Paradise Earth

Robert Muller's Ideas & Dreams Nurturing Our Home

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Selected Excerpts

Chapter I: The Absolute, Urgent Need for Proper Earth Government

Section I Our new, overriding concern: the salvation and preservation of the Earth

Section II: Next Development of the World System

Section III: The Need for a Change in Values and Basic Rethinking of all Principal Segments of Human Life based on crypto casino approximation

Section IV: The Need for Futurization

 

Chapter III : Ways to Achieve Paradise Earth

I. NEED and PROPOSALS FOR A NEW POLITICAL SYSTEM FOR PLANET EARTH

2. A Quantum Strengthening of the UN

3. The Creation of the United States orUnited Nation of the World

4. Consideration of Novel Ideas for the Governance and authorities


Section I

Our new, overriding concern: the salvation and preservation of the Earth

Since 1945 the needs, injustices and complaints of humanity, especially of the poor countries, have been high on the agenda of the United Nations. Recently the UN has held a World Social Summit on all these problems in Copenhagen and launched a United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty, 1997-2024.

Regarding the newcomer in the age of global preoccupations, namely the Earth, we must listen to her too and respond to her complaints. If the Earth could speak she would say:

Why did I have to take all of a sudden a population increase from 2.5 billion people in 1952 to 6.1 billion in 2024, more than a doubling in less than fifty years?

We could answer as an excuse: it happened out of sheer ignorance. After the war the rich countries and the United Nations wanted to prevent the early death of innumerable children in the poor countries. They died young because of epidemics, bad health conditions, malnutrition and hunger. But having no population statistics for the world and for most of these countries, we did not tell the parents that they would no longer need to give birth to an average of six children per family to have at least two left to till the land and to take care of their old age. Until 1952 we did not even know what the world population was! When the UN organized for the first time in human history decent global statistics and world censuses, we discovered that women did not have more children, but that children no longer died early (the mortality rate fell from 34 per thousand to 14 per thousand). When this was discovered it was too late, the children were born and a young population is highly reproductive. The UN warned nations and humanity by means of world population conferences and every other possible means that a world population explosion was upon us. But religions and other factors opposed it. Nevertheless, these efforts saved you from 2.2 billion more humans on your surface by the year 2024. Instead of 8.3 billion human beings in that year there will be only 6.1 billion.

*The Secretary General of the UN reported to the 1997 UN General Assembly that 100 nations on this planet have become poorer in the last fifteen years and that 1.3 billion people of this Earth have a daily income of only one dollar.

The Earth:

Yes, but I hear that at the present rate you will be 9.3 billion in the year 2024 and stabilize only at 10.7 billion in the year 2,200, which means 4.8 billion more people than today! You still increase by 80 million people every year. You will end by destroying me.

Our answer:

We continue to do our utmost. Each year the figure of population growth decreases by a few more millions. In October 1999 we were 6 billion people. The increase during the preceding twelve months was 78 million. To change the course of global phenomena takes time. Humanity which is in the kindergarten of the global age has not learned it yet.

The UN's latest forecasts of the world population in 2024 are: a total world population of 8.91 billion, of which 1.16 billion (a decline of 40 million) in the rich countries and 7.75 billion (an increase of 3.05 billion) in the poor countries.

The Earth:

You better learn it fast. I have another major complaint, namely while there is a population explosion in the poor countries you have also triggered off a wild inventions, production, business, marketing, advertising and overconsumption explosion in the rich countries. In these countries an individual consumes 30 times more of my resources than in the poor countries. From my point of view, namely the damages you do to my body, your population statistics are wrong: while the less developed countries count 4.7 billion people, the more developed countries' 1.2 billion should be multiplied by 30, i.e. they represent in my eyes 36 billion people!

The Earth would have other complaints, she could ask for example:

WHY EACH MINUTE

- do you destroy 21 hectares (52 acres) of my tropical forests (38 million acres a year) after having destroyed most of the forests in your "rich" countries?

- do you consume 35,725 barrels of petroleum to run around in cars and fly around me in airplanes?

- do you let 50 tons of fertile soil be blown off my cropland?

- do you add 12,000 tons of carbon dioxide to my atmosphere, to the air you breathe, a staggering total of 6.3 billion tons in 1997?

WHY EACH HOUR

- do you let 685 hectares of productive dryland become desert?

- do you spend 120 million dollars on military expenditures, which you could use for the good of your poor and for my preservation?

- are 55 people poisoned and 5 killed by pesticides?

- are 60 new cases of cancer diagnosed in the United States alone, over 5,000,000 cases each year with 20,000 cases leading to death, because of the thinning of my ozonosphere which protected you from the ultra-violet rays of the sun?

WHY EACH FIVE HOURS

- do you let a species die out on this planet? This would mean a loss of 84,000 species in the next 50 years.

WHY EACH DAY

- do 25,000 people die of water shortage and contamination?

- are 10 tons of nuclear waste produced by 437 and a constantly increasing number of nuclear plants? How can you let my body be reatomized when it took millions of years for me to loose the nuclear radiations I had when being born from the sun, and it was only when that atomized condition ended that I was able to give birth to life and to you?

- do 250,000 tons of sulfuric acid fall as acid rain in the northern hemisphere, killing lakes and damaging remaining forests?

- are 60 tons of plastic packages and 372 tons of fishing nets dumped into the seas and oceans by commercial fishermen, killing fishes, sea birds and sea mammals?

