Global Community needs a Commons Trust Fund to manage the Commons with the highest priorities.

We are all members of Global Community. We all have the duty to protect the rights and welfare of all species and all people. No humans have the right to encroach on the ecological space of other species and other people, or treat them with cruelty and violence. All life species, humans and cultures, have intrinsic worth. They are subjects, not objects of manipulation or ownership. No humans have the right to own other species, other people or the knowledge of other cultures through patents and other intellectual property rights. Defending biological and cultural diversity is a duty of all people. Diversity is an end in itself, a value, a source of richness both material and cultural. All members of Global Community including all humans have the right to food and water, to safe and clean habitat, to security of ecological space. These rights are natural rights, they are birthrights given by the fact of existence on Earth and are best protected through community rights and the Global Commons. They are not given by states or corporations, nor can they be extinguished by state or corporate action. No state or corporation has the right to erode or undermine these natural rights or enclose the commons that sustain all through privatisation or monopoly control.

Land here, by definition, covers all naturally occurring resources like surface land, the air, minerals deposits (gold, oil and gas etc), water, electromagnetic spectrum, the trees, fish in the seas and rivers. It is unjust to treat land as private property or a commodity. Land is not a product of labor. Land is the Global Commons. Everyone should therefore be given equal access to all natural resources.

Earth rights are ecological rights and the rights that Global Community has in protecting the global life-support systems. Earth rights are those rights that demonstrate the connection between human well-being and a sound environment. They include individuals and global communities human rights and the rights to a clean environment, and participation in development decisions. We define ecological rights as those rights of the ecosystem of the Earth beyond human purpose. They are those rights that protect and preserve the ecological heritage of the Earth, a Global Commons, for future generations. The biggest challenge for social democracy today is to articulate coherent policies based on a unifying vision for society.

For our survival as Global Community, and as a collective intelligence, we need to learn about ecological dangers we face, their causes, and how to render them harmless. We all have a strong moral obligation to protect and conserve the biodiversity of life on Earth. Local, community-based economies, are crucial for the well-being of our children, and to make global communities a reality.

The impacts of our democracy are destroying the Earth global life-support systems. Because only a few people have control over so much of the Earth, our democracy is no longer based on equal rights to the Earth and of its natural resources. This causes a fundamental threat to democracy. What has become of democracy? What has become "we the people? " To live in a world at peace and have conditions of basic justice and fairness in human interactions, our democratic values must be based on the principle of equal rights to the Earth.

We need to take a giant step forward to a new form of democracy. How the Earth should be owned is the major economic question of this time. The world should be owned not just by the people living in it but by all life on Earth.

Planet Earth is humanity's inheritance. The land, water, air, and the wonderful other bounty of natural resources were not human made. Everyone, all lifeforms, has a common right and ownership to their uses. We must recognize the rightful claim of every person to inherit an equitable portion of Earth's natural bounty. That is humanity common heritage.

Can the world become a better place to live in? Of course it can! The means of a great change are at our fingertips. With the aid of the telephone, radio, TV, computers, communications media and devices worldwide, and web sites for information and teaching, we can inspire a new global support for opinion that will enable us all to harvest Earth's bounty. Let us all act together! Let us all participate in a Global Dialogue. Let us launch a global campaign for the restoration and renewal of our planet and ourselves as one humanity. Let us promote the creative actions and the ideas that are healing and nurturing people and planet.

Global Community has proposed a new democratic mandate recognizing that land, air, oil and natural gas, minerals, all other natural resources rightly belong to global communities. The Earth is our birthright and our common heritage. What we make from our mental and physical labor can rightfully be held as individual property but the profit of the Earth should be shared by all life. The unjust and inequitable ownership of the land and of all other natural resources have caused the great majority of local-to-global conflicts and wars, and the global warming of our planet. And now our global life-support systems are under threat. Let us appreciate the commons that are truly important for all life survival.

