by Kennedy Graham
In the first two post-Rio reflections, I advanced two main propositions:
- That the international community needs to declare a global Ecological Crisis and undertake global executive action, rather than wallow in ineffective international legislative negotiations;
- That the interface between science and politics needs improvement, with the Secretary-General using high-level panels as an intermediary for policy analysis and prescription.
In this third and final reflection, I recommend consideration of a new organising framework for such global action.
Are we in a global ecological crisis? I contend that we are:
- Our ecological footprint, surpassing Earth-share (bio-productive capacity per capita) in 1981, recorded an overshoot of 18% in 1992 and 50% in 2010. Humanity is grossly over-consuming the planet’s resources, engaging in permanent ecological theft from the next generation.
- If each human pursues the consumer lifestyle of North America, the sustainable population is some 2.2 billion. At present, we are 7 billion, heading to 9 b.
- Biodiversity loss continues, at 100 to 1000 times above the natural rate.
- Our greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, portending serious anthropogenic climate change with average global temperature increase of between 2°C (difficult) and 6°C (intolerable), falling short of the stated objective of climate stabilization identified in the 1992 Framework Convention.
That, by definition, is a crisis situation.
In fact, we have known about this for almost half a century.
- In 1972, following the first UN environment conference, the UN General Assembly requested UNEP to “keep under review the world environmental situation to ensure that emerging environmental problems of wide international significance receive appropriate and adequate consideration by Governments”. (UNGA res. 2997)
- In 1992, UNEP noted that a ‘clear scientific consensus has emerged on estimates of the range of global warming which can be expected during the 21st century”. Business-as-usual could have “possibly catastrophic consequences”. (Saving Our Planet, para 3.17).
What of the capacity to respond? As early as 1982, UNEP observed:
“At the [1972] Stockholm conference, it was generally assumed that the world’s system of national governments, regional groupings and international agencies, had the power to take effective action. …. By the early 1980s, there was less confidence in the capacity of national and international managerial systems to apply known principles and techniques or in the effectiveness with which international debates lead to action. …. Twenty years after Stockholm, it is still not possible to … say with confidence that the Governments of the world have the knowledge or the political will to deal with the global problems which we already know exist”. (Saving Our Planet, p. 165).
Forty years after Stockholm and twenty years after the Earth Summit, Rio+20 limply validated that prescient insight, with its platitudinous declaration of 283 paragraphs.
Popular attention over the decades has focused on climate change. But it has become apparent more recently that the Global Ecological Crisis is comprised of an inter-locking series of planetary boundaries. So the global executive action must encompass that.
Of the nine planetary boundaries recently identified by scientists, three have already been exceeded: climate change, biodiversity loss, and the nitrogen removal from the atmosphere. A fourth (stratospheric ozone depletion) is recovering from boundary excess. Three others (freshwater, ocean acidification, land use) are approaching the boundary. With the final two (chemical pollution, atmospheric aerosol loading) we lack sufficient data to be certain.
While human knowledge allows us to aspire to specific resilience in respect of each boundary, we have little understanding of the requirements of general systems resilience for the biosphere, with the dangers of non-linear change (‘tipping-points’, ‘black swans’) an added existential threat. The increasing risk of large-scale methane release and continental ice-melt forms an unpredictable part of this concern.
What is needed, it would therefore seem, is a formal recognition that the Ecological Crisis is real, that it is complex, and that it requires conscious and rational response on the basis of a crisis management situation.
A new organising framework, both regarding the scope of the threat and the institutional capacity to respond, could take the following form:
- UN Security Council attention to all components of the Ecological Crisis as a threat to international peace and security;
- an empowered Secretary-General, taking more personal initiative as sanctioned under the Charter; and
- a high-level panel, acting on behalf of the Secretary-General, operating as intermediary between the scientific community and the policy-making community with regard to the nine planetary boundaries (or any revised version of this as recommended by the scientific community).
At present, international negotiations have bequeathed framework conventions for ozone depletion, climate change and biodiversity. Their subsequent binding protocols proved successful with ozone but manifestly inadequate with the other two. In the case of the remaining six other boundaries, little or no policy development has occurred to date.
