I am sure that there is no need to remind you of the outcomes of previous Climate Change Conferences.
They all failed.
In the vain hope that any one of you might read this:
HERE IS THE REASON WHY and THE SOLUTION.
The debates that are likely to dominate the Paris talks will not be about emissions but about – Money.
If nations can meet and agree equitable goals on the climate, on economic development, on social and environmental issues, and do so in a spirit of cooperation, this alone will be a huge achievement.
That as you know this is hoping for a “miracle.”
We already know that the commitments made, and likely to be made by December, will not by themselves be enough to hold the world to no more than 2C of warming.
So far, countries have made formal emissions pledges. They cover more than 65 percent of current global emissions. The pledges vary. Some are absolute targets expressed as tons of carbon dioxide per year in 2030; others are targets measured against business as usual, or promises to reduce emissions for every dollar of economic activity.
The EU is to cut its emissions by 40%, compared with 1990 levels, by 2030. The US is to cut its emissions by 26% to 28%, compared with 2005 levels, by 2025. China is to agree that its emissions will peak by 2030.
Nations responsible for about two-thirds of global emissions have come up with their targets known in the UN jargon as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions or INDCs – but some countries, most notably India.
Are the current pledges enough to keep global warming below 2 degrees C?
Nobody can be certain.
Serious doubts remain as to whether these promised cuts will be nearly enough to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change.
There are too many scientific uncertainties about exactly how sensitive the atmosphere is to growing concentrations of greenhouse gases. We could get lucky, but equally there might be tipping points that could suddenly accelerate warming.
In the Unite Nations own words it is attaching a set of “sustainable development goals,” on to the Conference which will take over from the millennium development goals that were pegged to 2015.
These will include issues such as access to clean water and sanitation, access to energy, gender equality, education and health. ” Those SDGs will have a profound effect on whether the world can meet its climate change targets, and meet them in an equitable fashion that allows poor countries to lift their citizens out of poverty while not passing climate thresholds.”
While these United Nations aspirations are essential Climate Change has to tackled without interference.
Poor nations want all the money to come from rich country governments, but those governments are adamant that they will not provide such funding solely from the public purse. They want international development banks, such as the World Bank, to play a role, and they want most of the funding to come from the private sector.
There is strong disagreement over how this should be done.
At Copenhagen, where the finance part of the deal was only sorted out at the very last-minute, rich countries agreed to supply $30bn ($20bn) of “fast-start” financial assistance to the poor nations, and they said that by 2020, financial flows of at least $100bn a year would be provided.
These pledges are already backsliding.
This is a hugely contentious issue:
Why because any core agreement, will be contested over issues such as “loss and damage”, by which developing countries want assistance on coping with extreme weather events, likely to be made worse by climate change. An agreement on this is still possible.
African countries, and others with little or no responsibility for climate change, want a separate fund to compensate them for “loss and damage” resulting from climate disasters such as extreme heat, wild weather, floods, and droughts. This would be a 21st century equivalent of war reparations — for climate crimes rather than war crimes.
This will be one of the main obstacles to a Paris deal.
While you as a negotiator will be mired in the paragraphs, sub-headings and addenda of texts thick with square brackets denoting unresolved issues, heads of government have the power to sweep aside such details and order them to agree.
What can we expect before Paris?
Most delegates believe that funding issues are the most likely deal breakers in Paris.
That would be bad for the world.
So here is the solution:
Make Profit for Profit Sake Pay;
By placing a World Aid Commission of 0.05% on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions (over $20,000) on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions, on all new drilling and mining Licences.
A commission rate ranging from 0.005 to 0.25 percent would generate between $15 and $300 billion per year, of which a substantial amount could be allocated to promote international peace and development and Climate Change.
This would create a perpetual Funded Fund to contributed to rectifying the very thing that caused the problems in the first place.Greed.
There will be one further week of negotiations, in October, before the Paris meeting agrees, so there is much work to be done on the software to make this possible.
This is the first World Organisation in the series of posts that can hold its head up high, because we cannot separate the well-being of people from the well-being of the ecosystems where they live.
World Wildlife Fund was conceived in April, 1961, and set up shop in September, 1961, at IUCN’s headquarters in Morges, Switzerland. H.R.H. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands became the organization’s first president.
In its first year, the Board approves five projects totaling $33,500.
TO DAY IT is one of the largest environmental and conservation groups with worldwide affiliates. The panda drawn for the first time in 1961 by Sir Peter Scott, artist and co-founder of WWF, remains until today the organization’s symbol.
Its mission is to use scientific knowledge and advance that knowledge; to “work to preserve the diversity and abundance of life and the health of ecological systems by protecting natural areas and wild populations of plants and animals, including endangered species”; to promote “sustainable approaches to the use of renewable natural resources”; and to promote “efficient use of resources and energy and the maximum reduction of pollution.”
In 1973 WWF grants $38,000 to the Smithsonian Institution to study the tiger population of the Chitwan Sanctuary in Nepal.
WWF begins awarding the annual $50,000 Getty Prize for outstanding contributions to wildlife conservation in 1974. The Prize increases to $100,000 in 1999, and now focuses on the education of future conservationists.
During the first three years of its existence, “WWF raised and donated almost US$1.9 million to conservation projects.”
HUMANITY’S FOOTPRINT IS OUTSTRIPPING EARTH’S ABILITY TO PROVIDE
Already, 60% of ecosystem services—things like water supplies, fish stocks and fertile soil— are in decline because of human impacts on the environment.
Already, we need the equivalent of 1½ Earths to meet the demands people make on nature. We are eating into our natural capital, making it more and more difficult to sustain what will be needed by those who come after us.
THE PLANET IS CHANGING. WE ARE TOO. EVERY DAY, THE THREATS FACING THE PLANET BECOME MORE STARK.
TARGETING SPECIFIC PLACES AND SPECIES IS NO LONGER ENOUGH.
Fortunately, making connections—between the health of the planet and the health of humanity, between sustainability and a strong bottom line, between the sources of energy we choose and the water we drink—is one of WWF’s greatest talents.
Today, the WWF International is focused on six global issues, each critical to the health of our world and its inhabitants. The organization’s Web site lists the focus and need for each of the six programs.
The challenge comes in establishing that connectivity in a way that inspires action from people everywhere, on all levels.
ONE IN NINE PEOPLE ON THE PLANET SUFFERS FROM HUNGER.
90% OF THE OCEAN’S FISH STOCKS ARE OVER FISHED OR BEING FISHED TO THEIR LIMITS. AMERICANS CONSUME NEARLY 5 BILLION POUNDS OF SEAFOOD A YEAR NOT TO MENTION JAPAN, SPAIN. OCEANS FEED MORE THAN 1 BILLION PEOPLE. THEY GUIDE US TO ADVENTURE AND CONTEMPLATION, ABSORB CO² , AND HOLD THE PLANET’S GREATEST DIVERSITY OF LIFE.
GLOBALLY, OVER FISHING IS HAVING A DEVASTATING IMPACT ON THE SEA.
WILDLIFE POPULATIONS AROUND THE WORLD HAVE DECLINED BY AN AVERAGE OF 52% OVER THE PAST 40 YEARS.
BY 2030, GLOBAL DEMAND FOR FRESH WATER IS PROJECTED TO EXCEED CURRENT SUPPLY BY MORE THAN 40%.
573 MILLION ACRES OF FOREST WILL BE GONE BY 2050 IF WE DO NOTHING TO STOP DEFORESTATION.
THE CONCENTRATION OF CO² IN THE ATMOSPHERE IN 2013 WAS HIGHER THAN IT HAD BEEN IN AT LEAST 800 THOUSAND YEARS.
