July 2016 was the hottest month since records began in 1880. Jos Lelieveld, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute, has warned that large areas of the planet could become so hot that they would be virtually uninhabitable for humans.

This would trigger an exodus of hundreds of millions of refugees. Lelieveld maintains, “The July temperatures must underline the urgency of the crisis.”

I finally kicked smoking on 1 January 1972. It was a huge struggle, as nicotine is as addictive as heroin, but it was my New Year resolution and I was able to stick with it. 

I made my first visit to Kew Gardens in London in the early 1980s. It is a beautiful and highly scientific place and in May this year, it produced an extraordinarily important report on The State of the World’s Plants.

The good news is that the staff now believe that there are 390,000 species of plants on earth. The director of science at Kew Gardens, Kathy Willis, spoke to Damian Carrington of The Guardian about the importance of plants for humans.

One-hundred-and-fifty years ago in 1866, Father Gregory Mendel published an article entitled, Experiments with Plant Hybrids, in a scientific journal in the city of Brno (Brünn in German), which today is in the Czech Republic.

He sent copies of his research to a number of prominent naturalist scholars across Europe, including Charles Darwin. Darwin did not read Mendel’s paper; if he had it would have helped him understand how his own theory of evolution worked.

The El Niño is causing damage to the Great Barrier Reef off Australia’s northern east coast in a manner that was predicted by Pope Francis in his encyclical, Praise Be: On care for our common home (Laudato Si’).

I vividly remember my first visit to Kew Gardens in London in the early 1980s. I was on my way to Ireland for a holiday after my first term as a missionary among the T’boli people in the highlands of south-eastern Mindanao in The Philippines.

I had enjoyed my time there learning their language, listening to their music, watching their intricate dances, observing their rituals and celebrations, especially around marriage.

Since Praise Be: On care for our common home (Laudato Si) was published on 18 June 2015, many people have been claiming that it was the climate change encyclical.

But even a cursory reading of the document makes it clear that it also deals with poverty, the destruction of biodiversity, the pollution of fresh water and the oceans, extractive industries and waste.