Jun 18, 2015 4 min read

Pope Francis left little room for doubt when he issued his encyclical on climate change Thursday. He is calling out politicians, especially in this country, who have chosen to fiddle for their corporate owners while the planet burns.

In a plea for immediate and bold action to address climate issues, Francis slammed what he called a “structurally perverse” economic system dominated by the wealthy that exploits the less fortunate and turns the Earth into an “immense pile of filth.”

As we said, strong words. But they’re words that need to be heard worldwide and particularly here, where seemingly 97 percent of prominent Republicans in D.C. and on the presidential campaign trail walk in lockstop in ignoring the opinions of the 97 percent of climate scientists who believe human activity is responsible for dangerous and potentially apocalyptic changes in global weather patterns.

“It is not enough to balance, in the medium term, the protection of nature with financial gain, or the preservation of the environment with progress,” said the pope. “Halfway measures simply delay the inevitable disaster. Put simply, it is a matter of redefining our notion of progress.”

According to an Associated Press report, the pontiff expressed hope that his work would lead to a change in opinion and action when key United Nations climate meetings are held later this year.

Francis chastised climate-change skeptics, calling them “obstructionist” and saying they “seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms.” He stressed the need for strong and comprehensive change, including a greater commitment to the development of alternative energy sources, and dismissed ideas such as marketplaces for buying and selling carbon credits, calling them a “ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries and sectors.”

That’s clearly a finger pointed at the United States, among others.

The reponse of the fossil-fuel industry was swift and highly predictable.

“The simple reality is that energy is the essential building block of the modern world,” Thomas Pyle of the Institute of Energy Research, a conservative free-market group, told the AP. “The application of affordable energy makes everything we do – food production, manufacturing, health care, transportation, heat and air conditioning – better.”

He didn’t mention whether the application of energy from coal and oil makes the environment better.

Politicians on the right don’t even want to hear from the pope on this issue.

The attitude of former Florida governor and current Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush was typical. Bush said, “I don’t think we should politicize our faith. I think religion ought to be about making us better as people and less about things that end up getting into the political realm.”

Those comments beg a couple of questions. One, how is it politicizing faith to call for better stewardship of the planet Christians credit God with creating? And two, wouldn’t such stewardship make us better people?

But Bush and those like him know where their bread is buttered, and where the money for their political campaigns originates. Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, he of the childish snowball stunt on the Senate floor, has received, over the years, about $2.7 million from the mining, coal, oil, gas and electric utility industries. The other climate deniers, both in Congress and in the GOP presidential field, are gobbling up cash from the same sources. We like the idea expressed in a popular Internet meme that suggests our politicians wear uniforms like NASCAR drivers, with patches to tell us who their sponsors are.

We have great appreciation for Pope Francis’ display of intelligence, courage and leadership, probably more so because those qualities often seem to be in such short supply on these shores.