While United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other global warming activists addressed a bevy of political and ecclesiastical heavyweights at the Vatican-sponsored international symposium on climate change in Rome on April 28, another group of scientists and policy experts met nearby to express their dissent and to urge Pope Francis to reconsider the perilous path he is trodding.
In his address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Ban Ki-moon stressed that “climate change is the defining issue of our time.” “Responding to it effectively is essential for sustainable development,” he averred.
The UN secretary-general continued: “Climate change is intrinsically linked to public health, food and water security, migration, peace and security. It is a moral issue. It is an issue of social justice, human rights and fundamental ethics. We have a profound responsibility to the fragile web of life on this Earth, and to this generation and those that will follow.”
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“If ever there were an issue that requires unity of purpose, it is climate change,” Ban Ki-moon insisted. “Science tells us we are far off track from reducing global emissions sufficient to keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius. We are currently on course for a rise of 4-5 degrees Celsius. This would alter life on Earth as we know it.This is morally indefensible. It contradicts our responsibility to be good stewards of creation.”
In a “prebuttal” on April 27 organized by the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based libertarian think tank, climate experts exposed the scientific fallacies and anti-Christian agenda promoted by the UN-led confab. Meeting at the Hotel Columbus, about a block from St. Peter’s Square, the speakers warned that the Vatican was in danger of making “an Unholy Alliance” with climate fear promoters. On April 28, Heartland held a second counter-event for the press and public to further explain the dangers posed by the UN fearmongering over “climate change” and to argue that it is wrong for Christian leaders to lend the cloak of moral authority to this effort. Experts speaking at the Heartland conference included:
• Dr. Richard Keen of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado;
• Harold Doiron, retired NASA physicist/engineer and current NASA consultant;
• Marc Morano, former communications director for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and founder of the watchdog website Climate Depot;
• Elisabeth Yore, an international children’s rights attorney and expert witness in human trafficking;
• Lord Christopher Monckton, chief policy advisor to the Science and Public Policy Institute and former special advisor to Margaret Thatcher when she served as U.K. prime minister from 1982 to 1986;
• Dr. Thomas Sheahen, director of the St. Louis-based Institute for Theological Encounter with Science and Technology;
• Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, founder and national spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance, a Biblically-based public policy network of inter-faith religious leaders and scholars dedicated to free-market solutions to economic, social, and environmental challenges; and
• Jim Lakely, director of communications at the Heartland Institute and former White House correspondent for the Washington Times.
Dr. Keene, a professor of meteorology, told the Heartland conference that the “solutions” proposed by the UN are “like using surgery to solve a sniffles. It’s bad on two counts. The cure is worse than the ailment and number two, the cure does not even fix the ailment. So why bother? All of these draconian policies that would increase world poverty would be flawed policies that would fail to solve a non-existent problem.”
In his message for Pope Francis, retired NASA scientist Hal Doiron said: “I am here to report today: Houston we do not have a problem. It is impossible to think global warming will cause any problem especially when you look at the benefits of adding CO2 to the atmosphere.”
Climate Depot’s Marc Morano said he is concerned that Pope Francis “appears to be about to take an extra step that other Popes have not. That extra step is to endorse a UN climate treaty. This is a game changer from previous Popes and previous Vatican statements.” Morano continued: “The Pope is essentially going to replace Leonardo DiCaprio at this year’s UN climate summit in New York City to speak on behalf of the UN to lobby for a climate treaty. So Leonardo DiCaprio in 2014, to Pope Francis in 2015. This will sow confusion among Catholics in America [and] around the world.”
Morano noted:
We already have a phenomena that many Catholics recognize — a la carte Catholicism — where Catholics pick and choose which doctrine they want to follow. With the Pope coming out with such strong statements on global warming and endorsing a UN treaty … the Vatican is essentially going to confuse Catholics into thinking that their positions on man-made global warming fears are now an article of faith — are now part of Catholic doctrine.
This is nothing short of an “Unholy Alliance” between the Vatican and the man-made climate fear promoters. One of the greatest friends of poor people around the world — an estimated 1.3 billion people who lack running water and electricity — is carbon based fuels.
When the Pontifical Academy of Science announced the Vatican-UN summit, it said the event’s objective is to produce “a joint statement on the moral and religious imperative of sustainable development, highlighting the intrinsic connection between respect for the environment and respect for people — especially the poor, the excluded, victims of human trafficking and modern slavery, children, and future generations.”
Attorney Elisabeth Yore, who has been an international children’s rights advocate for 30 years, called the UN-Vatican statement “preposterous” and “deceptive,” noting there’s no connection between climate change and human trafficking.
“This declaration of an intrinsic connection, a nexus between climate change and human trafficking is on its face, preposterous, deceptive and infinitely damaging to the plight of victims of human trafficking around the world,” Yore said. “This fallacious statement links a real human crisis of modern slavery with a manufactured one of climate change.” Yore argued that trafficking is growing for other reasons, such as war and sex-selective abortions. “Abortion, not climate change, is fueling the industry of human slavery,” she said.
Yore also blasted Columbia University professor and UN advisor Jeffrey Sachs, who is one of the guiding lights behind the UN-Vatican climate gambit. Sachs and the UN, she said, are opposed to the “precious and profound tenets of the Catholic Church regarding the sacredness of life and human dignity.” Yore, who is a Catholic, said “It is perplexing that abortion and reproductive rights zealots like, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and Jeffrey Sachs, the Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network are prominently highlighted at this Catholic Conference in anticipation of Pope Francis’ Environmental Encyclical.”
“As a Catholic,” said Yore, “I am deeply troubled by the recommendations and policies promulgated over the last 20 years by Jeffrey Sachs, in his various roles at the United Nations. As Director of the UN Millennium Development Goals, and now, as director of UN Sustainable Development Solutions, his rabid advocacy of abortion, and reproductive health services are in direct contravention of the moral teaching of the Catholic Church.”
In his latest book, Sustainable Development, published this year, Dr. Sachs states: “The legality of abortion also plays an evident role as well. Different societies have widely divergent views about abortion, but the data suggests that those countries with legalized abortion tend to have lower observed fertility rates than countries where abortion is illegal.”
“I find it incomprehensible that the Vatican would be misled into thinking that the UN and the Vatican share common solutions,” she said. “The Church welcomes children as a gift from God, when the United Nations and Sachs want to limit the number of children.”
Meanwhile, on April 27, the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation released “An Open Letter to Pope Francis on Climate Change” signed by more than 100 scientists, economists, and religious leaders expressing opposition to the worldview and central-planning agenda put forward by the UN’s anthropogenic (manmade) global warming, or AGW, alarmists.
Photo of Pope Francis: AP Images
Related articles:
How Green Was My Vatican: Statement from the Papal Environmental Conference
Scientists’ Message to Pope: Be Skeptical of Climate Change Alarm
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