Pope Francis is blasting “short-sighted human activity” for global warming and rising sea levels and is urging leaders at climate talks in Germany to take a global outlook as they negotiate ways to curb heat-trapping emissions.
Francis met on Saturday with a delegation of leaders from the Pacific islands and told them he shares their concerns about rising sea levels and increasingly intense storms that are threatening their small islands.
He decried in particular the state of oceans, where overfishing and pollution by plastics are threatening fish stocks and sea life that are critical to Pacific livelihoods.
He said several causes were to blame, but that “sadly, many of them are due to short-sighted human activity connected with certain ways of exploiting natural and human resources, the impact of which ultimately reaches the ocean bed itself.”
