For me, this moment is not just for mourning, but for deep gratitude. We have been fortunate to witness a rare kind of leadership. At a time of widening divides – among nations, within societies, and between humanity and the planet – he offered a steady hand and a moral compass.

His 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti remains one of the most profound moral blueprints of our time. A rallying cry for unity, compassion and solidarity. In a world increasingly fractured, he reminded us of something simple but profound: we belong to each other. Migrants, the poor, the marginalized – he made no distinction. He asked us to look into the eyes of the “other” and see not a stranger, but a neighbour – not a threat, but a reflection of ourselves.

He made us feel we were working not just on policy, but on purpose.

He was never afraid to hold a mirror to power – reminding us often that political and economic systems should serve the common good, that true leadership means service, and that peace is not simply the absence of war, but the presence of justice.

I remember clearly the first time I met him. It was shortly after his election, and we were presenting the Better Growth, Better Climate report. He listened carefully – then gently reminded us: “Don’t forget who suffers most from climate change.” He asked us to go beyond the science and put people, especially the most vulnerable, at the centre of our work. Later, he showed us his modest room – having declined the grand papal apartments. That small act spoke volumes about his values: humility, solidarity, simplicity.

He cared deeply for the protection of nature – fitting, given that St. Francis is the patron saint of ecology. His 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’, a passionate appeal for the care of our common home, marked a turning point in how faith, science and society could come together.

I will not easily forget the moment he stood before the 2015 United Nations General Assembly, when the world adopted the Sustainable Development Goals. His presence brought a kind of stillness – and then, motion. He made us feel we were working not just on policy, but on purpose.

As the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Global South, and the first to take the name Francis, he disrupted centuries of convention, not for the sake of change, but to reflect a different kind of leadership – one that opened the doors of the church a little wider. As he said in one of his final letters, “Love builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.” It’s a reminder we would do well to carry forward. The work is not finished. If anything, it begins anew.

He would often end our meetings with a simple request: “Pray for me.” And we did. Today, we return to that prayer. Rest well, dear brother. May your example continue to guide us, and may we be worthy to continue on the path you forged.

Now it falls to us to carry the light forward.

This article was originally written for LinkedIn. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. See the original post here.

Paul Polman is the former CEO of Unilever, a long-time climate campaigner and the author of Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More than They Take.

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The Vatican published a 10-page declaration from Pope Francis on Wednesday saying Western countries have dragged their feet on climate action and urging them to take much faster and more far-reaching steps to tamp down rising global temperatures. Responses to the climate crisis have so far “not been adequate,” the document says, “while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point.”

In his new encyclical, titled Laudate Deum, or “praise God,” Pope Francis calls for a hastened transition to renewable energy and the “abandonment of fossil fuels,” while cautioning against an overreliance on technologies like carbon capture and storage. It’s the pontiff’s first major declaration on climate and the environment since the Paris Agreement was negotiated in 2015, although he has frequently opined less formally on the urgency of climate action. In 2019, he declared a global “climate emergency,” saying a failure to act represents “a brutal act of injustice toward the poor and future generations.” He has since made calls for “radical decisions” and society-wide collaboration to address the problem.

The release of the message coincides with the start of a major gathering at the Vatican, the “Synod on Synodality,” to decide the future of the Catholic Church, including debates on the role of women in Catholic ministry, divorced people, and the LBGTQ+ community. Laudate Deum, which draws extensively from the climate science of the United Nations, received widespread praise from environmental leaders as well as leaders in the Catholic Church. “To have a global religious leader like Pope Francis putting climate action in terms of defending life is huge,“ Jessica Moerman, president of the Evangelical Environment Network, told the Associated Press.

Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, called the declaration “a word from the churches to the people of God … calling for a united humanity that will serve our suffering creation.”

“As in the Old Testament, God lays before us a choice and says, ‘Choose life,’” Welby added in a statement. “Laudate Deum chooses life.”

Described by Pope Francis as the “second part” of his previous encyclical, Laudate Deum is blunter and more critical than many of the pontiff’s previous communications. It takes specific aim at the United Nations’ annual climate conferences for failing to stem climate pollution. “Despite the many negotiations and agreements,” the encyclical says, “global emissions continue to rise.” The pope expresses guarded hope for this year’s conference, COP28, to be held in November and December, but warns that the talks could be compromised by conflicts of interest with the host country, the United Arab Emirates.

The UAE is “known as a great exporter of fossil fuels,” the pontiff writes. Despite the country’s recent investments in renewable energy technologies, “gas and oil companies are planning new projects there, with the aim of further increasing their production.”

The pope criticizes other wealthy countries for obstructing climate policy in order to protect their “national interests.” He targets overconsumption in the developed world too, noting that per-capita emissions in countries like the United States are up to seven times higher than the average in the world’s poorest countries. “A broad change in the irresponsible lifestyle connected with the Western model would have a significant long-term impact,” he writes.

He also echoes many scientists’ concerns about an undue reliance on technological solutions like carbon capture, which sucks the greenhouse gas out of the air so it can be stored in ecosystems or rock formations. “To suppose that all problems in the future will be able to be solved by new technical interventions is a form of homicidal pragmatism,” he writes, “like pushing a snowball down a hill.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/culture/pope-francis-calls-for-rapid-decarbonization-abandonment-of-fossil-fuels/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

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A combination of pasta, hot dogs, oranges and green peppers got him through the month.

