Paris Climate Change Conference

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman). She asked me to sign her motion, and I was happy to do so. I do not know why she thought I might be interested in the Pope’s encyclical, but here I am. I hope the House will forgive me if I concentrate entirely on the encyclical, on which I have some expertise; I have absolutely no scientific expertise on other climate change subjects about which other hon. Members will want to speak. I will, if they are interested, try in a few minutes to put the encyclical in context.

I have tried to read the whole encyclical. Like all Vatican documents it is very subtle, very profound and very long—the best part of 200 pages—but the part on climate change is relatively short. Since the papacy’s unhappy experience with Galileo, which the hon. Lady mentioned, the modern papacy tends to endorse scientific consensus, but the detailed part on climate change is quite limited. The encyclical is really a very long prose poem that concentrates on and affirms the Pope’s belief in the interdependence of man, nature and God.

It is important that we do not try to weaponise papal encyclicals for one side of the argument or the other. The words that come from the Vatican are seldom very useful in that context. To give an example on another subject, I was in the Vatican last week to meet Cardinal Baldisseri, who has been leading the synod on the family. Journalists always try to pigeonhole such debates inside the Vatican as controversial, saying that there are traditionalists and modernisers. That is the way of politicians. The Vatican moves in a rather more sedate manner. The long document on the family does not take a confrontational viewpoint on all the matters that have worried us in this House over recent years. Again, it is a long prose poem in favour of traditional marriage and the family. We must therefore be careful about how we read the document we are discussing.

The encyclical is primarily saying that mankind is much more than mind or body; there is a deeper soul. As mankind is about the soul and its connection with a universal God and a universal nature, we must recognise that we are part of nature and respect nature. That is where the Pope comes from when discussing climate change.

I do not want to weary people too much and will not read out the whole encyclical, but I will read a couple of paragraphs to give a flavour of it. It is very beautifully written and it informs the debate in a general way. In paragraph 65, the Pope says:

“Without repeating the entire theology of creation, we can ask what the great biblical narratives say about the relationship of human beings with the world. In the first creation account in the Book of Genesis, God’s plan includes creating humanity. After the creation of man and woman, ‘God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good’… The Bible teaches that every man and woman is created out of love and made in God’s image and likeness”.

That informs the Pope’s view on climate change and the other debates that we, as politicians, are interested in. Unsurprisingly, he is always much more interested in the God-centric point of view.

In paragraph 67, the Pope states:

“The biblical texts are to be read in their context, with an appropriate hermeneutic, recognizing that they tell us to ‘till and keep’ the garden of the world… ‘Tilling’ refers to cultivating, ploughing or working, while ‘keeping’ means caring, protecting, overseeing and preserving. This implies a relationship of mutual responsibility between human beings and nature. Each community can take from the bounty of the earth whatever it needs for subsistence, but it also has the duty to protect the earth and to ensure its fruitfulness for coming generations.”

I am sure that the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) would not disagree with any of those remarks. They are very beautifully put. I hope that the House will forgive me for having referred to those couple of paragraphs.

It is important, whether one is on the right or the left, not to say that the Pope has come down on one side of the argument. When the Pope went to see Congress, all the Republicans stood up and cheered when he proclaimed the right to life and his opposition to abortion. They were still clapping and cheering when, almost in the same breath, he talked about the rights of migrants and his opposition to the death penalty. They were left on their feet, clapping for something they did not agree with.

[Caroline Lucas]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way, as he has named me?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Of course.

[Caroline Lucas]

The hon. Gentleman is making an interesting speech. He says that the Pope does not come down on one side or the other. Will he confirm, however, that the Pope is saying very clearly that we need to tackle climate change? We might have an argument about the best way to do it, but he is saying that. He also has a strong economic critique. I can quote him too:

“Since the market tends to promote extreme consumerism in an effort to sell its products, people can easily get caught up in a whirlwind of needless buying and spending.”

That is pretty strong language.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I am happy to accept that. I do not want to weary the House by referring to the paragraph, but the Pope does endorse action on climate change. That is a relatively small part of the encyclical and it must not be seen in the context of the political debate. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland was right to mention conferences and what is going on in Paris, but I do not think that the Pope is concentrating on that. What he is concentrating on, fundamentally, is the theme that we are part of nature. The debate around climate change relates to his profound belief that we are part of nature and connected to nature, and that we are abusing the world. Because we are abusing the world, we are abusing ourselves. I think that that is what he is trying to say, and that is what I am trying to explain to the House in my very inadequate way.

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Gentleman has obviously thought deeply about these matters and has given more of the theology than I did. However, the Pope does talk about the need for more effective international action and he does decry what we politicians have done up to now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I am happy to accept that the Pope talks about more international action, but he is careful not to be too specific. In one paragraph, he is quite critical of carbon credits. He gives a general thesis and acknowledges the problem, then he leaves it to us—the Secretary of State, the Minister and the Opposition parties—to come up with solutions.

The most important theme of the encyclical comes out in the very first paragraph. It relates to our common home. This is where I hope I can take Opposition Members with me. The Pope states:

“‘Laudato si’, mi’ Signore’—‘Praise be to you, my Lord’. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. ‘Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs’.”

When one reads through this long encyclical, that sort of language is repeated again and again.

The Pope is repeating the philosophy of the 20th century philosopher, Professor Charles De Koninck, who understood that the person, the individual, could not be neglected. He differed from the personalists because he knew that the person had to be integrated within a vision of the common good. In the encyclical, the Pope constantly concentrates on our common good and our common nature: the good of the individual, the good of the family, the good of the village, town, province and country, and the good of the whole world. People—you and I—have to be understood, De Koninck argued and the Pope now argues, in the context of our place in the universe as a whole. That is one thing that the Pope is trying to do with the encyclical. Like De Koninck, the Pope understands the truth expressed by St Thomas Aquinas that the greatest perfection of the created person is the good of the universe.

The Anglican academic, Professor Jacobs, wrote a moving reflection on the encyclical, in which he pointed out that Francis does not use the word “planet” or even “environment”, but uses the word “home”. He constantly concentrates on our common home. Professor Jacobs writes:

“All the economic questions he explores later in the encyclical are therefore grounded in the etymology of ‘economy’: the governance of the oikos, the household. Such domestic language is a powerful means of fighting the abstracting effects of any attempt to ‘think globally.’ Francis seems to be saying that if you want to act globally, you should think locally: think of the earth as your home, one you share with others to whom you are accountable.”

“Laudato Si’” is distinctly not merely an encyclical about climate change. While the papacy has always been a patron and promoter of modern science and learning, specific scientific matters are outside its teaching authority. Rather, this is an encyclical about the fundamental crisis of humanity that is at the foundations of our modern world. Ecological aspects are a symptom of that crisis, not the root of it, and there are no simple solutions.

Professor Thomas Hibbs, who was formerly of Boston college, an institution of the Pope’s own Jesuit order, has written:

“The most audacious claim in the encyclical is not the affirmation of the reality of climate change, but the insistence that to have a coherent and effective environmental philosophy requires both an anthropology and a cosmology.”

He writes that “Laudato Si’”

“seeks nothing less than the re-imagining of the place of human persons in the entirety of the created cosmos. Francis discerns beneath the contemporary ecological crisis a crisis of the human person, who is now lost in the cosmos, increasingly alienated from self, others, nature, and God.”

I apologise for trying to explain the encyclical, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have done it as best I could. It is a most beautiful document and I recommend that hon. Members read it in its entirety.