The Washington Post - Mark Stoll, director of environmental studies at Texas Tech, discusses Pope Francis' views on climate change and the relationship between religion and environmentalism.
Pope Francis is set to publish "Laudato Si': On the Care of Our Common Home" on Thursday, the first encyclical on the environment by any pope. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and many others have expressed hopes the encyclical will put the moral weight of a popular pope and the world's largest Christian church behind meaningful action on environmental problems, such as global warming.
What most Americans seem to have forgotten is that the link between religion and environment is not recent. The relationship between religion and environment goes back centuries, but the original moral and religious inspiration for conservation and environmentalism was forgotten during environmentalism's heyday in the '70s.