Some 30 years later, riding Tesla’s soaring stock, Musk passed Jeff Bezos to become the richest man on the planet, with a net worth of US$189.7 billion as of January 8, 2021.

In carrying out his mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy, Musk has become a prophet for clean capitalism, with Tesla now ranked as the most sustainable and valuable car company in the world.

Musk is not alone. The Prince of Wales, the pope, and critically, a protest movement catalyzed by Greta Thunberg have all turned up the heat for businesses to get real about cooling the planet.

Prince Charles has long championed the environment and the central role industry and finance must play in its protection, but he’s dialled up the urgency significantly in the past year. In the fall, he said climate change poses such a severe threat that the world’s only option is to adopt a military-style response reminiscent of the U.S. Marshall Plan that helped rebuild post-war Europe 70 years ago.

In January, the prince looked back more than 800 years to the Magna Carta (which inspired a belief in the fundamental rights of people) to issue a companion document – the Terra Carta, or Earth Charter – that aims to enshrine the rights and value of nature in capitalism, inviting the world’s CEOs to make a sustainable future the growth story of our time.

Pope Francis once described unbridled capitalism as the “dung of the devil.” In a sign of the times, he recently gave his blessing to the Council for Inclusive Capitalism, a partnership between the Vatican and the leaders of some of the world’s largest businesses, including the chiefs of BP and Bank of America.

This seemingly unholy alliance seeks to make capitalism a more holy instrument for answering the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.

There are now more than 300 companies, representing more than US$3.6 trillion in market cap, that have committed to a net-zero-emission target in line with a 1.5°C future.

Some worry these are empty words that give the impression that sufficient action is being taken – a sort of delay tactic. Thunberg, the teenaged activist who kicked off a citizens’ climate movement, says, “We must forget about net-zero – we need real zero.”

She spells out what that means:

“Immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction. Immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies. And immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels. We don’t want these things done by 2050, 2030 or even [next year]. We want this done now.”

She’s right, but defunding carbon bombs will not be enough; not even close. The real action is going all in on funding climate solutions. What gets funded gets done. How we invest our trillions starting right now will determine our future.

To paraphrase Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, the climate-solution revolution is today, not tomorrow. The litmus test for companies and countries (and anyone, really) is what percentage of your current budget is allocated with an intention to create a carbon-free sustainable world. If it’s less than 100%, you’ve got work to do.

The recently released Corporate Knights Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World is a list of companies that are, in the words of Prince Charles, who spoke at this year’s launch, “leading the way by putting sustainability at the heart of their products, services, business models and investments, helping to move the world onto a more sustainable trajectory.”

This year’s Global 100 companies rose to the top of a pool of 8,080 global firms that earn more than $1 billion a year, based on rigorous assessment of 24 indicators, including percentage of taxes paid and percentage of revenue and new investments aligned with a sustainable economy. Several new performance indicators reflect social concerns highlighted by both the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, including providing paid sick leave and executive and board racial diversity.

On average, one-third of new investments on the part of Global 100 companies are clean, in contrast to less than one-quarter for their peers, while the percentage of Global 100 companies that offer at least 10 days of paid sick leave (86%) is more than double that of their peer benchmark, the MSCI All Country World Index (41%).

Global 100 companies also earned on average 41% of their revenues from products or services aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, compared to just 8% for their peers.

But none of this would have legs if the good guys weren’t also faring well financially. On this score, the Global 100, which is calculated as an index, handily outperformed its MSCI ACWI peers by 10% over the last year, and 43% since the Global 100 index was launched in 2005.

What is needed now is for the rest of the business world, most importantly the big-money investors who have been sitting on the sidelines, to also lean into this more civilized form of sustainable capitalism.

Encouragingly, the largest pension fund in Ontario, the $205 billion Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, recently committed to achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This marks a stark contrast to the Canada Pension Plan, which has no such target and has been singled out for its “troubling incrementalism” by Osgoode Hall pension scholars – while forgoing $6 billion in returns as a result of its fossil fuel investments over the past 10 years, according to Corporate Knights analysis of its equities portfolio.

But now that BlackRock, the largest investor in the world, with a whopping $8.7 trillion under management, has jumped on the net-zero-emissions bandwagon, it is only a matter of time before it becomes the standard, placing a 100% sustainable and zero-carbon economy within our grasp.

The good news for our species is that the forces of pride and profit have shifted in favour of those on the right side of climate history, with shame and economic shambles awaiting those who cling to the wrong side.

Just four of the 13 Canadian companies on the Global 100 have committed to align their businesses with net-zero science-based targets, compared to more than half of Global 100 companies in general, though there is still time for them to get on board in the lead-up to global climate talks this fall in Glasgow.

With the sun shining on climate solutions, companies are free at last to shed their carbon cloaks.

A version of this article appears in the Winter Issue of Corporate Knights as well as the Toronto Star.

Toby Heaps is the CEO and editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights.

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