Pope challenges governments to take ‘drastic’ climate change measures

Pope Francis on Sunday called on world governments to take “drastic” action on climate change.

According to Reuters, he said that governments will have a “responsibility” at the United Nations Climate Action Summit later this month to show “the political will to take drastic measures to achieve as quickly as possible zero net greenhouse gas emissions and to limit the average increase in global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius with respect to pre-industrial levels, in accordance with the Paris Agreement goals.”

{mosads}“We have caused a climate emergency that gravely threatens nature and life itself, including our own,” he  said in a written message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, the news service noted.

Francis reportedly said that governments should “renew commitments decisive for directing the planet towards life, not death.”

He also said it is time to abandon fossil fuels and move toward clean energy and “a sustainable and circular economy.”

Francis has repeatedly focused on the environment. He criticized the U.S. in 2017 for pulling out of the Paris climate agreement.

On Sunday, his weekly public address was delayed because he was trapped in a Vatican elevator, Reuters noted.

He told the crowd in St. Peter’s Square that he was stuck in the elevator for 25 minutes before firefighters freed him.

“A round of applause for the fire brigade,” he said, according to the news service.