Mayor Hales reports back from meeting with Pope Francis on climate change

Published 12:00 am Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Mayor Charlie Hales reported back from Rome Wednesday morning after his audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican, praising the pope’s folksy style and commitment to addressing climate change.

Pope Francis issued a 184-page encyclical on climate change last month, calling attention to the threats it poses to all humanity and the planet.

Hales was one of about 60 mayors invited to meet with the pope, based on the Portland mayor’s participation in the C40 group of world mayors who are taking the lead on reducing carbon emissions.

The mayors sat in a classroom-style setting, listening to the pope talk in Spanish with simultaneous translations in their earpieces. Hales didn’t get closer than about 15 feet from the pope, he said in a conference call with Portland news reporters, but he came away energized by the event.

The pope’s message “really transcends dogma,” said Hales, a lifelong Episcopalian. “He’s made this a moral issue.”

Hales said when he returns home he hopes to tackle some of the tasks the city and Multnomah County already set for their leaders when they recently adopted an updated Climate Action Plan. Those include establishing a city policy on fossil fuel exports and considering moves to divest city holdings in fossil fuel companies. The fossil fuel policy is more important in the wake of Pembina Pipeline’s proposal to export propane from Portland, Hales said. This spring he changed his mind on Pembina’s proposed export terminal at the Port of Portland, and refused to let the City Council consider a zone change needed for the project to proceed.

In one new initiative coming from the Rome events, Hales said he volunteered to convene a meeting with fellow big-city mayors on the West Coast to follow up and discuss environmental initiatives. He also hopes to install more solar panels on city buildings. Hales also discussed the notion, commonly held by environmentalists, that the world must leave much of its present stocks of fossil fuels in the ground rather than use it for fuel, if we hope to prevent catastrophic effects from global warming.

Work to avert climate change is “not particularly happening at the national level,” Hales said. “The real work and real change is happening at the metropolitan level. That will happen street by street, light rail line by light rail, solar array by solar array.”

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