Vatican City (AsiaNews) – States have a “shared responsibility” to protect our planet to ensure that “present and future generations” are “able to live in a healthy and safe environment.” Hence they have a shared responsibility in dealing with climate change according to the Holy See.

Mgr Pietro Parolin, undersecretary for Relations with States at the Secretariat of State of the Holy See, expressed the Vatican’s views at the high-level event on climate change titled The future is in our hands: addressing the leadership challenge of climate change that is being held during the 62nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly.

In his address, Monsignor Parolin said that “those who hold up the earth as the only good, and would characterize humanity as an irredeemable threat to the earth, whose population and activity need to be controlled by various drastic means,” believe in an “inhuman ecology.”

In reality programmes of “mitigation and adaptation” needed to stop climate change do “meet a series of barriers and obstacles, not so much of a technological nature, but more so of a social nature, such as consumer behaviour and preferences, and of a political nature, like government policies.”

“States,” he added, “are free to adopt international conventions and treaties, but unless our words are matched with effective action and accountability, we would do little to avert a bleak future and may find ourselves gathering again not too long from now to lament another collective failure.”

He concluded saying that “[w]e sincerely hope that States will seize the opportunity that will be presented to them shortly at the next Conference” on climate change.