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The leaked draft of “Laudato Si’”, Pope Francis’ widely anticipated encyclical on the crisis of climate change and other global environmental concerns, contains 146 numbered paragraphs contained within a preface and six chapters. The translation below from the original Italian is very rough, a Google translation amended by Brad Johnson.

ENCYCLICAL: PRAISED BE
THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS ON CARE OF OUR COMMON HOME

Table of Contents

• Praised be, my Lord [1-2]
• • CHAPTER ONE: WHAT IS HAPPENING TO OUR HOME [17-19]
    1. Pollution and climate change
       • Pollution, refuse, and culture of waste [20-22]
       • The climate as a common good [23-26]
    2. The water issue [27-31]
    3. Biodiversity loss [32-42]
    4. Deterioration in the quality of human life and social degradation [43-47]
    5. Planetary inequities [48-52]
    6. The weakness of the reactions [53-59]
    7. Diversity of opinions [60-61]
  • CHAPTER TWO: THE GOSPEL OF CREATION [62]
    1. The light that faith offers [63-64]
    2. The wisdom of the biblical accounts [65-75]
    3. The mystery of the universe [76-83]
    4. The message of every creature in the harmony of all creation [84-88]
    5. A universal communion [89-92]
    6. The common destination of goods [93-95]
    7. The gaze of Jesus [96-100]
  • CHAPTER THREE: THE ROOT OF HUMAN ECOLOGICAL CRISIS [101]
    1. Technology: creativity and power [102-105]
    2. The globalization of the technocratic paradigm [106-114]
    3. Crises and consequences of modern anthropocentrism [115-121]
       • Relativism practice [122-123]
       • The need to defend labor [124-129]
       • Innovation from biological research [130-136]
  • CHAPTER FOUR: INTEGRAL ECOLOGY [137]
    1. Environmental, economic and social ecology [138-142]
    2. Cultural ecology [143-146]
    3. Ecology of daily life [147-155]
    4. The principle of the common good [156-158]
    5. Intergenerational justice [159-162] 122
  • CHAPTER FIVE: SOME GUIDELINES AND ACTION [163]
    1. Dialogue on the environment in international politics [164-175]
    2. Dialogue to new national and local policies [176-181]
    3. Dialogue and transparency in decision-making [182-188]
    4. Politics and economics in dialogue for human fullness [189-198]
    5. Religions in dialogue with the sciences [199-201]
  • CHAPTER SIX: EDUCATION AND ECOLOGICAL SPIRITUALITY [202]
    1. Pointing to another way of life [203-208]
    2. Educating the alliance between mankind and the environment [209-215]
    3. The conversion scheme [216-221]
    4. Joy and peace [222-227]
    5. Civil and political love [228-232]
    6. The sacramental signs and the celebratory repose [233-237]
    7. The Trinity and the relationship between the creatures [238-240]
    8. The Queen of all creation [241-242]
    9. Beyond the sun [243-246]
       • Prayer for our Earth
       • Christians pray, with creation

The leaked draft of “Laudato Si’”, Pope Francis’ widely anticipated encyclical on the crisis of climate change and other global environmental concerns, contains 146 numbered paragraphs contained within a preface and six chapters. The translation below from the original Italian is very rough, a Google translation amended by Brad Johnson.

