Climate change meeting in Fresno echoes recent comments from Pope Francis

A meeting was organized in Fresno Wednesday night by activists and faith leaders to promulgate comments from Pope Francis about actions to protect the planet from pollution and climate change.

Investor and philanthropist Tom Steyer also attended the meeting at Saint Anthony Mary Claret Catholic Church in southeast Fresno. He is also the founder of NextGen Climate, which has been making efforts to encourage American politicians to debate it.

The meeting saw more than 200 people participating in the discussion over climate change actions. Speakers said Fresno is facing threats of climate change disasters like pollution, drought, record heat and other health hazards.

Community leaders have to say that the best remedy to the problem is to shift to clean energy economy, which is very promising to both create jobs and improve public health. Clean energy by no means degrades the quality of air and water.

“The pope has made climate change the greatest moral question of our time. But it is also an economic question and a health question. Generating energy cleanly will have tremendous benefits”, said Steyer.

Unhealthy air affects seven out of 10 Californians and the city has the worst air pollution among all the US states, said Steyer. Asthma is the plight of more than 3 million Californians and more than 17,000 people were forced to quit their jobs in 2014 alone because of the drought.

Pope Francis said in Bolivia that implications of climate change on global level must not be underestimated as they are grave for environment, society, economy, politics and goods distribution.