George Pell saw climate science as a dangerous religious dogma – in the end his hardline stance held the church back

The late Cardinal George Pell left a legacy of climate science denial which – in his later years – became ever more distanced from reality and the position of the Catholic church.

For decades in newspaper columns and speeches, Pell popularised climate denial talking points to dismiss the science of global heating and to brand environmentalists as hysterical and in the grip of a pseudo-religion.

In one 2011 interview with Catholic media, Pell said: “In the past, pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today, they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.”

Climate change was mostly natural, Pell often argued, and the science linking human emissions to the warming of the planet was not settled.

“He was really quite prolific and wrote so many climate denial pieces,” says Prof Tim Stephens, an expert on international environment law at the University of Sydney, who corresponded with Pell several times over the issue. “It seemed to occupy quite a bit of his time.

“He was too caught up in the rightwing cultural view of climate change being a hoax or a conspiracy.

“I wrote to him with a genuine offer to give him more mainstream information instead of conspiratorial talking points. It was clear it was having no impact and his mind was completely closed.”

Pell, who died in Rome this week aged 81, used his position as Australia’s most senior Catholic to forcefully reject concerns over a climate crisis.

“It wasn’t just that he was repeating climate denial talking points, he was also delving deeply into the contrarian literature and quoting it,” says Stephens, who is a practising Catholic.

In one column in 2008, Pell wrote that global warming had “ceased” because some parts of the planet had seen unusually cold weather and snowfalls.

These were, he wrote, “inconvenient facts for the climate-change bandwagon … and it is an intolerant bandwagon with loud, exaggerated claims that the issue is settled and that an unchallenged consensus among scientists confirms the hypothesis of dangerous, humanly caused global warming.”

Citing a book by Australian mining figure and geologist Prof Ian Plimer, Pell wrote in 2009: “Evidence shows the wheels are falling from the climate catastrophe bandwagon.”

In his highest profile address on climate change, Pell delivered a 2011 lecture in London at the sceptical thinktank the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which was founded by Thatcher-era UK treasurer Lord Nigel Lawson.

Pell pulled together a cavalcade of talking points that climate scientists reviewed and dismissed as “dreadful”, “utter rubbish” and “flawed.”

Five years later, the former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott followed in the footsteps of his friend and mentor, delivering the same annual lecture to the same thinktank, with similar themes.

On the eve of the Paris climate conference in 2015, the former prime minister Kevin Rudd publicly challenged Pell, who was climbing the ranks of seniority in the Vatican.

It was no small matter, said Rudd, that Pell was muddying the ethical waters with his radical climate scepticism.

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But Stephens says the dam wall of Pell’s climate denial broke in 2015 when Pope Francis released his encyclical on the environment – Laudato Si – calling for global action on climate change to mitigate the risk of serious consequences for ecosystems and humanity.

“He was an outlier among bishops in Australia,” he says. “But it didn’t stop his criticism [of climate science].”

Neil Ormerod, a retired professor of theology formerly at the Australia Catholic University, says Pell ignored the encyclical.

“It made no difference to him,” he says. “But Laudato Si will be remembered long after George Pell becomes a footnote in history.”

Ormerod remembers discussing climate change with Pell in about 2009 and being shocked by his scepticism.

“He was my employer at the time,” Ormerod says. “Part of it was that George was a political animal and he grew up in a world of anti-communists and with the collapse of communism, they needed a new opponent to focus their concerns.

“Really he saw the emerging green movement as a new form of communism. He referred to them as watermelons – green on the outside but red on the inside. He saw it as neopagan.”

Pell and Abbott shared similar ideas about the validity of climate science and the broader environmental movement – both believing environmentalism was a form of dangerous religious dogma.

“If nothing else, Pell provided Abbott with spiritual succour for maintaining this very hardline climate change denialism position,” Ormerod says.

Even when papal teaching was moving in the opposite direction, Ormerod says, Pell’s scepticism provided cover for the likes of Abbott, who were able to point to Pell’s scepticism as being consistent with their religious beliefs.

Among the church hierarchy, Ormerod says, Pell’s hardline stance held the organisation back and muted any response to the growing threat of climate change.

“Pell’s position on climate was disappointing, but it was just one of many disappointments,’ he says. “On a range of social issues, whether it be sexuality or industrial relations, he took a very conservative line politically and aligned himself with these retrograde political movements. And that held us back.”