ENCYCLICAL: PRAISED BE
THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS ON CARE OF OUR COMMON HOME

Table of Contents

• Praised be, my Lord [1-2]
• • CHAPTER ONE: WHAT IS HAPPENING TO OUR HOME [17-19]
    1. Pollution and climate change
       • Pollution, refuse, and culture of waste [20-22]
       • The climate as a common good [23-26]
    2. The water issue [27-31]
    3. Biodiversity loss [32-42]
    4. Deterioration in the quality of human life and social degradation [43-47]
    5. Planetary inequities [48-52]
    6. The weakness of the reactions [53-59]
    7. Diversity of opinions [60-61]
  • CHAPTER TWO: THE GOSPEL OF CREATION [62]
    1. The light that faith offers [63-64]
    2. The wisdom of the biblical accounts [65-75]
    3. The mystery of the universe [76-83]
    4. The message of every creature in the harmony of all creation [84-88]
    5. A universal communion [89-92]
    6. The common destination of goods [93-95]
    7. The gaze of Jesus [96-100]
  • CHAPTER THREE: THE ROOT OF HUMAN ECOLOGICAL CRISIS [101]
    1. Technology: creativity and power [102-105]
    2. The globalization of the technocratic paradigm [106-114]
    3. Crises and consequences of modern anthropocentrism [115-121]
       • Relativism practice [122-123]
       • The need to defend labor [124-129]
       • Innovation from biological research [130-136]
  • CHAPTER FOUR: INTEGRAL ECOLOGY [137]
    1. Environmental, economic and social ecology [138-142]
    2. Cultural ecology [143-146]
    3. Ecology of daily life [147-155]
    4. The principle of the common good [156-158]
    5. Intergenerational justice [159-162] 122
  • CHAPTER FIVE: SOME GUIDELINES AND ACTION [163]
    1. Dialogue on the environment in international politics [164-175]
    2. Dialogue to new national and local policies [176-181]
    3. Dialogue and transparency in decision-making [182-188]
    4. Politics and economics in dialogue for human fullness [189-198]
    5. Religions in dialogue with the sciences [199-201]
  • CHAPTER SIX: EDUCATION AND ECOLOGICAL SPIRITUALITY [202]
    1. Pointing to another way of life [203-208]
    2. Educating the alliance between mankind and the environment [209-215]
    3. The conversion scheme [216-221]
    4. Joy and peace [222-227]
    5. Civil and political love [228-232]
    6. The sacramental signs and the celebratory repose [233-237]
    7. The Trinity and the relationship between the creatures [238-240]
    8. The Queen of all creation [241-242]
    9. Beyond the sun [243-246]
       • Prayer for our Earth
       • Christians pray, with creation

The leaked draft of “Laudato Si’”, Pope Francis’ widely anticipated encyclical on the crisis of climate change and other global environmental concerns, contains 146 numbered paragraphs in a preface and six chapters. The translation below is very rough, a Google translation amended by Brad Johnson.

ENCYCLICAL: PRAISED BE
THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS ON CARE OF OUR COMMON HOME

Table of Contents

• Praised be, my Lord [1-2]
• • CHAPTER ONE: WHAT IS HAPPENING TO OUR HOME [17-19]
    1. Pollution and climate change
       • Pollution, refuse, and culture of waste [20-22]
       • The climate as a common good [23-26]
    2. The water issue [27-31]
    3. Biodiversity loss [32-42]
    4. Deterioration in the quality of human life and social degradation [43-47]
    5. Planetary inequities [48-52]
    6. The weakness of the reactions [53-59]
    7. Diversity of opinions [60-61]
  • CHAPTER TWO: THE GOSPEL OF CREATION [62]
    1. The light that faith offers [63-64]
    2. The wisdom of the biblical accounts [65-75]
    3. The mystery of the universe [76-83]
    4. The message of every creature in the harmony of all creation [84-88]
    5. A universal communion [89-92]
    6. The common destination of goods [93-95]
    7. The gaze of Jesus [96-100]
  • CHAPTER THREE: THE ROOT OF HUMAN ECOLOGICAL CRISIS [101]
    1. Technology: creativity and power [102-105]
    2. The globalization of the technocratic paradigm [106-114]
    3. Crises and consequences of modern anthropocentrism [115-121]
       • Relativism practice [122-123]
       • The need to defend labor [124-129]
       • Innovation from biological research [130-136]
  • CHAPTER FOUR: INTEGRAL ECOLOGY [137]
    1. Environmental, economic and social ecology [138-142]
    2. Cultural ecology [143-146]
    3. Ecology of daily life [147-155]
    4. The principle of the common good [156-158]
    5. Intergenerational justice [159-162] 122
  • CHAPTER FIVE: SOME GUIDELINES AND ACTION [163]
    1. Dialogue on the environment in international politics [164-175]
    2. Dialogue to new national and local policies [176-181]
    3. Dialogue and transparency in decision-making [182-188]
    4. Politics and economics in dialogue for human fullness [189-198]
    5. Religions in dialogue with the sciences [199-201]
  • CHAPTER SIX: EDUCATION AND ECOLOGICAL SPIRITUALITY [202]
    1. Pointing to another way of life [203-208]
    2. Educating the alliance between mankind and the environment [209-215]
    3. The conversion scheme [216-221]
    4. Joy and peace [222-227]
    5. Civil and political love [228-232]
    6. The sacramental signs and the celebratory repose [233-237]
    7. The Trinity and the relationship between the creatures [238-240]
    8. The Queen of all creation [241-242]
    9. Beyond the sun [243-246]
       • Prayer for our Earth
       • Christians pray, with creation

