“No matter where you go, whatever temperatures you check, they’re all going the same direction — and they’re increasing,” said Br. Kevin Cawley, the Edmund Rice Christian Brothers’ main representative at the United Nations and executive director of the Thomas Berry Forum for Ecological Dialogue at Iona University, which hosted the Jan. 16 event.
The presentation by Cawley on the many plights facing the planet, as well as some signs of progress, came on the heels of the hottest year ever on record and amid turbulent global politics, with ramifications for international efforts around climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.
It also aligned with the Catholic Church’s Jubilee Year, a time in which Pope Francis has invited the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Catholics to become “pilgrims of hope.” That word, hope, is all the more important during potentially dark times, Cawley said…