FORESTS ARE AT THE HEART OF LIFE ON EARTH. BILLIONS OF ANIMALS, PLANTS AND PEOPLE DEPEND ON THEM. THEY PROTECT OUR WATERSHEDS AND SUPPLY THE OXYGEN WE BREATHE. BETWEEN 46,000 AND 58,000 SQUARE MILES OF FOREST ARE LOST EACH YEAR ROUGHLY EQUIVALENT TO 36 FOOTBALL FIELDS EVERY MINUTE.
FRESH WATER IS CENTRAL TO OUR SURVIVAL. RIVERS, WETLANDS, LAKES AND STREAMS SUPPORT MORE THAN 10% OF ALL KNOWN SPECIES. WATER IS A CONDUIT FOR HEALTH, ENERGY AND FOOD. VIRTUALLY NO FRESHWATER SYSTEM REMAINS UNAFFECTED BY HUMAN ACTIVITIES.
WILDLIFE INSPIRES US. ANIMAL POPULATIONS ANCHOR A WEB OF LIFE THAT IS INTEGRAL TO EVERY HEALTHY ECOSYSTEM ON EARTH. IN THE SPAN OF JUST TWO HUMAN GENERATIONS, HALF OF EARTH’S WILDLIFE HAS DISAPPEARED.
FOOD SUSTAINS AND RENEWS US. ITS CREATION, PRODUCTION, PACKAGING AND TRANSPORT ENCROACH ON NATURE IN HARMFUL WAYS.
IF CURRENT TRENDS CONTINUE,WE WON’T BE ABLE TO REPLENISH THE WORLD’S FOOD SUPPLY FAST ENOUGH TO KEEP UP WITH DEMAND.
A HEALTHY CLIMATE IS A PRECARIOUS GIFT. CLIMATE CHANGE IS UPSETTING THE BALANCE THAT PEOPLE AND WILDLIFE NEED TO THRIVE.
The UN Climate Change Conference in Paris is fast approaching—and with it, our best chance to secure meaningful global climate change action. But the decisions that define our day-to-day lives have a huge impact as well.
Now, the 21st century and social media have ushered in a new set of trends. Younger generations respond less to formal affiliation and gravitate to supporting stand-alone causes and initiatives to get things done. The same is true of some sectors of philanthropy. Increasingly, successful individuals, along with foundations and corporations, see giving as a tool to confront and mitigate some of the biggest problems of our day.
Taking into account the above conditions that are currently prevalent to our plants and the consequences to all living creatures, included us, you would think that our World Governments and Large Multinational Corporations would be funding the WWF work and projects.
You would be wrong. It has to beg, steal and borrow.
84% of WWF’s spending is directed to worldwide conservation activities.
(32% of its Funding comes from Individual Contributions, 19% from Government grants & contracts, 19% from in-kind and other revenues, 10% from other/non operating contributions, 9% foundation contributions,7% WWF network revenues and last 4% from corporate contributions.)
There is a lot of room for some corporation like Apple, Microsoft, or Banks to step up to the plate or it could be funded by the establishment of a World Aid Commission of 0.05% on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions (over $20,000) and on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions, and Drilling Licences. (see previous posts)
(WWF’s FY14 financial performance remained steady, with total revenues and support at $266.3 million. WWF’s programmatic spending represented 84% of total expenses, with management and administration costs accounting for a modest 5% of total expenses. Total net assets of $357.9 million represented a 12% increase over FY13.)
The World Bank system was created as an integral element of the post-World War II Bretton Woods system of international and multilateral institutions. The Bank was designed to avoid future world wars by ensuring an open international trading system and global financial stability.
The same as the Nato and the United Nations it is another World Organisation that should be either shutdown, reinvented or amalgamated.
Like the IMF the World Bank is empowered by the governments which control it (led by the U.S., the U.K., Japan, Germany, France, Canada, and Italy — the “Group of 8,” which holds over 40% of the votes on their boards) with imposing economic austerity policies in the countries of the so-called “Third World” or “global South.”
The World Bank, the IMF and central banks such as the Federal Reserve literally control the creation and the flow of money worldwide.
They want all of us enslaved to debt, they want all of our governments enslaved to debt, and they want all of our politicians addicted to the huge financial contributions that they funnel into their campaigns.
According to the World Bank Articles of Agreement, all its decisions must be guided by a commitment to the promotion of foreign investment and international trade and to the facilitation of capital investment. Here is a dated example.
The first country to receive a World Bank loan was France. The French loan was for US$250 million, half the amount requested, and it came with strict conditions.
France had to agree to produce a balanced budget and give priority of debt repayment to the World Bank over other governments. Before the loan was approved, the United States State Department told the French government that its members associated with the Communist Party would first have to be removed. The French government complied with this diktat and removed the Communist coalition government. Within hours, the loan to France was approved.
When the Marshall Plan went into effect in 1947, many European countries began receiving aid from other sources. Faced with this competition, the World Bank shifted its focus to non-European countries.
The size and number of loans to borrowers was greatly increased as loan targets expanded from infrastructure into social services and other sectors mostly for the personal interest of larger world nations ignoring the like Vietnam because they were communist who were fighting for their lives to reject democracy from running over their country.
To finance more loans, the Bank used the global bond market to increase the capital available to the bank.
One consequence of the period of poverty alleviation lending was the rapid rise of third world debt.
From 1976 to 1980 developing world debt rose at an average annual rate of 20%.
During the 1980s, the bank emphasized lending to service Third-World debt, and structural adjustment policies designed to streamline the economies of developing nations.
UNICEF reported in the late 1980s that the structural adjustment programs of the World Bank had been responsible for “reduced health, nutritional and educational levels for tens of millions of children in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.”
And it left millions of families poor and children unprotected subject to Mason sponsored Child Sex trafficking.
Beginning in 1989, in response to harsh criticism from many groups, the bank began including environmental groups and NGOs in its loans to mitigate the past effects of its development policies that had prompted the criticism.
It also formed an implementing agency, in accordance with the Montreal Protocols to stop ozone-depletion damage to the Earth’s atmosphere by phasing out the use of 95% of ozone-depleting chemicals, with a target date of 2015.
Less recently, a project in Seychelles to promote local tourism by the name of project MAGIC was launched in 2010. Its successor project TIME was scheduled to be launched in 2012. Nothing more of it was heard of it since and was a project that at least to me makes no sense in its disclosure.
Traditionally, based on a tacit understanding between the United States and Europe, the president of the World Bank has always been selected from candidates nominated by the United States. In 2012, for the first time, two non-US citizens were nominated.
In 1991, the bank announced that to protect against intentional deforestation, especially in the Amazon, it would not finance any commercial logging or infrastructure projects that harm the environment.
About that time, in order to promote global public goods and free trade commercial market, the World Bank tried to control communicable disease created by laboratories in Intelligence agencies around the world, but could not stop the tragic effects of Ebola.
Since then, in accordance with its so-called “Six Strategic Themes,” the bank has put various additional policies into effect to preserve the environment while promoting development.
The World Bank is best known for financing big projects like dams, roads, and power plants, supposedly designed to assist in economic development, but which have often been associated with monumental environmental devastation and social dislocation.
In recent years, about half of its lending has gone to programs indistinguishable from the IMF’s: austerity plans that “reform” economic policies by suffocating the poor and inviting corporate exploitation.
The World Bank Group is the second largest public development institution in the world. Reform is long overdue. However, the most influential players are the finance ministers of the G8 countries, above all the US Treasury which sees no need for reform.
In 1992, an internal World bank review found that more than a third of all Bank loans did not meet the institution’s own lending criteria.