- why each day are tens of thousands of men rushing to skyscrapers around the world to invent more, to produce more, to market more, to advertise more, to sell more, while only a few are concerned with my preservation? You cannot say, as you say for the population explosion, that each year that explosion diminishes somewhat. On the contrary it gets worse every day.

WHY SINCE 1970

- have you destroyed more than thirty per cent of my nature and the destruction is accelerating, not decelerating as is the population explosion?

WHY DURING A HUMAN LIFETIME

- do you dump so much garbage and waste on me: while the average is 150 times of the weight of a person in a poor country over a lifetime, why does the average American create a mountain of waste 4,000 times his own weight?

And the Earth could go on. She could say:

"I regret to have no total figure on what you dump into the seas and oceans which cover 71 percent of my body and contain the largest number of longest living of my species. US industries and cities dump an estimated 6.4 trillion gallons of waste and sewage into the oceans every year.

I heard her also murmur:

"I almost wish that you humans would put coloring materials in the exhausts of your cars and airplanes to see what you add to the air which goes into your lungs and which I made so pure for you. Thank God, it begins to show in the form of smog over your cities."

The Earth would further say:

The UN Charter does not even mention me or my nature, natural resources, or the environment. But since the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the environment and the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit you have begun to look into my miseries. You have created a UN Environment Program and an Earth Council, and you are drafting an Earth Charter, a Declaration of my rights. I hear that next you will take up the drafting of a universal declaration of human responsibilities. Ministries of the Environment have sprung up in almost all countries. I thank you for that. But alas, the UN's recommendations are all too often ignored and most poorly implemented, as was revealed by your 1997 Special General Assembly to review the situation. Why don't you transform the UN into an Earth Organization, in which humans and nature would cooperate for the optimum fulfillment and survival of both, and make me the most beautiful and flourishing planet in the whole universe, the true paradise I was meant to be by creation?

She would add:

I have just read a statement by Mr. Mario Soares, the Prime Minister of Portugal and Chairman of a World Commission on the Oceans, who says:'"the action taken for the seas and oceans since the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit has been quite depressing." May I warn you: if the ultra-violet rays going through the vast hole in my ozonosphere (it has reached the size of continental China) kill the plankton and diatoms of my seas and oceans you might lose 2/3rds of your oxygen!

And why do you have 556 militaries, 85 doctors and only one world servant per 100,000 Earth inhabitants?

Yes, why, why, why...

It is to these fundamental global Earth challenges, in addition to the unresolved human ones, that the world community must address itself as we enter the 21st century and new millennium.

It is a vast subject which reaches from the individual to local, city, provincial, state, national, regional, continental and international, global levels, including the world's commons (the seas and oceans, the atmosphere, the ozonosphere, the moon and outer-space) and the immediate, medium and long-term future.

It is a vast subject also regarding the means of action: institutions, law, financial resources, taxation, human talents and resources, and the proper education and cooperation of more than 6 billion human individuals on this planet which is meant to be a paradise.

Section II: Next Development of the World System

Since globalization is the primary evolutionary phenomenon, challenge and opportunity of our time, it obviously raises the extremely important question of the type, role, structure, strength and resources of the world system.

And since the Earth is in peril and the greatest part of humanity is still in misery, the remedies must be audacious and strong, even if they seem irrealistic or difficult to accept by those in power. We must stretch our minds and hearts to the dimension of the problems. As President Roosevelt wrote in his own hand on the day before his death for the speech he was to deliver at the opening of the San Francisco Conference convened to give birth to the United Nations:

"The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today."

In my view, after fifty-five years of service in the United Nations system, all the above points to the utmost urgency and absolute necessity for proper Earth government.

This should become the priority item on the agenda of world affairs at the entry into the third millennium. The poor countries who have been waiting so long for world justice should be the first to request it after 50 years of promises from the rich countries.

There is no shadow of a doubt that the present political and economic systems &endash; if systems they are&endash;&endash; are no longer appropriate and will lead to the end of life evolution on this planet. We must therefore absolutely and urgently look for new ways. The less we loose time, the less species' and nature will be destroyed.

I would urge therefore that consideration be given to the following avenues:

 

I

to hold a World Conference on Proper Earth Government through the Free Market System

Since business was the first to globalize itself world-wide, far beyond governments, and since corporations are now for all practical purposes ruling the world, we should give them the opportunity, even request them to assess their full responsibility for the future of all humanity, all living species and of the Earth herself and prove to us the validity of their claim that the free market will do it all, that it is the perfect system.

The world corporate community should be asked to answer how they would take care of the above complaints of the Earth, how they would provide for a well-preserved planet and the well-being of all humanity, full employment, the renewal of natural resources, the long-term evolution of the planet and continuation of life on it, the real democracy of the consumers in a corporate power and wealth economy.

Such a conference would bring together the heads of the major 180 world companies, banks and stock-exchanges, the World Bank, the IMF, the GATT, the new World Trade Organization, the International Chamber of Commerce and similar organizations.

II

to ensure proper Earth government through a second generation United Nations for the 21st century

Since the United Nations is the only world-wide, universal organization at present available, since it had many years of valuable experience and many successes, since it paved the way to proper Earth government, instead of putting it on the defensive, unjustified attacks and criticism, reduction of resources and non-payment of obligatory contributions, governments should honestly ask themselves if a better way would not be to consider a second generation United Nations upgraded by a true quantum jump into a proper Earth preserving and human well-being and justice ensuring government.

