Apparently, there is a split of opinion on what some people believe God wants the world to do about the climate. On one side, Senator Jim Inhofe does not believe the man is responsible for climate change. He has publicly stated that, “[T]he Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that ‘as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night.’ My point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.” When I mentioned this quote to a European audience at a conference on climate change and business in 2013, there was an audible gasp. He also wrote a 2012 book, The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future. His position did not change after the 2013 Intergovernmental Commission on Climate Change Report definitively declared that climate change was largely man made. This would all be irrelevant if Senator Inhofe wasn’t the Chair of the Senate committee that oversees the environment. Inhofe was the keynote speaker last week at the Heartland Institute’s annual conference on climate change (watch the video clip in the article in which the Catholic Church and the Pope get special mention).

On the other side of the debate, Pope Francis will enter the fray with a new Encyclical on climate change next week, and it's expected to have some influence on upcoming UN talks on the subject. Many US politicians argue that the Pope should "mind his own business" and stick to issues that affect the poor and the faithful around the world. Climate change is actually directly related to the ability of poor people to gain access to water, grow crops, and avoid natural disasters, and thus I would argue that this is the Pope’s “business.” It’s also Senator Inhofe’s business as he's allegedly received over $1.7 million from the oil and gas industry over his career.

Although oil and gas companies have contributed to Senator Inhofe, a number of them have already tried to be proactive in their CSR reports and other marketing efforts. The tide may be turning against climate change deniers. Norway’s $900 billion sovereign wealth fund just divested from 122 fossil fuel companies ($945 million), and that fund was largely financed by Norway’s oil wealth. In any event, I look forward to reading the Pope’s comments and seeing how foreign governments and US businesses respond to it.