Unlike the United Nations, where each member nation has an equal vote, voting power at the World Bank and IMF is determined by the level of a nation’s financial contribution. Therefore, the United States has roughly 17% of the vote, with the seven largest industrialized countries (G-8) holding a total of 45%.
Because of the scale of its contribution, the United States has always had a dominant voice and has at all times exercised an effective veto. At the same time, developing countries have relatively little power within the institution, which, through the programs and policies they decide to finance, have tremendous impact throughout local economies and societies.
The global rise in prosperity and personal freedoms over the past 65 years has been an immense human achievement despite a string of horrible regional conflicts and pockets of terrible suffering.
However we are now facing the latest “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” — climate change, food security, infectious disease and urban youth unemployment — are rapidly approaching. It is hard to believe that the seven billion people living in 200 nations on earth today will be successful in holding them off without strong truly global institutions.
Its time to make our global institutions look and feel more global.
If we ask the question are these institutions ready to meet the challenge? The answer from most analysts is “No.”
While the WTO is based in Geneva, Switzerland, both the IMF and the World Bank are headquartered in Washington, D.C. The time has come to move at least one of them out of the United States.
The almost universal perception that there is no significant difference between the IMF and the World Bank. They work so closely together and have so many overlapping activities that they look like conjoined twins.
Their missions, however, are fundamentally different. Separation could make each one more effective.
Because the World Bank’s operations are overwhelmingly in developing countries, a case can be made for moving the World Bank to Africa, Asia or Latin America.
The biggest obstacle to moving the World Bank out of Washington is the veto power that only the United States wields. So re-locating the World Bank is a political non-starter.
By enhancing the Bank’s legitimacy, it would help to make the World Bank more effective in meeting the global challenges that are likely to become more difficult in the years to come.
The huge gap between the world’s richest and poorest countries remains one of the great moral dilemmas for the west. It also presents one of the greatest challenges for development economics. Do we really know how to help countries overcome poverty?
At least a billion people on the planet live in desperate circumstances resembling conditions that prevailed hundreds of years ago. Our failure to alleviate their plight is morally reprehensible. But where, exactly, are the greatest concentrations of poor people? Data is hard to come by and even harder to interpret. How can one compare cost-of-living indices in different periods when new goods are constantly upending traditional consumption models?
Consider the impact of cell phones in Africa, for example, or the internet in India.
The World Bank investment policy consolidates the position of the corrupt, inefficient and undemocratic regimes of many developing countries.
The Bank has evinced willingness to deal directly with almost any government without sensitivity to their human rights record.
Given that developing countries are both shareholders and clients in the Bank, the agencies are unlikely to admit that loans to a particular regime will not achieve any benefit until a reformed government achieves power.
The negotiation process between the Bank and the regime is invariably closed and the circulation of Bank reports restricted to the participants.
The poor are disenfranchised from the very institution supposed to support their development.
It is not necessary to deny that some of the infrastructure projects supported by the IBRD, from the road-building schemes in the 1980s to the dam construction programmes of the 1990s, failed to reduce poverty and caused a degree of environmental damage.
Only 3% of the Bank portfolio is set aside to protect against the loss of revenue from defaulting debtors.
Faced with mounting attacks from all sides, the IMF and World Bank are scrambling to assuage critics. On Apr. 10, the IMF set up an independent review board to evaluate its policies. The World Bank is pushing an initiative to combat the global scourge of AIDS. And both are working on a new strategy for fighting global poverty. But in the end, more radical reforms may be needed to get the demonstrators off the streets and the politicians off the two agencies’ backs.
The IMF — along with the WTO and the World Bank — has put the global economy on a path of greater inequality and environmental destruction.
Over the past decade an estimated 3.4 million people have been displaced by bank-funded projects.
There’s always a price tag for development. But the question is: Who should pay the price?
Should poor people be the ones who sacrifice when the government tries to do a big project? Even the World Bank says the budget for a project should include money to cover people’s losses.
The World Bank’s role in the global climate change finance architecture has also caused much controversy. Civil society groups see the Bank as unfit for a role in climate finance because of the conditionalities and advisory services usually attached to its loans.
The Bank’s undemocratic governance structure – which is dominated by industrialised countries – its privileging of the private sector and the controversy over the performance of World Bank-housed Climate Investment Funds
The World Bank working in partnership with the private sector may undermine the role of the state as the primary provider of essential goods and services, such as healthcare and education, resulting in the shortfall of such services in countries badly in need of them.
As an increasing shift from public to private funding in development finance has been observed recently, the Bank’s private sector lending arm – the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – has also been criticised for its business model, the increasing use of financial intermediaries such as private equity funds and funding of companies associated with tax havens.
As the World Bank and the IMF are regarded as experts in the field of financial regulation and economic development, their views and prescriptions may undermine or eliminate alternative perspectives on development.
There are also criticisms against the World Bank and IMF governance structures which are dominated by industrialised countries.
The World Bank hasn’t even adopted specific human rights policies, and doesn’t recognize that it has organizational responsibilities to abide by international human rights law.
Before I sign off on this post I should mention the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) established on 17 May 1930, is the world’s oldest international financial organisation. The BIS has 60 member central banks, representing countries from around the world that together make up about 95% of world GDP.
The BIS was created out of the Hague Agreements of 1930 and took over the job of the Agent General for Repatriation in Berlin. When established, the BIS was responsible for the collection, administration and distribution of reparations from Germany – as agreed upon in the Treaty of Versailles – following World War I. The BIS was also the trustee for Dawes and Young Loans, which were internationally issued loans used to finance these reparations.
After World War II, the BIS turned its focus to the defense and implementation of the World Bank’s Bretton Woods System. Between the 1970s and 1980s, the BIS monitored cross-border capital flows in the wake of the oil and debt crises, which in turn led to the development of regulatory supervision of internationally active banks.
The BIS has also emerged as an emergency “funder” to nations in trouble, coming to the aid of countries such as Mexico and Brazil during their debt crises in 1982 and 1998, respectively. In cases like these, where the International Monetary Fund is already in the country, emergency funding is provided through the IMF structured program.
The Bank for International Settlements is an organization that was founded by the global elite and it operates for the benefit of the global elite, and it is intended to be one of the key cornerstones of the emerging one world economic system.
Its head office is in Basel, Switzerland and there are two representative offices: in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China and in Mexico City.
The mission of the BIS is to serve central banks in their pursuit of monetary and financial stability, to foster international cooperation in those areas and to act as a bank for central banks.
Given the continuously changing global economic structure, the BIS has had to adapt to many different financial challenges. However, by focusing on providing traditional banking services to member central banks, the BIS essentially gives the “lender of last resort” a shoulder to lean on. In its aim to support global financial and monetary stability, the BIS is an integral part of the international economy.
The BIS is a global center for financial and economic interests. As such, it has been a principal architect in the development of the global financial market. Given the dynamic nature of social, political and economic situations around the world, the BIS can be seen as a stabilizing force, encouraging financial stability and international prosperity in the face of global change.
In the old days World Bank and maybe in the future will act as a lender of last resort to the banking sector during times of bank insolvency or financial crisis.
As the face of hunger has changed, so has its address.
The Wealth of Nations and the inheritance for humankind and all forms of life rest with World Organisation that are out of date – this should explain to many as to the disappearance of an equal World.
Money Talks as is evident with the latest Trade deal TTPI.
However, in today’s modern economy we are witnessing a rapidly expanding array of services with mobile technologies as their backbone, but what a World we are making. Our priorities are driving by growth at all costs, and a media owned by our Capitalist culture. We produces 1.3 billion metric tons of garbage each year, and that number is expected to double by 2025.
