There are significants benefits in the protection and conservation of rainforests. The following table shows a list of some of them.

Corporate citizen global ethics

Vision of a new economic system to replace America economic, population, military and environmental wars against our world, Earth.

Global Trade and Resources Ministry (GTandRM) proposal over time since 1985.

Business, trade and global resources: Part II (Animation).

Global Trade and Resources Ministry.

Corporate citizen global ethic.

The disappearance of populations is a prelude to species extinction. No geographically explicit estimates have been made of current population losses of major indicator taxa. Species have collectively lost over 50% of their historic range area, mostly where human activities are intensive. This implies a serious loss of ecosystem services and goods. It also signals a substantial threat to species diversity.

Energy, food, and water crises; climate disruption; declining fisheries; increasing ocean acidification; emerging diseases; and increasing antibiotic resistance are examples of serious, intertwined global-scale challenges spawned by the accelerating scale of human activity. They are outpacing the development of institutions to deal with them and their many interactive effects. The core of the problem is inducing cooperation in situations where individuals and nations will collectively gain if all cooperate, but each faces the temptation to take a free ride on the cooperation of others. The nation-state achieves cooperation by the exercise of sovereign power within its boundaries. The difficulty to date is that transnational institutions provide, at best, only partial solutions, and implementation of even these solutions can be undermined by international competition and recalcitrance.

Human impacts on the environment are intensifying, raising vexing questions of how best to allocate the limited resources available for biodiversity conservation. Which creatures and places most deserve attention? Which should we ignore, potentially accepting their extinction? The answer to this dilemma depends on one's objectives. To motivate action, conservationists often mix diverse ethical and practical objectives, hoping they will reinforce each other. But attention given to one goal may instead diminish the prospects for achieving others.

One tends to be alarmed at the popular concept of globalization because  it is based on greed. Globalization is here to stay and is a fact of life. The world has become global. Societies throughout the world are struggling to be in step with the most powerful nations. National economies and financial markets are connected through computer link-up and are interlocked. Commercial banking and business ownership has no economic or political borders. Because of the dynamic of trade in goods and services and because of the movement in capital and technology, production in different countries has become increasingly dependent on one another.

In consequence of globalization, the new economic and political distribution of power around the world has become very different then we were used to. It has become very fluid, in perpetual motion and affected by global markets. Giant new markets are forming all over the world. Competition is hardening. National economies can no longer insure or guarantee rights of possession on any property. National borders no longer mean protection, security, cultural boundaries, resources ownership, political and economic control.

International market regulations try to control or ease the effects of globalization. The effects are often devastating. With globalization comes global problems such as:

    *    unemployment in industrial nations
    *    poverty increases world-wide ~ entire countries in a state of starvation
    *    environmental degradation
    *    national interests of a country changing and becoming more trade oriented and trying to go with the wave of global trade
    *    international interests of a country take prime importance
    *    in developing countries, national debts constrict the institutions of the national state and contribute to the destruction of the economic activity which, in turn, as the effect of creating unemployment
    *    national currencies of many countries are affected by national debts and contribute in destroying social life, creating ethnic conflicts and civil wars
    *   the large corporation is becoming larger and getting more power and control falls into the hands of a few people
    *   globalization is another way of keeping control on our lives in the hands of a few people
    *   with globalization, we have no control and no say in our future and the world becomes a game played by a few people just as it has alway been through history, leading to revolutions and war
    *   with globalization there is no sense of direction and meaning, no security for the individual, just a few people getting richer and controlling us all.

The need to survive can put checks and balances  on the rampant globalization effects already raging like a virus in our world. To survive what must be re-thought? Old ideas and values, traditions, laws, ways of doing things must be re-evaluated and some left behind.

The choice is simple survival:

*    every man has the right to be able to provide for his family
*    people have the right to food
*    children have the right to be educated
*    the world has a right to clean healthy fields, streams, meadows and mountains, water and breathable air
*    resources can be helped to last indefinitely

Over ancient time to this day, morality in society made its way into our ways of doing business. So the set of behaviors that constitute Global Civilization ethic for a business evolved largely because they provided possible survival benefits to increase evolutionary success. Consequently, peoples evolved socially to express emotions, such as feelings of empathy or guilt, in response to these moral behaviors. Humans developed truly moral, altruistic instincts. When looking across cultures of geo-cultural areas and across millennia, certain virtues have prevailed in all cultures, the major ones include

wisdom, knowledge, courage, justice, love, truth, empathy, kindness, and social intelligence.

Global Civilization: Short and long term solutions to saving the world.

Earth biodiversity zone

Global warming and international trade agreements.

Global Civilization Politics and Justice Without Borders.

Global Community accomplishments in the year 2008. The Global Crisis.

The extinction crisis was caused by an economic system based on capitalism which promotes accumulation by dispossession, and ceaseless growth designed and calculated to encourage a higher yearly GDP that is destroying ecosystems the world over. The global socioeconomic system of capitalism is thus forcing us to work harder to surpass previous GDP consumption and population numbers until we have devoured everything that maintains life, ending up with a polluted, lifeless, and scorched planet. This system made it possible for 1% of people in the world, namely Transnational Corporations CEOs, and mostly global corporate America, to have as much wealth as half the world's population, with always the overriding goal for which maximal profits, and not the needs and welfare of future generations. Capitalism has institutionalized a global ignorance, in which producers and consumers cannot know or care about one another, so that the pollution and human exploitation caused in the production and transportation of goods in the world has remained invisible and opaque to consumers. The combined effects of aggressive marketing, advertising, and planned product obsolescence has meant that the consumer’s oversized footprint is largely a consequence of the global power of this 1% so, in that sense, it is perhaps more accurate to speak of corporate global ecological footprints rather than the footprints of nations or individuals. In a nutshell, capitalism is responsible for the extinction crisis and, therefore, its defenders and endorsers, mainly the CEOs of corporate America at home and overseas, including their Chief Operating Officers, Board of directors, and Chief Financial Officers, should be brought to justice.