Such a conference would have at its disposal many proposals and ideas for the strengthening of the UN made by various UN bodies, governments, Secretaries General, World Commissions, outside organizations and retired elders like myself. I have formulated mine in my Testament to the UN and in my 6000 ideas and dreams for a better world.

I recommend the urgent holding of a UN Charter Review Conference and second Bretton Woods Conference to assess the United Nations system's role, potentialities and substantial strengthening to cope with the critical issues and needs of the Earth and of humanity in the future. A Charter review conference would moreover give a voice to 135 governments of the present 190 members, which did not participate in the drafting of the Charter and creation of the UN. If a Charter review conference is vetoed by the big powers, these 135 governments should hold their own conference and offer the world a new draft Charter. They owe it to their people and to world democracy.

There is no doubt that given the massive changes which have taken place since 1945, an Organization created more than 50 years ago can simply not be adequate to deal effectively with the mounting, unprecedented, massive world problems of a new century and millennium.

III

a

New Philadelphia World Convention for the Creation of the United States of the World

The star-performance, often called "miracle" of the American States in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia 200 years ago which put an end to a similar political chaos in North America between numerous, sovereign independent states at the time, should be repeated.

Such a Convention of all nations would review the state of world democracy and would have to add to the system of balance of powers the new dominant power of business and the immense, global new claims of the Earth for her and our salvation.

"Philadelphia II" is a project of US Senator Mike Gravel who proposes a convention for the writing of a charter for a Global Constitution.

In this regard, we might well apply to the present world situation these words by George Washington concerning the political chaos which reigned in North America at his time:

"The primary cause of all disorders lies in the different state governments and in the tenacity of that power which pervades the whole of their systems."

IV

a World Conference of all world federalist and world government associations and movements, to propose a federal constitution and system for the Earth

An immense work has been accomplished by the World Federalist Association headed by Sir Peter Ustinov, by its national associations and many other world government movements. There exist already several draft World Constitutions. World philanthropists should sponsor a World Conference or other ways to come up with a world constitution for the 21st century. We may remember that during World War I, Andrew Carnegie brought over to the US two Belgian scholars who drafted the statutes of the League of Nations and earned the Nobel Prize for it. Contemporary philanthropists should be inspired by such examples. According to UNESCO only 15 percent of philanthropy is international and most of it is bilateral. When the global world and the human family are in greatest need, they are the orphans of philanthropy.

And is it so inconceivable that two big federal countries like the United States and Russia might take the initiative of calling a world conference for the establishment of a global federal government in their image? After the cold war, what a warm spring, a spring of truly united nations this would be for our precious planet to become a paradise!

V

a World Conference for the creation of a World Union on the pattern of the European Union

The world has recently witnessed another political miracle, similar to the American miracle in Philadelphia: the miracle of Strasbourg, the birth of the European Union of 15 European countries which have finally put an end to their antagonisms and wars, decided to unite and cooperate and have abolished the borders between them. Every European can now settle anywhere in the Union, elect a European Parliament at the same time when electing his national Parliament, and can have his government condemned by a supra-national European Court of Human Rights when his rights are violated. Also, the European Union has its own European budget and tax system and is not dependent on national contributions as is the United Nations. In 1990 the European Economic Community had already a budget of 7.4 billion dollars, ten times the UN budget for all its world activities. This example is so hopeful, so powerful, so novel and inspiring that I recommend it as an outstanding guidelight for more regional communities and for the entire globe.

It is significant that the European Parliament has called for the setting up by the United Nations of an International Environmental Court and a World Environment Agency, of which the European Environment Agency would be a regional branch. It also wants that consideration be given to the setting up of a Parliamentary Consultative Assembly within the UN. We should wholeheartedly support these proposals (see page 23).

I recommend that the European Union organize meetings and conferences with outside countries to show them how they can move towards regional unions and how a World Union can be established. This would render a great service to the world and to the UN General Assembly.

2024: ten more European countries have been admitted to the European Union, making it an area larger than the US. Twenty-five more countries want to join it, making it perhaps the beginning of a World Union.

VI

a World Conference of the planet's five continents for a Proper Earth Government through continental Unions and a World Union

About ten years ago or more, I suggested to President Bush that in view of the creation of the European Union, the American countries from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego should create an all-American community or union. He listened to me but instead of creating that union in a common, joint effort of all American countries, as was done in Europe, the US negotiated separate trade agreements first with Canada, then with Mexico, and then the Latin American countries created their own Mercosur (the Southern Latin American market) and the future of an American Union is in doubt.

It might be noteworthy that indigenous people of the Americas believe in a prophecy according to which the Eagle and the Condor will meet on sacred Mount Rasur in Costa Rica from which a civilization of peace and nature will spread to the entire world. It is on that hill that the dream of the demilitarization of Costa Rica was born, where the United Nations located the UN University for Peace and the Earth Council created by the Rio de Janeiro Conference on the environment, as well as the International Radio for Peace. Simon Bolivar, for his part, in his dreams, prophecized that someday the capital of the world will be located in Central America.

The continental approach to a world union remains an important avenue. One could conceive five continental unions: the European Union, an American, an African, an Asian, and an Australian Union. A World Union could be constructed as a super-structure and common political system of the five continents. Humanity would then save astronomic military expenditures. What a relief for the world it would be!