The commons are based on the notion that just by being members of the human family, we all have rights to certain common heritages, such as the atmosphere and oceans, freshwater and genetic diversity, and culture. In most traditional societies, it was assumed that what belonged to one belonged to all. Many indigenous societies to this day cannot conceive of denying a person or a family basic access to food, air, land, water and livelihood. Many modern societies extended the same concept of universal access to the notion of a social commons, creating education, health care and social security for all members of the community. For example, since adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, governments are obliged to protect the human rights, cultural diversity and food security of their citizens.

Equitable access to natural resources is another key character of the commons. These resources are not there for the taking by private interests who can then deny them to anyone without means. The human right to land, food, water, health care and biodiversity should all be codified as Global Parliament has done by developing the Scale of Global Rights, Global Constitution, and the Global Citizens Rights, Responsibility and Accountability Act.

Historically, the commons were regulated. For examples: hunting, fishing, farming, grazing of livestock, land irrigation, community forests, etc.

In our society, the commons, which were supposed to be a vehicle for meeting everyone's basic needs in a roughly equitable way, have been used to serve a global market economy. On a cultural level, the commons include music, arts, video, television, literature, radio, media information, software, etc.

The normal workings of market economy require the appropriations of natural resources that morally or legally belong to everyone. In turn, these natural resources must be transformed to tradeable commodities. For example, the World Trade Organization, which claims to advance human development through free trade, is essentially a system for seizing non-market natural resources from communities, dispossessing people and exploiting fragile ecosystems with the full approval of international and domestic law. It is so bad that businesses are able to sue government if not allowed to do as they wish.

For economic reasons, society has privatized lifeforms, replaced biodiverse lands with crop monocultures, allowed businesses to use groundwater supplies to make bottled water, and exchange self-reproducing agricultural crops for sterile, proprietary seeds that must be purchased again and again. In fact, all major habitat types across the planet are substantially degraded with alarming implications for their continued capacity to support human well-being into the long-term future. And there are many instances of aggressive and competitive exploitation leading to the degradation or even collapse of marine and fresh water fisheries, grazing lands, water resources and other important commons.

We live today in an era when an increasing and demanding global human population is colliding with seriously degraded and degrading ecosystem quality, making increasingly evident and urgent the need for the moderation of human activities towards the achievement of a sustainable balance. This necessarily includes ensuring equitable access to natural resources, essential for social stability locally and globally. For example, carbon-rich emissions from anywhere in the world affect all who share this planet's climate system, and equally carbon sequestered in any one locality represents a potential benefit to everyone on Earth including future generations.

The major transition to a more sustainable world lies in the distinction between, on the one hand, the ownership of land and other key natural resources and, on the other, the many benefits that these ecosystems provide to people regardless of ownership. The old ways are no longer morally nor even economically acceptable.

Historically, the commons were bound to ownership of fields. Those who owned fields was permitted to herd their cattle on the commons. Arable farming was organized in cooperatives, and the village cooperative had the authority to manage the commons. Later, only landowners had property rights to the commons. The commons were part of an economic system that had no alternative but to be communal. Managing the commons was based on social and cultural interaction and closely connected to the cooperative's property rights to the common resources. The stronger the peasants property rights to the fields, and therefore also to the commons, the stronger their self-government.

In contrast, the concept of the commons today often refers to open-access natural resources such as oceans, land, fresh water, the atmosphere and space. They are the global life-support systems, and Sections 1, 2 and 3 on the Scale of Global Rights prioritize them as the most important commons for all life survival on our planet. Such aspirational uses of the term do not specify the actual governance types that can sustainably manage them.

High-seas fisheries can serve as an example. Limiting a fishing season to counter overfishing has a parallel in the grazing season on the commons; extending national fishing zones to 200 miles from the coast is analogous to the boundaries of a village's grazing land and the determination of who had rights to graze livestock there. The making of national quotas and individual fishermen's quotas resembles the practice of stinting on the commons. Similarly, we could consider that natural resources to be a giant commons managed as a Commons Trust Fund by some global agency such as Global Protection Agency (GPA).

