Chapter 12
"Anything else you're interested in is not going to happen if you can't breathe the air and drink the water.
Don't sit this one out. Do something. You are by accident of fate alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of our planet"
-Carl Sagan
Saving the Planet
At the dawn of the 21st century, human
civilization now stands on the brink of its own self-destruction and probable
extinction, systematically failing to come to grips with the absolute scale and
horror of the ongoing ecological degradation and destruction of the planet's
biosphere and how this will affect the future well-being of the human
enterprise.
The battle to save the planet requires first and foremost the immediate
termination of a bloated annual $1.5 trillion dollar global military budget.
Funds instead must be immediately re-directed towards building an
environmentally sustainable global economy which will revolutionize every facet
of human existence.
The United States of America, a flagrant violator of human rights and
international law, assumes direct responsibility for consistently working
against the very people, institutions and nations of the world who are at the
forefront of implementing desperately needed global change.
Second, the current human population explosion on Earth- 7 billion and
counting, as of 2010- must be brought under control immediately. World population pressure
is the prime force behind every level of social and environmental destruction
we are witnessing on our planet today; increased hydrocarbon emissions, water
scarcity, deforestation, desertification, topsoil loss, ozone depletion,
species loss, urban sprawl, ocean pollution, global warming, poverty, disease,
pestilence, famine, war etc... To compound the problem, masses of desperate
people are given no choice but to consume the very resource bases on which they
depend, further eroding the means by which sustainable planetary livelihoods
can function and operate properly and sufficiently.
Third, the effort to create an international sustainable society is more like
mobilizing and preparing for war against the worldviews, policies, interests
and ideologies of corporations, industries and governments alike. Time itself
is the scarcest resource there is in the struggle to Save the Planet. In
addition to axing the global military budget and confronting the global population
explosion, waking up to the dimensions of the world's environmental crises as well as
implementing the necessary solutions are absolutely paramount.
Starting with the UN Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm,
Sweden in 1972, to the Rio Summit held in Brazil in 1992, to the 2002
Johannesburg Earth Summit in South Africa to the 2012 Earth Conference held again in Brazil, all efforts must now be made
to establish and institutionalize decentralized energy independence through
free energy sources such as solar, wind and anti-gravity. We must enact
sustainable, organic, vegetarian values and agricultural practices, develop
alternative independent non-polluting transportation modes, enforce sustainable
water and soil use practices, mandate finite resource recycling, proliferate
global information exchange largely through the expansion of the internet, and
institutionalize, as well as legitimize, green businesses
throughout the world who are creating sustainable alternatives and solutions to
the highly exploitative, largely failing, unsustainable and environmentally
damaging world economic system that we now have.
On these 3 pillars; global demilitarization, global population control and the
building of an environmentally sustainable global economy, can the planet be
saved. Mankind must begin to move away from just responding to global
disasters and instead move towards shaping and building an ecologically
healthy and sustainable- as well as survivable- advanced world civilization for
the 21st century. The environment, on which we all depend, will move to the
center of all social, economic and political decision-making, where it belongs.
From this earth base, the human enterprise, with proper vision, management,
courage, care, compassion, justice and intelligence can move victoriously
through the most tumultuous crisis in its entire history and evolve into a truly
advanced civilization amidst the cosmos.
In 1992, some 1700 of the world's leading scientists, including the majority of the
Nobel laureates in the sciences, issued an appeal entitled, "The World's Warning
to Humanity". In this document, scientists summarized that human beings and the
natural world are on a collision course. No more than one or two decades remain
before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects
for humanity severely diminished. The scientists warned that a very great danger
lies ahead and that a change in the stewardship of our planet is urgently required
if human misery on a vast scale is to be avoided.
The scientists outlined ozone depletion, growing water scarcity, oceanic pressures,
soil productivity loss, deforestation, biodiversity loss, global warming, population
growth, increased poverty and other threats to the global environment in their document.
The greatest peril is to become trapped in spirals of environmental decline, poverty and
unrest leading to social, economic and environmental collapse. Success in this global endeavor
to Save Our Planet will require a great reduction in violence and war. According to the document,
a new ethic is required, a new attitude towards caring for ourselves and all other life on the planet.