The next few decades, perhaps to 2020, is probably the time the international community of states has left to take decisive action for the global community of peoples.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by Kennedy Graham on Mon, August 6th, 2012
Tags: biodiversity, climate change, ecological footprint, global ecological crisis, ozone depletion, planetary boundaries, rio 92, rio+20, Saving our Planet, UNEP
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on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
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The world’s largest powers have a history of ignoring the UN if directives that would have a negative impact on their economies and national interests: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/business/technology/120803/us-refuses-hand-over-internet-control-un.
We also have the issue of how we manage the dominant multinational corporates and the world’s largest banks. JP Morgan Chase is the world’s biggest company and Exxon Mobil is the most profitable. Oil and gas, mineral mining and banks continue to dominate our richest companies and because they also operate as multinationals they are effectively beyond the influence of individual governments or the UN. With Government debt soaring individual companies’ wealth are now beyond the countries where they operate and that wealth buys huge political influence.
New Zealand is held to be the least corrupt country in the world and yet we still see attempts to legislate responsibly for our national good being successfully stymied by wealthy companies and industries that will potentially suffer economically. Despite the collapse of financial institutions due to poor regulatory controls (causing substantial suffering to ordinary New Zealanders who lost their life savings) the industry successfully lobbied to have much needed regulations watered down. The alcohol industry has successfully limited legislation designed to address our huge issues around alcohol consumption that would have an impact on their profits. This is despite the fact that there are massive health and legal costs that the government has to cover due to misuse of alcohol.
Yes, the international community of states may indeed reach a consensus around the actions necessary to save our planet but how do you propose they convince Exxon Mobil and JP Morgan Chase that business as usual is no longer an option?
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As I pointed out two threads ago, this will not pass.
Not that you couldn’t get it through the UN General Assembly – but any and I mean ANY attempt to use the UN to dictate to the US government will fail, will alienate the US from the UN in a very MAJOR way, and if the US government accepts it, begin a second civil war. This is NOT going to work except in theory.
I’d love to live in theory because everything works there.
The alternative approach which I outlined earlier, does more to help, and faster, because the “conservatives” the powers that be rely on to keep them in power (and money) WOULD support a move to a redeemable currency and away from the fractional-reserve system. They might object to the “debt jubilee” notion that goes with it, that which Steve Keen outlines, but that isn’t completely outside the realm of possibility. They know the system as it is is effed beyond recognition, and fixing it is going to be ugly.
However, and despite my lack of respect for those who are insulting and
The point to this is that removing the “economic” impediments to legislation at the NATIONAL level makes it reasonable to expect national laws to be enacted to enable compliance with existing agreements and obligations. It basically pulls the ground out from under the people who profit most from the status quo… who are funding the blockade that is stopping legislation in places like the US… and here.
In spite of this
“World Governance statutes that the UN has been surreptitiously small-printing infinitum into obscure addenda attached to climategate confab docos”
…nonsense, the fact is that Mr Rose has a correct handle on the issue as far as its practicality is concerned.
The people who CONTROL the various sovereign states, only sometimes the people who vote in general but the people in control now, will NOT relinquish that control. How they control each country is not material, sufficient that they do.
Goldman-Sacks-The-Planet and Just Pay Morgan Chase aren’t going to let you do this. The conservatives in the heartland of the USA aren’t going to accept dictation from the UN either.
You need another plan of attack. This theory will not serve.
BJ
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How about proposing that there is a global security crisis (as you outlined) but propose a new UN body be in charge with organising/planning a response, rather than the veto power laden UNSC to deal with it.
The new body including India, Germany, Japan and Brazil. Also the African Union the Arab League, the EU and ASEAN – as well as the 5 permanent members of the UNSC.
It’s science led bureaucracy identifying problems and formulating a range of policy options. This as a baaee for future multi-lateral gatherings to sign off on policy choices.
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You can’t get this through over the top of the USA. US Republican Senators and Representatives have to be brought on-side to get this to happen and an insufficient number of them is capable of mustering a quorum of brain cells on this topic.
They ALREADY regard climate change as a conspiracy of those who would impose “one world government” on the USA, overriding their sovereignty. How do you think this would go down in that environment? The bullet riddled corpse of this idea would be dragged out of the chamber before it even finished an initial reading. I KNOW my countrymen, and the proposed answer cannot pass.
