleum.

Francis thanked the attendees for participating in the meeting and said he hoped they had been able to “re-examine old assumptions and gain new perspectives.”

“We are challenged to find ways of ensuring the immense supply of energy required to meet the needs of all,” including the estimated more than 1 billion people who lack access to electricity, “while at the same time developing means of using natural resources that avoid creating environmental imbalances resulting in deterioration and pollution gravely harmful to our human family, both now and in the future,” he said.

It is not right that satisfying the “thirst” for energy in some parts of the world results in pollution, scarcer resources, poverty and social exclusion for others.

There is an urgent need, he said, “to devise a long-term global strategy able to provide energy security and, by laying down precise commitments to meet the problem of climate change, to encourage economic stability, public health, the protection of the environment and integral human development.” There needs to be a serious effort to transition to energy sources that are highly efficient while producing low levels of pollution, he added.

“This is a challenge of epochal proportions. At the same time, it is an immense opportunity to encourage efforts to ensure fuller access to energy by less-developed countries,” the Pope said, “as well as to diversify energy sources and promote the sustainable development of renewable forms of energy.”

“Our desire to ensure energy for all must not lead to the undesired effect of a spiral of extreme climate changes due to a catastrophic rise in global temperatures, harsher environments and increased levels of poverty,” he said. --CNS

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