Pope Benedict XVI denounces failure of world leaders at Copenhagen summit

In a speech to ambassadors, the pontiff criticises the 'economic and political resistance' to fighting environmental degradation

Associated Press
guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 January 2010 16.14 GMT
Pope Benedict XVI denounced the failure of world leaders to agree to a new climate change treaty in Copenhagen last month, saying that world peace depends on safeguarding God's creation.
He issued the admonition in a speech to ambassadors accredited to the Vatican, an annual appointment during which the pontiff reflects on issues the Vatican wants to highlight to the diplomatic corps.
Benedict has been called the "green pope" for his increasingly vocal concern about the need to protect the environment. Under his watch, the Vatican has installed solar photovoltaic cells on its main auditorium to convert sunlight into electricity and has joined a reforestation project aimed at offsetting its CO2 emissions.
In his speech, the pontiff criticised the "economic and political resistance" to fighting environmental degradation and creating a new climate treaty at last month's negotiations in Copenhagen.
The weak agreement known as the Copenhagen accord that emerged from the summit urged deeper cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming, it did nothing to demand them.
"I trust that in the course of this year ... it will be possible to reach an agreement for effectively dealing with this question," Benedict said.
He said the issue was particularly critical for island nations and in places like Africa, where the battle for resources, increased desertification and over-exploitation of land has resulted in wars.
"To cultivate peace, one must protect creation." Benedict told the ambassadors, many of whom wore their national dress or were medal-draped formal attire for the audience in the frescoed Sala Regia of the Vatican's apostolic palace.
The pontiff said the same "self-centred and materialistic" way of thinking that sparked the worldwide financial meltdown was also endangering creation. To combat it will require a new way of thinking and a new lifestyle and an acknowledgment that the question is a moral one, he said.
"The protection of creation is not principally a response to an aesthetic need, but much more to a moral need, inasmuch as nature expresses a plan of love and truth which is prior to us and which comes from God," he said.
To illustrate his point, the German-born pope pointed to the experiences of eastern Europe under the "materialistic and atheistic regimes" of the former Soviet bloc.
"Was it not easy to see the great harm which an economic system lacking any reference to the truth about man had done not only to the dignity and freedom of individuals and peoples, but to nature itself, by polluting soil, water and air?" he asked.
"The denial of God distorts the freedom of the human person, yet it also devastates creation."