Pope Francis so right and so wrong in encyclical on climate change

Twenty nations including Japan, Italy and Australia may be releasing more greenhouse-gas pollution than they agreed to under the Kyoto treaty to curb global warming. They're failing to rein in carbon-dioxide output enough to meet their pledges signed in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, according to reports by individual countries. As a penalty for missing their goals under the treaty, the nations are required to buy permits for every excess ton of the heat-trapping gas released through 2012.

 As Elon Musk presented the new Tesla 3, a fawning press announced that the “world-changing car” could “dominate” the market. Within days, 276,000 people had put down $1,000 to pre-order the car.

But the Model 3 doesn’t exist yet. There is no final production version, much less any production. Musk is “fairly confident” that deliveries could start by the end of 2017. But running on schedule isn’t Tesla’s strong suit. Meanwhile, Tesla’s current best-seller has been plagued by quality problems.

With Hurricane Dorian striking the Bahamas and the East Coast, the climate blame game is now in full swing again: Global-warming activists, newspaper columnists, TV commentators and politicians are drawing links between climate change and hurricanes.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, warns, “This is what climate change looks like.” Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders one-ups that, tweeting: “Hurricane Dorian has everything to do with climate change, which is the existential crisis of our time.”