VII

a World Conference on Earth and Human Government through new bio-political modes patterned on examples from nature

A very novel approach to the organization of humanity and its proper relations with the Earth and nature is to follow the biological models offered by the formation and admirable functioning of numerous colonies of cells, bacteria and living species observable in nature and now well studied. This is a very advanced science which opens up the most interesting and promising vistas. A bio-political science can and should now be rapidly developed on its basis. It would offer a very much needed bio-political revolution of the Earth' political system and science. The Earth and nature would come to their full preeminence and rights. All other world governmental avenues will sooner or later lead to it. First models are already the bio-regional approaches existing in certain areas of the world such as the Arctic Forum and the big river basins and mountain chains cooperative agreements.

Beyond this bio-regional vision and approach is the idea and proposal of Barbara Gaughen-Muller to create a United Nature, a transformed United Nations to respond to the fundamental unity of nature of which we humans are part. Humans would not dominate nature but cooperate with her and learn from her. It is probably the most advanced, timely and imaginative vision of the total, proper functioning of planet Earth.

The Natural Law Party created by British scientists, which exists already in 100 countries and has become the third largest party in the United States could be the spearhead of this new approach. See the book by the President of the US Natural Law Party, physicist Dr. John Hagelin: Manual for a Perfect Government. How to harness the laws of nature to bring maximum success to governmental administration. Maharishi University, Fairfield, Iowa 52557, USA.

VIII

a World Conference on proper Earth government through what the world's religions have in common in terms of universal, global spirituality and world-wide human experience

Last, but not least, humanity has reached a point when we must consider our human presence, past, present and future on this particular planet in the universe. We have now a tremendous information on the universe in which we live. In addition to our total consciousness of our Earth and her global evolution we are also now acquiring and developing a cosmic consciousness of the universe. This is one of the greatest advances in human history, even if the mysteries of infinity and eternity might remain beyond human and scientific grasp. This has the result of bringing together the spirituality or basic "faiths" of the religions and science. God, the gods or the Great Spirit or Spirits and their emissaries, prophets and human incarnations like Jesus gave humanity at its early stages a cosmic, universal, all-encompassing faith or feeling for the mysteries of the cosmos, for the norms of love and for the miracle of life and norms of behavior between all humans, other species and nature. These messages or""revelations" should not be neglected. They contain some of the profoundest answers to human behavior, fulfillment and survival. Great was our astonishment in the environmental crisis to discover the wisdom and rules of behavior towards nature dictated by the Great Spirit to the indigenous people of this planet, and towards Creation in practically all religions. The world's 5000 religions are filled with incredible wisdom regarding human morality, belief in life, environmental adaptations, survival and future evolution. This is strongly coming to the fore at this time in the following:

1. the dream and plan of my compatriot Robert Schuman from Alsace-Lorraine to see the European Union, which started with a coal and steel community followed by an economic community, followed by a political union, culminate in an all spiritual European Union including the Eastern European countries, especially "Holy Mother Russia". For him this was much more important than the extension to these countries of a military union through NATO.

2. the San Francisco Initiative to create a United Religions Organization similar to the United Nations also born in that city, where all religions of the world will cooperate, define what they have in common, provide their wisdom on human behavior and morality, and right relations with nature, God's Creation and the universe thus ushering the world into a great Spiritual Renaissance. In the process they will hopefully reduce and progressively give up their fundamentalism in favor of a global spirituality, the same way as nations in the United Nations have reduced to some extent their national fundamentalism called sovereignty.

3. in August 1998, at the 20th World Congress on Philosophy in Boston, a World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality was created. Mr. Karan Singh of India and I are its Co-Chairmen. It met for the first time in September 2024 in Canada.

4. In December 1999, at the invitation of Nobel Peace Prize winner, Bishop Edmund Tutu, a third World Parliament of Religions was convened in Pretoria, South Africa. The first such Parliament was held in 1893 and the second in 1993, both in Chicago. A fourth one is being planned for 2024.

Global religious cooperation towards a world spiritual Renaissance and Paradise Earth is accelerating.

Section III: The Need for a Change in Values and Basic Rethinking of all Principal Segments of Human Life

In recent years, Erika Erdmann, the research aide and Librarian of Nobel Prize winner Roger Sperry, and Professor Jean-Claude Leonide, a reputed French anthropologist undertook a survey of long-term evolutionary scientists which showed that scientists were becoming more optimistic as a result of the birth of a global consciousness which makes us humans aware of our mistakes and problems and helps us solve them by changing course and adapting to new evolutionary requirements. Their survey revealed that the theory of

"chaos" according to which the universe and human life make no sense is losing ground. The new theory is that on any planet having life in the cosmos one species sooner or later evolves to a point of gaining a total knowledge of the planet it lives on. It will then be in its power either to continue evolution or to bring it to an end. The first course will require that the former values of that species, values not respectful of the new phase of evolution, must be replaced by new ones which take that evolution into account. These new values are a major new evolutionary imperative.

In my view and in theirs, humanity has reached that stage on Planet Earth: we must revise our basic values dating from the 19th and early twentieth century and acquire a new evolutionary wisdom which respects nature, the Earth and their basic laws. If nature has produced the incredible, sophisticated variety of innumerable living species around us, each one a true miracle, it is simply not possible that the human species is not a miracle too, perhaps the most advanced of all. We are no longer our own objective. We have become the caretakers, the trustees, the shapers of future evolution, the instruments of the cosmos, integral parts of it, as we have already recognized of late to be of the Earth.

The future of the Earth will be bright and life will not become extinct if we decide so at the beginning of a new century and millennium. We are entering a thrilling, transcending new global, cosmic phase of evolution in the line indicated by Teilhard de Chardin, the anthropologist, if the human species understands its suddenly momentous, incredibly important evolutionary role and responsibility.

