Here’s how we know that we’re living in a topsy turvy world: the Pope is out in front of Republicans on climate change.

In case you weren’t paying attention, the Pope has recently released an Encyclical in which he blames human activity for climate change and makes it a moral imperative to protect the environment.

You can read it here.

Republican malcontents like Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee aren’t buying it. Of course, unlike Santorum and Hucakbee, the Pope was actually trained as a chemist in his younger years.

What I particularly enjoy is that when the Pope weighs in against abortion, all the conservative Republicans line up behind him. When he weighs in on climate change or the moral imperative to help the poor, they tell him to stop meddling in politics.

Of course, the Catholic Church is still completely wrong on birth control, which position was established by Pope Paul VI in his 1968 Encyclical, Humae Vitae. I mention this because this is a serious part of the environmental problem: there are just too many people on our planet. And we just keep breeding like rabbits. Or, actually, like humans. Back in Biblical times, estimates are that there were maybe 300 million people on Earth. Now there are 9 billion. At the rate that we consumer resources, 300 million might be an acceptable population, with enough room for all the other plants and animals. The Earth cannot really sustain our rate of consumption, and it would be a good thing if the Pope were to acknowledge that.

But still, let’s take what we can get, and recognize that this Pope is way ahead of the Republican candidates for President on climate change. And if that isn’t sad, then I don’t know what is.