Today, we describe these many societal benefits from the natural world as ecosystem services. These services are very important to survival, our enjoyment of a decent quality of life, and contributes to the wellbeing of humanity. For examples, Global Community has put forward a long list of new policies reflecting the deep interconnections between people and ecosystems, as well as leading business practices to help society step into a more sustainable and safe future with ecosystems and their many services as core considerations:

storage and cleansing of water,
production of food and fibre from fertile soils and marine waters,
regulation of air quality and flood peaks,
pollination,
recruitment of stocks of fish of commercial,
values of aesthetic,
inspiring, educational and spiritually-uplifting places,
sustainable forestry practices securing both dependable supplies into the future,
business-led natural resource stewardship include organic and other food chain certification schemes,
catchment management and providing incentives for farmers and other land users to withhold practices that degrade the quantity and/or quality of water draining from landscapes,
cash incentives for upstream land managers to maintain or revert to more sustainable practices,
markets have been created, known as paying for ecosystem services (or PES),
sequestration of carbon in forests and other land to address the increasing climate change concerns of governments and businesses,
PES markets developing for the safeguarding of biodiversity and a range of other socially-valued ecosystem services,
the library,
bike lanes
dog parks
music,
recipes,
the amazing murals,
hope,
passion,
the future,
our democracy,
monuments,
open spaces for recreation, and many other services can be added here as part of the commons.

Obviously many of these services are not as important as others. And that was the reason to research and develop the Scale of Global Rights. The Scale prioritizes all services in order of importance for all life survival on our planet and that of the next generations.

Today, we describe societal benefits from the natural world as ecosystem services. These services are very important to survival, our enjoyment of a decent quality of life, and contributes to the wellbeing of humanity.

The core concept needed by Global Community for a better tomorrow is to manage our planet, to take charge and take care of our planet with fair benefits for all. To accomplish this, four major responsibilities need to be addressed: Ecology, Earth governance and management, sovereignty and land ownership, and ethics.

Ecology
The Earth's ecological problems stem largely from our collective failure to share. It is now increasingly evident that only by sharing the world's natural resources more equitably and sustainably will we be able to address both the ecological and social crisis we face as a Global Community. All major habitat types across the planet are substantially degraded with alarming implications for their continued capacity to support human well-being into the long-term future.

So, how do we go about adapting our behaviours to manage in a sustainable way the many environmental commons upon which we rely but have consistently overlooked in decision-making at the very least since the outset of the Industrial Revolution?

A first priority is the protection and care of the environment and natural resources, including creatures large and small. We should be encouraged to think and act as an Earth manager and support an Earth care initiative. At this moment global warming is a major problem. We should seek to reduce its causes, and we can further these goals by thinking and acting as an Earth manager and by joining in the observance of one great global holiday: Life Day Celebration on May 26 of each year

Life Day Celebration on May 26 of each year

.

Earth governance and management
Global Community is this great, wide, wonderful world made of all these diverse global communities. We the Peoples, Global Community, are reaffirming faith in the fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and smalll. We the Peoples implies every individual on Earth. Earth management and good governance is now a priority and a duty of every responsible person on Earth.

Conservation, restoration, and management of the Earth resources is about asking ourselves the question of "Who owns the Earth?" The large gap between rich and poor is connected to ownership and control of the planet's land and of all other Earth natural resources. Global Community must now direct the wealth of the world towards the building of local-to-global economic democracies in order to meet the needs for food, shelter, universal healthcare, education, and employment for all. And these needs are the Global Commons that have always existed throughout humanity history. They are the primordial human rights on the Scale of Global Rights.

Earth governance gives a new meaning to the notions of territoriality, and non-intervention in a state way of life, and it is about protecting the cultural heritage of a state. Diversity of cultural and ethnic groups is an important aspect of Earth governance. Earth governance is a balance between the rights of states with rights of people, and the interests of nations with the interests of the Global Community, the human family, the global civil society. Earth governance is about the rights of states to self-determination in the global context of Global Community rather than the traditional context of a world of separate states. Although Global Community ensures state governments that it will obey the principle of non-intervention in domestic affairs, it will also stand for the rights and interests of the people within individual states in which the security of people is extensively endangered. A global consensus to that effect will be agreed upon by all Member Nations.

The major transition to a more sustainable world lies in the distinction between, on the one hand, the ownership of land and other key natural resources and, on the other, the many benefits that these ecosystems provide to people regardless of ownership. The old ways are no longer morally nor even economically acceptable.

