But he brought that moral resolve to the question of climate change, making it the subject of his 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si,” the most important document of his papacy and arguably the most important piece of writing so far this millennium. I spent several weeks living with that book-length epistle in order to write about it for The New York Review of Books, and though I briefly met the man himself in Rome, it is that encounter with his mind that really lives with me. “Laudato Si” is a truly remarkable document—yes, it exists as a response to the climate crisis (and it was absolutely crucial in the lead-up to the Paris climate talks, consolidating elite opinion behind the idea that some kind of deal was required). But it uses the climate crisis to talk in broad and powerful terms about modernity.
The ecological problems we face are not, in their origin, technological, says Francis. Instead, “a certain way of understanding human life and activity has gone awry, to the serious detriment of the world around us.” He is no Luddite (“who can deny the beauty of an aircraft or a skyscraper?”) but he insists that we have succumbed to a “technocratic paradigm,” which leads us to believe that “every increase in power means ‘an increase of “progress” itself’… as if reality, goodness and truth automatically flow from technological and economic power as such.” This paradigm “exalts the concept of a subject who, using logical and rational procedures, progressively approaches and gains control over an external object.” Men and women, he writes, have from the start
intervened in nature, but for a long time this meant being in tune with and respecting the possibilities offered by the things themselves. It was a matter of receiving what nature itself allowed, as if from its own hand.
In our world, however, “human beings and material objects no longer extend a friendly hand to one another; the relationship has become confrontational.” With the great power that technology has afforded us, it’s become
easy to accept the idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers, and experts in technology. It is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the Earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit.
The deterioration of the environment, he says, is just one sign of this “reductionism which affects every aspect of human and social life.”
I think Francis’s project for the Earth—a recovery of fellow feeling, with a special attention to the poor—is the only thing that can save us over time. But it will take time—obviously for the moment we’ve chosen the opposite path, as exemplified by the fact that JD Vance, scourge of the refugee, darkened his last day on Earth.
In the meantime, Francis was very much a pragmatist, and one advised by excellent scientists and engineers. As a result, he had a clear technological preference: the rapid spread of solar power everywhere. He favored it because it was clean, and because it was liberating—the best short-term hope of bringing power to those without it, and leaving that power in their hands, not the hands of some oligarch somewhere.
As a result, he followed up “Laudato Si” with a letter last summer, “Fratello Sole,” which reminds everyone that the climate crisis is powered by fossil fuel, and which goes on to say
There is a need to make a transition to a sustainable development model that reduces greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, setting the goal of climate neutrality. Mankind has the technological means to deal with this environmental transformation and its pernicious ethical, social, economic, and political consequences, and, among these, solar energy plays a key role.
As a result, he ordered the Vatican to begin construction of a field of solar panels on land it owned near Rome—an agrivoltaic project that would produce not just food but enough solar power to entirely power the city-state that is the Vatican. It is designed, in his words, to provide “the complete energy sustenance of Vatican City State.” That is to say, this will soon be the first nation powered entirely by the sun.
The level of emotion—of love—in this decision is notable. The pope named “Laudato Si” (“Praised be”) after the first two words of his namesake’s “Canticle to the Sun,” and “Fratello Sole” was even more closely tied—those are the words that the first Francis used to address Brother Sun. I reprint the opening of the Canticle here, in homage to both men, and to their sense of humble communion with the glorious world around us.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through all that you have made,
And first my lord Brother Sun,
Who brings the day; and light you give to us through him.
How beautiful is he, how radiant in all his splendor!
Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.
The world is a poorer place this morning. But far richer for his having lived.
