House Republican Plans to Boycott Pope Francis’s Speech Over Climate Change

http://www.nationaljournal.com/s/73344/house-republican-plans-boycott-pope-francis-speech-over-climate-change

In an op-ed on the con­ser­vat­ive site Town­hall.com, the Ari­zona Re­pub­lic­an ap­pears very much con­cerned that Fran­cis will urge ac­tion to fight cli­mate change when he be­comes the first pope to speak dir­ectly to a joint ses­sion of Con­gress. The pontiff is an out­spoken ad­voc­ate of ac­tion to com­bat man-made cli­mate change, a stand that does not sit well with Gos­ar, a skep­tic of the sci­entif­ic con­sensus that hu­man activ­ity is the primary driver of dan­ger­ous glob­al warm­ing.

“At this pivotal mo­ment in world his­tory, His Holi­ness, Pope Fran­cis, is in­tend­ing to spend the ma­jor­ity of his time on one of the world’s greatest stages fo­cus­ing on cli­mate change,” Gos­ar writes, de­clar­ing: “If the Pope plans to spend the ma­jor­ity of his time ad­voc­at­ing for flawed cli­mate-change policies, then I will not at­tend.”