How to check off "Save the World" on your bucket list?
Welcome to Planet Republyk's project!
Before going further in the argument built in favor of the Planet Republyk project and launching, in the next episode, into the history of the planetarist movement, let's enumerate, in this episode, some of these stakes, concerning each and every one of the almost eight billion human beings that this planet shelters and that a world governance could/should better govern, than the nations individually, if it were legitimate, autonomous and sovereign on these stakes.
- Ensure global peace and security, starting with the elimination of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Arbitrate and definitively close border disputes between nations.
- Ensure the prevention of pan-national natural hazards due to climate disruption, of which the rising oceans are a good example. To provide prompt, professional and effective assistance in the event of large-scale calamities such as floods, mega-fires, droughts, heat waves, famines, epidemics, meteorite falls, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons, tsunamis or man-made disasters. (e.g. Gulf of Mexico, Fukushima in Japan, etc.)
- Preserve life and its ecosystems, including old-growth forests, coral reefs and species threatened by the sixth mass extinction.*
* The global number of wild animal species declined by 68% between 1970 and 2016[i]. As a result of human activity, more than one million species are at risk of extinction within the next century, including 40% of insect species, a catastrophe among disasters, due to their essential role in the terrestrial food chain[ii].
Ecocide reaches 84% for freshwater species (fish, birds, amphibians, mammals[iii].) Plants are declining at twice the rate.
Since 1900, three species of plants are disappearing every year. This is twice as much as for animals and 500 times faster than if nature was the only one responsible[iv].
That our species alone has been responsible for the extinction of millions of living species is probably the greatest crime that the next generations will have to reproach us with. They will rightly call us barbarians. From the point of view of science, medicine and pharmaceutical research alone, this is a catastrophe. There is every reason to believe that the key to the cure of many present and future diseases lies in a species whose existence we did not know, even though we have already caused its disappearance.
- To assume responsibility for the protection of the universal human and natural heritage by combating the growing private appropriation of sites and resources, including water, that should remain public and accessible to all humanity. To inventory and protect the artifacts and places of the common heritage by creating museums and making these collections and sites accessible. Legislate against mass tourism as a threat to our universal heritage.
- Ensure the preservation of the world's fresh water supplies and good soils; the sustainable management of scarce energy resources and commodities so that they also benefit future generations. Implement processes to reduce the waste of these products and ensure a more equitable distribution.
- Restructure the globalized agricultural model so that proximity to consumption sites determines where agricultural production takes place, not financial markets.*
* On a global scale, 90% of the variety of vegetables and 85% of the variety of fruits have disappeared since 1950, according to the findings of researcher Lenore Newman, professor of food safety and environmental sciences at the University of Fraser Valley in Canada[v].
- Legislate on the hunting of marine mammals; on the management of international fisheries reserves; on the cleaning of the seas, including the three continents of plastic waste; on the fight against ocean acidification and hypoxic marine areas.
- Ensuring human rights in lawless areas; access for all to clean water, adequate food, shelter, education and quality health care; the abolition of serfdom and even of the still existing slavery, human trafficking, sexual and military enslavement. All the more so in the case of children.
- Defend women's rights by, among other things, abolishing birth selection, forced marriages, the practice of excision and other cultural mutilations, violence and murder resulting from honor codes, etc. Ensure the protection of indigenous peoples and all other minorities (religious, ethnics, linguistics and of gender and sexual orientations). Intervene systematically and rapidly when genocidal action is suspected.
- Prevent and diligently manage epidemics (Ebola, cholera, tuberculosis, SARS, etc.); humanitarian disasters; mass migratory movements (e.g., Syrian war, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, etc.)
- Determine the explanation for the constant worldwide increase in: cancer, obesity and its corollaries: diabetes and heart disease; asthma and other respiratory diseases; allergies and autoimmune diseases; birth defects; drastic drop in sperm quality; suicide, depression, burnout and other mental illnesses; children having to take medication for ADHD, anxiety, depression.*
* The Spanish psychiatrist Luis Rojas Marcos, internationally recognized as one of the specialists in child resilience, expressed concern in a text[vi] that has been circulated around the globe about the results of numerous studies showing that one in five children between the ages of 10 and 14 has mental health problems today. His research team has observed a 43% increase in ADHD, 37% increase in adolescent depression and 200% increase in suicide rates in this age group over the past few decades.
