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
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