The leaked draft of “Laudato Si’”, Pope Francis’ widely anticipated encyclical on the crisis of climate change and other global environmental concerns, includes 246 numbered paragraphs contained within a preface and six chapters. The translation below from the original Italian is very rough, a Google translation amended by Brad Johnson.

A formatted English translation of the Laudato Si draft is available as a PDF, as is a full side-by-side translation.

ENCYCLICAL: PRAISED BE
THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS ON CARE OF OUR COMMON HOME

Table of Contents

• Praised be, my Lord [1-2]
• Nothing that arises in this world is indifferent [3-6]
• United by the same concern [7-9]
• St. Francis of Assisi [10-12]
• My appeal [13-16]
• • CHAPTER ONE: WHAT IS HAPPENING TO OUR HOME [17-19]
    1. Pollution and climate change
       • Pollution, refuse, and culture of waste [20-22]
       • The climate as a common good [23-26]
    2. The water issue [27-31]
    3. Biodiversity loss [32-42]
    4. Deterioration in the quality of human life and social degradation [43-47]
    5. Planetary inequities [48-52]
    6. The weakness of the reactions [53-59]
    7. Diversity of opinions [60-61]
  • CHAPTER TWO: THE GOSPEL OF CREATION [62]
    1. The light that faith offers [63-64]
    2. The wisdom of the biblical accounts [65-75]
    3. The mystery of the universe [76-83]
    4. The message of every creature in the harmony of all creation [84-88]
    5. A universal communion [89-92]
    6. The common destination of goods [93-95]
    7. The gaze of Jesus [96-100]
  • CHAPTER THREE: THE ROOT OF HUMAN ECOLOGICAL CRISIS [101]
    1. Technology: creativity and power [102-105]
    2. The globalization of the technocratic paradigm [106-114]
    3. Crises and consequences of modern anthropocentrism [115-121]
       • Relativism practice [122-123]
       • The need to defend labor [124-129]
       • Innovation from biological research [130-136]
  • CHAPTER FOUR: INTEGRAL ECOLOGY [137]
    1. Environmental, economic and social ecology [138-142]
    2. Cultural ecology [143-146]
    3. Ecology of daily life [147-155]
    4. The principle of the common good [156-158]
    5. Intergenerational justice [159-162] 122
  • CHAPTER FIVE: SOME GUIDELINES AND ACTION [163]
    1. Dialogue on the environment in international politics [164-175]
    2. Dialogue to new national and local policies [176-181]
    3. Dialogue and transparency in decision-making [182-188]
    4. Politics and economics in dialogue for human fullness [189-198]
    5. Religions in dialogue with the sciences [199-201]
  • CHAPTER SIX: EDUCATION AND ECOLOGICAL SPIRITUALITY [202]
    1. Pointing to another way of life [203-208]
    2. Educating the alliance between mankind and the environment [209-215]
    3. The conversion scheme [216-221]
    4. Joy and peace [222-227]
    5. Civil and political love [228-232]
    6. The sacramental signs and the celebratory repose [233-237]
    7. The Trinity and the relationship between the creatures [238-240]
    8. The Queen of all creation [241-242]
    9. Beyond the sun [243-246]
       • Prayer for our Earth
       • Christians pray, with creation

Download the full side-by-side translation.

The magazine L’Espresso has leaked the Italian draft of Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’ widely anticipated encyclical on the global moral crisis of man-made global warming, days before its planned Thursday release. A Vatican spokesperson told Bloomberg that the leak was a “heinous act.”

The National Journal’s Jason Plautz summarizes

While renewable power is built up, the encyclical says, it is permissible to rely on fossil fuels, but that overall, the extraction and burning of oil and gas is evil.