Is it not time that we the guardians of the Planet got together to shut some doors by tabling a peoples UN resolution to place a World Aid Commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions (over $20,000) and on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions ( See previous posts)
The chances of this ever happening are minuscule as self-interest is deep rooted.
To understand the role of capitalism in modern economic times you must understand the word Growth.
Growth at any cost. Which we are just coming to apprentice thanks to the Internet.
For a long time nothing much happened till Wheat conned humans into growing it.
It is not my intention here to address Money and Power. It is sufficient to say that money leads to power and corruption and that all three intermingle in the notoriously subject of Economics.
What I want you to do is to look at Capitalism that founded states and ruined them, opened up new horizons and enslaved millions, moved the wheels of Industry and drove hundreds of species of plants and animals into extinction, plundered the earth resources for profit, promoted science, all to the dethronement of a sustainable planet and ask yourself is it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
There can be no doubt without some system the human race would descend into barbarism based on nothing but self-interest.
Our cultural output throbs with this notion of self-interest. Just look at the present Refugee problem facing the European Union.
So would the collapse of Capitalism lead to misery?
Capitalism in all its credulity and inequality reflects mans barbarous nature. Indeed the horrors of ISIS are trumpeted so vehemently by the western press precisely because they fill this narrative.
However a dog eat dog world with which capitalism and the state justify themselves is in part a fallacy.
In fact nature teems with co-operation – both between animals, between species and within the ecosystem as a whole.
We are the same, but it is no coincidence that where we do co-operate these areas are dominated by capital and constructed in a way that systematically reward the uglier sides of our common nature.
We know that the world in unfair where the few have too much and the most have too little.
The feeling that Capitalism, inequality, and injustice are inevitable and the idea that to struggle for a better world is naive is coming to an end.
If we could only entrench the cooperative compassionate and empathetic sides of our nature as dominant values in society we would redesign our Capitalist world – to a world worth while living in.
The current state of our planet is affording all of us this opportunity.
How can we tackle the world problems ?
A good place to start would be to get Capitalism to pay for it.
By placing a World Aid Commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over ($20,000) on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions, on all Drilling Wells. This would create a perpetual pot out of Profit for Profit sake that could fund the inevitable cost of climate change.
In doing so we would redistribute the world’s wealth from the whole of the world. ( see previous Posts)
Sooner than later we are going to exhaust the raw materials and energy of the planet Earth. What will happen then?
Which is why, whenever the opportunity arises, we must be prepared to seize it.
The most accurate simulation of the human brain ever has been carried out, but a single second’s worth of activity took one of the world’s largest supercomputers 40 minutes to calculate.
SO LET’S HAVE A LOOK AT WHAT WE HAVE ACHIEVED SINCE WE CAME DOWN OUT OF THE TREES AND STOOD UPRIGHT.
( I am sure there will be many gaps in what I write here so you will have plenty of ammunition to comment. Those of you who are shadow people lead by the like button feel free to press it. )
Right: On your marks we off.
At first we were of no significance till we discovered that we could walk up right, discovered fire, tools, and language. We became foragers/ hunters with no hierarchy spreading all over the world providing there was a land bridge developing new weapons and new clothing due to climate change and perhaps unfriendly rivals.
All that changed when we began to devote our efforts to manipulating the lives of animals and plants. The Farmer had arrived. More babies to be fed, so we burnt down forests and planted wheat thus becoming wheat slaves living in settled artificial enclaves dedicated to growing wheat.
Because of this we discovered writing and numbers, money and religion.
This lead to placing a material value not just on possession but on ourselves resulting in a conscious effort to create laws, customs, procedures, to run societies.
By this time with the human brain going into hibernation due to all the information that needed to be stored we are well on the way to creating religious gods, empires, armies, taxes, etc Thus the arrival of bureaucracy, rulers, social division, ruling classes, slaver, gun power, the wheel and sea worthy ships.
Of course building, pollution, masculine dominance and exploration were now in full swing and it’s not long before the world is dividing into Empires of different cultures, different languages, different belief, most still using their legs and horses with the odd set of wheels to get around.
The Roman empire broke up, the Mongol empire went to pieces, the Chines empire built a wall, America and Europe did not know each other existed. Alexander the Great conquered most of the known world.
90% of humans lived in a single mega world ; the world of Afro- Asia the rest lived in America, central America, the Andean world, the Australian world, islands of the Pacific.
They were all swallowed up by the Afro-Asian world.
Resources were plentiful. Till along came How Much is it. Money the foundation of Greed and cooperation between strangers drastically reducing diversity. The first step to we becoming US against the Rest.
The European Industrial Imperial steamroller gradually obliterated our uniqueness.
The Spanish quashed the Inca, Ferdinand Magellan circumnavigate the globe, Marco Polo gave the Vatican a Chines map of America, they sending Columbus off to discover it, while Queen Vic with the help of Darwin, Livingstone, Nelson, expanded the British Empire with ball and chain, cannon.
At this stage there is no evidence that history is working for the benefit of humans. Science, engineering, flight, medical advances, power, religious rightness, profit, wealth, corruption, greed and reckless plundering of the earths resources, ignorance, and credit now come into play.
Empirical observations are being put together with the help of mathematical tools.
All of this cost money and it did much more than just charting the universe, mapping the planet and cataloging the animals than did Galileo, Columbus and Darwin. If there had being no funds or these geniuses and they had not being born we would be still waiting on some others to do so.
Of course none of the above is in strict chronological order and I have left out, Michelangelo Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, William Shakespeare, Bach, Confucius, Aristotle, Newton, to mention a few but I hope you get the gist.
I grow sick and tired of all the same old lies
I might be a little young, so what’s wrong?
You don’t have to be old to be wise
— Judas Priest
Anyway it is suffice to say that European imperialism was entirely unlike all other imperial projects.
So here we are. WE CREATED THE WORLD THAT YOU SEE AROUND YOU.
After numerous wars and two million years of being marginal creatures, thirteen odd billion years after the big bang we have arrived at the Capitalist creed OF THE FREE MARKET and a belief that Science which is about 500 years old can solve all our problems.
The question is how many people want to live in a world that you see around you.
We need to ignite a second cognitive revolution. It is unclear whether bio engineering could really resurrect Neanderthals. Tinkering with our genes won’t necessarily kill us. But we might fiddle to such an extent that we would no longer be Homo sapiens.
In a previous post I asked what do we want to become. A human who stood on the moon and saw a dying world that could be so beautiful if we learned to share.
Paradise Lost or Found.
Unlike other animals, we humans need to create the means for our physical survival as well as our spiritual well-being. We need to figure out how to acquire food, build shelters, cure illnesses, build cities, travel to the Moon, and create everything that deserves the label “civilization.”
Take a moment to look around you. Reflect on your own achievements and take pride in them. Reflect on the virtues that have allowed you to achieve the things you value.
The potential for human achievement is endless, but only if we truly value achievement and appreciate that the achievements we create in our modern world are manifestations of the moral virtues we each create in our character. Not Twitter, not Face book, not the internet, or the web of everything, not Google, not Apple.
If there’s one thing that many science and reality-minded people tend to do quite a bit, it’s over analyze every little detail.
The answer is right in front of your eyes . Open them.
We must tap Greed by creating a World Aid Fund by placing 0.05% commission on all High Frequency Stock Exchange Transactions, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over $20.000. on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions, on all new Drilling wells. ( See previous Posts)
Understanding the problems confronting refugees—and those striving to protect them—depends on grasping precise legal definitions.
