The seriousness of the multiple crises facing our planet is beginning to sink in for a growing number of people around our planet as more and more voices are raised concerning our perilous human situation. My previous books, going back to Millennium Dawn: The Philosophy of Planetary Crisis and Human Liberation that appeared in 2005, have been part of this chorus. My latest book, however, appearing this summer, goes deeply into the multiple dimensions of our planetary climate crisis and illuminates not only the serious of our situation but articulates a concrete path by which we can address the crisis. In this it is quite unique among all the literature that has addressed our climate crisis thus far.
The world lacks a coherent and integrated global system for addressing its lethal problems that is backed by the authority of democratic government and the enforceable rule of law. The Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has been moved to 100 seconds before midnight, emphasizing that we are closer to doomsday than even at the height of the Cold War. The Atomic Scientists cite two main reasons for this sense of apocalypse: the lack of action addressing the climate crisis and the continued upgrade and investment in nuclear weapons.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its 2019 report raises the same alarm expressed by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Globally, measures taken thus far to address climate change remain wholly inadequate to the task and the threat increases by magnitudes of pending calamity with each passing year.Meanwhile the sovereign militarized nationstates of the world continue to spend 1.8 trillion US dollars per year on weapons and war-making capacities. The threat to the future of humanity is palpable and undeniable.
The United Nations organization, in its 75 years of operation, has utterly failed to end wars. Tens of millions have died as a consequence of wars during this period. It has failed to establish effective climate change mitigation measures. It has failed to address the vast disparity between the rich and poor, primarily the global south versus the global north, a disparity in which 1% of the Earth’s population controls 50% of the world’s wealth. As Ervin Laszlo told me in a recent interview I did with him: he worked for the UN for seven years and has direct experience that the United Nations is anything but “united.”
The UN has failed to stop or even slow down the population explosion despite having held several major conferences on this issue beginning as early as 1954 in Rome, then in 1965 in Belgrade, 1974 in Bucharest, 1984 in Mexico City, and 1994 in Cairo. Our planet continues to add some 80 million to its population each year with no significant mitigation measures in place. Climate scientists and activists with one voice declare that we are in “overshoot” having likely exceeded the carrying capacity of the Earth decades ago.
The most glaring reasons for the inability of our planet to deal with the threat of human extinction involve a global economic system predicated both on endless growth and the private accumulation of extraordinary wealth for a few as well as a fragmented world of nearly 200 militarized sovereign nation-states in competition with one another. More and more groups and persons worldwide are calling for a global “borderless democracy” or for “unity Earth,” because the realization is dawning widely that unless our planet is united we will not be able to achieve peace, nor environmental sustainability, nor economic justice, nor universal protection of human dignity and human rights.
The Constitution for the Federation of Earth is an extraordinary document carefully designed to address all these threats to human existence and to achieve these salutary goals. It was written by hundreds of world citizens and international lawyers working together over 23 years from 1968 to 1991. Study of the Earth Constitution reveals a brilliant design premised on ensuring unity in diversity in all agencies and legislative bodies of the democratic Earth Federation government. It ensures protection of the diversity of nations, cultures, and persons worldwide while establishing an effective system inclusive of the global unity and authority of the World Parliament to rapidly and effectively address our planetary crises.
The Constitution was created with the understanding that the multiple crises that the world is facing require an integrative and authoritative solution. Many experts and agencies, including the UN Sustainable Development Goals document, recognize that these crises are interdependent and interrelated and require a comprehensive planetary solution. It is this synergistic solution that cannot be forthcoming from a world economic system premised on endless competition for the private accumulation of wealth of the few. Nor can it be forthcoming from an anarchic system of militarized sovereign nation-states recognizing no effective laws above themselves. And the UN is premised on both these antiquated systems.
