This is a blueprint for the long-term sustainable realisation of
"Humanities' Achievement of Hope" from as soon as possible (less than seven years) off into the far distant future. Assumes the effective world-wide implementation of all UN and other international
conventions already agreed to by the majority of the world's nations. As well as all of Agenda21 initiatives, in local policy frameworks consistent with the Global Greens Charter.
1. The transformation of economic research and policy into "ecological economics," wherein human impact on the biosphere is fully integrated into all market transactions and
economic policy decisions.
a). Establishing the Precautionary Principle as centrally critical to all questions impacting on surviving native wild-life or habits.
b). Rapid world-wide authoritative
modeling {down to the level of individual countries } of what the Earth's Carrying Capacity for different Affluence scenarios actual is.
c). Carbon Taxes.
d). Refocussing
economic attention to being more concerned about Energy flows, than they are now of money flows.
e). Moving tax policy orthodoxy so that energy consumption proportionally attracts more
tax than income acquisition. In a socially just way, tax policy must broadly discourage things the world can-not afford, rather than being obsessed with short-term monetary wealth.
2. Wide public education and other programs to curtail any future population increase. The world is simple full, with humanities population only able to expand at the detriment of the
planet biosphere. Then initiatives to bring national populations into line with the finding of carrying capacity determined in 1b [as above].
3. A crash global research program
to develop post-carbon energy sources, on a scale dwarfing the USA's Manhattan or Apollo projects.
4. Public acceptance that the high-speed, long-range personal transportation modes
(private motoring & aircraft ) of today will not remain possible in a post-carbon world. Then a Renaissance for public transport infra-structure.
5. A transition toward a post-corporate,
and even a post-urban, economy with a vastly reduced ecological footprint. Giant, exploitative, transnational corporations would give way to regional, worker owned cooperatives; mega-cities would
disperse to smaller, localized communities.
6. An ambitious national & international efforts in Space exploration. Thence as soon as possible, firm timetables and international
commitments to establishing permanent extraterrestrial settlements. The luxury of an international growth economy will only once again become available when humanity leaves the finite confines of the
Earths biosphere.
7. A crash program of research into (non-military uses of ) exotic new technologies like nanotechnology and artificial intelligence that could help human communities do
more with less.
8. The creation of new international institutions – { with real authority embodied in military force }-- to ;-
a). supervise massive resettlement of populations threatened and displaced by Global Warming / Climate Change,
b). enforce the dismantling of CO2 producing industries,
c). disseminate new technologies,
d). create economic incentives for social reorganization, and prevent environmental and resource conflicts.
9. A crash program of research into what planetary scientists call "terraforming." Usually this refers to the creation, via exotic technologies, of an Earth-like environment on an
alien planet such as Mars. In this context, it would refer to a massive effort to restore the Earth's environment and biosphere to something like their pre-1800 conditions.
10. The creation
of worldwide cultural and spiritual movements that would promote what Vaclav Havel once called, in a 1990 speech to the US Congress, "a global revolution in the sphere of human
consciousness.". There needs to be basic cultural change, in the hearts and souls of human individuals, to promote a new, more ecologically aware world-view. Not an easy thing to do, we all
know. { Maybe something along the lines of "A Green Philosophy of Chaotic Hope"
}
11. Via public critique, education, then socio-political legal restrictions affect the permanent crippling of the ideologies / theologies running
counter to the above agenda;-
a). US radical right as an effective force in USA's national politics, thereby making the world's (presently) most powerful nation-state somewhat more amenable to sensible policy
proposals.
b). Fundamentalist religious grouping, invoking Absolute God given authority. Especially at this juncture;- Traditional Catholicism, Fundamentalist Protestant
Christianity & Islam.
For those readers who do not believe this could work, or have strong objections to particular points (as expressed above), what is your well-researched alternative? We are always open to serious sugestions.