The core definition of a “refugee” is contained in the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, which define a refugee as an individual who: “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.”
With biggest driving force for change still to manifest itself: It seem to me that the definition is long over due a revamp.
Climate Change will like the Internet have a profound effect on the world.
The Internet alone has assisted the creation of wars, by highlighting the inequalities that exist between the have and have not’s. It is exposing Capitalism and the free Market for what it real is. It is unveiling corruption, challenging the mass media and assisting mass immigration by generating sizeable networks to deal with the any obstacles set in their paths.
Climate change will change any definition of undocumented aliens asylum seekers. It will displace millions, impacting on the economy, by having a positive affecting on some groups and negatively others.
Trade agreements like the TTPI will weaken the case of those who would venture a rigid and single-factor comparison between “political” immigration and “economic” immigration.
We can expect the migratory issue to become increasingly political. A more rational approach would be to consider who the illegal immigrants are, before making immigration laws.
Much of Europe’s brewing migration debate carries a polarized tone of certainty, and migrants themselves are often slotted into neat “political” and “economic” categories.
You can see this at the moment as the EU struggles to establish who are political refugees and illegal immigration, on the role of economic versus non-economic factors. The definition Refugee has and is being ignored.
Is it possible to distinguish between the poverty of “condition” and the poverty of “position”?
Poverty, while a commonly cited factor “pushing” migration, is difficult to define.
In the former situation, the two main factors are a lack of employment and steady income, which prompt a feeling of having “nothing to lose.”Their biggest concern and expectation is to improve their physical well-being, something they regard as impossible at home.
This element has also got a growing home-grown element of poverty due to unemployment, no hours contracts, and exploration of the vulnerable within the EU.
Poverty of position, in contrast, involves migrants who use emigration as a way of more rapidly climbing the social ladder. These migrants feel that their income and position in their home country will never match their social capital (for example, their level of formal education or training). They move to places where they believe they can realize their aspirations.
Theses generic terms therefore covers a wide range of facts but Violence and Conflict are the leading causes of the current wave of migration [to Europe]
It is rooted in the crazy [U.S.] idea to launch an intervention in Iraq, which allegedly had weapons of mass destruction, but nothing was found.” A disaster that destabilized the Middle East giving rise of terrorism that we now see to-day.
However some of the blame for many asylum seekers is not wars.
For example, persecution is not necessarily imposed by the government or other official institutions in their country of origin. Some may face violence at the hands of mafia networks, armed groups, or a dominant majority group in connection with factors that are not directly political, such as ethnicity.
Others may be threatened for having a lifestyle that involves a socially unacceptable choice of spouse, sexual orientation, etc. As a result, some people are threatened and persecuted without fully meeting the demands of the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.
The long the short and tall of it is that Northern Africa today can no longer defend Europe from the immense masses of people on the move.
As Europe turns its back, these are refugees, not migrants, are arriving in their thousands on Greek shores .
The number thought to be in the UK could be as high as 863,000 – larger than the population of Leeds. By comparison, Italy was thought to have up to 461,000, Germany had 457,000, France’s top estimate was 400,000 and Spain had 354,000. Greece, it is estimated that about 100.000-150.000 undocumented refugees and migrants enter Greece each year, among them maybe around 10.000 unaccompanied minors.
Refugees and other vulnerable people deserve the protection and assistance to which they are entitled under international law. Rather then the inhumane treatment seen in the below:
In a wide range of countries, attitudes toward immigrants appear to be related to labor-market concerns, security and cultural considerations, as well as individual feelings toward political refugees and illegal immigration.
Are attitudes toward foreigners influenced by economic considerations or are they driven exclusively by non-economic issues?
At what point do we as citizens of the EU conclude that these people have already suffered enough and deserve to be aided in their flight to safety?
Without legal alternative routes for refugees to enter other European countries, people fleeing conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere have taken matters into their own hands
The future of Europe, will be determined by its ability to confront the issue of immigration. Whatever the attitude of the government, population pressure will be immense on Europe and there is no chance to prevent such migration.
On the one hand, the Fortress Europe concept essentially focuses on the role of external border controls and neglects the entry and settlement of clandestine immigrants and undocumented aliens. At the same time, border controls, deportations, mass arrests, and internment of migrants in closed centers and prisons invalidate the thesis of Europe as a sieve.
Europe, which is neighbor to many war zones takes in more than 1.5 million legal migrants.
Overall, forced displacement numbers in Europe totalled 6.7 million at the end of the year, compared to 4.4 million at the end of 2013, and with the largest proportion of this being Syrians in Turkey and Ukrainians in the Russian Federation. Syria’s ongoing war, with 7.6 million people displaced internally, and 3.88 million people displaced into the surrounding region and beyond as refugees, has alone made the Middle East the world’s largest producer and host of forced displacement. Adding to the high totals from Syria was a new displacement of least 2.6 million people in Iraq and 309,000 newly displaced in Libya.
Today, Libya, between 500,000 and one million people aspire to come to Europe.
With population growth of 7% or 8% in Africa, against just over 1% here, migratory pressure is mechanical.
It is not possible or desirable that Europe opens its doors to every tom dick and harry. On the other hand it not possible to address the situation with 4-meter (13-foot) high fence on its borders like Hungary, or We need to build a wall, we need to keep illegals out,” Donald Trump said at last Thursday’s GOP debate.
I for one do not want to be represented by Israeli or Berlin wall.
It needs policies that better serve the interests of both nations and immigrants.
It is beyond me that we cannot move FRONTEX (It coordinates EU States’ actions in the implementation of EU border management measures.) from Warsaw (Poland) to some where useful. So far this year, more than 180,000 migrants have reached Greece and Italy by sea (others come from Turkey via the land border with Bulgaria).
In the first four months of this year, more than a quarter of a million people claimed asylum in a European Union member state.
Where is the big deal in setting up humanitarian corridors for asylum seekers. To putting up initial reception center. To agreeing to a binding quota system for distributing refugees among all European countries.
I am sure if an appeal was made to all European Citizens the majority of the 509 million would not begrudge 10 Euros a month.
Let us hope that Europe can respond intelligently by rejecting generalisations and simplistic discourse by being true to its values, notably in terms of asylum and yet be more effective.
I leave you with the words of Ahmed Satuf, another refugee from Idlib in Syria, told Al Jazeera he didn’t want anything from Macedonia, except for being allowed to cross its borders.
“I’m not a terrorist. We are humans. Where’s the humanity? Where’s the world? Everyone here, they are families,” he said.
“We don’t need anything. We don’t need money. Let us cross. I want to go to Germany.”
Europe above all places in the world born of integrationist ideals yet undermined by participants’ unwillingness to share costs as well as benefits, has a chance to shine.
“For us, today Europe is at stake”
said Orban Viktor the president of Hungary, “The survival, disappearance or, more precisely, the transformation beyond recognition of the European citizen’s lifestyle, European values and the European nations.”
In our contemporary world it is very rare that we are asked to talk about what lies at the heart of our actions. Instead we hide behind statistics, data, policy statements etc, few of which actually touch other people’s hearts and minds.
To days debates between today’s religions, ideologies, nations and classes will in all likelihood disappear along with Homo Sapiens so it is naive to imagine that we simply hit the brakes on climate change and all will be honky dory.
We are more powerful than ever before, but have very little idea what to do with all that power. We seem to be more irresponsible than ever. We are accountable to no one, and consequently wreaking havoc on or fellow animals and on the surrounding ecosystem, seeking little more than our own comfort and amusement, yet never finding satisfaction.
There is nothing more dangerous than a dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?
The real question is not what do we want to be come? but ‘what do we want to want’.
