ROW Episode 9

In this episode we consider how our cascading global challenges demand global solutions and the consequent imperative to create a World Parliament equipped with the necessary authority to meet the collective needs and challenges of the 21st Century and beyond.

Transcript

Sovaida: 0:08

Hello and welcome to Reimagining Our World, a podcast dedicated to envisioning a better world and to infusing hope that we can make the principled choices to build that world. In this episode, we consider how our cascading global problems demand global solutions and the consequent imperative for us to create a world parliament equipped with the necessary authority to meet the needs and challenges of the 21st century and beyond. It's exciting to be here with you today. Thank you for joining me. We have basically spent the last several sessions really laying the foundation of what it takes to reimagine our world, really dealing with some old ways of looking at the world, old mindsets and we've started to explore some of the habits that flow from it. I'm really excited because today I want to start to delve with you into what we can do very concretely in terms of addressing one of the habits that we have failed to put into place that the world desperately needs. We've already established that we live in a world that is extremely interconnected and interdependent and that effectively the world has become a single organism. We spent a whole session really delving into this and unpacking this particular mindset. While there are many benefits to be derived from a world that is so interdependent, when our destinies are so interlinked, there are also going to be some inevitable downsides. The biggest downside is that when you have a world that is a single organism, that has become like a human body, that body becomes prone to systemic risks. There are certain things that you can confine to a certain part of the body, certain diseases that are localized, but then you see certain systemic risks. For instance, when cancer occurs in the body, It then threatens often the whole body if it spreads, because it spreads through the lymphatic system, through the blood and through other systems that they're just recently discovering also exist I was attending a webinar just yesterday given by a functional health doctor talking about the COVID 19 virus and how this coronavirus that is causing the long hauler syndrome in a lot of people is essentially creating systemic problems in the body. It's spilling over into various systems in the body, taking over, the nervous system, the brain. It infiltrates all kinds of systems that we have, which is why we're starting to see very bizarre symptoms that initially were not associated with the respiratory stresses that the virus placed in our bodies. The same is true of the world. When we look at the world that is so interconnected, we see the systemic risks that we have become exposed to. Climate change is one of them, right? What I do here in my hometown of Washington, D. C. has an impact on somebody all the way across the world, because the environment knows no borders and pollution is pollution and global warming has a cumulative effect and affects everybody in the world. It's a universal problem. We also have the problem of nuclear proliferation that is a problem for everyone. You'll remember in one of the previous sessions I said that experts have told us that even if we had a limited nuclear war between say Pakistan and India, geographically limited and limited in duration, it would cause 10 years of no summer, cause crops to fail around the world, and would put 2 billion people in danger of dying of hunger. That is quite an impact. We cannot take it lightly. We have the systemic risks of terrorism that we have seen unfold for many years now. The global financial crises that have come and gone and escalated and every one seems to be a little worse than the previous one, like contractions when a woman is in labor. Each contraction is more intense. The contractions become more frequent. And here we also have a variety of systemic problems. Migration is another one. Genocides. So we see that we have become prone as a single humanity to many systemic risks. Now you would think that because of the collective nature of so many of our most intractable problems and the systemic nature of them, that we would need to have a collective response. They really demand a collective response. We have to be able, as an international community, to consult, to cooperate, and to act together, so create unity of vision and unity of action, which we also discussed in one of our episodes, in order to tackle these problems effectively. And yet, we are lacking precisely the kinds of collective decision making and enforcement institutions that the world so desperately needs. Our current systems of global governance, to the extent they exist at all, are extremely primitive. This is one of those old habits we have that we have to replace very quickly. To create a new habit and create a new system of global governance that is fit to meet the challenges of the 21st century and beyond, we have to start by acknowledging three things. First is that the systems we have in place, like the United Nations and other international organizations, were designed for a stage in humanity's growth when we were more immature. You'll remember that we talked about the Maturation Analysis, the fact that humanity as a collective whole has been going through stages of collective development that will result in its unification and its unity. As we approach that maturity, as we're going through the turbulent throes of adolescence, we now need to start thinking of designing new institutions of global governance in new ways, new processes for these institutions to operate that are fit for purpose for a mature humanity. We're about to get to that maturity; we're definitely not there yet. That's the first thing. Acknowledgement of where we are is really important. The second thing we need to acknowledge is that Institutions, laws, policies, ways of thinking are there to serve us. They are there to make humanity happier and to conduce to the welfare of the peoples of the world, and not for us to sacrifice ourselves to uphold a particular document or policy or institution or tradition. If traditions and policies and institutions