Global Warming: Pope Francis Challenges President Trump’s Policies

Dear Friends and Readers,

I offer this essay, excerpted from my book, Catholic Social Teaching as a summary of the teachings of Pope Francis that can be used to resist President Trump’s energy policies.

Peace,
Fr. Jim Bacik

In his September 23, 2025 address to the United Nations General Assembly, President Trump said that “climate change is the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” He went on to explain that he Initiated the process of withdrawing from the historic 2015 Paris Agreement because “America was paying so much more than every other country.” During his second term, Trump has rolled back programs to expand renewable energy projects, calling wind power a pitiful joke that is too weak and expensive and kills too many birds. At the same time, he has planned to open up more fossil fuel power plants often repeating the slogan, “Drill, Baby, Drill!” According to reputable climate scientists, President Trump’s energy policies are contributing to global warming which poses a real threat to the health and well-being of the human family, especially the most vulnerable.

Pope Francis, in his groundbreaking 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’: Care for Our Common Home, provides a compelling challenge to President Trump’s energy policies that is faith informed, science based and action oriented. (The following summary is excerpted from my book, Catholic Social Teaching pp. 23-24 and 84-88). Francis recognizes a “very solid scientific consensus” that most global warming in recent decades is due to the “great concentration of greenhouse gases,” “released mainly as a result of human activities” (no. 23). He stresses the urgency of the crisis: “Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain” but must propel us into constructive action to save our planet. The Pope is summoning us to an “ecological conversion” leading to the practice of an “integral ecology” needed to save the earth. He begins his treatment of an ecological conversion by noting that some “committed and prayerful Christians” tend to ridicule this concern, while others refuse to change their habits to help fix the problem. As Christians, our relationship with Jesus Christ should guide our relationship to the natural world. Protecting “God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue not an optional or secondary aspect of our Christian experience” (no. 217). An authentic ecological conversion involves admitting ways we have harmed God’s creation by our actions and by our omissions. It recognizes the power of a “utilitarian mindset” and an “unethical consumerism” to blunt our “ecological awareness.” In essence, a Christian ecological conversion is a Spirit inspired process of a growing appreciation of the intrinsic value of God’s creation and our sense of our moral responsibility to care for it.

Francis places his call for an ecological conversion in the context of the long and rich tradition of Christian spirituality consistently committed to living Gospel-inspired faith convictions in the real world. The pope insists that a “passionate concern for the protection of our world” cannot be “sustained by doctrine alone” but requires a “change of heart” that “encourages, motivates, nourishes and gives meaning” (no. 216) to all our efforts to protect the earth and all its citizens.

For Francis, an ecological conversion informed by Christian faith is not an end in itself but an important catalyst for achieving an “integral ecology” that includes an ideal moral vision to guide a worldwide effort to promote the common good of the earth and all its citizens. Applying his fundamental conviction that “everything is closely united,” Francis insists that “we are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental.” He grounds his analysis in reality: “We are part of nature, included in it and therefore, in constant interaction with it.” Thus, we need “comprehensive solutions which consider the interactions within natural systems themselves and with social systems.” Concretely this means “combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature” (no. 139).

Pope Francis sees an integral ecology in its diverse elements serving the common good in various ways: strengthening societal institutions, especially the family; protecting indigenous communities from exploitation of their homelands and their distinctive cultures; keeping God’s gift of creation intact for the next generation; practicing the preferential option for the poor, who suffer the most from ecological degradation; working for a more equal distribution of the world’s goods that promotes peace, stability, and security for all people; protecting the cultural treasures of humanity; and developing living spaces (homes, worksites, common areas, and cities) that help humanize daily life. In sum, Pope Francis has called all Christians to an ecological conversion so that we can be leaven for the world as a whole, striving for the integral ecology needed to save us and our common home.

According to a 2022 Pew Research poll, only 54 percent of adult Catholics in the United States agree with the pope’s position on anthropogenic global warming, with 25 percent saying that it is due to natural patterns and 9 percent denying that the earth is warming. Four out of ten Catholics who attend Mass regularly say their homilist never mentions climate change. Clearly, Pope Francis has not yet been able to convince large numbers of U.S. Catholics—clergy and laity—to join him in accepting the scientific consensus.

While recognizing that the most effective solutions must come from the developed nations of the world, Francis encourages all of us to do our part to reduce pollution and waste that will help create a new culture of care for creation that will eventually impact political decisions (nos. 70–91). The pope laments the lack of progress of the United Nations’ climate conferences, but insists that losing hope would be “suicidal,” exposing the human family, especially the poor and vulnerable, to the worst ravages of global warming.

In 2021, Pope Francis launched a seven-year “Laudato Si’ Action Platform,” which renewed his appeal to cultivate “respect for the gifts of the Earth and creation” and to “inaugurate a lifestyle and a society that is finally eco-sustainable.” Concerned about the next generation, the pope added: “From God’s hands we have received a garden, we cannot leave a desert to our children.” Today this program calls all of us as individuals and members of organizations to do our part to counter the dangerous climate policies of President Trump, so that as Francis so eloquently put it “our mother Earth may be restored to her original beauty and creation may once again shine according to God’s plan.”