Sovereignty and land ownership
Land here, by definition, covers all naturally occurring resources like surface land, the air, minerals deposits (gold, oil and gas etc), water, electromagnetic spectrum, the trees, fish in the seas and rivers. It is unjust to treat land as private property or a commodity. Land is not a product of labor. Everyone should therefore be given equal access to all natural resources.

Global Community concept of land ownership states that land and natural resources of the planet are a common heritage and belong equally to everyone as a birthright.

On the other hand, soveveignty is the status of a person or group of persons having supreme and independent political authority. The concept of sovereignty is related to the concept of power: power over a territory, land and water, oil and minerals, as well as life on Earth. The United Nations (UN) cannot have normal attributes of sovereignty, which has been defined around a territory and population.

With sovereignty one can speak of citizenship. Global Community Citizenship is offered to anyone who accepts the Criteria of Global Community Citizenship as a way of life. It is time now to take the oath of global community citizenship. We all belong to this greater whole, the Earth, the only known place in the universe we can call our home.

Criteria for sovereignty and land ownership

Global Community has established the criteria for sovereignty and land ownership of 'a global community of a million people'.

a global community is in place

a typical community has a population of one million people

the land and its natural resources are just enough to live a sustainable life and for a healthy living

the community governs its owns affairs as per the Scale of Global Rights, Global Law, Global Constitution, and the protection of the environment and of the global life-support systems

a symbiotical relationship exists between the citizens and Global Community

a democracy based on the fact that land, the air, water, oil, minerals, and all other natural resources within the community rightly belongs to the community along with Global Community, and that the Earth is the birthright of all life

Earth management and taxation of all Earth natural resources

The definition of sovereignty and the Criteria help in understanding Canada's position in the Artic. Sovereignty implies control, authority over a territory. The concept of state sovereignty is embedded in international law. Traditionally, this definition reflects a state’s right to jurisdictional control, territorial integrity, and non-interference by outside states. Sovereignty implies both undisputed supremacy over the land’s inhabitants and independence from unwanted intervention by an outside authority.

However, sovereignty has also been defined in terms of state responsibility. This includes a state’s exercise of control and authority over its territory, and the perception of this control and authority by other states. Sovereignty is thus linked to the maintenance of international security and protection of the environment, the planetary ecosystems.

A very important legislation was the Global Citizens Rights, Responsibility and Accountability Act which was approved by Global Parliament, defined rights, responsibility and accountability of all global citizens. Each and everyone of us will make decisions, deal with one another, and basically conduct our actions as per the Act.

Following this thinking we see land ownership is no longer a problem. The Earth and all its natural resources belong to all the "global communities" contained therein. A village, or a city is "a global community" and owns the land around its boundaries. Along with Global Community, it has ownership of all natural resources within its boundaries.

A global symbiotical relationship is created between nations and Global Community for the good of all groups participating in the relationship and for the good of humanity, all life on Earth. The relationship allows a global equitable and peaceful development. This is the basic concept that is allowing us to reach out willing Member Nations from different parts of the world.

Ethics
Global Community ethics embrace the process of understanding what is truly important for humanity’s survival on our planet, and that the Scale of Global Rights gives Peoples the moral foundation for a better individual and community. Global Community ethical grounds are practical, real, and applicable for all women and men of good will, religious and non-religious.

One of the greatest causes of disagreement in humanity's history have been the conflicting views of different religions. And at the same time it is religion that has most effectively fostered humanitarian actions. The question is, can the obvious benefits in different religions be approved and supported without approving that part of their faith with which we differ?

Allegiance to a faith dealing with the mysteries of life: Why are we here? Is there a future life? Is there a God? often provides meaning and incentives for a virtuous life. But each person must temper their belief by recognizing any virtue they see in peoples with a different hypothesis or religious beliefs about the mysteries of life. The Golden Rule Principle, also called the Ethic of Reciprocity by theologians, says: "Dont do to others what you wouldn't want done to you." Or treat others the way you would want to be treated. The Golden Rule has a moral aspect found in each religion or faith. It could be used as a global ethic. Every faith is unanimous of saying that every individual should be treated with the same respect and dignity we all seek for ourselves. As a first step in bringing together religious leaders all around the world, the Global Community is presenting here 13 statements that unify us all in one Golden Rule

The Golden Rule principle, also called the Ethic of Reciprocity by theologians

.