We must recognize the Earth is limited in its capacity to provide for us. We must
acknowledge its fragility. Fundamental changes are urgently required if we are to avoid the
collision our present course will bring about.
Although the World's Scientists Warning to Humanity was issued in 1992, its impact, message and dire warning
is all the more relevant today for a world system that really hasn't changed course all that much since then.
Business as usual has plunged us deeper into the planetary peril we are all now confronting.
The systematic failure of human consciousness and human society to come to grips with the absolute
horror, death and destruction that is coming upon this planet if we do not change our ways is almost
beyond comprehension, yet it exists nonetheless.
At the forefront of the desperately needed change and transformation of our current, highly dysfunctional
world economic system is the World Social Forum. Based in Brazil, the World Social Forum serves as a kind
of counterforce to the 'business as usual' hyper-capitalist World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland
every year.
The World Social Forum defines itself as being pluralistic, diverse, non-governmental and non-partisan.
Its aim is to build an alternative to the prevailing model of global economic expolitation. Referred
to as the global justice movement, the World Social Forum hopes to promote alternative answers to the
world's growing economic, environmental and social problems. Below is a listing of World Social Forums
held since 2000:
-1st Annual World Social Forum: January 2001, held in Porte Alegre, Brazil.
-2nd Annual World Social Forum: February, 2002, held again in Porte Alegre, Brazil.
-3rd Annual World Social Forum: January, 2003, again held in Porte Alegre, Brazil.
-4th Annual World Social Forum: January, 2004, held in Mumbai, India.
-5th Annual World Social Forum: January 2005, held in Porte Alegre, Brazil.
-6th Annual World Social Forum: Simultaneously held in Caracas, Venezuela, Nairobi, Kenya and Karachi, Pakistan in 2006.
-7th Annual World Social Forum: held in Nairobi, Kenya in 2007.
-8th Annual World Social Forum: was not organized at any particular location but was held in many locations
around the globe under the banner of a "Global Call to Action" in 2008.
-9th Annual World Social Forum: held in Brazil in the Amazon rainforest between January and February, 2009.
-10th Annual World Social Forum: did not have a centralized location, but did have an event held in Porte Alegre, Brazil in 2010.
The World Social Forum has branched out into many regional forums including; the Americas Social Forum,
the European Social Forum, the Asian Social Forum, the Mediterranean Social Forum and the South
African Social Forum. The value of the World Social Forum, as part of an overall movement and mobilization effort
to Save Our Planet, lies in its collective ability to redefine the future trajectory of the human enterprise.
In certain terms, the Forum is helping to develop an alternative vision for our future by strongly voicing
the cry that, indeed, another world is possible.
Another movement that has weighed into the fray, particularily around the issue of global warming, has been Al-Qaida, the
so-called "terrorist" organization headed by Osama Bin-Laden. Although widely acknowledged as a front group for American
and European intelligence, the movement, as of 2009, came out with a statement entitled, "The Way to Save the Earth".
The heads of major multinational corporations and the prevailing global political establishment were singled out as being threats themselves to the
future survivability of the planet. As characterized in Bin-Laden's document, many senior capitalists are steeped
in wickedness and coldheartedness and really don't care about the human disasters that have been caused by their global
economic activities. This parallels their global eugenics operations which are designed to depopulate the planet.
With regards to the threat of global climate change specifically, i fully concur with Mr Bin-Laden in his appeal
for humanity to severely scale back on global greenhouse gas emissions. According to Mr Bin Laden, what is being asked
of you is simple: that you tighten your embargo against the polluters and that you take the initiative to boycott them
in order to save yourselves, your wealth and your children from the threat of global climate change. Instead of
protesting on the steps of conferences and begging for your lives, we are asked to take radical and decisive actions in our quest to live freely and honorably, for there
is no good in a life which incurs humiliation.
The World's Scientists Warning to Humanity, the World Social Forum and Al-Qaida are but a few of the numerous voices and
organizations who are appealing to the conscience of the human species to change our ways and radically re-engage the future with
an alternative vision of planetary survival.
