Several people with lots of time recently endeavored to count all the words in America's laws.

They didn't stop with the 52 Titles of the U.S. Code, which would fill about 100 volumes. They included federal court rulings, state and local statutes, laws governing U.S. territories, several hundred treaties with Native American tribes, and U.S. treaties with other nations.

Their conclusion: if we assembled all the words in 10-point type with 50 lines per page on letter-size paper, they would fill 4.5 million pages.

However, just 52 stand out today as the most important. They appear in the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970, where Congress said our national mission was to:

"Use all practicable means and measures, including financial and technical assistance, in a manner calculated to foster and promote the general welfare, to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony, and fulfill the social, economic, and other requirements of present and future generations of Americans."

Congress enshrined this mission in a moment of clarity when it recognized that our species threatens the quality of life, and life itself, on the planet. Civilization's fate and that of countless other species depend on us getting our relationship with nature right. We need the humility to acknowledge that our well-being is intimately connected with the natural world's. In fact, we have a great deal to learn in a biosphere that has developed over four billion years of trial and error.

So, we should check in now and then with those who have spent their lives studying this relationship at its deepest and most profound level. One is the late Pope Francis, who adopted the name of the Catholic saint best known for his devotion to wildlife and the environment.

In 2015, Pope Francis issued a long dissertation on our relationship with nature, especially the danger of global climate change. Here are excerpts:

Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us...This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her.

We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air, and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she "groans in travail" (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.

If we approach nature and the environment without this openness to awe and wonder, if we no longer speak the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world, our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set limits on their immediate needs. By contrast, if we feel intimately united with all that exists, then sobriety and care will well up spontaneously.

The climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all. At the global level, it is a complex system linked to many of the essential conditions for human life.

A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system…Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it…Our lack of response to these tragedies involving our brothers and sisters points to the loss of that sense of responsibility for our fellow men and women upon which all civil society is founded.

But a sober look at our world shows that the degree of human intervention, often in the service of business interests and consumerism, is actually making our earth less rich and beautiful, ever more limited and grey, even as technological advances and consumer goods continue to abound limitlessly. We seem to think that we can substitute an irreplaceable and irretrievable beauty with something which we have created ourselves. Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years...The problem is that we still lack the culture needed to confront this crisis. We lack leadership capable of striking out on new paths and meeting the needs of the present with concern for all and without prejudice towards coming generations. The establishment of a legal framework which can set clear boundaries and ensure the protection of ecosystems has become indispensable; otherwise, the new power structures based on the techno-economic paradigm may overwhelm not only our politics but also freedom and justice.

It is remarkable how weak international political responses have been...There are too many special interests, and economic interests easily end up trumping the common good and manipulating information so that their own plans will not be affected… This is the way human beings contrive to feed their self-destructive vices: trying not to see them, trying not to acknowledge them, delaying the important decisions and pretending that nothing will happen.

Eight years later, after nations failed repeatedly to fully confront the climate crisis, Francis issued a second, more pointed letter:

Despite all attempts to deny, conceal, gloss over or relativize the issue, the signs of climate change are here and increasingly evident...It is no longer possible to doubt the human–anthropic origin of climate change... We need to rethink among other things the question of human power, its meaning and its limits...We have made impressive and awesome technological advances, and we have not realized that at the same time we have turned into highly dangerous beings, capable of threatening the lives of many beings and our own survival.

We need lucidity and honesty in order to recognize in time that our power and the progress we are producing are turning against us...We must move beyond the mentality of appearing to be concerned but not having the courage needed to produce substantial changes.

Today, it is worth repeating the ironic comment of Solovyov about an "age which was so advanced as to be actually the last one."

He might have added, verbum sapienti (a word to the wise is sufficient).