By Mark Lewis
It is Friday, June 14, 2019 and I am in the Vatican waiting for the Pope to make his entrance.
I am here for an audience in his presence, followed by the chance to shake his hand. It is a hand that stretches back 2,000 years. A hand that holds the sceptre of the oldest continuous office in the Western world. A hand whose ultimate forebear was Saint Peter, the most devoted of the 12 disciples. It is the hand that shook the hand that shook the hand of Jesus himself. It is the hand of God.
Around me sit some of the world’s most powerful figures from the oil and finance industries, together with selected scientific experts and policy advisers on energy and climate change. I am here as the head of sustainability research at BNP Paribas Asset Management, and our audience with the Supreme Pontiff is the culmination of three days as his guests for a seminar on the climate crisis.
Pope Francis has long been a passionate advocate for action to fight climate change, his first encyclical, Laudato Si, having been dedicated to this subject. Published in June 2015, it was deliberately timed to help create momentum for action ahead of the Paris climate change summit in December of that year.
We have spent the last two days debating the technical aspects of the global energy transition and accelerating the shift away from fossil fuels, and now the Supreme Pontiff wants us to consider the moral dimension: the imperative of avoiding the incineration of Planet Earth.
Every one of the business, policy, and scientific leaders here is used to being the biggest dog in the room, and to making consequential decisions that determine how our world produces, consumes, finances, and thinks about energy. As such, they are key to determining whether the world will be successful in limiting the increase in the Earth’s average temperature to “well below 2C above pre-industrial levels” as agreed to by all member states of the UN under the Paris Agreement, agreed only four years ago.
To my left, I see the head of ExxonMobil with his thinning silver hair, gold-rimmed glasses, and steely-eyed stare; to my right the boss of Chevron, tall, tanned, and laconic; of Total, dandruffed, portly, and pugnacious; of BP, slick, self-deprecating, and urbane; and of Shell, prim, primped, and professorial. Big Oil’s chieftains are out in force, and they are here to engage. But be in no doubt, they are also here to defend their fiefdoms from the angels of change.
Lord, make me carbon-free — but not yet.
Then there are the overlords of finance. My glance across the ranks identifying the potentates of some of the world’s largest investment companies such as Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street, Invesco, and Norges. Mammon’s minions are in the Temple, and while they lack the charisma of their petroleum counterparts, their power is even greater. They, too, are here to engage but also – be in no doubt – to defend the “laying up for themselves of treasures upon earth” (Matthew 6:19).
Lord, make my portfolio carbon-free — but not yet.
I also pick out German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s advisor on climate change, a brilliant and passionate physicist and the most urgent voice in the room for action, and the former US energy secretary under President Barack Obama, a magnetic force with wild, frizzy, grey hair but a more tempered tone.
“There is gold and abundance of costly stones, but the lips of knowledge are a precious jewel” (Proverbs 20:15).
The odour of testosterone — and it is mostly testosterone — is overwhelming. But here and now, all of these exalted personages are as still with the thrill of anticipation as I am. For how often do even such power players as these get a chance to hear the voice that heard the voice that heard the voice of Jesus himself? To hear the voice of God.
We are in the Great Hall of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which is housed in an elegant adjunct to the magnificent Renaissance jewel of the Casina Pio IV. The Academy traces its origins back to 1603 when the Roman aristocrat Federico Cesi founded the Accademia dei Lincei (Academy of Lynxes), so called because Cesi wanted scientists with the visual prowess of the lynx to be able to observe Nature as closely as her keenest eyes do. The most eminent member of the original Academy was Galileo.
The Academy folded not long after the death of Cesi, and then went through a form of re-incarnation in 1847 under Pope Pius IX as the ‘Pontifical Academy of the New Lynxes’, before being re-established in 1936 by Pope Pius XI under its current title of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
The Great Hall, or Aula Magna, is at the top end of the Casina, and it is in this chamber that we have been holding our debates on climate change and the energy transition yesterday and this morning. It is the centrepiece of the new building, and on the way into it through the Academy’s colonnaded main entrance one passes two statues that represent the fusion of belief and inquiry encapsulated in this body: to the left Faith, to the right Science.
It is an austere, high-ceilinged, whitewashed space, with a bust of Pope John Paul II in a lofty alcove dead centre on the wall opposite me, and a bust of Pope Pius XI in a similar niche on the wall behind me. On either side of each Pope there are panelled inscriptions in Latin explaining the history of the Academy, and Galileo is name-checked on two of these four panels, one beside each Pope.
If my hazy schoolboy Latin can be trusted, the dedication to the left of Pius XI reads: “For the eager pursuit of good arts and singular generosity, the Academy of the Lynxes, founded in 1603 by Prince Federico Cesi, and made famous among its first members by Galileo after the varying fortunes of time and events.”
