This post is a response to Joao Abegao’s article “When Heroes Win, Everybody Loses”
You close your article with the following admonition, “In any event, if we are to stand a chance in creating a better world for all living things, a sensible and humane plan to stabilize and slowly reduce the human population back to a sustainable size needs to be put in place. All of us can aid in that effort by changing and supporting actions from the individual to the international level.”
All of us must make certain that we understand “international” as used above means global. I am very happy when I see someone who is not afraid to consider overpopulation as a global problem. I am also very happy that you are willing to use the language “changing and supporting actions from the individual to the international level”. I interpret your language as meaning that you favor establishing an office at the global level, i.e. higher than any national level.
A city deals with problems within a city. A state within a state. A nation within a nation. The idea of the globe as being a political jurisdiction to solve global problems is new. But it has to be embraced.
My goal is to promote the idea of a global office that will be established by all of the nations acting together. I believe that an office at the global level is needed so that all of the nations can work together simultaneously to solve the various global crises that humanity is facing: overpopulation, global warming, probable atomic energy implosion, plastics degradation, and revitalizing nature. The global office that I envision will be limited to solving a limited number of problems like those shown above. I certainly do not want an autocratic form of governance at the global level so I have tried to include as many failsafe measures as possible.
[1] To be valid the global office must grow out of the deliberations of respected institutions that are close to the people. These institutions are the educational institutions, because learning is at the core of humanity. This is why the path to establishing a global office that will serve all of humanity equally must begin at the colleges and universities, worldwide.
[2] To act as one group the colleges and universities must form themselves into an association complete with a mission statement, officers, standing committees and everything else that an association needs to function. With modern communication an association should be able to formulate itself and then to begin functioning, even if the people on the committee live in different parts of the world. Our colleges and universities have all the acumen needed to figure out how this can be done.
[3] The first mission for an association of colleges and universities will be to engage the nations and convince the nations that the nations must agree to form an association of nations so that the nations will have a group, ratified by the nations, to create and provide governance to a global office. No single nation will be in charge. The Association of Nations will be in charge If the Association of Nations uses a one nation one vote rule whenever decisions are made, then the decisions will be arrived at democratically regardless that some nations may have autocratic rule.
[4] In my writings I have suggested that the association of colleges and universities call on the most respected people in the world to aid in the process of convincing the nations. The politicians who happen to be in power at the time will need to be convinced. Having highly respected people from within each country jaw-boning the politicians may make the difference.
[5] I also suggest that an association of nations could agree to have the association of colleges and universities become an advisory body for decisions that the association of nations make. An association of colleges and universities will provide an unbiased view and will have expertise that may not be available to politicians.
[6] I envision a global office whose head is not one person who is elected but rather a committee of twelve who are elected: six from the science and engineering departments and six from the comparative religion and humanities departments of the colleges and universities. These committee members will be elected to overlapping terms of office so that new ideas can be forthcoming but also so that a continuation of purpose presides.
[7] The global office will have to be located somewhere in the world. It will have two sub-offices. One sub-office will be like the group of highly respected people in #4 above. I also include, in this group, a raft of emissaries for each of these people so that there will be continual jaw-boning of global leaders of all stripes. The second sub-office will be a committee of twelve elected from the populace. The global office will write the criteria for the people elected to this sub-office. There will be three from a scientific, engineering background, three with a religious, humanities background, three from business and three from government. These positions will have time limits for reelection. The way the elections will be conducted is outlined in my writings titled, A Plan for the Nations. This sub-office will have hundreds or thousands of locations throughout the world doing the work of removing carbon from the atmosphere, ending the use of fossil fuel, administering rules for reducing the population, overseeing the dismantling of everything nuclear and cleaning up plastics from everywhere in the world.
The global office can be made into a non-threating office. This will take a lot of money, but there is enough money in the world to make this happen. If people will not step up to do their part then humanity risks socio-economic collapse. If we do the right things, the right way, right now, we can avoid collapse. Here is a truism that I embrace. If everybody wants something to happen and if everybody works at making it happen, it will happen.