Pope urges revolution to save Earth, fix 'perverse' economy

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Francis called Thursday for a bold cultural revolution to correct what he calls the "structurally perverse" economic system of the rich exploiting the poor that is turning Earth into an "immense pile of filth."

In a sweeping manifesto aimed at spurring action in U.N. climate negotiations, domestic politics and everyday life, Francis explains the science of global warming, which he blames on an unfair, fossil-fuel-based industrial model he says harms the poor most.

Citing Scripture and past popes' and bishops' appeals, he urges people of all faiths and no faith to undergo an awakening to save God's creation for future generations.

It's an indictment of big business and climate doubters alike.

"It is not enough to balance, in the medium term, the protection of nature with financial gain, or the preservation of the environment with progress," he writes. "Halfway measures simply delay the inevitable disaster. Put simply, it is a matter of redefining our notion of progress."

Environmental scientists said the first ever encyclical, or teaching document, on the environment could have a dramatic effect on the climate debate, lending the moral authority of the immensely popular Francis to an issue that long has been cast in purely political, economic and scientific terms.

Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a Scripps Institution of Oceanography scientist, said the encyclical would be a "game-changer in making people think about this."

"It's not politics anymore," he said, adding science usually is difficult for people to understand, but people respond to arguments framed by morality and ethics.

The energy lobby was quick to criticize the encyclical and its anti-fossil fuel message.

"The simple reality is that energy is the essential building block of the modern world," said Thomas Pyle of the Institute of Energy Research, a conservative free-market group. "The application of affordable energy makes everything we do -- food production, manufacturing, health care, transportation, heating and air conditioning -- better."

Francis said he hoped his effort would lead ordinary people in their daily lives and decision-makers at critical U.N. climate meetings later this year to a wholesale change of mind and heart, saying "both the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor" must be heard.

"This vision of 'might is right' has engendered immense inequality, injustice and acts of violence against the majority of humanity, since resources end up in the hands of the first comer or the most powerful: the winner takes all," he writes. "Completely at odds with this model are the ideals of harmony, justice, fraternity and peace as proposed by Jesus."

The encyclical "Laudato Si," (Praise Be) is 191 pages of pure Francis. It's a blunt, readable booklet full of zingers that will make many conservatives and climate doubters squirm, including in the U.S. Congress, where Francis will deliver the first-ever papal address in September.

It likely will put several U.S. presidential candidates on the hot seat, because some Republicans, Catholics among them, doubt the science behind global warming and have said the pope should stay away from the debate.

"I don't think we should politicize our faith," U.S. Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, a Catholic convert, said on the eve of the encyclical's release. "I think religion ought to be about making us better as people and less about things that end up getting into the political realm."