We all know that we must move away from our excessive and selfish lifestyle.
So as you prepare to come to Paris I would like to ask you to think about your personal role, and answer a simple, but profound, question:
Why do I care?
In making climate change and the protection of our beautiful planet a personal issue of your own beliefs and values you will come to the Cop primarily as a conscious human being not just a representative of a Government or agency.
Since time memorial we have all been led to believe that our current lifestyle is the most satisfying, but as you know in reality it is based on egoistic and unjust exploitation of resources and of human capital. It has led to a lifestyle based on selflessness and if left unchecked it will take us to an irreversible process of self-destruction.
We all know that opportunity for an agreement will be beset by challenges.
The question at the heart of any forthcoming Agreement surely most be > Who is going to pay for it.
It will not be the present exclusively profit-focused, job-oriented, planet threatening, income-wealth, gap-widening civilization.
It will not be the free-market capitalism even thought private investors stand to lose $4.2tn (£2.7tn) on the value of their holdings from the impact of climate change by 2100 even if global warming is held at plus 2C, a report from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has warned.
It will not be cash strapped world Governments.
It will not be a single global tax or regulatory scheme whether they live in a capitalist or communist society.
It will not be Industry reverting the trend of economic development and investment by coupled its insensible greed for profit with carbon emissions.
There is little point in agreeing a new climate change targets if there is no compassionate response to climate change requires for us to help the world’s poorest gain access to sustainable energy solutions so that they can improve their lives while avoiding the dirty energy path that developed countries followed.
There is little point in making the Agreement an Internationally legally binding treaty when there is no way of enforcing its terms or applying penalties for breach thereof.
There is little point in countries submitting their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions. The very reference to Intended expresses the get out clause.
By far the biggest obstacle to any agreement will be how countries will finance the move to a low-carbon global economy.
Even if one of these above problems were politically feasible, air is vital to a healthy economy. Which it isn’t. It is the people who want to breathe clean air. Climate pollutants, on the other hand, are everywhere. They are a waste product of nearly every aspect of modern life, and they are not limited to carbon; methane, soot and nitrous oxide all contribute to rising temperatures.
The present generation of young people is the forerunner of the generation of the most powerful generation in human history because of the enormous technology in their hands. We have to get them engaged in creating the world they wish to live in, and pass on to the next generation.
The sooner the socially committed players take charge of technology, the faster the world Social business is a new variety of business which delinks itself from any desire to make personal profit, where economic prosperity isn’t defined by constant reckless growth. We need to develop social systems that encourage people to put aside short-term personal gain in favor of long-term societal and environmental interests.
It is not just yours it is our collective moral responsibility to act. We must act because we care. With that comes a different way of thinking about both mitigating and adapting to climate change, from the roads to the treetops.
We seemingly need to get as close to demise as possible to be able to see things clearly. We’re already running up to and beyond the biophysical boundaries that enable us to exist. Given the pace of change, we can no longer exclude the possibility of reaching critical tipping points that could abruptly and irreversibly change living conditions.
It is only a mobilization of conscience on a global scale that will enable humanity to meet this great challenge confronting us.
We are already seeing promising signs such as the joint announcement by the US and China in Beijing in November 2014 and the decision of the European Council a few weeks before. Together these cover around 50% of world emissions.
Realistically we all know that if either China or the USA were to discover new reserve of Oil, Gas, or Coal they would not leave it in the ground.
So where are we?
The first and only scientific fact to know about climate change is that carbon is (almost) forever.
The Paris agreement for what its worth will come into effect in 2020. To Late.
At this meeting, more than 190 States will discuss a possible new global agreement you have to reach a universal agreement to limit the global warming to 2 degrees Celsius by 2100. To Late.
Countries have to agreed that there will be no back-tracking in these national climate plans, meaning that the level of ambition to reduce emissions will increase over time. Not Possible. Look at the United Nations a gossip shop with no money controlled by Veto.
Countries have been invited to submit their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions to the new climate agreement to be concluded in December, in Paris. This approach represents a concession to political and diplomatic realities, as well as to the limits of international agreements in influencing countries’ behavior in an area so vital to their interests.
The climate change issue is driven more by national than by international politics, so the agreement needs to allow states to determine the content of their own commitments.
So far 21 out of the 194 attending have submitted their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions. Bravo.
You might well ask at this point what is the solution.
There is only one solution and that is the creation of a World Aid Commission of 0.05% (for sake of argument) On all Stock Exchange Transactions with a higher commission on a High Frequency Trades, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over $20,000, on all Sovereignty Wealth Funds Acquisition., on all Drilling Wells.
This is the only viable solution to make Profit and Greed pay.
This would create a perpetual World Aid Fund with unlimited funds to tackle Climate Change, Inequality of Opportunity, Education and Disaster Aid.
It will create incentives and spread the funding through out the world by harnessing the very problem that has created the position we now find ourselves in.
Why will it work?
Because ( if firm action is not taken at the forthcoming climate change talks in Paris and the Earth’s temperature warms by a further 5C) investors are facing losses of almost $7tn at today’s prices.
Because democratizing our energy supply can be achieved by this fund in making non repayable grants available to the worlds citizens to install solar power. There’s something special about solar. Not just because it’s genius technology but because, it puts the power to act in millions of hands.
The energy and climate debate is very political and bogged-down by big vested interests.
Because it would solve Climate change which does not have the time or money to be reverted. Ever four days we add a million more people to the planet scuttling our rosy dreams of sustainability.
The definition of success in Paris has been widely misunderstood, and as a result there is a risk that success may be viewed as failure.
Before I wish every success here is a small practical step. Let the summit ask all major TV Media Channels weather forecasts carry a section on the effects of climate change.
The citizens of the world will be watching you.
Yours Sincerely,
The Founder and writer of the Beady Eye.
PS. There is no need for you to respond to this open letter I along with millions that are currently signing online petitions in support of the Earth which has no voice other than climate Change trust you.
If your eyes could speak, this is what they would say.
Unfortunately for us technology is blurring our global vision of what humanity means or can achieve.
The question is how long are we going to keep our eyes shut to a world run by Private Corporations, and out of date World Organisations, and Elected Corrupt Governments that are signing trade deals that put Corporate power above people power called TTIP ( The Transatlantic Trade Deal or tee-tip for short) that none of us have a say in. https://youtu.be/YVrDF0nSIAU
Now I know that Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Exxon Mobil, Express Scripts Holdings, Wal-Mart Stores, Google and World Fuel Services by the year 2025 will have made vast profits in the trillions. But they are likely to take our species to the brink of extinction. Why because if we continue to allow Capitalism to serve the bottom line of the Balance Sheet and not to contribute to resolving global problems we are all insane. ( See Previous Post: ) 0.05% WORLD AID COMMISSION)
How long are we going to allow all of our values along with the Earth just to become products to fuel the Stock Exchanges and Balance sheets of Privatization and Greed.
There is one thing sure about life. It makes no promises.
But I make you a promise THAT our eyes are going to be opened by Climate Change.
If we do not reduce emissions ( Don’t tell me with the mountain of data dealing with global warming that you STILL believe it will resolve itself or that teleology will be your Savior. ) they will not only threaten Society as a whole with food shortages, refugee crises, flooding, wars, and mass extinction of plants and animals, but make us all realize to late that Capitalism is the ultimate cause of global warming and climate change.
Our City bit living and greed along with our Social Media interconnected world has not only blinded us to the crises it is also eroding our understanding of what it means to live a fulfilled life.
The must have materialism that is dumped within months irrelevant of where it comes from other than it is affordable must stop.
Imagine an alternative where Capitalism and collectivism live together.
