Yes, Pope Francis may call Bill Gates, get Gates to bring together his friends, the 67 billionaires who are as rich as half the world, the poorest 3.5 billion. Or Gates may make the call. Doesn’t matter who puts the ball in action. Pope Francis needs help in his mission to save the global economy from the rapidly accelerating triple threat of climate change, hunger and inequality.

Pope Francis. Reuters

Fortunately Gates has a track record here: Back in 2009 he called billionaires Buffett, Rockefeller, Soros, Bloomberg, Turner, Oprah and other philanthropists to a secret meeting in the Manhattan home of Sir Paul Nurse, British Nobel biochemist and president of Rockefeller University. Again, in 2010 Gates created the “Giving Pledge” which now has 122 of the world’s Super Rich committing to give away half their fortunes in their lifetime.

And there are even more wealthy folks to work with. The world is mass-producing billionaires: Today there are 1,645 billionaires compared with 322 in 2000, with $7 trillion. Forbes says the U.S. has 492, Europe 468, China 358, Russia 111, Latin America 85, India 65, Canada 29, Africa 29, and more.

And at a time when cooperation is virtually impossible, Bill Gates’ experience offers a solution: Helping build a dream team from those 67 billionaire philanthropists, co-hosting with Pope Francis. Not so far-fetched either. Yes, Pope Francis has big issues with capitalism, but there’s still wisdom and virtue in Sun Tzu’s ancient advice to generals, keep friends close, your enemies closer. And the world certainly needs innovative solutions, fast.

Besides, the trend promises to continue. The Super Rich will get richer: Credit Suisse Bank even predicts 11 trillionaire families by 2100. They are also superoptimistic, see the UN’s population estimates of another three billion by 2050 as new opportunities with more consumers. And if excess consumption and overpopulation become problems, the Super Rich have faith new technologies will create alternative resources, greater efficiencies that will save the planet.

Yes, Pope Francis sees a different trend. But that’s all the more reason the pope should work with Gates and every billionaire ready to solve the impossible problems challenging our world.

Get the ball in action ... call the Pope, Bill, Melinda, Michael, Oprah

Bill Gates. Bloomberg

Bill and Melinda Gates are already committed, spending a fortune, changing the world. Pope Francis has the power base, the leadership skills, the authority to make things happen. Together they can rise above today’s battlefield of partisan politicians, competing anarchies, sovereign nations, dictators, myopic capitalists. Our polarized America is a perfect example of dysfunctional leadership. In the future, global teamwork will be essential for new solutions, timely action.

By 2050 at current growth rates, three critical trends will have predictably imploded in a combustible critical mass, driving us over the edge of a proverbial cliff, past the known survival limits of human civilization and a sustainable planet. This be the first time in history, says noted anthropologist Jared Diamond, where climate change is an interlocking set of “time bombs with fuses of less than 50 years,” that “if unsolved would do us great harm, because they all interact with each other ... we need to solve them all,” turn off the ticking time-bomb.

Pope Francis has already warned us of the three self-destructive trends: First: unsustainable global warming and climate change on Planet-Earth. Second: The pope says the global economy is “near collapse” as inequality increases, fueling revolutions. Third: Earth’s natural resources will be unable to feed the 10 billion people living in 2050. The three go hand-in-hand, merge, with trigger mechanisms cross-linked to ignite simultaneously.

True, Pope Francis, Bill Gates and many other billionaires are already working on philanthropic projects of personal interest. Now it’s time to combine forces, see the world as one entity, search for common solutions. For as Ben Franklin put it during the signing of the Declaration of Independence back in 1776: “We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Here is a review of this accelerating triple-threat now on track to destroy civilization:

1. Unsustainable climate change destroying the planet

First, after the conclusion of the recent Pontifical Academies of Sciences joint workshop on “Sustainable Humanity, Sustainable Nature: Our Responsibility,” Pope Francis added the “Biblical Case for Addressing Climate Change,” issuing an unequivocal warning to a large crowd assembled in Rome. The pope called on all of us to “Safeguard Creation ... Because if we destroy Creation, Creation will destroy us! Never forget this.”

Yes, encouraging news. But climate change and global warming demand leadership and action, not more studies. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of 2,000 scientists has been studying the problem since 1988. Their recent Fifth Assessment Report concluded these scientists are now 95% certain humans are the primary cause of climate change the past half-century. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s recent survey of 18 scientific associations scientists concluded with 97% certainty. You don’t need more studies to lead and act.

So why all the resistance to science? As we reported in “Climate Science is a hoax: Big Oil, GOP, God say so,” the Vatican’s Pontifical Academies of Science along with the UN-IPCC and NASA scientists have been overwhelmed by a powerful, well-funded army of climate-science deniers. Bottom line: They fear that acceptance of science fact will open the door to universal governmental regulations and taxation of carbon emissions, reducing profits and radically changing the business model of all global energy producers.

2. Global economy collapsing fueled by widening inequality gap

Second, in a recent interview with La Vanguardia, Pope Francis said: “The global economic system is near collapse.” Materialism and capitalism are increasing inequality and unemployment: “Our world economic system can’t take it anymore ... we are throwing away an entire generation to maintain a system that isn’t good.” We “put money at the center, the god of money” in a global “economy moved by the ambition of having more.”

These warnings expand on the main themes of the pope’s manifesto, “Apostolic Exortation: Evangelii Gaudium” of last fall. One statement summarizes his message: “Inequality is the root of social ills ... as long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems.” Since then, the growing inequality gap has been underscored by Thomas Piketty’s new book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.”

We reported on Pope Francis’ manifesto in a column last year, “Pope is an anticapitalism socialist—thank God.” The manifesto clearly articulated the pope’s mission on Earth. A mission to lead not just the church’s 200 cardinals, 5,000 bishops, 450,000 priests and deacons, not just the 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide and the 78 million in 17,645 American parishes, but also guide and inspire leaders of the world’s 196 countries and a population of more that seven billion that’s rapidly growing into an economically unsustainable 10 billion people living on the planet.

3. Earth’s natural resources cannot feed 10 billion in 2050

The Earth’s natural resources are being depleted at a rapid rate by overpopulation and increasing lifestyle demands. UN demographers predict three billion more by 2050. In Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis warned this new “culture of prosperity deadens us” in a global economy driven by “inordinate consumption,” where “unbridled consumerism combined with inequality ... eventually engenders violence.”

Violence will increase as competition for scarce resources increases, as water, fertilizer, farmland all rapidly disappear. The bottom line: Planet Earth cannot feed 10 billion people in 2050 as depletion of natural resources accelerates hunger, thirst, famine, disease and wars increase, all predicted by so many, including philanthropist Jeremy Grantham, called the “world’s most powerful environmentalist” by the London Guardian.

But even if the next three billion were not added, “what really counts is not the number of people alone, but their impact on the environment, the per-capita impact,” warns Jared Diamond, evolutionary biologist, author of “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.” Why? Because “First World citizens consume 32 times more resources such as fossil fuels, and put out 32 times more waste, than do the inhabitants of the Third World.”

In short, today’s global economy driven by “unbridled consumption” will continue accelerating, magnifying the “impact” resource depletions, intensifying the violence.

This trend is imbedded in Diamond’s conclusion; that “one of the disturbing facts of history is that so many civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society’s demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power.” That’s why there is such urgency to take action now. Why we cannot wait to start doing something later in 2050 when collapse will be obvious and it will be too late to act.

Bill Gates, Pope Francis, please make the call ...