The WHO revealed that by 2020, depression had become the leading cause[vii] of disability in the world, surpassing cardiovascular disease for the first time.
Among adults in Canada, mental health problems have become the leading cause of work absenteeism[viii] and school dropout[ix]. In any given year, one in five people in Canada will experience a mental health problem and one in two will experience a mental health-related illness or problem before the age of 40.
These health and social scourges, which are on the rise all over the world, are structural problems of our societies that we must stop referring to individual responsibilities and subsequent medical treatment. The sources of these problems must be addressed at a global level.
- Organize the continuation of space exploration as well as the cleanup of debris in orbit around the earth; prevent the appropriation of space, whether by the private sector or by states.
- Strengthen the fight against: programmed obsolescence; over-consumption; food waste. To institute policies of degrowth and reduction of consumption. Accelerate the fossilization of the carbon economy (oil, coal, gas). Regulate international, maritime and air transport. Pursue the universal standardization of weights, measures, calendars, accounting systems, and information filing methods.
- Ensure research and regulation of all substances harmful to humans and the biosphere, including the use of GMOs, endocrine disruptors, nanotechnology, pesticides and chemicals in food, cosmetics and consumer products. Prohibit, on a global scale, the use of the most harmful pollutants for the living.
- Legislate on the overuse of antibiotics, especially in agriculture. Limit the pharmaceutical industry's stranglehold on this vital field while investing in public research for new antibiotics whose growing ineffectiveness is a threat to global public health.*
* According to a report[x] by an expert panel on the potential socio-economic impact of antimicrobial resistance in Canada, 26% of bacterial infections were already resistant to treatment in 2018 and up to 40% of bacteria would become resistant by 2050.
Globally, hundreds of millions of lives are at risk. The universal republic to be created should therefore ensure funding for research into new drugs, antibiotics and vaccines while ensuring stockpile management and universal access.
- Defend the independence of the Internet, press and individual freedoms as well as the respect of privacy, which have been nibbled away[xi], even more so and perhaps for a long time, during the COVID 19 pandemic, by companies and States thanks, moreover, to the exacerbated tracing of the movements of citizens via their cell phones and the networks of surveillance cameras
- Create a global public multi-platform information network with substantial resources and 100% financing by the world parliament.
- Fund independent scientific research, especially in orphan areas, including the nearly 8,000 rare diseases. Investigate and document best practices in a multitude of fields, including economics, urban planning, education, health, architecture, transportation, politics, agriculture, culture and energy, in order to promote them. Support pilot projects of innovative alternative models in all these areas.
- Legislate on new technologies, because at the moment, it is big business, through prodigious amounts of money spent on advertising, self-interested research, lobbying and marketing, that is imposing the pace of change in our lifestyles without worrying about its potential harmfulness.*
* In this respect, the imminent implementation of 5G technology all over the world, without any possibility of escape, despite its possible harmful effects on the health of humans and animals, is quite telling. In a similar vein: see to international legislation on artificial intelligence, robotization of the workforce, law enforcement and armies; connectivity of everyday objects, eugenics, cloning, cybernetization of parts of the human being and/or genetic manipulation.
- To regulate: finance, international markets, the insurance market, overspeculation, including that of currencies, through, among other measures, the establishment of a universal currency. Lead the fight against tax havens; international criminal economies, including drug cartels, street gangs and mafia groups.
- Ensure the reduction of socio-economic inequality; the elimination of extreme poverty; and the limitation of income.*
* Chances are, before the first minute of 2019 has passed, Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, has already raked in your income[xii] for the year ahead. The NGO Oxfam International, preaching in the desert on this subject for years, called once again in 2019, the governments of the world to a better distribution of wealth in the face of the sad fact[xiii] that the 2,153 billionaires that count the world share more wealth than 4.6 billion people, that is to say, 60% of the population of the planet and that, if there can be an even more obscene illustration, the twenty-six richest human beings on the planet hold as much money[xiv] as half of humanity.
To add insult to injury, this odious disparity applies equally to the ecological footprint. In September 2020, the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) and Oxfam – international published a joint report[xv] stating that between 1990 and 2015, the richest 1% (78 million people) of the
world's population were responsible for more than twice as much C02 emissions as the poorest half of humanity (3.9 billion people).
