VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Saturday blasted “shortsighted human activity” for global warming and rising sea levels and urged leaders at climate talks in Germany to take a global outlook as they negotiate ways to curb heat-trapping emissions. Francis met with a delegation of Pacific leaders and told them he shares their concerns about rising sea levels and increasingly intense weather systems that are threatening their small islands. While several causes are to blame, “sadly, many of them are due to shortsighted human activity connected with certain ways of exploiting natural and human resources, the impact of which ultimately reaches the ocean bed itself,” the pope warned. History’s first Latin American pope has frequently spoken out against global warming and the impact it has in particular on poor and indigenous peoples. Francis told the Pacific leaders that he hoped the Bonn talks would take their plight into consideration, and look for a shared strategy to confront the “grave problems” facing the environment and oceans.

Source: National Post November 11, 2017 14:03 UTC