The preceding requires that all basic segments of human life on Earth be reviewed and rethought from scratch in the 21st century. These are:

a new political system for planet Earth
a new economics
a new education
a new media and communications
a new democracy
a new global leadership
a spiritual Renaissance and inter-religious cooperation
a non-violent human society
a well preserved planet
a decent well-being for all humans
a stabilization of the world population
right human settlements on the planet
the disarmament, demilitarization, denuclearization and global security of the planet
a new science and technology
a new anthropology, sociology and new ways of life
a new human biology
a new philosophy, cosmology and long-term view of evolution
a new world ethics and justice
a new world psychology
a new science and art of planetary management
an art and culture Renaissance

 

Such reconsideration is taking place currently in a whole series of institutions and conferences around the world. We can therefore be optimistic about our future as we enter a new century and millennium.

 

Section IV: The Need for Futurization

With our human concern for the phenomenon of globalization must also come a growing concern for the future, a long-term future, a new phenomenon which we could call "futurization".

Having recently attended as a member of an international advisory board, a conference on Humanity and the Earth in the year 3000 by a new Foundation for the Future created in Bellevue, Washington by two firms of outer space satellite and stations construction, I was deeply impressed how all things earthly and human must be seen in their globality and interdependence when considered from a long-term point of view. Alas, political thinking today most of the time does not go beyond the next elections. We do not heed the Iroquois' custom not to take any decision without thinking of its effects on the seventh generation.

I therefore recommend that all governments should create a Ministry of the Future and that the United Nations should create a main committee on the Future in the General Assembly to receive yearly reports from all UN specialized agencies and world programs on the long-term future. The Foundation for the Future has held in 2024 a meeting of 100 eminent long-term scientists and visionaries to provide a view of what the Earth and humanity are likely to be in the year 3000 under various conditions. Such long-term thinking and envisioning must become an important component of proper government of Paradise Earth.

Also to be noted is the prestigious Millennium Project of the United Nations University in Tokyo designed to assist in organizing futurists, scholars and policy makers all around the world who work for UN organizations, corporations, governments, universities and non-governmental organizations.


I. NEED and PROPOSALS OF A NEW POLITICAL SYSTEM FOR PLANET EARTH*

 

 

There can be no doubt that the political system of our planet is an utter chaos inherited from the past, totally unfit to meet the new global needs and colossal challenges of our current and future evolution. The United Nations with all its weaknesses has done wonders, helping humanity to cross with minimum damage one of the most dangerous transition periods in human history. It has solved more than a hundred conflicts and prevented many more through its quiet, behind-the-scenes diplomacy and early warning system. It can definitely be credited with having avoided a third world war through solving such dangerous crises as the Cuban missiles crisis and the Suez Canal crisis. If my Alsatian compatriot Bartholdi were alive he would build a United Nations statue twice the size of the Statue of Liberty. Nevertheless, more than 20 million humans died since 1945 in limited, local wars. In 1991 there are still 38 international conflicts and internal wars going on in the world. And in most internal wars the United Nations is not even allowed to intervene. The recent Iraq-Kuwait conflict is the most glaring illustration of the dangerous political chaos in which we live. May it have at least the benefit of proving that the time has come to have a new, deep-seated look at the political system of our planet. Not to do so on the eve of the third millennium would be the most inexcusable blindness and aberration in our whole history and evolution. In chapter 2 I have shown the paradoxes of the end of the national period of our history and the birth of the global age. In this chapter I will indicate the avenues we can engage into to work out a new political system for our planet.

To start with I will reproduce here the foreword I wrote to one of the most remarkable books on the subject written in recent times: "Planethood"1 by Ben Ferencz, a former prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, and Ken Keyes, a peace activist and publisher with an enormous following and readership in the United States and the English-speaking world. Hundreds of thousands of copies of this non-copyrighted book are in circulation. It has also been published in French2. In that preface I simply take the point of view of an extra-terrestrial team who would visit our beautiful planet and see how we mismanage it politically. But please get and read the entire book.

If a divine or extra-terrestrial committee of experts in planetary management visited our Earth, they would not believe their eyes. "You are insane!" they would exclaim. "This is no way to administer a planet! We give you the lowest mark in planetary management in the entire universe. We would look at them with surprise, astonished by the vehemence of their attack.

 

* From Robert Muller's book The Birth of a Global Civilization (1991)

 

"Look at what you are doing!" they would add with gentleness and pity. "You were given one of the most beautiful planets in the cosmos - one of the rare celestial homes at the right distance from a sun, endowed with marvelous forms of life. It is a living planet with an atmosphere, fertile soils, waters, and oceans. It is vibrant and interdependent, with elements all interlinked in the most marvelous ways. A true jewel in the universe. And look what you have done with it.

 

1. You have divided this planet into 160* separate territorial fragments without rhyme or reason - without geographic, ecological, human, or any other logic. All these fragments are sovereign; i.e.,

each of them considers itself more important than the planet and the rest of humanity.

 

2. You have armed these fragments to their teeth in order to defend their so-called "integrity." They often steal a piece of land from their neighbors.

 

3. You let two of the biggest parts of this international jigsaw puzzle stuff the surface and the inside of the earth, the waters, the seas, the airs, and tomorrow the heavens and the stars with nuclear devices capable of destroying most of the life on this planet.