And these inequalities, far from being reduced by the principle of trickle-down wealth, as promised by the preachers of economic neo-liberalism, are increasing every year. In 2018, the wealth of all the world's billionaires increased by 12%, while the 3.9 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity saw their wealth decrease[xvi] by 11%.
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This list is obviously neither an axiom nor exhaustive...
As you can see, many of the issues and threats go far beyond the competence of states. They cannot tackle them alone. However, a legitimate global governance, and sovereign over these issues, could govern them.
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That's all for chapter 5.
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[i] World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Zoological Society of London, "Living Planet 2020 Report, Turning the Tide of Biodiversity Loss", Almond, R.E.A., Grooten M. and Petersen, T. (Eds). WWF, Gland, Switzerland.
[ii] Francisco Sánchez-Bayo, Kris A.G. Wyckhuys, "Worldwide decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers Biological Conservation", Biological Conservation,Chapter 4. Discussion, Fig. 2. annual rate of decline of the three major taxa studied and of insect biomass, Elsevier, April 2019. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320718313636#s0115
[Ibid, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Zoological Society of London, "Living Planet 2020 Report, Turning the Tide on Biodiversity Loss".
[iv] Humphreys, A.M., Govaerts, R., Ficinski, S.Z. et al. "Global dataset shows geography and life form predict modern plant extinction and rediscovery," Nature, Nature Ecology and Evolution, vol 3, 1043-1047, 2019.
[v] Lenore Newman, Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food, Toronto, ECW Press, 2019, p.15
[vi] Luis Rojas Marcos, "una tragedia silenciosa," pequelandialeon.com, September 4, 2019. https://www.pequelandialeon.com/una-tragedia-silenciosa-articulo-escrito-por-el-dr-luis-rojas-marcos-psiquiatra/
[vii] World Health Organization, "Depression," WHO, News room, Factsheet, Media Centre, 30 January 2020.https://www.who.int/fr/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/depression
[viii] Canada, Report of the Mental Health Commission of Canada, "Understanding Mental Health, Mental Illness and Their Impact in the Workplace," 2017. https://www.mentalhealthcommission.ca/sites/default/files/2018-07/Monreau_White_Paper_Report_fr.pdf
[ix] Canada, Mental Illness Foundation (Canada) Report, "Depression and Mental Illness: One of the Primary Risk Factors for Dropping Out of School!", May 4, 2010. https://www.newswire.ca/fr/news-releases/depression-et-maladies-mentales-un-des-premiers-facteurs-de-risque-dudecrochage-scolaire-539765102.html
[x] Canada, Expert Panel on the Potential Socio-economic Impact of Antimicrobial Resistance in Canada, "When Antibiotics Fail," Council of Canadian Academies, Ottawa, 2019. https://rapports-cac.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Quand-les-antibiotiques-%C3%A9chouent-4.pdf
[xi] Marine Benoit, "Online privacy, the other victim of the coronavirus," Sciences et Avenir, March 25, 2020. https://www.sciencesetavenir.fr/high-tech/reseaux-et-telecoms/la-vie-privee-en-ligne-l-autre-victime-du-covid-19_142749
[xii] Jean-François Nadeau, "En 12 secondes," Le Devoir, March 12, 2018.
[xiii] Press release, "The world's billionaires share more wealth than 4.6 billion people," Oxfam International, January 19, 2020. https://oxfam.qc.ca/inegalites-partage-richesse/
[xiv] Audrey Chabal, "Who are the 26 billionaires weighing as much as 3.8 billion people?", Forbes, January 21, 2019. https://www.forbes.fr/finance/qui-sont-les-26-milliardaires-pesant-autant-que-38-milliards-de-personnes/?cn-reloaded=1
[xv] Sivan Kartha, Eric Kemp-Benedict, Emily Ghosh, Anisha Nazareth and Tim Gore, "The carbon inequality era, an assessment of the global distribution of consumption emissions among individuals from 1990 to 2015 and beyond," Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) and Oxfam international Joint Research Report, September 2020.
https://oxfam.app.box.com/s/q36ywh37ppur8gl276zwe8goqr6utkej/file/720283965204
[xvi] Press Release, "Last year, the wealth of billionaires grew every day by $2.5 billion while the wealth of the poorest half of humanity only decreased," OXFAM international, January 21, 2019. https://www.oxfam.org/fr/salle-de-presse/communiques/2019-01-18/lannee-derniere-la-fortune-des-milliardaires-augmente-tous