Efforts to slow climate change and mitigate its impact, particularly on the poor, are being thwarted by selfishness, the Vatican secretary of state has told world leaders at the COP29 climate conference. Source: Angelus News.
Representing Pope Francis at the conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, Cardinal Pietro Parolin told the leaders that their November 11-22 gathering was taking place at a time of “growing disillusionment with multilateral institutions and dangerous tendencies to build walls”.
But, he said, “selfishness – individual, national and of power groups – feeds a climate of mistrust and division that does not respond to the needs of an interdependent world in which we should act and live as members of one family inhabiting the same interconnected global village”.
Ignoring or denying the problem will not make the problem go away, the cardinal said.
The cardinal’s text, released at the Vatican yesterday, assured participants of Pope Francis’ “closeness, support and encouragement so that COP29 may succeed in demonstrating that there is an international community ready to look beyond particularisms and to place at the centre the good of humanity and our common home, which God has entrusted to our care and responsibility”.
The discussions in Baku were taking place amid concerns that President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accords, as he did during his first term, and to dismantle many current environmental regulations.
One key goal of COP29 is to secure the financing needed to support the urgent climate action called for in the 2015 Paris Agreement and to assist poor communities when climate-related disasters strike.
Cardinal Parolin told participants that efforts must be made to find ways to mitigate climate change and its impact without further undermining “the development and adaptive capacity of many countries that are already burdened with crippling economic debt”.
He said Pope Francis had appealed to the world’s wealthiest countries to give foreign debt relief to the world’s poorest countries during the Holy Year 2025.
FULL STORY
Selfishness is blocking progress on climate change, cardinal says (By Cindy Wooden, CNS via Angelus News)