The Catholic News Service’s Cindy Wooden reports that the title of the encyclical, “Laudato Si’”, “comes from a hymn of praise by St. Francis of Assisi that emphasizes being in harmony with God, with other creatures and with other human beings.” Father Michael Perry, head of the Franciscan Order, sang the medieval Italian hymn in the garden of the Franciscan headquarters in Rome on Friday, reciting St. Francis’ Canticle of the Creatures, also known as the Canticle of the Sun.

Once a person recognizes the “divine dignity” of every created being, Father Perry said, he or she recognizes a responsibility to “give glory to God by respecting and caring and promoting a sense of ‘being in this together,’ that life is one and each of us brings a special contribution.”

The interconnectedness of all creatures should help people to recognize that when they hoard riches and resources, they are harming their own brothers and sisters, especially the poor, he explained.

St. Francis’ canticle “is not just a flowery song about how we should live with nature. It is challenging us to revise our entire way of living our lives” in accordance with Gospel values, he said. “If someone is starving somewhere in the world, we are responsible.”

The canticle is a call for people to recognize that they are sons and daughters of God and brothers and sisters to one another, he said, “part of one family that embraces all creation: trees, sun, rivers, wind, fire—all of these because they all give glory to God.”

While St. Francis’ praise of Brother Sun and Sister Moon has been romanticized in many ways, Father Perry said, the obligations it carries are very realistic and concrete: to defend human dignity, especially the dignity of the poor; to promote dialogue and reconciliation to end war; to safeguard the earth and all living creatures; and to learn to live with just what one needs, not all that one wants.

Speaking before the scheduled release June 18 of the encyclical, Father Perry said the title signals Pope Francis’ belief that the entire church and all its members must be in solidarity with the poor, “must be about peace” and must respect the planet.

Download the Italian draft of Laudato Si’.

Update: View or download an English translation of the draft text.

In an interview with USA Today, petrochemical baron Charles Koch reiterated his rejection of the scientific consensus on industrial global warming.

“You can plausibly say that CO2 has contributed” to the planet’s warming, he told USA Today reporter Fredreka Schouten, but he sees “no evidence” to support “this theory that it’s going to be catastrophic.”

Koch may have been forced to admit that carbon-dioxide pollution is warming the planet by research he funded—the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study, which replicated previous global temperature reconstructions.

In fact, the only scientifically plausible systematic explanation for the rapid and continuing warming of the planetary climate since 1950 is industrial greenhouse pollution. The world’s national scientific societies and the world’s practicing climate scientists are in overwhelming agreement that dangerous impacts of global warming are already being observed, and globally catastrophic impacts are inevitable if further carbon dioxide pollution is not curtailed.

The $100 billion fortune of the Koch brothers is built upon decades of greenhouse pollution. To protect their business, the Kochs have spent billions supporting a vast infrastructure of politicians and advocacy organizations to reject the science of climate change and prevent regulation of climate pollutants.

UPDATE: Greenpeace’s Connor Gibson has more.

A key architect of the climate-denial machine oversees the nation’s energy and climate science research at the U.S. Department of Energy. Jeffrey T. Salmon is the Deputy Director for Resource Management of the Office of Science, overseeing its decisions on its grants and budget. In 1998, Salmon was part of the “Global Climate Science Team” of industry operatives who devised a strategy of attacking the validity of climate science in order to disrupt the Kyoto Protocol.

At the time, Salmon was the executive director of the ExxonMobil-funded George C. Marshall Institute.

Under his direction, the Marshall Institute was a major purveyor of climate denial, rejecting the scientific consensus and arguing against any limits on carbon dioxide pollution. Salmon instituted the practice of accepting corporate contributions at Marshall, starting with Exxon. In a 1996 appearance on CNN, Salmon said, “If you want to reduce carbon emissions for some reason, let’s hear that reason; let’s not hear that it’s global warming, which there’s no indication that human action is contributing to.” In 1993, Salmon wrote that there is “no solid scientific evidence to support the theory that the earth is warming because of man-made greenhouse gases.” In 1992, a Salmon op-ed in USA Today claimed, “New findings suggest that the greenhouse problem is a non-problem.”

