As I write, the 30th UN Climate Change Conference is underway in Belém, Brazil. It is ten years since many of the world’s leaders signed the Paris Agreement at COP21 when they pledged to reduce the use of fossil fuels so that global warming might be maintained at 1.5 degrees, writes Congregational Leader Sister Catherine McCahill SGS.
Some commentators are suggesting that this year’s conference is critical: “Australia and other governments are currently meeting in Brazil for COP30 to determine just how much the world is willing to do to address the threat posed by climate change, as the pact signed 10 years ago in Paris faces its own existential crisis.” (CPOP30 and the Paris Agreement, Royce Kurmelovs, The Saturday Paper, 15 November 2025).
There is some good news. Simon Stiell, the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change reported at the opening press conference: “The new NDCs (nationally determined contributions) including many received in recent days will reduce emissions by 12 per cent in 2035. That’s a big deal.” He urged the participants to greater action and accountability, reminding them that: “Every fraction of a degree of heating avoided will save millions of lives and billions of dollars in climate damage.”
Closer to home, this month east Asia, in particular the Philippines, and to a lesser extent Vietnam, have suffered the devastation of two typhoons, Kalmaegi and Fung-wong. More than 200 people have been killed, and thousands have been displaced with many losing all or most of their possessions, including shelter.
Our Good Samaritan Sisters and their ministry partners in Bacolod are still engaged in the daily task of providing relief parcels of food, clothing and sheets of iron. We mourn with them for the loss of lives, homes, livelihoods and possessions. Many of those they support were already living with very few resources and as squatters in make-shift communities. Now they have nothing but each other and their lives.
Even closer to home are the island nations in the Pacific. With Sisters in Kiribati, we Good Samaritans are acutely aware of the impact that climate change, in particular rising sea levels, is already having on their islands, their homes, their communities.
Recently, I have viewed two documentaries – Kiribati and climate change and Save Tuvalu, Save the World. I was moved by the simple appeal of the people; their cry for help to save their islands.
Cardinal Pablo David from the Philippines is one of the official Catholic Church participants at COP30. Speaking to Vatican News he commented:
“It’s almost like Pentecost. We come from various countries all over the world. I didn’t realise how seriously people are taking COP30 – just being there among the nations was amazing. It convinced me that there are people who truly care about our common home, about the Earth … The people least responsible for global warming suffer the most. But conversion is still possible. If we listen – truly listen – to one another and to the cry of the Earth, there is still hope.”
Poignantly for me as an Australian, he also comments on those countries that extract and export fossil fuels. His proposal is an “earth tariff” whereby a tariff would be imposed on countries/companies that extract fossil fuel. “That money could then be used by the UN to fund grants for Indigenous communities to regenerate forests, coral reefs and ecosystems.”
Like most Australians, I am aware of the fossil fuels extracted and exported from our country. The federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water reported this year:
Australia exports most of its energy production, with exports equal to 80 per cent of production in 2023=24 … 88 per cent of black coal energy production was exported, as was 74 per cent of domestic natural gas production and 96 per cent of crude oil production. Australia’s energy exports grew 3 per cent in 2023-24 to 15,292 petajoules, driven by an increase in black coal exports.
I am concerned when I see the upward trend of our exports. I wonder how this equates with being neighbour to the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations in the Pacific.
Of course, many of my fellow citizens will argue that Australia is not producing the greenhouse gas from the fossil fuels, we are only supplying the fuel. What is done with it, it not our concern. Others argue that if we don’t supply the fossil fuel, it will be sourced elsewhere. Another argument is that we need to protect our own citizens, those who rely on the extraction of fossil fuels for work or the viability of their rural and remote communities.
For me, this is not morally defensible. The supplier of a harmful product cannot be excused from the consequences of its use, especially when we know that no matter how it is used, harmful, global-warming greenhouse gas is the byproduct.
Yes, I am concerned for those individuals and families who live in and around those sites where coal and natural gas is extracted. Their livelihoods and lives are at risk. I grew up in rural Australia. I know and appreciate that statements and protests by climate activists from southern capitals are as likely to cause division and resentment as conversion.
We need to begin at home. If we wish to reduce and perhaps eliminate this country’s extraction and export of fossil fuels, we must engage those most impacted at the local levels where the products are sourced.
Their need for economic security, education for their children, health services and a sense of community must be addressed, and this will take commitment and resources from the entire Australian community.
I am encouraged in this approach by other voices from the Catholic Church community.
Madeleine Wörner from MISEREOR (German Catholic Bishops’ Organisation for Development Cooperation) explained this as a “just transition … moving from a fossil fuel-based economy to one that is sustainable, fair, and inclusive. … It needs to be just, not on the back of the most vulnerable, not on the back of the poor.”
The message from Pope Leo, delivered at COP30 by the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Parolin, links peace and climate action: If you want to cultivate peace, care for creation. There is a clear link between peacebuilding and the stewardship for creation.
The Bishops of Brazil have been preparing for COP30 for two years. They have mobilised the “global south” of the Church. Meeting in July with Pope Leo, a joint statement was issued by the Bishops Conferences of Asia, Latin America, and Africa and Madagascar. To them I give my final word of challenge and hope:
“Inspired by the cry of the peoples and the urgency of climate collapse, (we) stand together to raise a prophetic voice from the Global South. … We share a common conviction: without climate justice there is no peace, without ecological conversion there is no future, without listening to the people there are no real solutions.”
This article was published in the November 2025 edition of The Good Oil.