However, that same mob of incredibly dense individuals has a very real antipathy to the way the fed and the banks create money from nothing, and the lack of a redeemable currency. Most would like to go back to the gold standard, as that is a Constitutional issue they regard as having been wrongly ignored by the Supreme Court back a few decades ago. THIS is the place where the opposition can be split, and the logjam can be broken. It is the schwerpunkt. We CAN exploit it. We CAN go for a sustainable ECONOMY which by its nature will support more sustainable environmental policies.
But only if we quit trying to do this through direct action. That’s a critical weakness for Greens. We have this tendency to say X is bad so stop doing X. Not asking WHY X is being done and removing the reasons for it. The world is too complex and the resistance to change too deeply rooted in money and economics to accomplish much of anything with that direct-action strategy… except to get labeled as radicals and dreamers and stiffen the resistance of people who’s livelihoods depend on X.
You want change you find the fulcrum and the lever, you don’t charge the boulder head-on.
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“But only if we quit trying to do this through direct action.”
A UN process is indirect action by definition – direct action is when those directly affected carry out action themselves to directly rectify the situation (such as refusing to work, rendering a machine inoperable, making your own salt or physically blocking something). But I agree with the rest of your post.
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Sam
UN action is “direct” in the sense that the UN tells the US what it can and cannot do. It is an “in your face” confrontation with the US neo-conservatives and so I classed it as “direct” but I take your point…
Perhaps the key word here is “confrontational”, which can be soul satisfying and can become violent… but is hardly ever actually productive of change… particularly where the environment intersects with the economy.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719?print=true
Consider that the Fossil Fuel industry has trillions of dollars at stake if we manage to force, through CO2 taxation, a price on their products that is prohibitive of it ever getting burned…. which is after all, the object of the exercise. They’ll put a billion dollars into the electoral lottery game to make sure they win enough to keep the chance of progress somewhere between slim and none.
You can’t confront that and beat it. You have to rip the ground out from under it. Confuse its offensive efforts and slip past the defences. WE can do that. We can do that HERE in NZ and by setting a better example, break the economic stranglehold of the bankers of the planet. This doesn’t stop the resource folks directly, but it robs them of a key ally and shakes up the control of government… a lot.
It also makes sustainable economics instead of growth economics, a thinkable alternative. Which twists aside from that most potent attack made on sustainable economic systems, which is that they don’t grow enough to provide work for people.
BJ
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So essentially, because you have been unable to influence the population via democratic tools, you propose that countries cede their sovereignty to an unelected body, that has a long track record of corruption.
…all for altruistic purposes, of course.
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Spam
I fail to see how we would PROFIT by it… if you have a conspiracy theory working you’d best consider how to connect those dots.
BJ
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Yup – just that the term ‘direct action’ has a fairly specific political meaning. ‘Confrontational’ politics are seldom successful as a solution, though they can be effective as a means of communication (to communicate to potential allies, rather than to those one is confronting).
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What, you don’t think that an unelected body with unlimited (world-governance) power is a bad thing, simply because they won’t make a ‘profit’? Wow. So Gadaffi was only in it for the money? So Al Ashad is only in it for the money? People shouldn’t fight for freedom and resist authoritarian dictatorships when the motives of those authoritarian dictatorships isn’t profit?
..and if you don’t think that the UN is after money, then you’re very naive.
http://www.unescap.org/tid/mtg/egmrti_ref272.pdf
Extracts:
“How can we find an extra US$ 50 billion for development funding? Our focus is on flows of resources from high-income to developing countries.”
“We are presupposing that the tax is indeed levied on individuals and firms in the form of a carbon levy (or other environmental tax base). ”
“To the extent that emissions impose environmental damage wherever they occur, the corrective tax should be the same. However, this needs to be moderated to take account of the unequal distribution of world income — the very reason for our current interest in the tax. Considerations of global justice point to poor countries bearing less of the cost burden, and may justify the tax being levied only on high-income or middle-income countries.” (In other words the 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by developing countries is to be ignored.)
Yeah. So they’re not interested in money….
