Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, a leading German climate scientist who is set to speak as Pope Francis unveils his long-awaited climate
change encyclical, once said the world is overpopulated by 6 billion people,
Breitbart.com reports.
At the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference, Schellnhuber, who is founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and chairman of the German Advisory Council on Global Change, said that if greenhouse gas buildup caused a rise of 9 degrees Fahrenheit of global temperatures, much life on earth would be threatened. Six billion members of the 7 billion human population would die, he said, according to a
New York Times report on the conference.
"In a very cynical way, it’s a triumph for science because at last we have stabilized something – namely the estimates for the carrying capacity of the planet, namely below 1 billion people," said Schellnhuber, who is described by the Times writer as using dark humor throughout the talk.
"What a triumph," Schellnhuber said. "On the other hand, do we want this alternative? I think we can do much, much better."
Francis' encyclical comes out on Thursday in Vatican City , and many on the left have hoped it would link the global warming fight to religious obligation, Breitbart notes. With Schellnhuber, one of the word's most aggressive anti-climate change scientists, scheduled to speak, the left may be getting what they hope for.
"Catholics accept that we're living in an evolutionary universe," Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest and senior analyst at the National Catholic Reporter was quoted by Sciecemag.org. Reese said the encyclical may include such issues as "'Where is the world moving to?' and 'What is God's plan for creation?' and 'What [is] our role in it?'"
Schellnhuber said, "The scientific, economic, and moral dimensions all belong together."
Skeptics of man-made climate change already are voicing concern about the encyclical, and Schellnhuber's presence at the announcement isn't likely to allay their fears.
Breitbart notes he is also the author of the "two-degree target," that calls for nations to keep the global temperature within two degrees of what it was before the industrial revolution.
He also has called for an
Earth Constitution that would transcend the U.N. Charter and a "Global Council … elected by all the people on Earth" and a "Planetary Court … a transnational legal body open to appeals from everybody, especially with respect to violations of the Earth Constitution."
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