 

4. You permit ego driven tyrants to snuff out the lives of people with poison gas.

 

5. You put some of your best minds to work designing more efficient ways to kill - instead of better ways to nurture the body, mind, and spirit.

 

6. You spend huge sums of money for each of these sovereign territories, and almost nothing to safeguard and provide for the needs of the planet as a whole. You do not even have a planetary budget! What an aberration!

 

7. You let many of your scientists, industrialists, developers, builders, promoters, merchants, and military progressively destroy the fundamental resources of your planet so that within a few decades it will become unlivable - and you will die like flies.

 

8. You educate your children as if each of these territories were an autonomous island floating on an ocean instead of teaching them about their planet, which is their home - and about humanity, which is their family.

 

They would have a long list of other grievances: the gaps between the rich and the poor, between the overfed and the hungry, violence in so many forms, self-destructive drugs, the radioactive and chemical poisoning of the planet, ruthless greed for money and power regardless of the harm to fellow humans and animals, the violation by states of individual human rights, refugees, tortures, abandoned children, the homeless, the absence of a philosophy of life, of ethics, of planetary morals, a youth without ideals, racism, misinformation by the media and governments, abusive monopolies, an unlimited imagination to attribute to our own nation every possible virtue and greatness while at the same time denigrating and dividing other nations and groups, etc.

 

* Year 2024: 190

We could find many arguments to try to justify ourselves: our checkered history; the current nation-states being the result of conquests, murders, stealings, invasions, wars and marriages; the recent discovery, only 500 years ago, that we are a globe turning around its sun rather than the contrary; the dearth of global data until the United Nations and its specialized agencies were born; a total inexperience in planetary management; the absence of any precedents; the novelty of the crises, challenges, and global problems to which we react like little children burning our fingers; a first very weak world organization, misunderstood, used as a scapegoat by its masters who monopolize all fiscal resources of the planet; belief in obsolete values and ideologies; the multitude of tongues, cultures, beliefs, and religions which we have inherited from the past, etc.

The extra-terrestrials would answer, "All right, you have extenuating circumstances due to your history and slow evolution. But this has lasted long enough. You have until the year 2024 - the date of entry into your third millennium. Sit down. Think. Bring together your best minds. Consult your populations. And make a blueprint for a better system of planetary management. Luckily you have many excellent resources available.

"The latest is PlanetHood, a book by Benjamin Ferencz and Ken Keyes. PlanetHood seems to us a good point of departure. That book raises in effect the following fundamental question: What would be the fate of the United States if each of its fifty states were sovereign, possessed an army, a president, a Supreme Court, a State Department, a national hymn, a national flag, national days, and the exclusive power to levy taxes on its citizens? What if the United States government were no more than a United Nations without sovereignty, without legislative, executive, judicial, and fiscal powers, unable to make decisions and laws, but only recommendations and exhortations? You would exclaim: `What an indescribable mess it would be!' Well, this is exactly the state of your planet torn up into 160 pieces!

"We will return in ten years, during your celebration of the Bimillennium. We hope that by then you will have drawn up a proper political and administrative regime for this planet.

"Do not lose any time. Be courageous. Do not get stopped by the antiquated beliefs carefully nurtured by the existing powers and all those who benefit from the present disorder.

"You are on the eve of major potential nuclear, ecological, and climatic disasters. May God protect you, bless you, and guide you. After all, you are our brothers. May cosmic enlightenment finally illuminate your marvelous little planet circling faithfully around its sun in the vast universe.

"And please remember," they would advise as they left, "this planet has not been created for you. You were created to take good care of it."

 

In the light of the preceding, there are four practical, timely avenues into which we can engage to produce a new political system for our planet:

 

1. The European way towards a world community

2. A quantum strengthening of the United Nations

3. The creation of the United States or United Nation

of the World

4. Consideration of novel ideas for the governance and good

management of Planet Earth.

 

 

 

 

 

1. The European Way Towards A World Community

 

Perhaps the main lesson of the European Community is to have shown that a dream can come true. It was indeed the dream of a little boy named Robert Schuman which gave birth to it. Schuman, a compatriot from Alsace-Lorraine, had been a German soldier in World War I and a French Cabinet Minister incarcerated by the Germans in World War II. After the war, he wanted to resume his practice as a lawyer in the city of Metz, but a former school-friend of mine, Rene Lejeune, a true mystic who represented the Christian Democratic party in Lorraine impressed upon him to run for elections, underlining his responsibilities towards the reconciliation of France and Germany, the unification of Europe, and his saintly duty as a Christian. Robert Schuman responded to his appeal, was elected and became Foreign Minister of France in the late forties. Then another great dreamer and planner, Jean Monnet, presented him with a plan for a Coal and Steel Community between France, Germany, Luxembourg, and Belgium. France (Lorraine) had the iron ore and Germany (the Ruhr) had the necessary coking coal to make steel. To work on a strong common interest would show the two arch-enemies that they could cooperate. Jean Monnet asked Robert Schuman to lend his name to the plan, for it was his duty as a Lorrainer to reconcile the two countries and to build Europe. Schuman told me that he did not know what to do, because he was neither a coal and steel expert, nor an economist. But one morning he woke up and remembered a dream he had when he was a little boy: he lived in an upper part of Lorraine called the "corner of the three borders", because the frontiers of France, Germany, and Luxembourg converge in that place. Whenever little Schuman was riding his bicycle he hit a border and customs controls. This made him mad and he swore himself to do something to abolish those borders if he ever had a chance as a grown-up. Jean Monnet's plan was the golden opportunity. He went to his office at the Quai d'Orsay and signed the plan without further studying it. It became known as the Schuman Plan which later was expanded into the European Economic Community and finally into the political European Community which will enter into force in 1992. At that time all the borders between 15 European countries will be abolished.