Open your eyes and take a look at our world in 2015. (see previous post)
The Planet currently seems on the cusp of a decidedly unharmonic convergence.
The world is rife with crime, corruption, growing inequality and militarism.
The USA was once about the little guy– the rights of individual — the success of small business– it has gone big in the worst possible way.
The International community ( what ever that is) is now facing an unholy trinity of authoritarian politics, cutthroat economics and big brother surveillance, and far-right party anti-immigrant.
Indeed even if you were to take a squint through those eyes of yours. No matter whether we live under Capitalism or Communism they are both struggling to adapt to the same environmental factors.
You would think that the forces of modernity — of technological development, of growing bureaucratization would push both systems in the same evolutionary direction. Not on your nanny. Just look at their feeble reactions to ISIS.
If you cant rely on visual clues, listen to the sound waves rippling around the Globe.
Currently 2.5 degrees centigrade warming by 2100 is cited as the tipping point for catastrophe. However by 2050 at the current levels of Co2 emissions never mind the methane we will be at twice the pre-industrial level.
(The permafrost in the Arctic is melting pumping Methane into the atmosphere adding to the Co2. The Greenland ice sheet will be totally melted causing a sea level rise of 39″ and so forth and so forth.)
If no MAJOR POLICY CHANGES ARE ACHIEVED Now to curtail the greed of Capitalism which exist on the rampant, uncontrolled use of natural resources the human race can kiss its ass goodbye.
Capitalism depends upon the exploitation of natural resources at the highest possible level. And we are, of course, not talking just about fossil fuels. With no thought to conservation, recycling and what will happen when the sources, from iron ore to copper, to say nothing of the fossil fuels themselves, run out.
But capitalism can exist only if the rampant, uncontrolled use of natural resources continues unabated, for that is within the very nature of the system.
But when the natural resources go, so will capitalism and by that time it will be too late to replace it with anything else.
“The suicide of capitalism.”
By it’s very nature, operating to the greatest degree possible with no thought to anything other than the accumulation of profit, capitalism is leading to this possible outcome.
When the critical resources are gone, or at least the supply is reduced to such an extent that their cost makes making profit from their exploitation increasingly difficult, capitalism will die, even without workers’ revolution.
Indeed, by its very nature of focusing exclusively on profit-making, it will eventually kill itself, as well as taking many humans and many other species along with it.
According to a recent report in Nature, 41 percent of amphibians, 26 percent of mammals and 13% of birds are threatened with extinction, if nothing is done about global warming.
But the point here is that even without global warming, with no controls on the utilization of natural resources other than fossil fuels, capitalism is essentially killing itself.
And so, what is to be done?
There is of course hope.
While it may be too late to slow carbon emissions down enough to prevent reaching the “tipping point,” as some scientists think, it may very well be possible to develop a series of environmentally safe methods for capturing carbon and methane, shielding the earth from the increasing heat levels, and so on and so forth.
It is definitely possible to institute economic planning on a massive scale to conserve and re-use natural resources that will otherwise run out.
But that will require the replacement of capitalism with some form of socialism.
What form that system might take and how we will get there are matters for further consideration.
But given historical experience and an analysis of how capitalism has dealt with the socialist experiments that have come along so far (see, e.g., The 75 Years War Against the Soviet Union), we will not get there spontaneously, we will not get there without the formation of a series of leading parties and universal world organisations with clout, around the world to promote Humanity other than religions dominance.
If that series of events does not occur, then indeed capitalism will commit involuntary suicide with disastrous results for ours and many other species. It will indeed vault us into a full-blown “Sixth Extinction.”
The burning question: Can any of this be achieved other than Extinction.
A world where one is for all and all are for one. History tells us highly unlikely.
So I will leave you with another promises. That is– You and I will be long departed. So why bother? Because we and earth are worth It.
The other day I was wondering how one would describe Earth to an alien or a classroom of our modern-day interconnects kids.
Where would one start.
Is it round? Not quite it is an oblate spheroid instead of a perfect sphere. It takes the Earth on solar day to rotate upon its axis.
An alien might come to earth and attempt to understand the planet by reading the literature of the planet, or just the dictionary. Looking up the word “earth” the alien may be surprised to see the this term has multiple meanings, referring to a planet and to a substance (soil/dirt).
May be the best place to start is to give an perspective of where we are in space.
As you look outward into space, you’re actually looking backwards in time. The light you see from your computer is nanoseconds old. The light reflected from the surface of the Moon takes only a second to reach Earth. The Sun is more than 8 light-minutes away. And so, if the light from the nearest star (Alpha Centauri) takes more than 4 years to reach us, we’re seeing that star 4 years in the past. There are galaxies millions of light-years away, which means the light we’re seeing left the surface of those stars millions of years ago. For example, the galaxy M109 is located about 83.5 million light-years away.
A radio signal to travel once around Earth in 1/7 of a second. To get to the moon from Earth, so the round-trip time is twice this or 2.46.
If aliens lived in those galaxies, and had strong enough telescopes, they would see the Earth as it looked in the past. They might even see dinosaurs walking on the surface.
Only a few of us have ever seen Earth from afar. It’s mankind’s rarest view of all.
To see it without borders, see it without any differences in race or religion, we would all have a completely different perspective. Because when you see it from space you cannot think of your home or your country. All you can see is one Earth….”Earth, our home planet.
It is a beautiful blue and white ball when seen from space. the only planet in our solar system known to harbor life.
All of the things we need to survive are provided under a thin layer of atmosphere that separates us from the uninhabitable void of space.
HERE IS HOW I WOULD DESCRIBE IT;
It was formed about 4.5 billion years ago.
Earth is made up of complex, interactive systems that are often unpredictable. Air, water, land, and life—including humans—combine forces to create a constantly changing world that we are striving to understand.
It is the third planet from the sun and the fifth largest in the solar system.
About 71% of its surface is covered by water; the rest by land.
It is orbited by one satellite, the Moon.
Earth’s total surface area is 196,950,000 sq. mi. The area covered by the oceans is 139,480,000 sq. mi. Total land area is 57,470,000 sq. mi.
Earth’s diameter is just a few hundred kilometers larger than that of Venus.
The Earth’s crust is about 6.5 miles thick beneath the oceans, and about 25 miles thick under the continents.
Our planet’s rapid spin and molten nickel-iron core give rise to a magnetic field, which the solar wind distorts into a teardrop shape. The magnetic field does not fade off into space, but has definite boundaries.
Our planet completes its elliptical orbit around the sun in an average solar year, 365.24219 days. Its average distance from the sun is 80,777,537.8 n.mi.
The Earth’s axis is tilted 23.45 deg away from the perpendicular to its orbital plane.
It wobbles very slightly.
The Moon orbits the Earth about once a month (every 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, 2.9 seconds) The average distance from the Earth to the Moon is 238,857 mi., about 30 times Earth’s diameter.
The Earth’s crust is about 6.5 miles thick beneath the oceans, and about 25 miles thick under the continents. The surface layer is made of rock. This outer layer formed a hard, rocky crust as lava at the surface cooled 4.5 billion years ago.The crust is broken into many large plates that move slowly relative to each other. Mountain ranges form when two plates collide. The plates move about one inch per year. About 250 million years ago, most of the land was connected together, and over time has separated into seven continents. So millions of years ago the continents and the oceans were in different positions.
Scientists had previously concluded that the Earth was slightly older than 4.5 billion years old, but had not found a piece of the Earth’s primitive mantle.