are not working for us anymore, if their heyday has come and gone, then it's time to chuck them out and replace them with ones that do work. This again ties back into an approach that we've been talking about all along. Envision the world you want. Take stock of where you are. Accept responsibility for being where we are as a human race. And then look at the steps we need to take to bridge the gap between here and where we want to be. And recognize that we have choice, the power of choice that we also talked about, that is a gift that we can harness in order to take these steps. The third thing we have to recognize is that we have to take steps now. It's become very urgent to alleviate the tremendous suffering that humanity is going through. This suffering is not inevitable. This is something that has resulted because of very poor choices that we've made to date. We can start mitigating that suffering and reducing it by starting to make better choices. With climate change, if we continue to let climate change be the problem on the scale that it is, it's already going to cause a lot of problems, but we can start to ratchet it back and to manage it so that we can mitigate the consequences that could be absolutely horrific, could lead to scarcity of food and water, clean water on scales that we really haven't deeply thought about. Some people have, but the majority of the human race has not thought about scarcity of land and energy, all of which will inevitably lead to conflict and violence and even more suffering. We have to reduce the potential of a nuclear holocaust that can happen either because of anger or accident. We have so many nuclear arms in the world and the danger is tremendous of tripping up and letting something escalate and boil over into a nuclear war that nobody really wanted. We have to deal with human rights abuses, egregious human rights abuses that lead to killing, torture, and displacement all around the world. Pick a continent and look at the human rights abuses. They're horrific and are leading to a lot of suffering. And last but not least the pandemics that lead to the wiping out of a significant part of the human race if we're not careful, if we don't get our act together. And we're now seeing with the coronavirus, we have become complacent. But now with the new variants, we're starting to see,"Oh gosh, this problem is not going away anytime soon." And it's really forcing us to learn to work together, collaborate, cooperate, and treat each other as one. So that for instance, all members of the human race, whether in developed or developing countries have access to the vaccine, because the advantage of the part one nation can only be guaranteed by guaranteeing the advantage of the whole in a world where we are so interconnected that we're a single organism. Where does this all take us? Having acknowledged these three things, we then recognize that we have to start building institutions we need to tackle these problems. So the first institution I want to begin with is a world parliament. It is time and beyond time for us to start assiduously working towards the creation of a world parliament which has the authority to do several things. I'm going to walk through four essential things that this parliament needs to be able to do. The first is it has to have the authority to pass binding laws on nations in a certain narrow sphere of activities, so narrow areas, and that affect the collective interests of all nations and peoples. What does that look like? What sort of authority to pass binding legislation are we looking at? What I envision is, in a world that is so prone to financial crises that are global, we need a modicum of financial regulation at the global level to protect us against the types of financial crises to which we've become prone. We also, given climate change, need some body that is representative of all the peoples of the world to regulate the kinds and amounts of energy that we use to ensure that we don't continue to pollute our environment and continue to exacerbate the global warming problem that we've already caused that has led to climate change. We need rules on arms production and nuclear proliferation that are actually binding and where there's an enforcement mechanism to back them up. But for now I'm focusing on the legislative part, the passing the binding laws piece. We need certain regulations on food and water to ensure that everyone has fair access to sufficient clean water and healthful food. Some of you may ask, I'm anticipating a question that I often hear,"Doesn't the United Nations General Assembly have this authority?" Actually, it does not. One of the problems humanity faces, is that these institutions, including the UN, were created to meet the needs of a very immature humanity, and we've now moved past that stage, and we now have different needs. The UN General Assembly has no authority to pass laws that are binding on nations. It is a wonderful forum for periodic consultation and a forum to air problems and ideas for solutions, but ultimately the members of the General Assembly can only pass resolutions that essentially function as recommendations to nation states and hope that nation states take them seriously enough to act on them. Imagine if you lived in a country where your Parliament or Congress could only make recommendations to somebody to do something, and you could never pass laws on any topic because you just hope that somehow the regional bodies or the local bodies within your nation would take the recommendations of your Parliament seriously. It wouldn't fly, and we wouldn't stand for such a system. Yet we do in a global world, a world that has become essentially a single village. The second authority that such a body, a world parliament, needs to have is the authority to levy a certain amount of taxes directly on individuals. Just like I pay taxes to the District of Columbia where I live and also to the federal government of the United States, I would also pay a small amount of taxes to a global parliament and international body. Why? In order to fund its activities and its work on behalf of humanity in areas of collective interest. So again, research and development to find alternative sources of clean and renewable energy to replace the polluting fossil fuels: who's going to pay for it? We should be able to fund