Thus the dreams of Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet became true, far beyond what they could have expected. Today, East and West Germany are reunited, East Germany is part of the European Community and all Eastern European countries will sooner or later become members too. One of them, the USSR will even bring along a good-sized territory of northern Asia! The countries of Africa are waiting in line to be members. The Community will drop its adjective "European" and will become the pole of development, the axis around which a true world community will grow. This was indeed the ultimate vision of Jean Monnet as he wrote at the end of his memoirs:

"Have I said clearly enough that the Community we created is not an end in itself? It is a process of change, continuing in that same process which in an earlier period produced our national forms of life. The sovereign nations of the past can no longer solve the problems of the present: they cannot ensure their own progress or control their own future. And the Community itself is only a stage on the way of the organized world of tomorrow."

The world would be well advised to pursue the dream of Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman. The European Community fathered already two important children: President Bush proposed in 1990 an all-American free trade community from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, and the Central American Republics, long divided and torn by internal strifes and dictatorships are working actively towards a Central American Community endowed with a Central American Parliament, common consulates and passports, presidential meetings every six months and making Central America a demilitarized zone of peace. Out of the depth of their chaos, like a long abandoned field, as was the case of Europe, they found the will, the vision and the enthusiasm to engage into a radically different, promising, hopeful upward path of history.

 

 

This is also true of the world which is at the bottom of its political abyss. A great new vision can and must germinate from that abandoned planetary field. One could well see the world endowed with a European Community helping an all-African Community through massive aid to correct the historic lag of the latter continent in science, technology and development; an all-American Community in which the US and Canada would help their Latin American brethren to fill the same gap and to make of the Americas a showcase for the world; and an Asian Community in which Japan, Australia and New Zealand would help the poorer countries of that region. A Middle-Eastern Community should also be created to reconcile the peoples of that region.

A major drawback is that at the end of such a process each of these regional communities would have adopted legislations and created institutions which would be difficult to reconcile and might potently stand in the way of the global interests of the planet and of humanity, and prevent the creation of a true world community. At best, it might take a long time to mold and bring together these regional communities into a world community. A way out would be for one or several governments to propose the inclusion of a new item on the agenda of the UN General Assembly entitled:

 

"Creation of a true world community; implications of

existing and planned regional communities."

 

As a result, there would be right from the start debates and consultations to avoid creating a new major split of the world into powerful regional, conflicting and competing continental or regional entities. The creation and development of such communities should go hand in hand with the development of a world community in which the regional communities would be capped by world community legislation, institutions and resources ensuring a world-wide cooperation to meet the needs of all humanity and the planet.

The sooner such a move is made, the better. With every year that passes, the regional communities will acquire more rigid structures, rendering a world community more difficult, and retarding dangerously the necessary, unavoidable birth of a new global, political organization of the planet.

 

Robert Schuman once wrote a Manifesto of principles which was to guide a Constitutional Convention of European States in 1975, 25th anniversary of the Declaration which launched in 1950 the European Common Coal and Steel Community. Replacing the word Europe by humanity or world in these principles, the declaration could be a valuable guide for a process leading to a true world community.

 

1. Europe (humanity) must be the master of its destiny
2. Europe (the world) must acquire a soul
3. Political integration must complement economic integration
4. The politically integrated countries will take common decisions regarding international (world) matters
5. Political unity does not mean the absorption of the nation
6. Political integration does not mean the relinquishing of all national sovereignty
7. European ties (world ties) will not entail the negation of the fatherland
8. Europe must again become a guide for humanity
9. Europe must be the cradle and guardian of democracy
10. A united Europe must be the forerunner of tomorrow's universal community

 

2. A Quantum Strengthening of the UN

 

The United Nations has the enormous advantage to exist, to be universal, to have extensive experience and to be equipped with 32 specialized agencies and world programs covering practically every subject under the sun. After close to half a century it is high time to have an assessment and new look at this unprecedented but still cautious, imperfect, slow, and weak attempt at world organization. The imperatives of our global time call for an audacious reconstruction of the UN. International airports are reconstructed every ten to fifteen years. So are hospitals. The world's main international traffic center and hospital, the UN, has not been reconstructed once in 45 years! I have formulated my proposals after my long experience with the UN in several writings, especially in a peace Plan 2024 in my book What War Taught Me About Peace. Revised and expanded proposals can be found in a novel First Lady of the World. There is no dearth of ideas regarding the reform and strengthening of the UN, ranging from the abolition of the veto right to the creation of UN forces to replace national armies, from a revived role of the Military Staff Committee of the Security Council to the creation of a People's Assembly. For years, delegates and non-governmental organizations have put forward proposals. This was particularly the case during the fortieth anniversary of the UN in 1985.

Now that the cold was is over, thanks be to God, it is high time for leaders of nations to make the United Nations the leading global agency of the planet in the new age and millennium, to finally climax into the central legislative, executive and judicial institution on Earth.