Promoting an action program for Ethics of Earth

with these redemptive policies would quickly bring new attitudes of trust and hope, a change of heart worldwide.

The principle of sharing has always formed the basis of social relationships in societies across the world. We all know from personal experience that sharing is central to family and community life, and the importance of sharing is also a key component of many of the world’s religions. Given the importance of the principle of sharing in human life, it is logical to assume that it should play an important role in the way we organise economies and manage the world natural resources.

Humanity currently consumes 50 percent more natural resources than the earth can sustainably produce, which means we already require the equivalent of one and a half planets to support our consumption levels.

This calculation does not even take into account the massive growth in consumption that is widely predicted to take place over coming decades, in which the global middle class is expected to grow from under 2 billion consumers today to nearly 5 billion by 2030. Clearly, the ecological consequences of increased consumption across the world will be severe.

For too long, governments have put profit and growth before the welfare of all people and the sustainability of the biosphere. Public policy under the influence of neoliberalism has created a world economy that is structurally dependent upon unsustainable levels of production and consumption for its continued success. As mentioned above, it is the impacts of our democracy that are destroying the Earth global life-support systems, and we all have to help here.

Global Community has put forward a blueprint of the specific policies and actions governments need to take right now.

Earth is finite and, therefore, population growth, overconsumption, and economic activity must reach a limit in the very near future. Earth cannot and will not support continued population overconsumption, and economic growth. Humanity requires continual and never ending economic and population growth, in direct conflict with nature's finite resources.

Global Community has outlined a bold vision of how and why these reforms should be based firmly on the principle of sharing. Sharing the world natural resources equitably and sustainably is arguably the most pragmatic way of simultaneously addressing both the ecological and social crises we face. Let us first make a short list of the most important commons we need to take care of for life survival.

Essentially, a Commons Trust Fund would embody the principle of sharing on a global scale, and it would enable the Global Community to take collective responsibility for managing the world natural resources. And there are well defined commons which were classified as most important than others for all life survival on our planet.

We need to create a Global Ministry for the economic sharing, production and distribution of resources. We need global ministries for the most important commons.

Global Ministries are the new Global Commons :

Global Ministry of Essential Services
Ministry of Global Resources
Ministry of Global Peace in government
Earth Environmental Governance
Earth Ministry of Health
Global Ministry of Forests
Global Ministry of Agriculture, Food Production and Distribution
Global Civilization Ministry of Peace and Disarmament
Ministry of Intergovernmental Affairs: Global Government of Africa
Global Ministry of Water Resources Protection
Global Environment Ministry

The commons are the cultural and natural resources accessible to everyone for the benefits of all. These resources are held in common and not to be owned privately. The most important commons for all life on our planet are certainly the global life-support systems without which noone could survive on our planet.

The global life-support systems are the Commons with the highest priorities.

There are many related aspects of the global life-support systems:

climate change
global warming
Oxygen supplies
Ozone depletion
wastes of all kind including nuclear and release of radiation; chemical pollution
primordial global rights deterioration
species of the fauna and flora becoming extinct
losses of forest cover and of biological diversity
the capacity for photosynthesis
the water cycle and fresh water use
phosphorus and nitrogen cycles
food production systems
genetic resources
change in land use and lost of agricultural soils
global ocean acidification

The Scale of Global Rights prioritizes the Commons to save all life on Earth.

The Scale of Global Rights contains six (6) sections. Section 1 has more importance than all other sections below, and so on. Concerning Sections 1, 2, and 3, it shall be Global Community highest priority to guarantee these rights to Member Nations and to have proper legislation and implement and enforce Global Law. Concerning Sections 4, 5, and 6, it shall be the aim of Global Community to secure these other rights for all global citizens but without immediate guarantee of universal achievement and enforcement. These rights are defined as Directive Principles, obligating Global Community to pursue every reasonable means for universal realization and implementation.

