Inaction is an outrageous betrayal - Obama on climate change

JUST two months ago Pope Francis issued an unprecedented and deeply challenging encyclical in which he called on us all to change our culture of consumption and our energy-expensive lifestyles to try to avert the “unprecedented destruction of the ecosystem” before the end of this century.

On Monday, US president Barack Obama echoed that 11th-hour plea in equally grave terms and introduced a strengthened plan to tackle climate change.

Predictably — and how tragically — the very same voices that attacked the papal encyclical also attacked Monday’s initiative as if they were based on opinion rather than the concrete conclusions of some of the world’s best scientists. The proposals were rubbished, usually by the voices of the right and corporate business, as if the White House and the Vatican had been taken over by flight-of-fancy, vegan, ecowarriors, and Rastafarian tree-huggers.