Three days after it was leaked online (amid whispers the leak may have been an inside job), Pope Francis' long-awaited encyclical on the environment was officially released today, and he doesn't mince words in describing today's environmental issues as "one small sign of the ethical, cultural and spiritual crisis of modernity" and in calling for the self-sacrifice and "bold cultural revolution" required to stave off climate change, the AP reports. Some highlights and reaction:
- Despite assertions to the contrary, the pope contends in "Laudato Si" ("Praise Be") that there's "a very solid scientific consensus" to support claims of global warming, and that it's "mainly" happening because of human activity. "The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth," he writes, per the Washington Post.
- Francis puts the onus of ponying up funds to battle this environmental crisis on richer nations, which he says owe an "ecological debt" to the rest of the world since they extract natural resources from poorer parts for their own consumption—a system the pope calls "structurally perverse."