A George W. Bush appointee to the Department of Energy, Salmon moved over into his current position in July 2008. As a civil-service job, Salmon’s position is protected from removal by the current administration, an example of the practice known as “burrowing.” Salmon served in the Department of Energy for the entire Bush administration, starting in March 2001, as Senior Policy Advisor to Secretary Spencer Abraham. In 2002, he joined the Office of Science as the Chief of Staff to the Director of the Office of Science Ray Orbach. In 2006, when the Energy Policy Act of 2005 created the office of the Under Secretary for Science, he became the Associate Under Secretary below Orbach.

Under Obama’s first Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, much of the Department of Energy’s science research funding was directed through the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), funded by the 2009 stimulus bill.

Salmon, who has a doctorate in politics, was a speechwriter for both Dick Cheney when he was secretary of defense.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s secret climate-change gag rule turned a state legislative hearing into a screwball farce last Thursday. Legislators chortled as the state’s top emergency-management official struggled under the dry questioning of state Sen. Jeff Clemens (D-Lake Worth) to avoid saying the words “climate change.” At one point, Clemens offered a suggestion to Bryan Koon, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, recommending Floridians use the euphemism “atmospheric re-employment” as one that would be more acceptable to the governor, an outspoken denier of the science that the continued burning of fossil fuels is destabilizing the climate system and threatening Florida with rapid sea level rise.

The hearing room of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Tourism, and Economic Development broke out with laughter, including the legislator sitting next to Clemens, Sen. Jeff Brandes (R-St. Petersburg).

The conversation about the new FEMA guidelines that include climate change considerations continued, with Clemens needling Koon’s apparent fear of saying the words “climate change.”

“My understanding at this point is that future versions of our mitigation plan will be required to have language discussing that issue,” Koon said.

“What issue is that?” Clemens replied.

“Uh, the issue you mentioned earlier, regarding, um . . .”

At this point, the chair of the committee, Sen. Jack Latvala (R-Clearwater), doubled over in his chair, choking with laughter.

A spokesman told the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting: “The Florida Division of Emergency Management does not have any policy which prohibits the use of the words ‘climate change.’ ”

The exchange was featured on The Daily Show’s Wednesday episode. Stewart piled on with other climate-change euphemisms, including “moisture inconvenience” and “state-wide jacuzzification.”

Transcript:

In a passionate address yesterday, Secretary of State John Kerry called inaction on carbon pollution “just plain immoral,” as it is “gambling with the future of Earth itself.” Kerry’s remarks were made at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C., setting the stage for this December’s international climate negotiations in Paris.

“Lincoln took risks, Gandhi took risks, Churchill took risks, Dr. King took risks, Mandela took risks, but that doesn’t mean that every risk-taker is a role model. It’s one thing to risk a career or a life on behalf of a principle or to save or liberate a population,” Kerry said. “It’s quite another to wager the well-being of generations and life itself simply to continue satisfying the appetites of the present or to insist on a course of inaction long after all the available evidence has pointed to the folly of that path.”

“Gambling with the future of Earth itself when we know full well what the outcome would be is beyond reckless,” he continued. “It is just plain immoral.”

“And it is a risk that no one should take. We need to face reality. There is no planet B.”

Kerry also called for a renewed global commitment to cutting carbon pollution to avoid the 2-degree-Celsius warming threshold agreed to by President Obama. Using language that could have practical policy implications, Kerry argued that energy-investment decisions must “include the long-term cost of carbon pollution.”

It is time, my friends, for people to do real cost accounting. The bottom line is that we can’t only factor in the price of immediate energy needs. We have to include the long-term cost of carbon pollution. We have to factor in the cost of survival. And if we do, we will find that pursuing clean energy now is far more affordable than paying for the consequences of climate change later.

Such decisions notably include the long-awaited Presidential determination on the Keystone XL tar-sands pipeline, which if built would have the carbon-pollution impact of 40 new coal-fired power plants.

The Secretary of State made reference to the news uncovered by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting that Florida governor Rick Scott’s administration censored use of the words “climate change,” “global warming,” and “sea level rise.”

So when science tells us that our climate is changing and humans beings are largely causing that change, by what right do people stand up and just say, “Well, I dispute that” or “I deny that elementary truth?” And yet, there are those who do so. Literally a couple of days ago, I read about some state officials who are actually trying to ban the use of the term “climate change” in public documents because they’re not willing to face the facts.

