An Energy Truth Shines Through

Amb. Jim Nicholson

From Jim Nicholson, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See from 2001 to 2005:

Well, there's another thing that I hope he [Pope Francis] realizes, and that is that the best way to help the poor in this world is to help them come out of that poverty and get electricity. There are over a billion people in the world that still do not even have electricity, and fossil fuel is the hope for that electricity. It's cheap, it's readily producible, and if you can't refrigerate medicine and you can't read in the dark, and you can't grow out of that poverty and there's a real link there, and the Holy Father, I think, needs to be very careful about this green movement that he sort of seems to align himself with in this encyclical on global climate change, and I hope that he will realize that.

One may disagree with most of what Nicholson says here. But not with his main point: “the best way to help the poor in this world is to help them come out of that poverty and get electricity.” It’s such an important message – and important for the public to understand - that we’ll take it wrapped however anyone cares to wrap it. The rest will be resolved in the fullness of time.

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