Pope Francis has the moral authority to sway public opinion over global warming and might attend the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Scotland, US President Joe Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry said yesterday.
COP26 is being held in Glasgow in November and could accelerate measures by the world’s biggest polluters to tackle climate change, a challenge which activists, scientists and world leaders say could ultimately endanger the planet.
“I think that his voice will be a very important voice leading up to and through the Glasgow conference, which I believe he intends to attend,” Kerry told the official Vatican News outlet after meeting Pope Francis.
There was no immediate confirmation of this from the Vatican.
“Because he is above politics and outside of the hurly-burly of day-to-day, national conflict, I think he can sort of shake people a little bit and bring them to the table with a better sense of our common obligation,” Kerry added.
“We need everybody in this fight. All the leaders of the world need to come together and every country needs to do its part,” he said.
The Pope has called climate change “one of the principal challenges facing humanity” today.
He has rebuked industrialised countries most responsible for the crisis, while speaking up for the poor in developing countries who will feel its worst effects.
Kerry, who is on a European tour that will take him to Britain and Germany after Rome, met with the Argentine Pope at the Vatican a day after a meeting with Prime Minister Mario Draghi.
He is mid-way through the week-long trip to Europe.
Francis has made many calls for environmental protection since becoming pope in 2013, and has repeatedly urged governments to take drastic measures to combat global warming and reduce the use of fossil fuels.
Last month, Biden announced that the world’s largest economy would cut emissions blamed for climate change by 50-52% by 2030 compared with 2005 levels, doubling the country’s previous commitments.
Kerry, a former senator who served as secretary of state under president Barack Obama, has said that the next six months will be critical in shoring up support to upgrade commitments in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
The summit in Glasgow, he said in April, was “our last best hope to be able to coalesce the world in the right direction”.
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