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Bjchip – ” They ALREADY regard climate change as a conspiracy of those who would impose “one world government” on the USA, overriding their sovereignty. ”
And this is in the middle of a blog post on how to impose one world government so you can tell the US (and only the US) what to do. It seems to me that the US (and those evil republicans -where is Obama anyway) are right to be worried about ” one world” government.
Unfortunately we have seen a test run of that in Europe and it isn’t turning out too well. Strangely there have been lots of criticism on this blog about how Germany is being mean to those poor Greeks and imposing “austerity” on them. Isn’t that a similar situation?
One world government – no thanks. I can think for myself. I don’t need the commissars telling me what to do and how to do it.
Maybe you should just focus on climate change first , before going straight to the end-game.
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No Spam… what I don’t see is how you get to attributing to US some motive other than altruism, for advocating a pigovian carbon tax with revenue neutral restoration of any funds obtained thereby.
See… overall, we don’t care whether the UN is the source of the CO2 levy, or whether nations themselves do it. QUITE immaterial… and WE don’t get any of the money. So maybe you need to think that
overly snide insinuation through a bit more closely? Because you are impugning OUR motivations for advocacy here, not the UN.
The fact is that the UN is a useful organization in terms of world “governance” in that it puts SOME limits in place. God knows there are few enough.
…and ANY organization on the planet is interested in obtaining more resources to do its work… so the UN is just like any other organization.
I saw nothing in that document that was particularly invidious either. It is in fact, pretty much what I expect from a restricted world body with massive concerns and limited resources. Someplace along the line you went astray mate.
Dr Graham has a problem in that what he proposes will not work. The world has a problem because people like you don’t want it to be able to work. Our children have a problem… because it really won’t work and that means that the planet itself is pretty much toast in a few generations.
Good luck with that. You can sneer at our altruistic reasons, but don’t doubt that they exist because someone ELSE has economic concerns. I hadn’t noticed the economy doing all that well lately under the management it currently has anyway.
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@BJChip:
When an elected member of our parliament muses over ceding our sovereignty to an unelected body, you bet I’ll be snide. I don’t give a crap what the justification, motives or reason is, it is an afront to democracy and to every one who has ever fought for freedom on our behalf.
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All international sports gatherings need to be banned for a start until we get our carbon dioxide and methane levels down. International games, especially Olympics, have a huge carbon footprint, right from when the new venues are planned, until it is all cleaned up. International sports are a luxury and have lost the camaraderie and good spirit that sports originated with. Instead they are cutthroat, political beasts that admittedly can add to tourist-generated GDP, but GDP is one of the holes sinking our mother-ship.
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Reflecting on this discussion a bit more: I should clarify that I was not being snide with respect to Kennedy’s motives. I honestly believe that they are altruistic (I am much more skeptical of the UN, however, and believe that their long term goal is wealth redistribution, which requires them to control taxation).
My point is that altruistic or not, the UN are unelected with little or no formal accountability. The only accountability they have at the moment is because they are funded by the member states who can withdraw that funding. Should they be self-funding (obtained through direct taxation of states), then the only lever for accountability is gone.
Even evil corporations are accountable to shareholders.
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The UN is “unelected”? I suppose you COULD say that, but I think you’d be wrong.
You as an individual have some influence over the government of the day, and that government in turn selects and instructs its representative to the UN. It is in fact, a democracy in which each Nation is an “individual”… with a vote and a voice. I think you’d find that globally it is at least as representative a democracy as most of the states comprising it is, or more perhaps… though I am not sure I know how that would be measurable.
You may dislike it, but it IS trying to do the right things in general… and wealth redistribution through progressive taxation is a REQUIREMENT if you have fractional-reserve currencies and free-market capitalism mixed together. That combination will INVARIABLY act to concentrate wealth and power if you don’t redistribute.
I prefer to remove the fractional-reserve system as my starting point for rectifying things. Debt-backed currency is an unsustainable ERROR.
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The World of politics is dominated and manipulated by those who wield power. In this game the UN is merely a tool of the powerful, just as governments including the USA are tools of the powerful. For it is a fact that the powerful recognize no authority larger than themselves.
The powerful interests have formed an interlocking framework which drives the global agenda in the direction they choose, and this is evident if one follows the money trail. The monetary economy is constantly enlarged and ever a larger proportion is expropriated by the powerful.
