VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis urged governments on Friday to make good on their commitments to curb global warming, warning that climate change, continued unsustainable development and rampant consumption threatens to turn the Earth into a vast pile of “rubble, deserts and refuse.”

Francis made the appeal at a Vatican conference marking the third anniversary of his landmark environmental encyclical “Praise Be.” The document, meant to spur action at the 2015 Paris climate conference, called for a paradigm shift in humanity’s relationship with Mother Nature.

In his remarks, Francis urged governments to honor their Paris commitments and said institutions like the IMF and World Bank had important roles to play in encouraging reforms promoting sustainable development.

“There is a real danger that we will leave future generations only rubble, deserts and refuse,” he warned.

The Paris accord, reached by 195 countries, seeks to avoid some of the worst effects of climate change by curbing global greenhouse gas emissions via individual, nonbinding national plans.

Recently, Francis invited oil executives and investors to the Vatican for a closed-door conference where he urged them to find alternatives to fossil fuels. He warned that climate change was a challenge of “epochal proportions.”

And next year, Francis has called a three-week synod, or meeting of bishops, specifically to address the church’s response to the ecological crisis in the Amazon, where deforestation threatens what he has called the “lung” of the planet.


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