Elliott is a senior director at Laudato Si’ Movement and a fellow of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication with The Op-Ed Project.
Leaders have been gathering at the United Nations climate summit for the past few weeks, shaping crucial decisions for all humanity. The negotiators in past U.N. climate summits have lacked the courage of their convictions. But this year, Pope Francis, who planned to attend in person, sent an important message to participants. Negotiators should learn from faith leaders like him because they are making the hard choices to implement real climate solutions.
The talks, known as COP28, are the 28th time that countries will try to reduce greenhouse gas pollution while the problem grows – greenhouse gas pollution is now about 50 percent higher than it was 28 years ago.
This has been taking place eight years after the signing of the Paris Agreement, a climate accord that raised hopes for humanity’s ability to dream of a better future together. The signatures on that document represented a commitment to protecting the Earth, our common home, for the benefit of all.
With this in mind, it is a surprising fact that the phrase “fossil fuels” is not mentioned anywhere in the Paris Agreement. This seems like a puzzling oversight, given that there is no question that fossil fuels are a signficant factor in driving the climate crisis. Reducing the impact of fossil fuels is the only way to prevent the worst of the hunger, sickness, conflict and forced migration that climate change brings.
As countries try once again to turn the arc of greenhouse gas pollution downward, they should look to an unexpected source of inspiration. For many years now, leaders in the faith community have been speaking out about the climate crisis and making the difficult decisions needed to implement real solutions.
Pope Francis recently released a high-level statement on the climate crisis, saying “the necessary transition towards clean energy sources such as wind and solar energy, and the abandonment of fossil fuels, is not progressing at the necessary speed.”
Through the Vatican’s sustainability program, over 8,000 institutions and individuals have committed to creating comprehensive plans for action, including making the switch to clean energy. In response to both guidance from Rome and decades of Catholic teaching on climate change, more than 350 Catholic institutions have divested from fossil fuels, making the hard decision to align their financial practices with their values.
Ambitious action is being taken by Catholics in the United States. Dominican Sisters have invested $46 million in a Climate Solutions Fund to support projects in sustainability. A nationwide effort to install solar panels on Catholic facilities has resulted in clean energy powering parishes.
Beyond the Catholic faith, Muslims are embracing clean energy and have issued a prohibition against investments in fossil fuels. Synagogues are installing solar panels and Jewish leaders are developing climate action plans.
Each of these decisions involved months or even years, of deliberation, including challenging conversations with community members, financial advisors and facilities managers. Yet despite the challenges, faith leaders didn’t let the challenges stop them because they know that the urgent need to protect our brothers and sisters from the climate crisis is imperative.
National leaders face far more complex challenges but the science remains the same. Either we stop climate change, or climate change will stop us. Now is the time for action.
A view of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on June 25, 2026. President Donald Trump jolted Republicans during a fiery appearance at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, scrapping a housing bill signing ceremony and clashing behind closed doors with a party rebel who challenged him over the Iran war. Trump had been expected to sign the bipartisan housing.
Only Trump doesn’t care about housing
It was August 15, 2024. Then candidate Donald Trump stepped out of his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club’s columned clubhouse to a gaggle of reporters. He was flanked by tables of groceries and signs showing the rising cost of food. Also on one of the tables was a dollhouse, meant to represent the equally alarming rise in housing prices.
It was a speech about the economy, the single most important issue of the 2024 election cycle, full of promises that went right to the heart of Americans’ anxieties. While former President Joe Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris were contorting themselves to posture a good economy that just needed more time to recover from the pandemic, Trump was preying on voters’ very real fears of unaffordable gas, groceries, and homes. It was obviously a winning message.
In that speech, Trump promised, “We’re going to open up tracts of federal land for housing construction. We desperately need housing for people who can’t afford what’s going on now.”
As of mid-2023, there had been a housing shortage of nearly four million homes, according to the National Association of Realtors. Americans all over the country were either priced out of buying new homes due to low inventory, trapped in their existing homes by sky-high mortgage rates, or facing exorbitant rent hikes thanks to corporate investors buying up rental properties. Americans needed help, and Trump promised it.
Cut to March of 2026, when Trump reportedly told House Speaker Mike Johnson, “No one gives a sh*t about housing.”
That kind of thinking may explain why Trump this week suddenly announced he was canceling a signing ceremony for the bipartisan “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act,” a housing bill co-sponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott that passed the House 358-32 and was approved in the Senate on Monday.
Trump instead demanded Congress pass the SAVE America Act, his controversial election grievance bill that doesn’t have enough Republican support to get passed in the Senate.
It’s just the latest in a line of policy self-owns where Trump has seemingly intentionally made life more difficult for Republicans hoping to keep their majority. Despite midterm elections occurring in the midst of a blistering economy and an unpopular war, they were surely hoping the housing bill would give them something — anything — to brag about when they returned home to their districts.
And very much to the contrary, Americans do give a sh*t about housing. According to a recent survey by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a whopping 79% say the cost of housing is extremely or very important to them. Eighty-three percent say Congress should take action on the issue — like it just did. Eighty-nine percent say the House and Senate need to work together to pass affordable housing legislation — like they just did. And 63% say they would be more likely to vote for a lawmaker if they helped pass legislation to build more affordable homes and lower housing costs — like they just did.
There aren’t many issues that unite Americans like housing does, and very few bipartisan policy wins Congress can point to, and yet, Trump is holding that bill hostage in order to get his pet project — which doesn’t even have the support of his own party — pushed through.
If you’re trying to make sense of something so nonsensical, as I’m sure many Republican lawmakers are, it’s certainly sad but not actually all that complicated. Trump said what he needed to get reelected and then promptly abandoned his promises in order to pursue his own self-interests, even if those interests are bad for Republicans and bad for voters.
That’s just the kind of guy he is.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.