• The "Green" Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 (Photo credit: Catholic Church England and Wales)

Holy moley, scientists and Catholics agree on something: Climate change is a danger to everyone and must be dealt with immediately.

The question is, will government and industry listen and heed the Vatican's warnings?

From The New York Times:

When the Vatican released a report last week calling man-made climate change "serious and potentially irreversible" and advocating aggressive action to curb emissions, it stirred up old divisions within the U.S. faith community over whether human activity can affect creation and what should be done about it.

... Christian concern about man-made climate change would be awakened when it became clear that vulnerable populations would have to shoulder the worst effects. Like the Vatican report (ClimateWire, May 6), Hescox predicted that these would include famine, war, unrest and less access to water.

Meanwhile, many of the larger evangelical groups continue to believe that man-made climate change is not happening, or if it is happening that the results are modest.

This view is in part based on theology.

The view that only God can usher in catastrophic climate change is counter to the idea of free will, Hescox said.

"You can only have it one way," Hescox said. "You can either have us being truly puppets, and God controls every one of our moves or who gives us complete free will, and then there are consequences to our actions."

Read the entire article, by Jean Chemnick of Greenwire, here.

Further reading:

Fake website, press release target Missouri coal company — CNN

With Policy Help, IPCC Says Renewables Could Dominate Energy in 2050 — ClimateCentral.org

A more likely nuclear nightmare — iWatch, a project of the Center for Public Integrity