By Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
A group of radical authoritarian leaning scientists and experts with the Earth System Governance Research Alliance published an article in the March 16th online edition of ‘Science’ Magazine that advocates a bigger meaner stronger global government. The scientists, who say they are concerned with global warming wrote, “Human societies must now change course and steer away from critical tipping points in the Earth system that might lead to rapid and irreversible change. This requires fundamental reorientation and restructuring of national and international institutions toward more effective Earth system governance and planetary stewardship.”
Echoing those elitist calls for a global governmental authority with dictatorship levels of power, Gary Stix writing in ‘Scientific American’ online said, “To be effective, a new set of institutions would have to be imbued with heavy-handed, transnational enforcement powers. There would have to be consideration of some way of embracing head-in-the-cloud answers to social problems that are usually dismissed by policymakers as academic naivete.”
The radical website www.earthsystemgovernance.org writes: “it is apparent that the institutions, organizations, and governance mechanisms by which humans currently regulate their relationship with the natural environment and global biochemical systems are not only insufficient. They are also poorly understood. More fundamental and applied research on the global, national and local institutions and governance systems is therefore needed.”
The authors continue, “The problem of the architecture of earth system governance is a key concern of current negotiations and political processes that are often faced with ‘treaty congestion’ and complex interlinkages between different institutions, for instance between multilateral environmental agreements and the World Trade Organization. ‘Fragmented’ governance architectures are also an increasing problem for decision-makers, particularly in climate policy. A related concern is the reform of the United Nations, for example with a view to the debate on a United Nations Environment Organization.”
Mr. Stix said, “Would any institution be capable of instilling a permanent crisis mentality lasting decades, if not centuries? How do we create new institutions with enforcement powers way beyond the current mandate of the U.N.?” “If we are ever to cope with climate change in any fundamental way, radical solutions on the social side are where we must focus.”
The authors of the ‘Science’ article are calling for a “constitutional moment” at the upcoming 2012 U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio in June to reform world politics and government. Among their recommendations is replacing the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development with a council that reports to the U.N. General Assembly,
The ‘Earth System Governance Science Plan’ by Frank Biermann et al. writes, “Earth system governance is defined in this project as the interrelated and increasingly integrated system of formal and informal rules, rule-making systems, and actor-networks at all levels of human society (from local to global) that are set up to steer societies towards preventing, mitigating, and adapting to global and local en-vironmental change and, in particular, earth system transformation, within the normative context of sustainable development.”
Gary Stix asks in his article, “Could we ensure against a malevolent dictator who might abuse the power of such organizations?” Critics of a benevolent dictatorship would argue that a malevolent dictator is the inevitable end of all dictatorships no matter how well the intentions might have been in the beginning.
To read Gary Stix’s article in Scientific American:
To read about the climate scientists study of reinventing government, visit their website:
