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In 2015, Pope Francis came out as an environmentalist, with his landmark encyclical Laudato Si, later called by Bill McKibben “the most important document yet of this millennium” and by Pankaj Mishra “arguably the most important piece of intellectual criticism in our time.”

Last week, with a follow-up apostolic exhortation called Laudate Deum, the pope came even further out — as a climate alarmist, a techno-skeptic and a degrowther, sympathetic to activists and, most improbably, a reader of the feminist futurist Donna Haraway, the author of “A Cyborg Manifesto.” He also emphatically endorsed the “abandonment” of fossil fuels — outing himself as a “keep it in the ground” guy as well.

He is also much angrier than he was eight years ago. Since Laudato Si, the pope writes, “I have realized that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point.” In his new exhortation, he invokes the immediate urgency of faster action, takes pains to offer point-by-point rebuttals of climate denial and climate complacency, including corporate complicity and widespread greenwashing, attacks the “technocratic” worldview he sees behind planetary exploitation, defends climate protesters by describing them as filling a vacuum of global leadership, and calls out “the ethical decadence of real power.” He describes unignorable episodes of extreme weather as the “cries of protest on the part of the earth that are only a few palpable expressions of a silent disease that affects everyone.” And he returns to a two-part mantra he says he reiterates often: “Everything is connected” and “No one is saved alone.”

This is quite radical language, even for a pope who has long plotted his own complicated course as an outspoken progressive, alienating many Catholics along the way. But he is also on a journey familiar to many of those most concerned about climate, from grief and lamentation through exhortation to a position of more strident and more pointed outrage. Last month, I wrote about the change in tone from activist groups and climate establishmentarians toward the fossil-fuel industry. In Laudate Deum, Pope Francis channels that frustration, too, but he is more focused and withering on the failures of climate geopolitics since the publication of Laudato Si.

A lot has changed between 2015 and 2023 when it comes to climate, and yet an awful lot hasn’t as well. Emissions from the global electricity sector may soon be reaching their peak, the energy research group Ember just announced, and the International Energy Agency recently declared that there was still a workable pathway to net zero emissions in 2050 — and that following it would save the world $12 trillion.

On the other hand, emissions are still setting records, and climate extremes and disasters, often powered or supercharged by warming, have come to seem like so many features of our news wallpaper.

Eight years ago, when Laudato Si was published, most anyone looking soberly at the state of the climate from any perspective would see the same story: massive changes to come and yet little being done, at any scale, to mitigate warming and limit the damage. Today, energy optimism is, broadly speaking, warranted. But so is some climate pessimism.

This is where the pope is. And he is not shy about saying so. “The necessary transition,” he writes, “is not progressing at the necessary speed. Consequently, whatever is being done risks being seen only as a ploy to distract attention.” To expect technical interventions alone to resolve the climate crisis is “a form of homicidal pragmatism, like pushing a snowball down a hill.”

If in Laudato Si, Pope Francis wrapped concern for the future of the planet in the plaintive language of spiritual sickness, here he wields a much more political, even legalistic tone. In his short exhortation, Francis devotes long stretches of text to “rethinking our use of power,” “the weakness of international politics” and “climate conferences: progress and failures,” before devoting an entire section to the question: What to expect from COP 28 in Dubai?

His answer? “To say that there is nothing to hope for would be suicidal, for it would mean exposing all humanity, especially the poorest, to the worst impacts of climate change.” But based on the recent past and the conditions of this U.N. climate conference in the United Arab Emirates and run by the head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, he does not seem especially hopeful.

“We must move beyond the mentality of appearing to be concerned but not having the courage needed to produce substantial changes,” he writes.

Once and for all, let us put an end to the irresponsible derision that would present this issue as something purely ecological, “green,” romantic, frequently subject to ridicule by economic interests. Let us finally admit that it is a human and social problem on any number of levels. For this reason, it calls for involvement on the part of all. In conferences on the climate, the actions of groups negatively portrayed as “radicalized” tend to attract attention. But in reality, they are filling a space left empty by society as a whole, which ought to exercise a healthy pressure, since every family ought to realize that the future of their children is at stake.

For those who have left that space empty, he is especially unforgiving. “To the powerful, I can only repeat this question: ‘What would induce anyone, at this stage, to hold on to power, only to be remembered for their inability to take action when it was urgent and necessary to do so?’”

David Wallace-Wells is an opinion writer for the New York Times.