To start this process forthwith, the 1991 session of the General Assembly should establish a preparatory committee for the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations in 1995, entrusted with the task of preparing a bold plan for the reform and strengthening of the UN for consideration by the heads of states who will meet on the occasion of that anniversary. The quantum reform of the UN should enter into effect at the latest by the year 2024, date of our entry into the third millennium. The first task of the committee would be to assemble a compendium of all proposals ever made for the strengthening of the UN. Each country would be asked to establish national committees and consultations to receive the proposals and views of their citizens and best minds. People's movements such as those for a UN Peoples Assembly, for world federalism and world government should submit their proposals and activate their campaigns for a basic transformation of the UN. When the US Confederacy became a federal system, they took over what existed in Washington. It should be the same with the UN. You do not throw unsatisfactory water away until you have found better one, or nowadays you improve it and purify it.

 

3. The Creation of the United States or United Nation of the World

 

This would be the best solution, for we must ready ourselves for much more trouble on the global front and for an entirely different potentially cataclysmic third millennium. We cannot continue with the present chaos. Rather than develop regional communities and reconstruct the United Nations, it might be more effective to start from scratch and to look boldly into the face of the centuries to come. The fate of humanity and of the planet are at stake. Today the situation is similar, but infinitely worse than at the time of the US Confederacy when the US was in chaos, when several states had their own armies or militia, made wars on each other, had customs controls, different legislations and judicial systems, and issued their own money, to the point that George Washington exclaimed:

"The primary cause of all disorders lies in the different state governments and in the tenacity of that power which pervades the whole of their systems."

The Secretary-General of the UN and the leaders of nations should make these words their own and start the same process George Washington initiated when he called for a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. It labored for ten years to produce the US Constitution, during debates which were infinitely more virulent than those at the United Nations today. Regarding the acceptance of the results, these statements are worth quoting:

"The intolerable anarchy which was swiftly created by the exercise of autonomous sovereignty by the thirteen states over matters of common concern drove our forefathers into union. Most of them took every step in that direction with misgivings, with reluctance, and often with repugnance." (Vernon Nash, The World must be Governed)

"There were times in the Convention of 1787 when it seemed that the requirements of the individual states in their nationalistic American world were insurmountable. But the American Constitution has proved that none of the American "nations" actually had interests that were more vital to them than were the interests of America as a whole".( Lloyd Graham, The Desperate People)

These statements would be applicable to the entire world today. When the US Constitution was signed, Benjamin Franklin who had followed the debates as an old man in a wheel-chair, called attention to a golden half-sun painted on the back of the President's chair which Washington had occupied during the last four months of difficult deliberations. He said:

"I have often and often in the course of the session and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting. But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising sun."

A replica of that chair should be offered by the city of Philadelphia to the President of a world constitutional Convention to be established by the UN General Assembly as part of the current Decade of International Law. No government would be bound by such a convention and it must be assumed that several would not even attend, but it would be utter, irresponsible blindness not at least to look seriously into the possibility of proper world government in the light of the anarchy in which we live and have lived for much too long at an incredible cost.

Since it took the Americans ten years to produce their constitution, it would not be exaggerated to give such a World Convention eight years to produce a draft Constitution for adoption by a summit meeting of heads of states in the year 2024.

As someone once wrote to me: "Our world problems could be solved by the simple removal of the little letter "s" from the United Nations. Then we would become the United Nation".

 

 

 

4. Consideration of Novel Ideas for the Governance and Good Management of Planet Earth

 

The above proposals are very classical and based on historical or ongoing experience and developments. The time has also come to rethink the meaning of government, administration and management now that an entire planet is at stake. Perhaps the above ways are obsolete before even being tried out and accepted by governments. Perhaps the same revolution in approach is needed as was the case when Montesquieu came up with his revolutionary ideas of democratic government through legislative, executive and judicial branches of government. His ideas are several hundred years old and might no longer be appropriate for our time and coming age. It would therefore be wise to appoint also a committee of the most eminent and original thinkers of the world to propose novel, unusual, imaginative, innovative, visionary ideas based in particular on our most recent scientific and technological, biological and evolutionary knowledge, as well as on different cultural backgrounds and not only our western history and thinking. A first task of such a committee would be to assemble a compendium of the most original ideas put forward by visionary thinkers throughout history and in recent times. One idea which has gained ground of late is to organize the world on the basis of bioregions. For example, the chaotic situation left in Africa by colonialism would merit a redefinition of African nations on a bioregional, cultural basis, and the creation of a United States of Africa. It might be the only way out of their current ordeals.

All four steps above should be put into motion simultaneously, in order not to leave any stone unturned and to help the world engage into an entirely new civilization and world order, instead of the current wasteful, costly and bloody chaos. All four steps should be initiated by the 1991 or 1992 General Assembly of the UN. This would give us seven or eight productive years to prepare ourselves for the year 2024 and our entry into the third millennium. I pray God that these words will be heard by leaders of nations who must wake up to their planetary responsibilities the same way as the heads of the American states woke up to their American responsibilities and created the United States of America. A great poet, Victor Hugo, proclaimed already in the last century the need to create the United States of the World. Usually poets have the right vision of the future, but we follow them only when faced with absolute necessities. Today's leaders have the choice of being remembered as the giant founding fathers of a united humanity on a sustainable planet or of being totally forgotten by the citizens of the third millennium.

 

"With all my heart I believe that the world's present system of sovereign nations can lead only to barbarism, war and inhumanity. There is no salvation for civilization, or even the human race, other than the creation of a world government."

Albert Einstein

 

"Unless some effective supranational government can be set up and brought quickly into action, the prospects of peace and human progress are dark and doubtful."

Winston Churchill