There are lots of relevant comments made in this discussion, but to condemn one for reiterating an idea which has been scandalized by the powerful as conspiratorial is just plain dumb. Each and every conspiracy theory ought be tracked to its source and validated or exposed as crap… http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3-gQgMvzq7AJ:www.euppublishing.com/doi/pdf/10.3366/epi.2007.4.2.219+Conspiracy+Theories+and+the+Conventional+Wisdom&hl=en&gl=nz
The UN is about as democratic as the USA Presidential elections.. in that it doesn’t really matter who is part of the General Assembly, because the powerful have a veto on the Security Council, thus the death bed of many a good idea.
The UN is an idea that came out of the victors of the WW2. It has many fine policies but the question of human rights, based on the sacredness of the human being is denied daily, hourly and every minute in all corners of this globe by many of those who would have voted affirmatively at the UN.
The best thing to do would be to go into the conspiracy cupboard, dust off all those hidden inventions, and reinvent New Zealand. Go wild creating the new economy and society we advocate for.
Declare monetary independence. Give Social Credit a real go, we could fund government administration and eliminate taxes. No bases for the Empire. Fund real research into alternative fuels, and energy. There’s enough scientists and technologists looking for a reason not to jump the ditch. Delink from the World Trade Association and IMF. Build community. Encourage multiple occupancy of titles. Encourage folks to stay at home and develop self resilience. Build the Open Knowledge Society. Establish food security using viable seed. Set up our own Web. Shut down the corporate plunderers and open to the people of the world. The Globe needs leadership grounded in the mindset of removing roadblocks to good ideas who’s time is long overdue. And if for no other reason… http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1206/S00522/brittany-trilford-addresses-world-leader-at-rio20-opening.htm
What’s stopping us? Fear???
Go wild, have fun, live in the new world order made by ‘we the people.’
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“When an elected member of our parliament muses over ceding our sovereignty to an unelected body, you bet I’ll be snide. I don’t give a crap what the justification, motives or reason is, it is an afront to democracy and to every one who has ever fought for freedom on our behalf.”
And I thought you were talking about the TPP – I’m glad you cleared that up.
Trevor.
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gregfullmoon,
+1
I like your thinking and wish that we had a true Green party that would follow those ideals.
This global governance is doomed to failure as is the TPP for a simple reason.
People will simply ignore any and all abstract rules put in place. And if we as a people simply ignotre their petty rules and live our lives in a society as we see fit, they cannot do a thing about it.
We give our power away too easily to the financiers and the brokers. We simply need to ignore them and create our own society with BJ as minister of finance amd greenfly as minister of agriculture.
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Another conspiracy…. http://www.rexresearch.com/ogle/1ogle.htm
http://www.himacresearch.com/books/secret2.html
http://www.himacresearch.com/links.html
one can see the powerful operating here…
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gregfullmoon,
Problem with all those conspiracies is that the people with the inventive minds buy into the theories.
If they simply just put the information out there (such as this guy did in New Plymouth with his electric car conversion http://www.kiwiev.com/1_2d_the_donor_car.html)
we would have the technologies such as pre-vapourising the petrol before it enters the carburettor/injector being used worldwide.
But no, the inventors want to file patents, try and overturn this 1976 patent http://www.wikipatents.com/GB-Patent-1427540/devices-for-prevapourising-liquid-fuel and then claim “conspiracy” theories about big oil when the reaL problem with the prevapuorisation units is fire.
Pre-ignition is a real concern and so far unsurmountable. Timing is out just a fraction and boom she goes.
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Hi Gerrit
Got that on the bomb under the hood.. but without some real investigation and trialling these ideas sit around.. going nowhere no proper development.
If the petrol vapourizer methodology was properly commercialized it would drive down the price of petrol, then oil, and thus make ‘hard to get at oil’ non-viable. These require (so they say)a floor of $75-90 per barrel to make exploration and the costs of bringing it online profitable.
If one opens up the technology patent-skeleton cupboard and lets them out.. the environment would of necessity be more open and I think encourage ‘the market’ to switch to renewables..
The guy with the EV is clever..
and I agree about the restrictions imposed by patents.. bring on the open society..
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