Sections 1, 2 and 3 on the Scale of Global Rights defines the Commons with the highest priorities.

Section 1. Ecological rights, and the protection of the global life-support systems

Section 2. Primordial human rights:

safety and security
have shelter
‘clean’ energy
a ‘clean’ and healthy environment
drink fresh water
breath clean air
eat a balance diet
basic clothing
universal health care and education
employment for all

Section 3. global rights of future generations to have their life-support systems protected and primordial human rights taken care of today.

As shown in the above global life-support systems listing and also in the Scale of Global Rights, the most important commons that has been successful for billions of years is the biosphere. Nature has been and is still today the most important commons and society needs to build an economy of the commons that makes democracy based on the fact that land, air, water, oil & gas, minerals, space, the electromagnetic spectrum, and all other natural resources rightly belong to Global Community as a birthright, and they are for sharing as per the Scale of Global Rights.

With natural resources held in a Commons Trust Fund for all, it would be much easier to establish a global sharing economy, which is to equalise global consumption levels so that world population can flourish within ecological limits. To achieve this, over-consuming countries need to significantly reduce their natural resource use, while developing countries must be able to increase theirs until a convergence in global per capita consumption levels is eventually reached.

While many people understand that population growth must cease if humanity is to survive, no action has been taken on a world-wide basis which will insure that population growth is reduced to a minimum. Earth cannot and will not wait even twenty years before the horrible destruction of humanity commences. Global Community is declaring a moratorium on world population, the fertility rate and immigration applications all over the world, on all applications for immigration, until applicants from any religious or cultural background have satisfied completely Global Community standard for a population fertility rate of 1.3 children per family. The problem with world overpopulation is everybody’s problem. Until tangible progress is made no immigrants should be accepted. That is Global Law.

Overpopulation is a form of population warfare. It is the use of a very high fertility rate to conquer a nation, and that could mean as many as or more than 2.1 children per family. It is a form of cultural and/or religious aggression and invasion by having a much too high number of new born babies. For instance, there has been a rapid increase in population among Muslims to the extent that in 20 years all of Europe and North America are expected to be mostly Islamic. The influx of Latino immigration into the western states of the USA will also have the effect of a population warfare.

Now, obviously what immigration does is to infringe into the most important rights on the Scale of Global Rights: Sections 1, 2, and 3. It amounts at creating and stressing the world overpopulation problem which is way far more destructive than conducting military warfare. Global Community condemns all types of warfare we see in the world today: military, economic and population. Surely the rights to protect the existence of all life on our planet are more important than cultural and religious rights. Sections 1, 2 and 3 on the Scale of Global Rights are certainly more important than Section 6.

No one can feed, educate, and take care of a family with a large number of children. Simply said: if you cannot feed a human family of too many members, dont do it, it is better to refrain from making children. Think of the world population today and in the coming decades, as a family with already far too many members. We all know world population on our planet as over reach its safe and secure capacity. Our human family is breaking down, suffering, crying, hungry, dying, tortured, and in great danger of extinction. Our human family is out of control, abused, taken advantage of by the 1% of its members, and by promoting democracy and human rights destructively.

To reduce consumption levels in industrialised nations, natural resource management would need to be at the forefront of policymaking, and economic growth based on unlimited consumption can no longer be the goal of government policy. Much would also need to be done to let go the culture of consumerism; and private and public investments must be shifted to building and sustaining a low-carbon infrastructure.

After having established a Commons Trust Fund, reduced world population and global consumption, natural resources would be accessible to people in all nations, all global communities, consumed within planetary limits and preserved for future generations.

Perhaps an example on how to apply the Commons and making use of the Commons Trust Fund is realizing what is happening today in the Artic and doing something about it.

The astonishing beauty of the Artic is itself a natural resource. Natural resources must be protected. Glaciers are made of the purest drinking waters on Earth. There is also a vast array of different life-form communities such as the polar bears, Arctic foxes, seals, beluga whales, northern fulmars, and those communities of organisms that inhabit the sea floor like brittle stars, worms, zooplankton, microalgae, bivalves and some of the lesser known sea spiders. Everyone of those communities have an Earth right of ownership of the North and of all its natural resources. It is their birthright. They dont express themselves in English, but we understand them. Human beings have a moral obligation to protect and conserve the biodiversity of life on Earth which is why Global Community has created a biodiversity zone in the North by way of Earth rights and taxation of natural resources. The Commons Trust Fund would certainly be appropriate in protecting life in all its forms in the Artic and everywhere else in the world.

