'Creation is groaning': Pope Francis urges countries to follow Paris Climate Agreement
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"Modern society had pushed the planet beyond its limits and the time to fix a climate emergency was running out", he said
Pope Francis on Tuesday asked countries to continue fighting global warming as per the 2015 Paris climate accord.
"Modern society had pushed the planet beyond its limits and the time to fix a climate emergency was running out", he said.
"Our constant demand for growth and an endless cycle of production and consumption are exhausting the natural world," Francis said.
"Forests are leached, topsoil erodes, fields fail, deserts advance, seas acidify and storms intensify. Creation is groaning!", he added.
He was speaking on the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, when he urged countries to be more mindful of the planet.
"We need to do everything in our capacity to limit global average temperature rise under the threshold of 1.5°C enshrined in the Paris Climate Agreement, for going beyond that will prove catastrophic, especially for poor communities around the world," he added.
Recently, United States President Donald Trump began the process of removing US from the Paris agreement. US is the world's second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, just behind China.
Trump had called the mitigation process too costly.
On the other hand, his rival Joe Biden from the Democratic party said that he intends to return the US to a leadership role on climate change. He expressed a desire to reenter the US in all potential climate negotiations, and to work on the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.
Pope Francis added that biodiversity loss, climate change induced disasters, and the unequal impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the poor were all a "wakeup call in the face of our rampant greed and consumption".