Conference People and Planet First: the Imperative to Change course

29 June 2015

CIDSE and the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace will hold a two-day conference in Rome, taking place on 2-3 July 2015

The conference will bring together Church leaders, Decision Makers, Scientists as well as a wide range of representatives of Catholic and civil society organisations from different regions of the world.

The occasion for this conference is the felt need to link the momentum of the publication of Pope Francis’ Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ with the key political decisions that will be taken in the course of the year.

Indeed, during the second half of 2015 three major UN conferences will take place:

• The Addis Ababa meeting on Financing for Development;

• The UN General Assembly meeting to approve the new Sustainable Development Goals in September;

• And the Paris meeting in December to agree a Global Climate deal.

All three summits are inter-related and deal with giving economic development a new direction to serve people and the planet. This conference, planned to look at the relationship between care for creation, integral human development, global justice and concern for the poor in the light of Catholic Social Teaching and the upcoming Encyclical, is meant to mark in a fitting manner the fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of CIDSE.

The sessions of the conference will focus on:

• The integral ecology and the horizon for hope in light of the Holy Father’s Encyclical letter Laudato Si’ on care for our common home

• The Importance of the Encyclical Laudato Si’ for the Church and the World, in the Light of Significant Political Events in 2015 and Beyond

• Pathways that respect our common home

…(read more).

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

Noam Chomsky on Economics & Classical Liberalism 2015

E120, e130, e145

Denton Gears Up For Bigger Fight Over Fracking

E130, e120, e145

New Research Suggests Climate Change is Wiping Out Bumblebees

George Dvorsky Filed to: conservation 7/10/15 10:30am

A study led by Canadian researchers shows that bumblebees are disappearing in many areas where they lived several decades ago, and climate change is to blame.

Unlike most animals—and for reasons not entirely known—bumblebees can’t move north to cope with warmer temperatures. They don’t fare well in warmer climates because they evolved in cooler regions, away from the tropics. This makes them particularly vulnerable to changing climatic conditions.

To learn exactly how climate change is impacting bumblebees, researchers from Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. analyzed the history of 67 bumblebee populations in North America and Europe from 1901 to 2010. A survey of 423,000 observations of bees shows their populations have been on the decline since 1975; they’re being squeezed north by approximately 9 km (5.6 miles) a year, and are now extinct in their southern ranges to the tune of 300 kilometers (186 miles). The details of the study now appear at Science.

“Bumblebee species across Europe and North America are declining at continental scales,” noted lead author Jeremy T. Kerr at a recent news conference. “And our data suggest that climate change plays a leading, or perhaps the leading, role in this trend.”

…(read more).

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

Pope’s Tour Focuses on Poor, Violent, Neglected in South America

VOA News

Published on Jul 11, 2015

Pope Francis is wrapping up a weeklong tour of Latin America with a visit to one of the poorest neighborhoods in Paraguay’s capital, Asuncion. The pontiff’s second trip to the continent since his election to the papacy in 2013 included stops in Ecuador and Bolivia, countries ridden by poverty and crime.

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice