You don’t need me to tell you that we are living through an era of tremendous transition and disruption and whether or not we are comfortable with AI may already be moot:
HOWEVER, THE THREE BIGGEST PROBLEMS FACING THE WORLD CLIMATE CHANGE, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN THE FORM OF PROFIT SEEKING ALGORITHMS, AND NUCLEAR WAR REMAIN VIRTUALLY IGNORED DUE TO OUR STUPIDITY.
NONE OF THESE PROBLEMS CAN BE SOLVED BY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE OR ON A NATION BY NATION APPROACH.
THEY ARE GLOBAL AND NEED GLOBAL COOPERATION TO BE SOLVED.
IT MAY BE HARD TO BUY INTO THESE PROBLEMS AFTER HAVING GROWING UP IN THE ERA OF INDUSTRY BUT UNFORTUNATELY GOVERNMENTS, WORLD INSTITUTIONS, AND BUSINESS AND US WILL FIND OURSELVES AT THE HELM OF THE PAST IF WE PERSIST WITH THE BELIEF THAT ECONOMIES, CONSUMPTION, AND PROFIT IS THE HOLY GRAIL OF OUR EXISTENCE.
Unfortunately, human stupidity is perhaps the most powerful force humanity has at its disposal to combat the direction we are going to- Extinction.
WHEN IT COMES TO IDENTIFYING ITS EFFECTS THERE IS NO PROBLEM FINDING EXAMPLES IN THE PAST.
WE ARE NOW TRANSFERRING STUPITY INTO THE FUTURE IN THE FORM OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE THAT NO ONE UNDERSTANDS OR WILL BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND.
Remembering that there are no defenses against stupidity. The more pertinent question now is whether we can and ought to build trust in systems that can make decisions beyond human oversight that may have irreversible consequences.
In the internet era, technology is changing at an alarming rate. We, humans, are becoming increasingly reliant on the World Wide Web. This is leading to a decrease in the retention capacity of the human brain and an overall downfall in the intelligence quotient of Homo sapiens.
The only way a society can avoid being crushed by the burden of its idiots is if the non-stupid work even harder to offset the losses of their stupid brethren.
If we take a critical look at the three global problems starting with the current global position on climate change:
Reduce carbon emissions on a national promises bases – stupid.
The bottom line is, take action to cool your planet or the planet will take action and cool your life – forever.
The development of AI:
Turn a blind eye by continuing to feed human existence data into algorithms for profit and power thus concentrating both into the hands of a few Clouds- stupid.
Nuclear Power:
Elect Facebook and Twitter leaders, while Social media feeds us personal recommendations and false News- stupid.
IS IT TIME TO GET OUR HEAD OUT OF THE SAND AND DEMAND SOME GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE TO TACKLE THE GLOBAL PROBLEMS.
RATHER THAN TRADE WARS, PROMISES, NATIONAL ASPIRATIONS, PROFIT FOR PROFIT SAKE, WARS, INEQUALITY, WE COULD LOOK AFTER EACH OTHER AND THE EARTH WE ALL LIVE ON BY ENSURING THE AI SERVES US ALL EQUALLY NOT THE FEW.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
BUT VERY FEW OF US KNOW WHAT IT IS WHERE IT IS OR WHAT WE ARE DOING ON IT OR TO IT.
IT IS 6.378KM IN RADIUS, 6.6 SEXTILLION TONS IN WEIGHT, WITH A SURFACE AREA OF 197 MILLION SQ MILES MADE UP OF 71% WATER, 29% LAND OF WHICH 5% IS LIVABLE ON.
IT IS 4.54 billion years old, plus or minus 1%.
We humans speaking 7, O97 LANGUAGES of which 23 accounts for half the world’s population has been on it for a mere 0.004% of the Earth’s history.
IT HAS 15,000 BIRTHS PER HOUR. 360,000 PER DAY, 132 MILLION PER YEAR WITH 56 MILLION DEATH PER YEAR.
IT HAS 10.7 percent LIVING IN EXTREME POVERTY WITH 68.5 MILLION DISPLACE PEOPLE, OF WHICH 25.4 million are refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18 with 1% OF RICH PEOPLE owning half the world’s wealth.
IT IS THE 5TH LARGEST PLANET IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM WITH ABOUT 10 BILLION WITH TONS OF CONCRETE POURED ON IT EVERY YEAR.
3% OF THE WORLD IS COVERED IN URBAN AREAS WITH 33 BILLION METERS OF ROADS.
After water concrete is the single most widely used material in the world – and it has a carbon footprint to match.
As you read this, there are more than 40 conflicts unfolding in countries around the world. Yet these are just the most visible look beyond them and there are plenty more.
Total world military expenditure rose to $1739 billion in 2017.
We can blame terrorism and the fear it inspires despite the statistically unimportant number of casualties it inflicts, or the contemporary media and the breathless cycle of “breaking news”, but the truth remains that the wars that seem to inspire the fanatics or have produced so many headlines in recent years prompt deep anxiety.
And with climate change and profit-seeking algorithms things are only going to get worse.
Surely the needs of humanity should always come first. While there are people on Earth who need help, they should be helped, rather than seeing money spent on sending robots onto other planets. Humanity is the number one priority; keeping the human race alive is a necessity.
But we cannot live without the other species we share the earth with. Okay, guess quickly: how many species do you think we share the earth with.
A trillion.
While that may (or may not) be true, the next sentence is spuriously precise: “Every hour three species disappear. Every day up to 150 species are lost.”
Even putting aside the apparent mathematical error in that claim (on the face of it, if three species are disappearing every hour, 72 would be lost every day) there is an obvious problem in generating any such number. No-one knows how many species exist. And if we don’t know a species exists, we won’t miss it when it’s gone.
BP claimed the earth has enough oil left for about 53 more years at current production levels
So far Nasa has spent trillions on trying to get off it.
Science may well give us good things.
We all know Velcro came from NASA.
But why bother spending all this money exploring space and finding out there was water on Mars at some point in the last few thousand years (we have water in Earth) when these same great minds could be applied to finding better ways to power humanity’s insatiable desire for energy, to feeding the starving millions around the globe, and generally making life down here better before looking up into the heavens.
It seems the authoritative powers have their heads way, way up in the clouds.
Earth first:
14 billion pounds (6B Kg.) of garbage are dumped into the ocean every year. Most of it is plastic. Americans make up 5% of the world’s population, and yet, produce 30% of the world’s waste and use 25% of the world’s resources.
More than 95 percent of the world’s population is breathing polluted, unsafe air.
THIS IS THE EARTH YOU NOW LIVE ON SURROUNDED BY JUNK.
NOT THE EARTH ON YOUR SMARTPHONE NOR THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENT EARTH.
IF YOU WANT TO GROW UP ON THIS BEAUTIFUL PLANET LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
We all know that the world we live in is constantly in a state of transformation.
The wealth created from business for its most part in the history of humanity has always been blamed for being the enemy of nature, for destroying native cultures, for taking from the poor and giving to the rich, for poisoning the earth with effluent from its factories.
YET BUSINESS, PRODUCES FOOD, CURE DISEASE, CONTROL POPULATION, EMPLOY PEOPLE AND UP TO NOW GENERALLY ENRICHED OUR LIVES.
While we live our lives with what is left of our free-thinking brains SOCIAL MEDIA is undermining what we call Democracy and its Institutions.
We are now all subject to what I call perpetual mental MEDIA TORTURE, driven by algorithms which are owned by platforms that are all about making money without any regulation driving instability and unsustainable.
Social media is fueling anger, fear, and false news, resulting in the rise of right-wing political parties, led by political leaders of less and less talent.
We are rapidly coming to a threshold where we all have to reach a level of civilization in which we think about our selves and our existence on earth.
Once wealth is concentrated in the hand of few it undermines democracy by obvious means making democracy much less functional.
It is true to say attitudes to a lot of things have changed, HOWEVER, WE ARE STILL A LONG WAY OFF reaching a level of culture in which we can ask ourselves some really simple questions?
Like: Are we killing democracy? The answer is yes.
Like: How do we start a grass root movement to really tackle Climate change.
Like: How to Tax Carbon Emissions?
Like: How do we stop artificial intelligence widening the inequality gap.
Like: How do we reset the global pay gap.
Like: How do we reset human rights on an equal footing with the rights of shareholders.
Like: How do we transform the EU project from grey bureaucracy into a bright arena.
One of the most obvious results of the Artificial Intelligence revolution is the ongoing concentration of wealth into the hands of the few and as a result, we are now seeing profit without a soul.
THESE MEGA MONOPOLIES LIKE GOOGLE ALONG WITH FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS (that do nothing for the economy of a country other than probably harm it have created the very that are overthrowing Capitalism.
ALL POWER ENDS UP AS FINANCE.
THIS POWER SHOULD BE TAXED TO THE HILT TO TACKLE CO2 EMISSION, along with any other form of business commodities that generate profit for profit sake. ( See previous posts)
INSTEAD:
WHILE WE WATCH OUR WORLD FRY OUR POLITICIANS ARE BECOMING LESS AND LESS TALENTED, INCAPABLE OF INSPIRING ANY LONG TERM ASPIRATIONS.
WHAT WE ARE WITNESSING IS I AM ALRIGHT JACK POPULOUS POLICIES.
TRADE WARS, BREXIT, SABER RATTLING.
It is however within our power to change things.
ELECTIONS MIGHT NOT CHANGE ECONOMICS BUT THEY CAN CHANGE THE ATTITUDE OF THOSE ELECTED.
RATHER THAN major de-funding of free education, we need to go back to mass public free education like Finland, Germany.
IF WE DON’T HAVE EDUCATION BEYOND THE NEEDS OF THE MARKETPLACE WE CAN KISS OUR SWEET ASSES TILL WE ARE BLUE IN THE FACE.
Surely we are not all so dumb that we think its OK to carry on regardless.
Maybe we are so dumb that it will require an AI robot to tell us so.
Hail to the algorithm.
WHAT HAPPENS BEYOND THIS POINT WE HAVE NO IDEA. BY THEN IT WILL BE TOO LATE.
ITS TIME TO STOP THE DISHARMONY ON EARTH.
SOMETHING MUST BE DONE ABOUT IT.
DEMOCRACY COMES IN DIFFERENT COLORS AND SOCIAL MEDIA APPEALS TO BASIC EMOTIONS OF ANXIETY AND TRIBAL SOLIDARITY THAT MAKES IT ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO CREATE A TRUE PUBLIC SPACE A SENSE OF COMMON INTEREST.
ALL HUMAN COMMENTS APPRECIATED. ALL LIKE CLICKS CHUCKED IN THE BIN.
Modern day technology with its Artificial Intelligence does not point in any single direction. However, the gap between words and deeds is growing.
In times such as ours where there is a slow disengagement of truth, we need to be reminded that our central calling, our main task on the planet, is survival, which with the ever-growing use of AI gives rise to a host of new ethical problems and dilemmas.
With most of us chocking on non-truths, new technologies, and AI, the earth and our living conditions on the planet are worsening faster than ever.
Both AI and technology are begging for attention in order to be harnessed to our common values rather than profit for profit sake.
This is a debate that is only just beginning.
Since time memorial man does not seem to be able to ” help ” his selfishness, the desire to stand out.
They say that we are stuck with our character, we can’t evolve beyond it or without it.
So let’s not ask what is wrong with modern-day society, but ask where it is leading us?
It seems to me that we are living in a period where the overproduction of truth and non-truth cannot be consumed.
We are tranquilized with trivial.
We can’t control our own actions and there is no control over the actions of others.
So are we going to end up living with an inner sense of chaos that robot will not have?
At the moment we are split in two we have the awareness of our splendid uniqueness, but yet we end up feeding worms.
However, if the fear of death is removed by Technology we will lose the ability of our self- preservation.
( Anxiety is something we all share, now more than ever – normality is a neurosis.)
Then it will become impossible for us to have the ability to organize our own perceptions and our relationships to the world.
If we remove the idea of death, we remove what it means to live.
So is technology and AI going to create a greater social- historical truth, by omitting religious and spiritual ideas for our lives?
To do so it must replace what in our conscious life is called fear.
Our present-day fears are fashioned out of the ways in which we perceive the world. So we continue to design societies of symbolic action systems with structures of statuses ( Likes, Hits, Followers, Tweets, Posts, ) and roles, customs, and rules for behavior designed to service vehicles for earthly heroism. It doesn’t seem to matter whether the cultural hero-system if frankly, magical, religious, primitive or secular, scientific, technological driven or not.
The question is how conscious are we of what we are doing to earn our feeling of heroism?
Is there a need to create a larger theoretical structure to society?
Or is it too late as there is no harmony that unites different positions so that the sterile and ignorant polemics can be abated.
The crises of modern society are precise that the youth no longer feel heroic in the plan for action that their culture has set up.
We have been unable to this day to give an overall sense of heroism to any present-day capitalist industrial society mainly because of inequality.
As profit for profit sake dons the cloak of AI it is disguising the way society sets up its hero system with virtual reality and false promises.
Indeed it will not be far into the future when Robots will invent reasons for anxiety even where there is none to allow humans to exist.
The fear of death is a biological and evolutionary problem. It is an expression of the instinct of self-preservation, which functions as a constant drive to maintain life and to master the dangers that threaten life.
If AI removes the fear of death what will our mental functions be- will it be just living in the moment.
All historical religious address themselves to how to bear the end of life.
If we remove death, our biology and evolution must transfer into Trans-humans.
Will we really be able to call such hypothetical trans-humans “human” at all?
We must be more realistic about our situation in nature.
(Just look at Donal Trump who has more trouble with his lies than others.)
If we don’t do so we are we all going to end up as children living in others dependence – or on Artificial Intelligence.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
In a world where nearly 20 people are forcibly displaced every minute by violence, war and persecution ARE WE KIDDING OURSELVES TO THINK THAT TECHNOLOGY WILL SOLVE THE WORLD PROBLEMS.
One in every 113 people on the planet is now a refugee AND THAT IS WITHOUT CLIMATE CHANGE THAT IS GOING TO BE THE BIGGEST MOTIVE TO BECOME ONE.
At the moment ( According to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR) it might be true to say that out of the 65.6 million 40.3 million – are people displaced within their own country.
Here are below are four UNHCR videos that should be shown on World TV, across Social Media, in every school to every man woman and child.
We got it all wrong when it comes to helping Refugees.
They are not invisible people.
Camps are the wrong way to help today’s refugees.
We cannot turn our backs on the ten million people who have been forced to flee their homes. Every decent society knows this and knows that it’s our moral duty to come up with a workable way of helping the refugees.
So here’s the crucial question: what, beyond safety itself, are the critical elements of normality for any refugee?
The entire international refugee support system has presumed that the answer is food and shelter.
But is this really the right response in 2017?
The system was designed to cope with the displaced of post-war central Europe, many of them Germans who had fled the Russians, or Jews freed from the concentration camps.
Refugees nowadays do not have the luxury of a short-term solution. The problems they are fleeing are likely to last for a very long time. Imagine yourself in their position, displaced with your family. Would you really resign yourself to years in a refugee camp, living off food tokens, housed in a converted container?
UNHCR, and its penumbra of similar organisations, are designed for care.
Like all welfare programmes, theirs treats people as passive recipients. Inadvertently, it infantilises.
That so many refugees forgo this care, preferring the struggle of earning a living beneath the official radar of regulations that prohibit it, is testimony to the heroism of the human spirit. We shouldn’t, even with the best intentions, crush that spirit. We should do what we can to make autonomy less grim.
The key confusion has been to conflate refugees with migrants.
Refugees, by definition, are people who didn’t choose to be migrants: they wanted to live at home but their home became unsafe. Migrants are people who seek a better life. Migrants go to honeypots — dream locations can readily be ranked by their desirability.
Refugees do not go to dream locations; they are seeking proximate havens. All of the top ten destinations for refugees are themselves countries of emigration. All are poor countries in disorderly neighborhoods.
So this is the real answer for refugees, not tents and food but autonomy and community. It’s what you would want in their position.
In asking the development agencies to scale-up and integrate the new mechanisms for generating jobs for refugees with those for speeding post-conflict recovery, it would at last become possible to meet our true international duty of rescue. In the process we should free ourselves from the lazy trap of fitting the present into the past.
But try telling that to the current wave of some 65.6 million people around the world that have been forced from home from today’s wars and conflict zones. 65.3 million people on the run – most are now crammed into often squalid and unsafe camps as they wait in increasing desperation for a home, somewhere.
65.6 million is according to the UNHCR the latest figures (which should be taken with a dose of salt as many nations are not equipped with refugee registers or effective data collection procedures. It excluded people who were displaced by natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes, which separately uprooted at least 19 million people in 2015.
To put this number into perspective, one in about every 113 people in the world is currently a refugee. This means that of the 7 billion people on earth, over 65 million of them are living as refugees –– forced to leave their homes. The numbers are so breathtaking that they take a while to settle into the mind. This is the largest number ever recorded – and a testament to massive failures of both the international community and the United States in dealing with this crisis.
(There are also 10 million stateless people who have been denied a nationality and access to basic rights such as education, healthcare, employment and freedom of movement.)
I say the US, because it is the worst offender. It led the invasion of Iraq in 2003 without a legitimate casus belli. It set in motion the events that produced the Arab Spring resulting in immense forcible displacement in the region.
Just compare this 65 million with one of the greatest humanitarian crises in history — when a shattered Europe at the end of the Second World War had to resettle a staggering 16 million displaced persons.
A horrifying number certainly, but only a third as many as we have now.
The fact that the average amount of time people worldwide are living in displacement is now a staggering 17 years suggest that something is going terribly wrong in how we’re dealing with this issue.
In this climate, it is not surprising that there is animosity towards refugees by so many people. There has been a perceptible rise in racist and xenophobic acts in many nations, sometimes fueled by politicians and the media. The political reality suggests most countries will remain reluctant to house all but a very small minority of those displaced by violence.
We now live in a world where nearly 20 people are forcibly displaced every minute and we have seen anything yet. Wait tilluninhabitable regions due to climate change then we will have millions turning into billions.
Combined this with the violence in the Middle East and North Africa, with nine civil wars now going on in Islamic countries between Pakistan and Nigeria and half of the 23 million population of Syria been forced from their homes, plus 2.6 million Iraqis displaced by Islamic State – Isis – and 1.5 million people displaced in South Sudan.
Religious, ethnic and separatist conflicts are tearing countries apart.
Nationalism and socialism no longer provide the ideological glue to hold together secular states or to motivate people to fight.
Wars are currently being waged in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, south-east Turkey,Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and north-east Nigeria and none of them show any sign of ending.
Europeans were jolted by pictures of the little drowned body of Alyan Kurdi lying on a beach in Turkey and half-starved Syrians crammed into Hungarian trains.
What is to be done to stop these horrors? Perhaps the first question is how we can prevent them from getting worse, keeping in mind that five out of the nine wars have begun since 2011.
Let me begin by attempting to demonstrate why the refugee question must be addressed:
The waves of refugees now are just the leading edge of a global catastrophe, just watch as global warming takes its toll in the coming years.
The core problem remains the amount of violence we have in too many areas of the world. Until we figure out how to isolate wars and cut off their oxygen — as was done eventually in the Balkans in the 1990s — we will only delude ourselves in thinking our era grows less violent.
There is a danger that by attributing mass flight to too many diverse causes, including climate change, political leaders responsible for these disasters get off the hook and are free of public pressure to act effectively to bring them to an end.
Not an easy delusion to maintain as 48 million people call out to us from refugee camps that now seem as much prisons as safe havens.
It is better first to be informed and draw an opinion, rather than only to be opinionated. Half of refugees worldwide are children.
But why has this topic been so often ignored, or if mentioned, referred to as a “taboo”?
The fact is that world media in all its forms is dissenting us all to the point that refugees from war-torn countries are considered collateral damage, making good news footage.
World leaders can no longer watch passively as so many lives are needlessly lost.
We must be smart about finding solutions to help refugees.
We must find humane and dignified means to ensure refugees don’t risk their lives and those of their families by resorting to ruthless traffickers.
We must open designated channels of entry and offer tagged shelter under repatriation once its is safe to do so.
We must stop the world media spreading a climate of xenophobia.”
We must stop the growing resistance from nations to providing asylum for refugees.
We must stop spreading (due to political rhetoric) painting refugees as terrorists or beggars. “Refugees… don’t bring danger” but “flee from dangerous places.
The world governments will resist doing anything until such time as it is profitable to do so. This will be too late.
One of the more comforting claims in recent years is that the world is a less violent place than the blood-soaked centuries gone by. Bull shit.
The modicum of UNHCR support before abandonment, puts a spotlight of Shame on our world!
I have this awful feeling of deja vu. One begging UN resolution after another.
However there are the beginnings of an awakening about all this. In October the World Bank approved its first refugee loan — for job generation for Syrian refugees in Jordan.
Perhaps if the top five Tech Conglomerations were to charge a cent on all like clicks, on all shared photos, on all sales, all up loads, on all searches, on all tweets, on all e mails, on all Skype calls, they could save the world from melt down. This combined with a 0.05% world aid commission,( See previous posts) would create a perpetual fund of trillions to address inequality that leads to all our troubles.
In just a single minute on the web 216,000 photos are shared on Instagram, a total of £54,000 ($83,000) sales take place on Amazon, there are 1.8 million likes on Facebook and three days worth of video is uploaded to YouTube.
All suggestions and comments appreciated. All like click chucked in the bin till they are chargeable.
We live in a world where turning on the news every day means getting updated on the latest tragedy and not just finding out what the weather will be like tomorrow.
2017 is a year of unrelenting misery and fear. We live in a world where people feel more afraid of someone with a gun than protected.
We live in a world where text messages surpass face to face conversations.
We live in a world run by Algorithms. In a world where if you didn’t snap chat it or post it to Facebook, “it didn’t happen”.
We live in a world that has so many people without the words, “thank you” in their vocabulary.
We live in a world where people would rather sit in the comfort of their anguish and anxiety than take a small step to a better life.
What happened to the world where everyone minded their own damn business?
What happened to the world where people actually knew their neighbors, and didn’t fear them? What happened to the world where people got together and lost track of time because they didn’t have their phone attached to their hip?
What happened to the world where people could voice their opinion without getting hate mail? What happened to the world as one nation?
We live in a world where our self-esteem is managed by the amount of “likes” on our selfies and statuses.
I don’t need to tell you world news is pretty grim right now – if you use social media, it’s nigh on impossible to avoid articles about bubbling permafrost, drug-resistant gonorrhoea, and deadly obesity treatments.
And that’s just the science headlines.
We live in a world with rampant inequality due to capitalist greed, void of any common values.
We live in a world with global environmental changes locked into our future, with hidden threats to sustainability,not just because of migration that is just beginning due to lack of fresh water.
Stop, take a step back and think.
Isn’t it absurd that we, 7 billion of us living in the same planet, have grown further apart from each other? What sense does it make to turn your back on the thousands, maybe millions, of people living around you.
If we want wars we have all the ingredients.
We live in a world where our i pads and cell phones get thinner and our bodies get thicker.
We live in a world where people pass each other on the street and can’t even smile back.
We live in a world where people dish hatred out on a serving platter.
We live in a world where our world organisation called the United nations s just a gossip shop that has to beg for funds. Unable to cuts through the rhetoric because of
We live in a world where people take more than they give. We live in a world where people have completely forgotten what they were given knees for.
What happened to our world?
Most of us haven’t quite realized there is something extraordinary happening. I want to see it through a child’s eyes again.
Why is the world-changing?
We live in a world where because we are too afraid of hurting kid’s feelings instead of teaching them the value of hard work. You get a participation trophy for merely showing up.
We live in a world of lip service.
We are reaching our limits. It’s time for people to switch on the blender, stirring events in the non-human part of the world into their everyday lives, and see what happens.
Google might knows our names but it knows Sweet Fanny Adam about the natural world. The rest of the living world can get along without us, but we can’t get along without them.
Perhaps all living things comprise one biological entity, one large functioning ecosystem (life-force) with planet Earth as skeleton if so we had better learn quick that a skeleton earth whether it is due to Climate change, Nuclear war, or Algorithms will be worthless.
We are not isolated from the world around us by the boundaries of our bodies. Modern science has blurred the lines of the individual by shedding light on how interdependent life is. We are dependent on microbes. In essence, all life is connected to other life because we all exist in the same space. If you don’t like bacteria, you’re on the wrong planet.”
When it comes to making sense of the incomprehensible we can only place our trust in tales of the imagination.
The problem is that no one is will to bear the cost not even earth so why not make Greed pay. ( See previous Posts)
All comments appreciated all like clicks chucked in the bin.
Climate change is real and so are its effects, despite what Trump and his 22 Republican senators might stubbornly, short-sighted and nonsensical choose to believe.
Indeed, that climate change is real and caused by human activity is no longer an issue up for debate. That time has long passed.
It’s true that the train may be out of the station when it comes to avoiding climate change altogether, but we can still attempt to mitigate and alleviate the worst of the effects.
The fact that an agreement was achieved was a breakthrough. Never before have 195 countries agreed to some form of emissions reductions, even if they aren’t exactly binding.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced he was pulling United States out of the agreement, which means the US would join Syria and Nicaragua as the only nations that did not agree to the pact. Even Palestine and North Korea signed it.
In that context, Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement, the most promising global initiative addressing climate change, seems like a big deal. And it is, but not because his decision to withdraw will catapult us toward assured and quick global demise.
It is perhaps the best thing that could happen for the future of the agreement and, by side effect, the planet. After all, the accord is largely a voluntary gentleman’s agreement.
Trump’s decision might actually have a positive effect on the future of climate negotiations, freeing world leaders to pull together a stronger agreement that forces greater action.
It sends the message that the agreement is more about symbolism than action. Despite all of the fanfare that went on at the time, it seems that there are currently only 3 European Union countries pursuing climate policies that put them in line with the agreements made at the Paris Climate Change Talks.
The great majority of countries want to rig the law with loopholes so they can continue business as usual.
Some of the primary loopholes in question, are the use of higher baselines for measuring CO2 emissions reductions and a greater use of forestry credits (tree planting as an offset). Also, 9 member states “want to exploit the ETS’s huge surplus of 100 million allowances, worth an expected €2 billion, to help them meet their emissions obligations on paper.”
In effect, the U.S. risks becoming an unreliable country run by an administration that explicitly prioritizes corporate greed, short-termism, isolationism and nepotism over science, reason, growth and global sustainable prosperity.
The response to such a senseless act by the Trump administration should be a renewed and strengthened international commitment to combat climate change and the maintenance of a global climate governance regime that will be effective in keeping global warming below the critical 2 degrees Celsius.
This will never be achieved.
Why ?
Because man down through the age has demonstrated that he is incapable of cooperate with each other in large groups.
The modern deal offers power provided we renounce our belief in a great cosmic plan that gives meaning to life. On an individual level we are inspired to constantly increase our income and our standard of living. Greed comes easily to humans.
Don’t worry, The ecological meltdown is going to be great.
God like technology has it downside, like how or what is going to control these structures as traditional political structures can no longer process the data fast enough to produce meaningful visions.
We live in a world full of small interest groups and ruthless billionaires, we becoming chips enabled and manipulated by algorithms.
An international fund to help countries transition to green economies and cope with climate change will have an expected $100 billion US dollars per year. So far, only $62 billion US dollars has been gathered.
The whole thing will end in gridlock.
The climate change narrative is beginning to change.
There is only one way to stop climate change and that is to place a world aid commission of 0.05% on all transactions that exploit us and the world for profit sake.
For Example: High Frequency Trading, Sovereign Wealth Fund Acquisitions, Foreign Exchange Transactions over 50,000$, World Lotteries etc.
This will create a perpetual funded world aid fund to address climate change and the inequality that drives it.
Failure to act—or worse, acting to exacerbate—climate change could have lasting implications for the entire planet. The world has already burned more than two-thirds of the carbon that is expected to raise global temperatures by 2 degrees celsius (the previous target)–a catastrophic threshold.
If developing nations followed similar development trajectories as the US, for instance, then there would be no possibility for keeping climate change under control.
Emissions targets will never be legally binding, but report cards and updated promises are binding. No penalties will be given out for countries who fail to meet targets.
( A three-minute read that could save millions of lives)
If you ever wanted proof that Capitalism is driven by greed just watch what can only be described in the above words the recent plea made by António Guterres to the International community for funds to tackle the declared famine in parts of Nigeria, South Sudan, and looming in Somalia, Nigeria and Yemen.
The estimated number of affected children is now 450,000, with 14 MILLION PEOPLE needing humanitarian assistance across the region.
Five years ago, more than a quarter of a million lives were needlessly lost, 130,000 of them children. We simply cannot have a repeat of that tragedy. The only way to prevent this devastating loss of life is for donors and international leaders to act now.
Global hunger levels are at their highest for decades. There are currently 70 million people in need of food aid. The reality of life for a fifth of the world’s people, on a planet which produces enough food to satisfy everyone is that humanitarian aid to Africa has been shrinking.
Rich countries have been giving money to poor ones for many decades and for many reasons — from geopolitics to post-colonial guilt to altruism so there is little point here in reiterating the reasons why the world is in such a mess.
What is needed in the long run is a fully funded Humanitarian Affairs United Nations. Not a begging Institution.
Rather than boasting our compassion with wasteful foreign Aid there is only one course of action:
To make the Greed / Profit for profit’s sake segment of Capitalism system Pay.
This can be achieved with modern-day technology by Placing a World Aid commission of 0.05% on all. High frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange transactions over $ 50,000. on all Sovereign Wealth Funds acquisitions, on all gambling winnings.
This would create a Perpetual fund of billions.
The real question, though, is (with climate change and technology) is whether aid will remain relevant, and if so how.
The answer boils down to this: solutions.
Governments in developing countries will seek assistance only when they have a problem that they cannot solve by themselves.
They know how to build schools, hospitals or ports, and can pay for them. But they will look for other countries’ experiences when reforming educational curricula, designing health insurance systems, or regulating private suppliers of infrastructure.
They will want to avoid the mistakes of others, and learn from their successes.
At times, they may ask for support in implementing particularly tricky projects, mostly as a way to keep graft, pollution or displacements at bay.
This can only be achieved if the United nations see themselves more as partners than as donors. This will stop Aid countries of exporting their own way of thinking.
Donors would be sought after, rather than just accepted.
They will be those that can deliver ideas, experiences, expertise, lessons, evidence, and data.
In other words, what will make future aid relevant will be knowledge, not dollars.Development aid will be a more difficult business — for you will need to operate at the technical cutting-edge — but a more useful one.
To the extent that there are internal leaks in Africa–As a first order of priority, the leaks should be plugged to ensure that the little aid that comes in, stays.
In politics, no good deed ever goes unannounced.
It’s is very hard to feel hungry and not to be able to do anything about it.
Contributors to United Nations aid and development programs have provided slightly more than half of the $800 million requested in 1999 for African countries suffering from “complex emergencies”–the term applied when war and failed institutions, often combined with a natural disaster, leave vast numbers of people homeless and starving.
The reasons for the decline are not hard to find.
Donor nations are and will be more so under pressure to attend to problems at home rather than foreign assistance that is wasted by bloated aid agencies pouring money into the pockets of corrupt African governments, senseless civil wars, wasteful military expenditures, capital flight, and government wastes–Pouring in more foreign aid makes little sense.
However if asked we all want a more prosperous and equal world that will serve everyone’s best interests.
To create a less threatening world beyond our borders we must tackle inequality head on.
We are on track for a tipping point of Inequality with the web only speeding up this process through digitization and universal access. We’ll be postulating about social media’s impact on the more long-term future of the world.
Aid can be fearful of the future – but it can also be a force for good.
No transformation will occur overnight.
The debate on aid comes down to lack of imagination. We have cemented in our minds the idea of a hierarchy in the world’s nations: the developing world is below us and we need to help them, preferably to our advantage. But we do not want them to rise above us.
Catastrophe evokes a human response to help fellow creatures.
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Here is who to donate to: UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), Care, Oxfam, British Red Cross, Cafod, Tearfund, Christian Aid, World Vision, WFP, Unicef.
( A two-minute follow-up read to the Post ” What is happening to what we call common values.)
Perhaps with the election of Donald Trump it has already happened.
Why?
Because capitalism has and still is creating an explosion in economic and geographic inequality which is now fueled by commercial Artificial Intelligence.
The tragedy is that our World leaders and World Organisations seem inapt to do anything about it.
The main lesson for European and the rest of the world is clear:
As a matter of urgency globalization must be fundamentally reorientated.
Trade agreements must be revisited to become a means in the service of higher ends.
They must include quantifying and binding measures to combat the digital fiscal and climate dumping.
They must have a prosecutor capable of enforcing what is agreed.
Its time to change the political discourse on globalization, trade is a good thing, but fair and sustainable development also demands public services, infrastructure, health and education. These demand fair taxation systems
If we fail to deliver these the ludicrous fantasy of Trumpism testosterone imperialism will win with the dignity of world leaders reduced to one’s shopping choices.
Here are a few other thought as to why:
Because: Globalisation it is being replaced in economic by Artificial Intelligence calculation to satisfy consumer demands.
Because: With Trump closing of the USA will change the domination of the capitalism globe. It will now exist for a Chinese Communist party that gives delocalised capitalist enterprise cheap labour to lower prices.
Because: Technology – along with its turbo economic disruption is causing what seems to me to be the hastening of both a cultural and environmental apocalypse.
Because: Digital consumerism makes us too passive to revolt or save the world. Humans have been transferred into desirable readily exchangeable commodities. Culture appears more monolithic than ever. Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, are now presiding over unprecedented monopolies.
Because: The Internet discourse has become tighter, more coercive.
Because: Human personality is being corrupted by false news creating false consciousness that there is hardly anything worth the name anymore.
Because: Common Values are scarcely signifies any more – than white skin, white teeth and freedom from odour and emotions.
Because: Popularising, is a failure of the US and the EU to democratise in an attempt to create a one-dimensional society.
Because: Social Media operates on an eternal feeding loop.
Because: Our world organisations are out of date.
Because: Trade agreements aren’t worth the paper they are written.
Because: If we destroy or Atmosphere , or Seas, or Fresh Water all for the sake of profit, there is little reason to believe in a Christian or Muslim God or for that matter any other Gods that will make a difference.
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Development aid will be a more difficult business — for you will need to operate at the technical cutting-edge — but a more useful one.
