Laudato Si’ Is Wrong: The Poor Need More Energy, Not Less | National Review Online

Laudato Si’ Is Wrong: The Poor Need More Energy, Not Less | National Review Online
When it comes to energy supplies — and therefore carbon dioxide emissions and climate change — who are you going to believe?
Pope Francis, or BP?
...What matters when discussing energy availability, climate change, and poverty are hard numbers and simple math.
...But his new encyclical on climate change, Laudato Si’ (Be praised), shows a shallow understanding of global energy use and, in particular, of how energy consumption is soaring among the people he claims to care most about: the poor. 
...But if developing countries are going to prepare for possible changes in the climate, they will have to get richer so they can afford to deal with any calamities that may occur.
And how will they get richer? 
The answer is obvious: by consuming more energy. 
And for countries throughout the developing world, the lowest-cost energy is still coal.
...The encyclical fails to acknowledge that climate change is only one issue among many that we must address.
The more pressing issue is poverty and what must be done to get more energy to more people so they can escape poverty. 
In a world in which some 1.3 billion people still lack access to electricity, we have to move beyond the myopic belief that all hydrocarbons (and therefore most carbon dioxide emissions) are bad.
If we are going to cope with more-extreme weather events in the future — regardless of their cause — we are going to need a lot more energy, not less.
In his encyclical, Pope Francis calls for a “bold cultural revolution” to combat what he says is an “ecological crisis.”
But by ignoring the magnitude and importance of the energy sector, he has missed an opportunity to recognize that energy availability is essential to human fulfillment and freedom.