The solid shell that is between the Earth’s crust and the outer core makes up about 84 percent of the Earth’s volume. Until recently, researchers generally thought that the Earth and the other planets of the solar system were chondritic. This means that the mantle’s chemistry was thought to be similar to that of chondrites, some of the oldest, most primitive objects in the solar system. Chondrites contain certain isotope ratios of the chemical elements of helium, lead and neodymium.
Sixty-five million years ago it looked quite different than it does to-day.
There are about 300,000 plant species and about 1,400,000 animal species on Earth.
In the next 6.4 billions of years it will be eating by it nearest star the Sun which is 149,597,891 kilometers away. It will take a little more than 8 minutes before we realized it is time to put on a sweater. It takes Sunlight an average of 8 minutes and 20 seconds to travel from the Sun to the Earth.
It weighs 5.9736×1024kg. That is about 13,170,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pounds (or 5,974,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms).
80% of its fresh water is in its polar ice caps. Fresh water exists in the liquid phase only within a narrow temperature span (32 to 212 degrees Fahrenheit/ 0 to 100 degrees Celsius). The surface is unique from the other planets because it is the only one which has liquid water in such large quantities.
Its greatest present day threats come from humanity which is at a crossroads now, where we have to make an active choice.
Evolution, the Big Bang, and climate change are all things that were first proposed as hypotheses long ago.
Climate change is not. What are we doing about it. The same as always. Turn it into a product for profit.
One choice is to acknowledge these issues and potential consequences and try to guide the future (in a way we want to). The other choice is just to throw up our hands and say, ‘Let’s just go on as usual and see what happens.’ My guess is, if we take that latter choice, yes, humanity is going to survive, but we are going to see some effects that will seriously degrade the quality of life for our children and grandchildren.
The ongoing wars, the distortions of truth we have witnessed, the widening gaps between rich and poor disturb us more than we can say; but we have had so many reminders of powerlessness that we have retreated before the challenge of bringing such issues into our classrooms of our brains.
The best effort so far is the creation of an Earth Day this year. One day!
Population growth, widespread destruction of natural ecosystems, and climate change may be driving Earth toward an irreversible change in the biosphere, a planet-wide tipping point that would have destructive consequences absent adequate preparation and mitigation. No one knows how close Earth is to a global tipping point, or if it is inevitable.
Life on Earth is constantly changing and only the fittest organisms survive.
Every few of us appreciate how thin our little atmosphere is that supports all life here on Earth. So if we foul it up, there’s no coming back from something like that. The dictionary offers a firm set of definitions for this term, but no single definition, which leads to a sense of complexity. The complexities of perception are, in part, what post-modernism is all about. I describe it as pure insanity.
The Earth system now includes human society, Our social and economic systems are now embedded within the Earth system. In many cases, the human systems are now the main drivers of change in the Earth system. Earth system changes, natural or driven by humans, can have significant consequences without involving changes in climate. Global change should not be confused with climate change; it is significantly more. indeed, climate change is part of this much larger challenge.
Throughout history human societies have had to confront and adjust to climatic and environmental hazards. A long-term perspective that draws on such experiences must inform today’s climate policies. I argue that climate policies aimed at mitigating and adapting to hazards should be informed by our knowledge of past human experience.
In today’s globalised world our food tends to take a long route from farm to table, relying on international trade routes that pass through several bottlenecks. Sudden disruption of such delivery systems – via climate change or political volatility – can severely affect the food security of particular regions.
Large-scale governance is unavoidable in today’s world where hazards are regional and often transcend political boundaries, unfortunately at the moment we are relying on out of date World Organisations that are incapable of putting the Earth First!
The hope of the twentieth century rests on its recognition that war and depression are man-made and needless as is so with Climate Change.
Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel.
All can be avoided in the future by turning from … nineteenth-century characteristics … and going back to other characteristics that our Western society has always regarded as virtues: generosity, compassion, cooperation, rationality, and foresight, and finding an increased role in human life for love, spirituality, charity, and self-discipline.
We now know fairly well how to control the increase in population, how to produce wealth and reduce poverty or disease. We may, in the near future, know how to postpone senility and death but to what avail if we continue to deny Climate Change.
It certainly should be clear to those who have their eyes open that violence, extermination, and despotism do not solve problems for anyone and that victory and conquest are delusions, as long as they are merely physical and materialistic.
Our problem is that capitalism provides very powerful motivations for economic activity because it associates economic motivations so closely with self-interest.
Money and goods are not the same thing but are, on the contrary, exactly opposite things. Most confusion in economic thinking arises from failure to recognize this fact.
Goods are wealth which you have, while money is a claim on wealth which you do not have. Thus goods are an asset; money is a debt.
You would think that policymakers with the dark future of Climate Change ahead would be addressing a new set of existential questions.
Such as: Should Economics that grew wealth bear more of the burden to stop climate change. Another words developed countries should take the lead allowing less developed countries to maintain emissions.
As we all know to date no international mitigation and abatement efforts have taken place on a large enough scale to freeze emissions. We don’t see any intense geopolitical cooperation. Countries will not do anything on behalf of other that requires them to sacrifice their own interests.
Off course when you introduce future generations into the question democracy as it stands is not equipped to represent the interests of future generations never mind the here and now. Humans that don’t exist have no say as to what will it mean to live a meaningful life in a world that has eliminated all wildness, and forms of life from the planet.
So here we are poised to become agent of the greatest catastrophic events ever to hit our planet which could have to support over 10 billion people by 2050.
We are currently on a trajectory to warm the planet 4°C. In such a 4ºC world most of us will not be able to adapt never mind our natural systems.
As we move beyond the stable state we are already well beyond the zone of uncertainty. The risk for all species – including ours- grow and grow.
We need to start thinking in terms that we are just not used to thinking of as a human species.
Will it be left to the market to decide. With businesses as hubs for democratic engagement this could unfairly shift costs onto either consumers or taxpayers.
I’m not convinced.. that we’ve ended up with a society that’s really able to harness the innovation potential of business.
Climate change challenges democracy. But climate change also needs democracy.
We live in a carbon dependent world. And for the most part, we are loath to forego this somewhat cosy arrangement. Carbon dependency is promoted in part by technology which gives us many good things on the cheap: electricity, personal mobility, affordable consumer goods, cooling and warmth. It is also encouraged by governments which promise easy options to low-carbon outcomes, without delivering these options. And for the most part, we do not seem to care, as the goodies continue to arrive.
We all know in our hearts that this is a cop out: we are duped but we connive in the deceit. Democracy is not a system that forces us to face up to these contradictions. We want to live in a sustainable society but the political system does not reward or support the innovators and entrepreneurs who would guide us to it.
Political institutions manipulate us, as do the power brokers who shape political opinion and guide policy. Democracy shuns the long-term.
The goal of equipping democracy to mitigate and adapt to climate change is not a one-time endeavor but a continuous process.
Today, the formerly contented European middle classes, sitting in the gap between the rich minority and the poor majority, for the first time in living memory cannot be sure their children will be better off than they are. Confronted by this austere prospect, this group – the natural allies of climate stability – will become unsettled.
The world’s nations are desperately looking for guaranteed techno-fixes to climate change. Democracy around the world has suffered as governments seek to lean on eco-technocrats to cut back on investment in education and health and invest instead in technology for climate mitigation and adaptation.
I really do believe that people can provide the answers – if only we could unleash the real power of that creative potential. Environmental innovation has to be about much more than technology. I’ve realized that, and I’m going to make it my business to ensure that as many other people as possible do too.
So where best to start than requesting your Television Stations to highlight Climate Change in their Weather Forecast. Join me. This is a war against no enemy other than ourselves.
The World Bank, the IMF and central banks such as the Federal Reserve literally control the creation and the flow of money worldwide.
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