POPE SO WARNS

Pope warns climate change turning Earth into desert, garbage.

Pope Francis urged governments 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 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 lay 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.

U.S. President Donald Trump has said the U.S. will pull out of the accord negotiated by his predecessor unless he can get a batter deal.

Friday's conference was the latest in a series of Vatican initiatives meant to impress a sense of urgency about  global warming  and the threat it poses in particular to the world's poorest and most marginalized people.

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".

It grieves us to see the lands of indigenous people expropriated and their cultures trampled upon by  predatory schemes  and by new forms of colonialism, fueled by the culture of  waste and consumerism,'' Pope Francis said. [Agencies].