DHAKA: Pope Francis on Thursday issued a global plea for action to prevent ‘extraordinary’ climate change from destroying the planet and said wealthy countries must bear primary responsibility for creating the problem and for solving it.

In a radically worded letter addressed to every person on the planet, the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics blames human greed and self-destructive enthrallment to new technologies and progress for the critical situation ‘Our Sister, mother Earth’ now finds itself in.

‘This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her,’ he writes in one of the opening passages of his long-anticipated Encyclical on the environment.

Green activists have hailed the charismatic Argentinian pontiff’s widely-trailed intervention as a potential game-changer in the debate over what causes global warming and what can be done to reverse it, reports The Straits Times.

BDST: 1659 HRS, JUN 18, 2015
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