Editor’s note: Today, Pope Francis met with U.S. President Donald Trump to discuss peacemaking and climate change. Among the gifts the leader of the Catholic faith gave President Trump was a copy of his Laudato Si’, the 2015 encyclical on the environment that points to human activity as the main cause of climate change, warns of the “ever more severe droughts, floods, fires and extreme weather events” that lay in store and reminds developed nations of their duty to take action.
Calling out climate change deniers, skeptics and those that fail to act, the pope implored everyone, regardless of faith, to “take note of the need for changes in lifestyle and changes in methods of production and consumption to combat this warming.”
Conservation International’s stance on climate change hasn’t wavered in the two years since the pope published his encyclical. In 2015, CI’s CEO, Peter Seligmann, wrote about his hope that the pope’s message marked a watershed moment in environmentalism.
Sophie Bertazzo is a staff writer for CI.
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