“The varying fortunes of time and events” is certainly apt in the case of Galileo. To think that he was tried by the Inquisition in 1633 in another of the Holy See’s buildings only five hundred yards to the south of this chamber – the Palace of the Holy Office just outside the Vatican’s walls – but that in this sober space today his name is emblazoned in eternal glory as the progenitor of the Academy’s spirit.
Perhaps it really is the case that “to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1).
Glancing across the expectant faces on the solemn pews that gently slope up all four walls, I drink in the adrenaline dripping thickly in the room. In this moment of watchful breathlessness time stops ticking, hearts course more quickly, and the tired cheeks of the mostly middle-aged men around me take on the ruddiness of the cherubs in the medieval frescos that fill the other rooms of the Casina.
A haunting hush hovers over us as we await our heavenly host.
With a thunderous knock on the oak portal, His Holiness bursts into our presence. A surge of dopamine rushes through my body like the flame on a line a gunpowder. He is surrounded by the papal paparazzi that accompany him everywhere, their cameras whirring and flashing in a rumbling fluorescent blaze. The incessant flashlights give him the other-worldly aura of a celestial body floating across the marble floor. He takes his seat beneath the large mahogany crucifix opposite me, and bids us all be seated.
This is it. Showtime.
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“Distinguished executives, investors, and experts,” Pope Francis begins. “Today’s ecological crisis, especially climate change, threatens the very future of the human family. Any discussion of climate change and the energy transition must be rooted in the results of the best scientific research available today, letting them touch us deeply.”
As His Holiness pronounces these words I think of Galileo and his struggle 400 years ago and only 500 yards (457 metres) away. The Church has come a long way since 1633 and the Inquisition’s persecution of Galieo. Today, it is not the scientific method that is on trial. Rather, the Pope is drawing on the evidence compiled by Galileo’s successors in the scientific method – specifically, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and in a certain sense using this evidence to put the people in this room on trial.
He continues. “A significant development in this past year was the release of the Special Report on the Impacts of Global Warming of 1.5C above Pre-Industrial Levels by the IPCC. This report clearly warns that the effects on the climate will be catastrophic if we cross the threshold of 1.5C outlined in the Paris Agreement goal. The report warns, moreover, that only one decade or so remains in order to achieve this confinement of global warming.”
Yes, that was indeed the key message of the IPCC Special Report: time is running out fast, and we need to drastically reduce carbon emissions – by 45% by 2030 versus 2010 levels – if we are to avoid catastrophic and irreversible climate change.
The Pontifex therefore continues his speech with a passage about the need to price carbon emissions.
“Carbon pricing is essential if humanity is to use the resources of creation wisely. The failure to deal with carbon emissions has incurred a vast debt that will now have to be repaid with interest by those coming after us. Our use of the world’s natural resources can only be considered ethical when the economic and social costs of using them are transparently recognised and are fully borne by those who incur them, rather than by other people or future generations.”
This is amazing, I think to myself. I am here as an expert on carbon pricing, and I wrote the speech that my CEO delivered yesterday in this same room on this same topic. To hear His Holiness talk like a carbon analyst is the strongest career validation I have ever received.
“Continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them” (Timothy 3:14).
When the Pope talks about ‘carbon emissions’, he is using the generic term for CO2 and other greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere by human activity. GHG concentrations in the atmosphere are of two kinds: those that occur naturally and that explain the so-called natural greenhouse effect; and those that have accumulated in the atmosphere as a result of human activity and that drive the so-called enhanced greenhouse effect.
In the six Assessment Reports it has published since 1990, the IPCC has conclusively shown that as the quantity of GHG emissions has increased over time, so the rate at which the Earth’s climate is warming has accelerated. In effect, a manmade sub-cycle of energy exchange between the Earth and its atmosphere is occurring within the natural cycle of energy exchange between the sun, the Earth, and the Earth’s atmosphere.
This means that as atmospheric GHG concentration levels continue to increase, the equilibrium between incoming solar radiation and outgoing infrared radiation will be established at ever higher temperatures: the Earth will get hotter and hotter until planetary tipping points are reached, after which point warming will accelerate exponentially.
Think of carbon emissions as the luggage you take on a plane. If you want to take more than the personal luggage allowance the airline gives you, then you have to pay extra. Putting a price on extra luggage encourages people to travel more lightly so that the plane can fly safely.
In the same way, putting a price on the amount of storage space in the atmosphere for further GHG concentrations should encourage industries and consumers to reduce their emissions to levels consistent with achieving the warming limit enshrined in the Paris Agreement.
That is why the Pope wants to put a price on carbon emissions. The amount of space left in the atmosphere for further GHG concentrations is the ultimate scarce resource and it must be valued accordingly.
