As the world cooks, why have our political leaders gone cold on global warming?

The Age

02-05-2025

Pope Francis was entombed on Saturday in a simple wooden coffin in accordance with his wishes. He is remembered by millions as the 'people's Pope' after a lifetime of advocacy for the poor and disenfranchised.
In climate circles, Francis is remembered for Laudato Si, his second encyclical letter to the faithful, subtitled 'On Care for Our Common Home'. It is a 184-page treatise lamenting climate change and the destruction of the earth and its environmental systems in support of reckless consumerism.
Its publication in 2015 helped secure the 2016 Paris Accord, signed by almost every nation on earth, which pledged to hold global warming to less than two degrees and as close as possible to 1.5 degrees. But it had other political impacts. It drove what is sometimes referred to as the 'Francis effect' in the US, hardening the views of right-wing Catholics against his papacy, including his calls for climate action. Their support helped Donald Trump secure his second term, which he is using to dismantle climate action domestically and to disrupt it internationally.
An anti-Francis faction is now seeking to make the Vatican great again with a right-wing pope. 'The hope is to have a pontificate that concentrates more on Catholic issues, such as pro-life and family, rather than climate change and immigration,' Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, a German aristocrat and a prominent member of a right-wing push Europe and the US, told Politico this week.
Born in Argentina, Francis never returned to his country of origin throughout his papacy. Despite Francis's climate advocacy, Argentina is now led by Javier Milei, a right-wing populist and climate sceptic who flirts with abandoning the Paris Accord.
On Monday, Canada reinstalled Mark Carney as prime minister. Carney is a former governor of the central banks of Canada and England, but in climate circles he is known for an address made at Lloyds of London in 2015, often referred to as his 'tragedy of the horizon' speech.
He warned global financial institutions that climate change presented a real and overwhelming economic threat. Though its impacts would be most devastating to future generations, it could be addressed only by our own. This was the tragedy.
The speech is credited with catalysing a tectonic shift in the view of the financial sector to climate risk. Carney's advocacy would later help secure the Glasgow Climate Pact at 2021 world climate talks, accelerating actions to achieve the Paris goals. Optimists believed that the financial sector's engagement would serve as a bulwark against backsliding politicians. Banks, insurance companies and even the fossil fuel giants came on board with ambitious investment and emission reduction targets of their own.