Since 2011, Allen Ottaro has been running a grassroots lay organization that aims to empower African youth to get involved in working for a better climate.
The year leading up to the rescheduled climate summit — COP26 — gives countries a chance to take more and stronger steps toward meeting greenhouse gas reduction goals and helping each other. Will they act?
As Catholic groups worldwide divest from fossil fuels, some priests, environmental conservationists and activists in East Africa are resisting an oil pipeline taking shape in their region.
Catholics across the world have embraced and acted on environmental encyclical Laudato Si'. But the consensus among Catholic ecological leaders is those responses have been not nearly as widespread as Francis sought.
We say: Four years ago, on the first anniversary of the encyclical, an NCR editorial heralded "the emergence of a lay-led, community-based, action-oriented movement for the environment." Has that happened?
It's been notable that Pope Francis' words in Laudato Si' have not been matched with as much action as one might hope. However, the church and its affiliates have a big lever that they can pull — the financial one.
At the beginning of Laudato Si' Week, 42 faith institutions committed to divest their finances from fossil fuels, and called for post-pandemic economic recovery to shift the world toward a low-carbon future.
