ustxtxb_obs_2007_06_01_50_00019-00000_000.pdf

can the problems of the modern world be solved:’ Many great thinkers, leaders, and institutions, before and after Gandhi, have embraced that same higher moral cognition and supported a world federation in some formHarry S Truman, H. G. Wells, Albert Einstein, Churchill, Arnold Toynbee, Thor Heyerdahl, Jawaharl Nehru, Peter Ustinov, U Thant, Willy Brandt, Norman Cousins, General Hap Arnold, the Catholic Church \(Pope John XXIII, Pope John Paul II, and the Catholic Bishops Pastoral Letter the Episcopal Church \(Episcopal the Baha’i Faith. Why do we not recognize how urgent it is to immediately create an empowered, democratic federation of nations to take the global actions essential for our survival? Some disturbing statements underscore the resistance to this imperative. Former vice president Al Gore, who wrote and co-produced An Inconvenient Truth, has expressly rejected “world government” as a solution for the environmental crisis. Dr. Paul Kennedy, in his book The Parliament of Man, concludes that significant U.N. reform must come piecemeal; he rejects the urgent, comprehensive reform of the U.N. Charter that is absolutely necessary. If the world accepts the view that the U.N. cannot be immediately transformed into a structure of global governance, then we are doomed. Time will run out on humankind before we can turn the tide and build an environmentally sustainable world. I believe most people, upon serious reflection, would agree that the global reach of climate change, requiring global action enforced by global law, is obvious. Look at China’s rush to build scores of coal-fired plants that will pump out massive volumes of greenhouse gases. Or India’s rapidly increasing population and carbon emissions. Brazil is failing to prevent the rapid destruction of the Amazon rain forest \(as things are going now, 60 percent will be destroyed or severely damaged withpolluting nation of all, the United States, continues its ominous annual increases in carbon emissions. Gov . Arnold Schwarzenegger should be commended for what California is doing about carbon emissions, but what real effect will these efforts have when a vast cloud of coal emissions continues to drift on the wind from China to California? The solution to global warming is really rather simple. We need global laws placing strict, enforceable limits on all sources of carbon emissions industrial plants, automobiles, and others. These limits must be mandatory. The present voluntary system simply does not work. Government is the answer. As E.B. White wrote: “Government is the thing. Law is the thing. Not brotherhood, not international cooperation, not security councils … Where does security lie, anywaysecurity against the thief, the murderer, the footpad? In brotherly love? Not at all. It lies in government:’ The world needs to spend billions on transition costs for businesses, governments, and individuals. We must immediately undertake intensive programs to develop alternative fuels and energy, investing billions of dollars in programs rivaling in size and intensity the Apollo Project to put a man on the moon and the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb. How do we get from herea world of international anarchyto there a world justly governed by a democratized world federation? The only way to do it rapidly enough is by taking the model of the American Constitutional Convention of the 1780s and reviving it in modern form through a Charter Review Conference under Article 109 of the present U.N. Charter. The Articles of Confederation rendered by the Constitutional Congress were almost as impotent as the U.N. Charter is today. Our forefathers initially intended to “amend” the Articles of Confederation, but they had the courage to write a completely new Constitution. We now need that kind of courage on the global level. Many \(such as the World Constitution and on the U.N. and want to create a new world federation through spontaneous action. But direct action likely will not find a path to legitimacy. We need a better way. Article 109 of the U.N. Charter contains the only existing process of which we are aware to construct a global governing body. Urgency and the severity of the global situation causes us to turn to it. Article 109 requires two-thirds of the members of the General Assembly to call a Charter Review Conference; twothirds to adopt a new or comprehensively amended United Nations Charter at that Conference; and two-thirds of the member nations to ratify the amended or new Charter, as long as that twothirds includes the five nations with the single-nation veto \(U.S., Britain, France, that we will have a hard battle to complete the ratification process. But saying that the United States will never ratify a new U.N. Charter is selling the American people short. The first two steps of the process can be accomplished without the consent of the United States. With the inevitable rapid growth of People Power throughout the world supporting the Article 109 process, it is my belief that the global momentum for ratification will become so compelling that the people of the United States will apply sufficient political pressure to secure ratification. If the people will lead, the leaders will follow. There is a rising consciousness in America that there really is only one Earth, and that all of us on this planet of whatever nationality, race, culture, religion, or economic station are in this together, fighting for our planetary lives. Many Americans who have read the proposed new U.N. Charter written by One World Now \(see www.oneworld-now.com tized and empowered world federation is in the best interest of the United States, because it is in the best interests of the world. They also recognize that a new U.N. Charter will probably be much like the U.S. Constitution, with an elected legislative body \(with approbranch \(recognizing that the U.S. president has too much power, the new U.N. JUNE 1, 2007 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 19