At the latest count (in 2023), humans produce about 54 billion tonnes of GHGs, 80% of which is in the form of CO2.
For comparison, consider that every year the world produces 4 bln tonnes of oil, 7 bln tonnes of coal, 3 bln tonnes of gas, 30 bln tonnes of concrete, and 2 bln tonnes of steel. In terms of food staples, every year the world produces 770 mln tonnes of rice and 375 mln tonnes of potatoes.
So, every year the world produces more carbon pollution than it does all hydrocarbons, steel, concrete, rice, and potatoes put together. “And I brought you into a plentiful land to enjoy its fruits and its good things. But when you came in, you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination” (Jeremiah 2:7).
Concluding his speech, Pope Francis emphasises the need for immediate action.
“Dear friends, time is running out. We do not have the luxury of waiting for others to step forward, or of prioritising short-term economic benefits. The climate crisis requires our decisive action, here and now. A radical energy transition is needed to save our common home. There is still hope and there remains time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, provided there is prompt and resolute action.”
The room bursts into a standing ovation, and as the Pope leaves first in order to be able to greet us all individually on our way out of the Aula Magna, I pause once more to look at the inscriptions bearing Galileo’s name, and to reflect on the extraordinary moment we have all just experienced.
After his trial, Galileo defiantly said of the Earth moving around the sun, “Eppur si muove” — “And yet it moves,” or, alternatively, “And yet it turns.”
Meanwhile, Pope Francis has just told us that despite the conclusive scientific evidence establishing a causal link between human activities and climate change, the world continues to ignore the exhortations of the IPCC to change course and align its energy-consumption patterns with a trajectory consistent with the Paris Agreement.
The title of his speech might just as well have been: “And yet it burns!”
We all file out into the sunshine to have our photographs taken shaking hands with His Holiness. When it comes to my turn I thank him in my best Spanish for his extraordinary leadership, and he replies graciously in his gentle Argentinian accent. Thirty seconds of humbling enlightenment face to face with a spiritual giant.
All of the Big Oil and High Finance executives get their same moment of celestial grace, and after the ceremonial photographs are completed the Pope waves goodbye to us and we resume our meeting for one last discussion to finalise the press releases on the upshot of our seminar. There will be one on carbon pricing and one on climate-risk disclosure.
Yet when they are finished, the press releases have none of the urgency of the Pope’s resounding call to action. There are no pledges to reduce GHG emissions on the part of either Big Oil or High Finance, and no timetable for accelerating investments into clean energy technologies, either.
And there is certainly nothing remotely aligned with the IPCC’s Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5C that the Pope cited in his speech earlier this same morning.
But then, none of these executives came to the Vatican to put themselves out of business. The petroleum companies represented here are valued on their reserves of oil and gas, and the investment companies in part on the value of their shareholdings in these oil companies. They are not going to change their business models voluntarily. There will be no sinners redeemed by the empty phraseology of these press releases.
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It is Saturday, Apr. 26, 2025 and I am watching Pope Francis’ funeral on television. Looking back nearly six years later, and with Pope Francis having passed away only a few days ago, it is excruciating to look at the trend in GHG emissions and global average temperatures since he hosted the climate seminar in June 2019 and delivered his inspirational address.
In 2019, global GHG emissions were 52.8 bln tonnes. In 2023, they reached a new record level of 57.1 bln.
That compares with 49.8 bln tonnes in 2010, when the IPCC Special Report cited by Pope Francis in his speech called for a reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 of 45% versus 2010 levels. Instead, global emissions increased over 2010-23 by 15% and over 2019-23 by 8%.
Meanwhile, 2024 was the warmest year going back to 1850, and the first calendar year that averaged more than 1.5C above the pre-industrial level. All of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred in the last 10 years (2015–24). Going back further, all months since July 2023, except for July 2024, have exceeded the 1.5C level.
What can one say, except that the exhortations of Pope Francis and the scientific heirs to Galileo that he cited in Laudato Si and in his speech in June 2019 have been and continue to be brazenly ignored?
“And he said also to the people, ‘When ye see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway ye say, there cometh a shower; and so it is. And when ye see the south wind blow, ye say, there will be heat; and it cometh to pass. Ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky and of the earth; but how is it that ye do not discern this time?’” (Luke 12:54-56).
May Pope Francis rest in peace, having provided the moral leadership on the climate crisis so egregiously lacking amongst the world’s business and policymaking elites.
Mark Lewis is a partner at Andurand Capital Management LLP. He is the former global head of sustainability research at BNP Paribas Asset Management and a former member of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures.
Any opinions expressed in this commentary reflect the views of the author and not of Carbon Pulse.
