I explained here why I was not a fan of Pope Francis: too often, he substituted trendy but ill-informed leftism for theology. One of the many areas where he did this was energy and the environment; as so often happened, he had strong opinions but was woefully short on information. Energy expert Robert Bryce explains:
His 2023 apostolic exhortation, “Laudate Deum,” reads like it was written by Greta Thunberg and a horde of Brussels-based bureaucrats. Francis claims that “millions of people are losing their jobs due to different effects of climate change: rising sea levels, droughts, and other phenomena affecting the planet have left many people adrift. Conversely, the transition to renewable forms of energy, properly managed, as well as efforts to adapt to the damage caused by climate change, are capable of generating countless jobs in different sectors.”
Millions are losing their jobs due to climate change? Where, exactly, is that happening? If the transition is “properly managed,” it could create “countless jobs”? Really? Doing what? Putting solar panels on convent rooftops? Who will ensure “proper” management? Germany? Francis didn’t back up any of those extravagant claims. Laudate Deum contains 44 footnotes. That paragraph doesn’t have a single citation.
Francis claimed to be a champion of the poor, but the policies he advocated would have devastated poor people around the world:
Francis’ main felony appears in paragraph 55, where he claims, “the necessary transition towards clean energy sources such as wind and solar energy, and the abandonment of fossil fuels, is not progressing at the necessary speed.”
Let’s ignore the foolishness of attempting to run the global economy on the incurably intermittent energy provided by the wind and sun. Let’s also ignore the landscape-obliterating, bird-and-bat-killing, farmland-paving energy sprawl that comes with large alt-energy projects. Instead, let’s focus on hydrocarbons. Claiming we should give up coal, oil, and natural gas — which, according to the latest IEA data, provide 80% of all global energy — ignores physics, economics, and the needs of the world’s poorest people.
What follows is something most people–including, no doubt, Pope Francis–don’t know (see original for links):
According to the United Nations, about 660 million people still have no access to electricity. Further, … about 2.3 billion people are still cooking with fuels like wood, dung, and charcoal. According to the World Health Organization, about 3.2 million people, most of them women and girls, are dying every year due to the indoor air pollution caused by those fuels.
More people die every year from indoor air pollution than from AIDS/HIV, cholera, malaria, and tuberculosis combined. This is a public health crisis. Hydrocarbons — particularly fuels like butane and propane — are affordable, clean-burning, and could help save millions of lives per year. And yet, Francis and his colleagues believe we’re not getting rid of hydrocarbons fast enough.
Further, if you want billions to starve to death, it’s simple: just implement the Pope’s energy policies.
What about food? This is where Francis’ anti-hydrocarbon dogma hits a moral wall. Vaclav Smil, the Canadian author and polymath, has explained that without synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, “we could not secure enough food for the prevailing diets of nearly 45% of the world’s population, or roughly three billion people.”
How do we produce fertilizer? The answer, of course, is from natural gas, which is used in the Haber-Bosch process allowing us to produce ammonia. Between 70% and 80% of the energy used to make fertilizer comes from natural gas. Quitting hydrocarbons would decimate fertilizer production, starve billions, and trigger a humanitarian catastrophe.
If that’s not anti-human, what is?
More at the link. Pope Francis’s obituaries have often praised him for his humility. But how humble was it to pontificate–literally, in his case–on vital issues about which he knew next to nothing, and where his policy prescriptions would cause many millions to die?
Let’s hope the College of Cardinals does better this time.