Now folks, we literally do not have the time to waste debating whether we can say “climate change.” We have to talk about how we solve climate change. Because no matter how much people want to bury their heads in the sand, it will not alter the fact that 97 percent of peer-reviewed climate studies confirm that climate change is happening and that human activity is largely responsible. I have been involved in public policy debates now for 40-plus years, whatever, since the 1960s. It is rare, rare, rare – I can tell you after 28 years-plus in the Senate – to get a super majority of studies to agree on anything. But 97 percent, over 20-plus years – that’s a dramatic statement of fact that no one of good conscience has a right to ignore.

Climate activist group Forecast the Facts is petitioning for an investigation.

Kerry’s speech had one factual misstep – he claimed that the first Senate hearings on climate change were held in 1988, when Dr. James Hansen famously warned Congress that global warming was already measurably affecting the climate.

Climate change is an issue that is personal to me, and it has been since the 1980s, when we were organizing the very first climate hearings in the Senate. In fact, it really predates that, going back to Earth Day when I’d come back from Vietnam. It was the first political thing I began to organize in Massachusetts, when citizens started to make a solid statement in this country. And I might add that’s before we even had an Environmental Protection Agency or a Clean Water Act or Safe Drinking Water Act or a Marine Mammal Protection Act or a Coastal Zone Management Act. It all came out of that kind of citizen movement. And that’s what we have to be involved in now. And the reason for that is simple: For decades now, the science has been screaming at us, warning us, trying to compel us to act.

And I just want to underscore that for a moment. It may seem obvious to you, but it isn’t to some. Science is and has long been crystal clear when it comes to climate change. Al Gore, Tim Wirth, and a group of us organized the first hearings in the Senate on this, 1988. We heard Jim Hansen stand in – sit in front of us and tell us it’s happening now, 1988. So we’re not talking about news reports or blog posts or even speeches that some cabinet secretary might give at a think tank. We’re talking about a fact-based, evidence-supported, peer-reviewed science. And yet, if you listen to some people in Washington or elsewhere, you’d think there’s a question about whether climate change really is a problem or whether we really need to respond to it.

In fact, the first Senate hearings on climate change were 11 years earlier in 1977, when the science subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Technology held a series of four hearings on the National Climate Program Act. The first House hearings on the same act of legislation were a year earlier.

The risk of fossil-fueled climate change was brought to the Congress’s attention by President Lyndon B. Johnson in his February 8, 1965 address on the environment, now over fifty years ago.

Transcript of full remarks:

The massive coal-powered utility Southern Company, recently revealed as a top funder of Harvard-Smithsonian climate denier Willie Soon, claims it is getting out of the business of climate denial. Southern Company’s contract with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics included conditions giving it oversight over Soon’s research and a pledge to keep its funding secret.

The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy reports:

We have been given assurance that Southern Company takes responsibility for the funding but stated that upper management did not have direct knowledge of this activity. We also appreciate the perspective that the funding contract with Dr. Soon was of a recurring nature and that Southern has stated that they will not renew funding contracts in this line of research. Southern further acknowledges that going forward, it is does not want to “engage in influencing the science.”

Although Southern Company may cease directly financing the very few legitimate scientists who promote disinformation about man-made cliamte change, it’s doubtful the company will stop supporting the massive climate-denial infrastructure that is nearly indistinguishable from the American right. In the 2014 cycle, Southern Company made hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions to climate-science-denying Republicans. The utility giant has spent over $130 million since 2004 lobbying Congress, with a focus on blocking the regulation of coal pollution.

In 2014, Southern Company ran a “sponsored content” series on The New Republic’s website, entitled “Powering the Future, Honoring the Past,” which celebrated the utility’s “secure energy mix” of “the full portfolio of energy resources: nuclear, twenty-first-century coal, natural gas, renewables, and energy efficiency.”

“Corporate responsibility is part of our DNA,” one of the Southern Company “sponsored content” public-relations pieces claimed.

In a separate article, the New Republic’s Rebecca Leber criticized the Southern Company-Willie Soon relationship.