Pope Francis gave President Trump a copy of Laudato Si, the pope's encyclical about the moral obligation to take care of our planet, during the president's Vatican visit.

Shortly after, Trump decided to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement.

This was the first agreement signed by almost every country in the world, including China, India and the U.S., to take measures to limit global warming and climate change. To trash the agreement, as have some conservatives, because it is non-binding, is both short sighted and wrong.

All agreements start by small steps especially when this involves poor and rich countries each with their own problems. Cal Thomas calls those who believe that humans are largely responsible for climate change "secular progressives." Is Pope Francis thus a "secular progressive?"

Global warming and climate change if left unaddressed will lead to human disasters where the poor in this world will suffer the most. Isn't taking care of the poor a concern for self-righteous climate change deniers like columnist Thomas, who like to consider themselves morally superior?

The real issue is that 98 percent of the world's scientists who are conservatives and progressives, church goers and atheists, believe that man is contributing to climate change.

Trump should listen to the Pope.

Dr. Robert J. Perry

Mystic