The previous chapters of this book have attempted to identify and outline the key factors most applicable to the historic global
transformation that I believe is now fully upon us. As forementioned, the transition requires an immediate termination of the US
military-industrial-intelligence-security complex. That includes a defunding and decommissioning of the US Department of Homeland Security
and the Transportation Security Agency, both of which are now at the forefront of creating and operating a fascist stalinist-style
police state in America. Instead of wasting trillions of dollars creating a global economic spy and surveillance police state
control grid, its time to radically reverse course and re-invest those trillions into building and maintaining a just and equitable
green-based sustainable world society.
A few tens of billions of dollars invested in providing access to clean water and sanitation for all of the world's poor can and must be
accomplished. Its time to ban and criminalize all gas-guzzling trucks and SUV's and immediately transit our civilization into electric vehicles complete with
home based solar photovoltaic recharge grids. Along with the introduction, widespread use and proliferation of free energy based antigravitic
electrical generation and propulsion, humanity can rapidly exit the stone age carbon based emissions economy and permanently end the
threat of global climate change, which in truth, is the #1 international security threat facing our species on Earth today.
The world population explosion must be halted immediately. That means a mandatory 1 child per family policy enforced worldwide until
world population numbers can be brought under control. At 7 billion, as of 2010, we are in classic overshoot. These numbers need to brought down
to a sustainable and manageable level of between 2-3 billion maximum over time.
World deforestation rates need to be immediately and substantially reduced. Reforestation efforts should begin in earnest everywhere, not only
to counter growing desertification trends, but to build up the global carbon sink mitigation quota for the planet. The world's oceans, which
absorb the largest percentage of global CO2 emissions and heat need to be protected and managed sustainably, to the best of our ability, despite
the unrelenting carbon onslaught. Global carbon emissions, if not stopped and reversed immediately, will cause both the North and South poles (including
Greenland) to rapidly and expeditiously deteriorate. Already, both the North Pole and the continent of Greenland are undergoing massive melts which, in turn,
are negatively altering the weather, temperature and oceanic current patterns and gradients of the rich industrial nations and areas of the north,
particularily in Europe.
The shift away from meat eating to vegetarianism will re-direct plant based foods now fed to fatten up cows, chickens and pigs, and put it into the diets of
billions of starving people around the globe, putting a halt to the greatest holocaust of men, women and children the world has ever witnessed.
With global information access, a rapidly growing global knowledge base and the tools to transmit, share and receive large amounts of information worldwide,
we can actively work to construct an alternative energy economy based on solar, wind and anti-gravity sources to replace the highly antiquated, largely failing
and environmentally destructive hydrocarbon economy we are now imprisoned in. International sustainable development must become the worldwide
standard by which current and future human development is to progress. Organic agriculture, ecologically oriented community development, green jobs, economic
decentralization, environmental education and stewardship, land, water, air and soil conservation and a cultivated respect for the welfare of successive
generations are some of the hallmarks of this transition. A green world order and the salvation of our planet will, of course, be the end product of
this historic shift for our species, both in terms of elevating human consciousness and in regards to securing the advanced infrastructure needed for
our continued livelihood.
Current global eugenics policies designed to destroy life on Earth must needs be swept away forever. Campaigns and practices to end life are obviously
incompatible with the drive to secure life through the principles of nurturance, stewardship, ecology and sustainability.
The battle to Save Our Planet is, whether we like it or not, the central overriding priority of our time. Failure, along with extinction, is not an option.
Therefore, let us engage the future with all the brilliance, wisdom and intelligence at our command as we learn to properly manage our planet. The world
crisis that is now upon us also provides the perfect opportunity for us to rapidly and swiftly transit our failing world society into a thriving, highly advanced
and compassionate world civilization for the 21st century and beyond.
We now stand at the very threshold of becoming the world's first truly global civilization. By fate of evolution and human destiny, we also
find ourselves at the very nexus of human history. Resource limits, a finite planet and an emerging Age of Ecology are predetermining
our future survival prospects as a species. There really is no other option than for us to organize, build and enter into a global
green civilization. Author Joanna Macy once noted that, "Future generations, if there is a livable future for them, will look back
at the epochal transition we are making to a sustainable society. They may well call this the time of the Great Turning".
-FIN-
SOURCES:
1. World Social Forum
2. International Forum on Globalization
3. State of the World Forum