Foreign Affairs

Pope Francis Plans To Huddle With Enviromentalists At Vatican ‘Future Of Life’ Conference

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Pope Francis will host environmental activists at “Saving Our Common Home and the Future of Life on Earth” at the Vatican on July 5 and 6.

The pope is scheduled to speak at the conference designed to push for a stronger response to global warming on July 6, reported Axios.

The Vatican meeting will happen a few days after the third anniversary of Francis’s environmentally focused encyclical Laudato Si.

Speakers at the Vatican conference will include several people in charge of United Nations climate conventions and U.S. environmental activist Bill McKibben. McKibben has retweeted messages about a “#GreenNewDeal” tweeted by New York Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

This is precisely the right way to think about the future. https://t.co/GVJBpuJ6Jg

— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) June 27, 2018

Hawaii is a real leader, and this is a message we need in DC https://t.co/DeTg7jHD65

— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) June 28, 2018

The Vatican scheduled the upcoming meeting to precede bigger conferences like the Global Climate Action Summit in California from Sept. 12 to 14, the International Monetary Fund-World Bank meeting in Bali from Oct. 12 to 14, as well as the COP24 U.N. climate conference from Dec. 3 to 14.

The Vatican hosted oil executives from companies like Exxon Mobil and BP at a conference with a similar mission on June 8 and 9, and Pope Francis addressed the attendees via phone, reported Reuters.

Pope Francis gave President Donald Trump a copy of his papal letter Laudato Si, which calls the earth an “immense pile of filth,” during a meeting the two leaders had on May 24, 2017. The pope gifted the encyclical to Trump to convince him not to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Trump announced the U.S. was withdrawing from the agreement on June 1, 2017.

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