On matters of Catholic dogma, the Popes claim to be infallible. But on the science around climate change and the political Net Zero lunacy they frequently talk out of their pontifical posteriors. Who can forget the late Pope Francis’s claim that humans are causing earthquakes, a suggestion that only the whackiest of climate alarmists can utter. Alas, the new Bishop of Rome is also capable of ruminating out of his rear end with Pope Leo XIV recently giving us his ‘world is burning’ sermon. At a recent ‘green’ mass at his summer estate in Castel Gandolfo, he added: “We must pray for the conversion of so many people inside and outside of the church, who still don’t recognise the urgency of caring for our common home.”
As a ‘lapsed’ Catholic, your correspondent has been the beneficiary of many such ‘conversion’ prayers. Fear works well if you are a schoolboy sitting at the feet of Sister Agnes, headmistress of St Anselm’s primary school in Dartford, with the fires of hell promised for missing mass on Sunday and the numerous Holy Days of Obligation. Papal fears of a world burning due to excessive holidays in Benidorm are a bit tame. After all, it has been done to the far limits of stupidity by the UN activist-in-chief Antonio Guterres. Come on Leo, I can’t help thinking, you can do better than that.
Needless to say the new Green Pope is all-in on the fake science of weather attribution. “We see so many natural disasters in the world, nearly every day and in so many countries, that are in part caused by the excesses of being human, with our lifestyle.” One can only pray that the new Pontiff gets around to reading the latest scientific assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, where little or no human involvement is observed in almost all natural weather events, now and forward to 2100. He might care to consider that deaths from natural disasters have plunged by 95% over the last 100 years, while the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has led to a remarkable 15-20% ‘greening’ of the planet.
Wearing green vestments for his special mass in the new ecological education centre at the summer residence, Pope Leo urged the world to recognise what he called the urgency of the climate crisis, and “hear the cry of the poor”. But the poor are not crying, at least not for the rich Western elite fantasy of Net Zero. Many in the developing world see hydrocarbon use as the key to lifting them out of grinding poverty. They are aware of the enormous increase in staple crops that has occurred over the last 60 years due to the use of hydrocarbon-enabled fertilisers. They can feel the extra food in their bellies – to deprive them of the natural stored energy of the Earth at this stage in their development would, in Sister Agnes’s often spoken words, be wicked.
Hellbound and Down 