Pope Francis’ long awaited first encyclical on the environment turned out to just as much of an indictment of global capitalism’s grinding effect on the poor as it was a call to action to tackle global warming.

“The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth,” Pope Francis writes in “Laudato Si”.  “In many parts of the planet, the elderly lament that once beautiful landscapes are now covered with rubbish.”

He decries relentless exploitation and destruction of the environment that is driven by the reckless pursuit of profits and its allies, political short-sightedness and apathy.  The world’s most vulnerable people are increasingly being abandoned by the world economic order in shanties of garbage surrounded by open sewers and fouled water supplies.

“Both everyday experience and scientific research show that the gravest effects of all attacks on the environment are suffered by the poorest.”

Francis argues that wealthy countries should shoulder the economic burden of cutting emissions.  And forget about the trading of carbon emission credits – the Pope believes that to be just another form of financial speculation that will not bring about the “radical change” we need to save the future.

“Many of those who possess more resources and economic or political power seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms, simply making efforts to reduce some of the negative impacts of climate change,” writes Francis, critiquing professional global warming deniers.  “The attitudes that stand in the way of a solution, even among believers, range from negation of the problem, to indifference, to convenient resignation or blind faith in technical solutions.

“Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it,” the Pope wrote.