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Rosary beads on an open bible.
BEACON TRANSCRIPT – Cardinal hopes a papal letter will impact the global climate conference set to take place in Paris, France later this year. The cardinal in question is Peter Turkson and he is the lead consultant on the papal encyclical for environmental issues.
The cardinal has expressed his hopes that the papal letter known as Laudando Si, released earlier this year by Pope Francis, will have an impact on the upcoming U.N. Climate Change Conference and help give the 196 leaders attending the conference the moral fiber they will need in order to reach the hard decisions that will have to be made in order to protect the Earth from climate change.
The main goal of the conference is to achieve a new international agreement on the climate, one that can be applicable to all the nations and that will lead to the prevention of worse consequences due to climate change. It is also hoped that this new agreement will limit the rise of Earth’s average temperature to 2 degrees Celsius, which is widely viewed as the limit for avoiding catastrophic global warming.
Cardinal Peter Turkson has also shared his hope that, in the aftermath of the conference, the state leaders will go back to their countries with concrete actions and gestures in mind and enforce them shortly after. He has made these statements during a three day visit to Columbus.
The conference that is set to take place in Paris at the end of November is the 21st event of this kind, in which partners of the U.N. will discuss climate change. The cardinal noted that the first 20 meetings ended in little progress but has also shared his belief in the recent realization that many people have had about the threats that global warming poses and the fact that humanity is slowly starting to realize the need for taking better care of the environment.
His hope in the change of people’s attitudes toward global warming may have some foundation. The cardinal explained that government leaders are prepared to take action this time and that business leaders have now accepted an invitation from Pope Francis to come to the Vatican and have a dialogue on environmental issues in December of this year. This shows that more leaders from both the political and the business sector are preparing themselves to fight global warming.
The cardinal added that several bishops’ conferences have stated their commitment to encouraging their nation’s leaders to make a bigger effort and take some decisive steps in order to fight climate change. He advised people around the world that this is an issue they cannot ignore, as it affects all of humanity.
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