The important issue of climate change is causing conflicts over the Artic region to become a global problem requiring all Peoples on Earth to participate in the debate, and to come up with an action plan to save all life on Earth. The risks deriving from the warming-up of the earth can very well be illustrated with data on the situation in the Arctic. If the whole ice sheet covering Greenland today were to melt, this would result in a 7 meter rise in sea levels worldwide. Greenland glaciers for instance have accelerated the speed at which they flow towards the sea along the country's coast. The Arctic ice sheet has lost a reported 15 percent of its surface over the last thirty years, and 40 percent of its thickness. Both indigenous hunters and other lifeforms which depend on the ice sheet for their habitat suffer in consequence. Considered to be the symbol of the Arctic, the ice bear is threatened with extinction in the short term.

Another way Arctic warming could have worldwide consequences is through its influence on permafrost. Permanently frozen soils worldwide contain 1400-1700 Gigatons of carbon, about four times more than all the carbon emitted by human activity in modern times. A 2008 study found that a period of abrupt sea-ice loss could lead to rapid soil thaw that would result to an annual carbon emissions which could amount to 15-35 percent of today’s yearly emissions from human activities.

An even more critical source of greenhouse gases is the methane in the seabed of the Arctic Ocean. These so-called clathrates contain an estimated 1400 Gigatons of methane, a more potent though shorter-lived greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Methane clathrate, a form of water ice that contains a large amount of methane within its crystal structure, remains stable under a combination of high pressure and low temperature. At a depth of 50 meters or less the East Siberian Arctic Shelf contains the shallowest methane clathrate deposits, and is thus most vulnerable to rising water temperatures. Current methane concentrations in the Arctic already average about 1.90 parts per million, the highest in 400,000 years.

Beside the global warming of the planet, there is another factor that contributes to warming of the waters in the Arctic, and it is the increase in discharge rates from melting glaciers. This runoff is much warmer than the Arctic Ocean water. The net result is a slight warming of the Arctic Ocean waters and a dilution of salinity.

Global climate change is rapidly advancing, melting glaciers, eroding soil, causing increasingly wild storms, and displacing millions from rural communities to live in desperate poverty in urban slums. Almost every human victim lives in the global South, in communities not responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. The atmosphere has already warmed up almost a full degree in the last several decades.

Unlimited growth in society assumes unlimited natural resources, and this is the reason of the crisis. In order to feed the increasing demands of our consumer based system, society has seen Nature as a great resource for our personal convenience and profit, not as a living ecosystem from which all life came from. So we have built our economic and development policies assuming either that Nature would never fail to provide or that, where it does fail, technology will save the day.

What happens in the Artic will also affect us all. The rapid disintegration and melting of Arctic icebergs, glaciers, and sea ice is projected to raise global sea levels, and threatening coastal cities across the world. And the melting of the Arctic permafrost and of frozen areas of the seafloor is likely to release huge amounts of methane (about 20 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas) that will be catastrophic for the planet.

In the current economic crisis almost every country and probably all the industrialized countries have taken steps to stimulate their economies without making a determination as to what level of economic activity is best for the long term survival of humankind.

Accountable government is what humanity needs. Global Community deserves nothing less. Global Parliament is what we offer. Let us build a Global Commons Trust. Let it be administered by the Global Protection Agency (GPA) of Global Community.

Every aspect of society will have to be evaluated and most likely changed. Every aspect of morality, charity, government, religion, politics, philosophy, etc. will have to be evaluated and revised in almost an instant of time. That is the problem facing humanity.

To achieve a balance of freedom and order, local communities must be given a larger responsibility for peace and care for Earth. Let towns and cities link with each other locally and across national boundaries in creating programs and in solving social and environmental problems. This will help foster the trust needed by nations to achieve lasting peace for all peoples.