this work at the global level. Help communities to adapt to climate change. These poor countries, island nations, that are going underwater. They need help. This is a problem that's been created by many around the world. It's not their fault, and they need to have the help of the global community to find alternative places for them to relocate. We need be to be able to relocate refugees displaced by rising oceans that we know are going to continue to rise by 2100. And there's a lot of adaptation work that needs to be done for people who want to remain, even in countries as wealthy as the United States. All our coastlines are going to be severely decimated by rising waters caused by climate change. Dealing with famines that arise around the world. Again, this is something that should be funded by people through direct taxation by this world parliament. Bailouts. We saw how Europe struggled with the concept of bailouts. Rich countries in Europe didn't want to continually bail out countries that they thought weren't pulling their weight as much, like Greece. If everybody participated in paying taxes, everybody would have, feel a sense of investment and have a stake in this fund that would then help countries who were in dire situations and needed to be bailed out. Natural disasters like earthquakes or these bush fires that are ravaging, the Amazon or Australia or the Congo Basin Forest. These are all, these are the lungs of the world, right? Especially the Amazon and the Congo Basin Forest. We all need them to absorb the carbon dioxide that we keep spewing into the environment. We all need to have a stake and contribute to alleviating this problem. The third authority that this global institution of world parliament, I posit, needs is the sole authority to act as the trustee of the world's most important natural resources. It needs to have the exclusive power to develop, manage, and distribute critical natural resources for the benefit of humanity as a whole. Critical energy sources are one. Food and water are the others. I just listened to a very interesting webinar in which Christine Lagarde, who was the former head of the IMF and is now the head of the European Central Bank, was interviewed, and she said something so apropos and true. She said, we need to start redefining our social contract between governments and peoples. For me, that includes the social contract between individuals and a global system of government. We have to begin, by redefining what we mean by common goods. What is it that we all have a right to, essentially. I think adequate access to energy sources and to clean water and food have got to be a priority, part of the very basics that all human beings are entitled to have, regardless of where they live and whether they happen to live in a country that's water rich or has no water resources of its own or is energy rich or not. It shouldn't depend on an accident of geography. Ensuring equitable distribution of these resources will eradicate a huge number of conflicts in the world. A good fraction of the conflicts in the world are fought over access to critical resources, including energy. This is very well documented in a lot of studies. The fourth authority that this world parliament ought to have, and it's the last one I want to talk about, is the sole authority to wage war in the world. In other words, nations have to be willing to cede their right to enter into conflict with each other as a means of resolving disputes. But this world parliament will have the sole right to maintain the peace of the world using force in certain circumstances that we will talk about later. Only when the peace of the world is at stake and you basically have a cancer in the body of the world that needs to be dealt with. You don't let the cancer ravage the body. You take action and you cut it out. This world parliament also needs, linked to this idea, to have the authority to limit the amount of arms that any given nation will have to the amount that every nation needs in order to maintain internal peace, order within its borders. Beyond that, all weapons should be destroyed. These are the four authorities that I propose should exist in a world parliament. We need to move towards creating such a body. I'm going to leave a couple of other critical questions that relate to this for later episodes. Next time I want to talk about the importance of democratic representation on this body and how what one can envision this happening and to talk about some proposals that are out there in the world right now, actually, for different ways of approaching it. Then you can think about it and decide which of these you think is more viable or not. After that I want to get to the question of Is it possible, because I know that's going to be a burning question for such a body ever to come into being. How do you get nations to cede a certain amount of the sovereignty they currently have to a supranational institution, so that it can have these authorities and powers that we just talked about? That's it in terms of the thoughts I wanted to share with you today. I'd love it if you put in the comments where you're joining from. I'd love your feedback. I'm very interested in hearing what you guys think about these ideas that are being thrown out there and proposed. The ideas are also in the Alchemy of Peace, the book I've just written. But my goal is to start a dialogue to really get us all thinking about these issues. I believe this is the time when the peoples of the world all have a stake in our future, and we all need to be actively engaged in throwing ideas out, starting dialogue. Please take these ideas and share them with your friends. Either share the video or share the ideas. However you want to do it doesn't matter. The point is to have the conversations and have dialogue so that we can quickly change mindsets and habits and shift to a new reality. I will bid you all goodbye, and have a wonderful rest of the weekend, and I look forward to seeing you all next time That's all for this episode of Reimagining Our World. I'll see you back here next month. If you liked this episode, please help us to get the word out by rating us and subscribing to the program on your favorite podcast platform. This series is also available in video on the YouTube channel of the Center for Peace and Global Governance, CPGG.