Even a cursory reading of the Earth Constitution reveals that it is precisely directed at addressing all these problems simultaneously and synergistically—ending war and disarming the nations, protecting universal human rights, diminishing social inequality, and protecting our planetary ecosystem. The Earth Constitution also contains unique system features that prevent any slide toward tyranny or misuse of the system for private gain. Among the three houses of the World Parliament are included not only the House of Peoples and the House of Nations but a House of Counsellors staffed by people recognized for their wisdom and expertise in addressing global problems.
The civilian World Police are charged with progressively reducing the use of violence in the apprehension of suspects and the World Ombudsmus is charged with being a watchdog on the government as a whole to ensure that there is no abuse of power or violations of human rights. Article 18 of the Earth Constitution mandates that constitutional review takes place quickly and regularly after the initial World Parliament has entered it first operative stage. In this way, if there are weaknesses or changes needed to make the Earth Constitution more democratic or more effective in addressing our planetary crises, these changes can be made with relative ease.
The Earth Constitution was declared finished and ready for ratification at the Fourth Constitutive Assembly in Troia, Portugal in 1991. Given the effective design of the document, along with its edibility allowing modification of the system as needed, it should be clear that the time for entertaining changes is after ratification, not an endless debate about details of wording prior to ratification during which time the crisis situation on our precious planet continues to cascade toward the abyss. Upon ratification, the Earth Constitution should replace the UN Charter with all the valuable agencies of the United Nations integrated into the Earth Federation government, giving these agencies for the first time the authority and resources to do their jobs.
There are many excellent organizations worldwide working on human rights, sustainable agriculture, poverty alleviation, ending war, on reducing CO2 emissions, etc. But what is lacking is the required united global global effort backed by enforceable, democratically legislated laws. This new book, Design for a Living Planet: The Earth Constitution Solution, investigates these issues in substantial detail. It also explores the multiple ways that the Constitution addresses our planetary climate crisis.
The most useful and efficient action any of us can take is to work for the ratification of the Constitution for the Federation of Earth. It is only when humanity is truly united in this way that we will be able to effectively transform our planet to one of peace, justice, and sustainability. The Earth Constitution represents our most promising option for making our planet a decent home for all its citizens and for reversing our present freefall toward inevitable doom.
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Author Contact: Glen T. Martin, Ph.D., Executive Director of the Earth Constitution Institute
Author Email: GMartin@EarthConstitution.world ECI
Website: EarthConstitution.world
Publisher: Peace Pentagon Press (an imprint of Oracle Institute Press)
Book Webpage: TheOracleInstitute.org/Design-Living-Planet
Publisher Contact: Rev. Laura George, J.D. Laura@TheOracleInstitute.org
Promotion Contact: Ariel Patricia Cagganello Ariel@SacredStories.com
Glen T. Martin, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Radford University in Virginia, USA. He is President of the International Philosophers for Peace, Executive Director of the Earth Constitution Institute (ECI), and President of the World Constitution and Parliament Association (WCPA). ECI and WCPA are cooperating worldwide organizations that sponsor the Constitution for the Federation of Earth and organize sessions of the Provisional World Parliament. Dr. Martin travels and lectures worldwide on behalf of the Earth Constitution and the philosophical foundations of emerging world law and the development of a binding world court system.
Dr. Martin was in college during the 1960s when the U.S. government was drafting young people into its imperial military machine. He declared himself a conscientious objector and refused to enter any organization dedicated to war, which he considers to be just another form of murder. Dr. Martin has long been a critic and resister of the dominant world system of militarized sovereign nation-states integrated with growth-based, exploitive capitalism. Instead, Dr. Martin has philosophically developed an alternative world federalist vision of planetary peace and justice based on the Earth Constitution.
Dr. Martin has received several international peace awards, including the Gusi Peace Prize International in Manila, Philippines (2013). He has published hundreds of articles concerning freedom, peace, justice, human rights, and sustainability in popular as well as academic venues, and he is the author or editor of a dozen books. For more information about Dr. Martin: www.OneWorldRenaissance.com
