[LifeSite News] – Pope Francis has called upon the world to give up fossil fuels, claiming that the climate is in a state of “emergency” and that this has been caused by human activity.
In his Message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, an ecumenical celebration held on September 1, the Argentine pontiff encouraged the world to adopt “simpler lifestyles” and to abandon fossil fuels.
“Now is the time to abandon our dependence on fossil fuels and move, quickly and decisively, towards forms of clean energy and a sustainable and circular economy,” he said.
James Taylor, Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at the Heartland Institute, a conservative research and education organization, told LifeSiteNews that the Vatican “should be careful” when making theological pronouncements on certain worldly issues, like the use of fossil fuels.
“Pope Francis’ desire for humans to be good stewards of creation is admirable,” he said.
“As a theological entity rather than an entity with particular scientific or economic authority and expertise, the Vatican should be careful about assigning theological weight to particular economic theories or scientific questions,” he continued.
“Forcing people off of abundant, affordable energy and imposing expensive, unreliable ‘clean’ energy sentences too many people in the world to perpetual poverty and all the human misery that accompanies it.”
Taylor added that there is “nothing clean” about the “environmentally devastating mining of rare-earth minerals necessary for wind and solar power equipment” and observed that the deaths of millions of birds and bats can be blamed on wind turbines. He also suggested that hundreds of square miles have been destroyed to make room for enough wind turbines to produce the same amount of energy as a single power plant.
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[Editor’s Note: This article was written by Dorothy Cummins McLean, title changed by P&P, and first published at LifeSite News]
