Pope Francis on Thursday said global warming skeptics have “perverse attitudes” when it comes to addressing the threat of anthropogenic climate change.
In a letter read at the 2017 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany, the pontiff issued an “urgent call to renew dialogue on how we are building the future of the planet.”
“We need an exchange that unites us all, because the environmental challenge we are experiencing, and its human roots, regards us all, and affects us all,” the pope said, blaming human activity for causing climate change.
Pope Francis added that efforts to address climate change have been hampered by people who deny the issue.
“Unfortunately, many efforts to seek concrete solutions to the environmental crisis are often frustrated for various reasons ranging from denial of the problem to indifference, comfortable resignation, or blind trust in technical solutions,” he wrote, adding that “denial” was a “perverse attitude.”
“We should avoid falling into the trap of these four perverse attitudes, which certainly do not help honest research or sincere and productive dialogue on building the future of our planet: denial, indifference, resignation and trust in inadequate solutions.”