Developed economies have been emitting most of the greenhouse gases that had caused the global warming of our planet, climate change, rising sea levels, and today's environmental and life extinction crisis. Unlimited fossil fuel exploitation and production by the developed economies mean a commitment to greenhouse gases pollution. The United States of America has been by far the worst polluter and largely responsible for the crisis in the world today.

What is going on today, the extinction crisis, is largely due to the failure of growth-based capitalism. We need to address the structural deficiencies in the existing system. To maintain a general satisfaction in a social system that’s driven and motivated with competition, endless growth is needed, but in a finite system it must end when natural resources are exhausted. However, greenhouse gases pollution produced in this economic system not only impairs life, but is causing the global warming of the planet, acidifying the oceans, and will be ending life if the system is maintained to its exhaustion. So we have now recognized that both the global environmental problem and the social justice issue associated with the crisis are linked to long histories of capitalist domination over people, other life forms, and plants. The crisis, in other words, ought to be a key issue in the fight for climate justice.

This 21st century is very crucial for humanity as it will determine our survival or not as a species and, consequently, the survival of the next generations. The Biosphere is our world, our home. The lives of all lifeforms and plants on our planet deserve protection, preservation, and care. The genomic information of plants, animals, and human beings is the common wealth of the planet, and all efforts to make use of this environmental commons must be framed around principles of equality, solidarity, environmental and climate justice. 

Global Civilization disapproves of the limitless exploitation of the natural foundations of life, the relentless destruction of the biosphere, and the militarization of the space within and above the Earth's atmosphere. Several important causes of Global Warming, Climate Change, and the extinction crisis, have given rise of an existential threat to humanity and much of Nature.  

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, developed economies have been emitting greenhouse gases (GHGs) which created global warming and today's environmental crisis, and that makes the capitalism system responsible, and we must first change it. By far, the nation that started, and still is pursuing the largest production of GHGs ever since WWII is America. And America is largely responsible for the global warming of the planet and, therefore the increase in the Earth’s surface temperature, the rising of sea level, climate change, and many other worldwide disasters. Unlimited fossil fuel exploitation means a commitment to GHG pollution over 16 times greater than the world’s present remaining Terminal Carbon Pollution Budget that must not be exceeded if we are to have a 75% chance of avoiding a catastrophic 2C temperature rise. America is to be blamed for the extinction crisis, and should pay. 

The extinction crisis is an environmental issue and also a social justice issue, one that is linked to long histories of capitalist domination over people, animals, and plants. The extinction crisis needs to be seen as a key element in contemporary struggles against accumulation by dispossession. This crisis, in other words, ought to be a key issue in the fight for climate justice. 

The 1% people have as much wealth as half the world's population, and are controlling all economies on the planet. They stand behind a capitalist model of an economic system. 

Capitalism has institutionalized a global ignorance, in which producers and consumers cannot know or care about one another, and in which the histories of all products will be lost. 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 Global Civilization. 

The combined effects of aggressive marketing, advertising, and planned product obsolescence mean that the American consumer’s oversized footprint is largely a consequence and reflection of the global power of Transnational Corporations(TNCs), corporate America. Global warming and climate change denialism requires shutting one’s eyes to obvious realities when the truth is that the Earth is warmer than it has been in 120,000 years. In that sense, it is perhaps more accurate to speak of corporate ecological footprints rather than the footprints of nations or individuals. Globalization has meant the distancing of cause and effect, source and sink, so that the pollution and human exploitation caused in the production and transport of goods has remained invisible and opaque to consumers. 

How can further troubles not come into being when a vicious globalized capitalist system is in existence for which maximal profits, not people and their needs, is always the overriding goal? The global socioeconomic system of capitalism is forcing us to work harder to surpass previous consumption and population numbers until we have devoured everything that maintains life, ending up with a polluted, lifeless, and a scorched planet. 

What is going on today is largely attributable to the failure of growth-based capitalism. We need to address the structural deficiencies in the existing system. To maintain a general satisfaction in a social system that’s driven and motivated with competition, endless growth is needed, but in a finite system it must end when resources are exhausted. However, we also have a double whammy, that of pollution which impairs life and the carbon that’s heating the biosphere and acidifying the oceans, they would end life if the system is maintained to its exhaustion. 

Economic growth (measured as Gross Domestic Product) and value are seen as the same. Meanwhile, the actual value generated outside of market capitalism – the “care economy,” social labor, eco-stewardship, digital communities and commons – are mostly ignored or considered merely personal (“values”). Today, we have a dictatorship of one kind of value as delivered by the market system, which determines for everyone how they can live and what they should believe in. 

The word “value” is useful to merchants and economists in talking about  money and markets. But it has little relevance when talking about ethical living or the human condition. 

Hence, with the dollar as world money the US gains an automatic borrowing mechanism giving it global policy autonomy denied other states. Given a current account deficit financed by savings of others in the world, US government spending on global militarization and other priorities can expand without “crowding out” private sector borrowing.

The main source of economic reliability in America was transferred over time from gold to dollars, specifically to US treasury bills. This major shift allowed the Federal Reserve to print dollars practically without limit (as seen in recent years with interests rates for borrowing money from the FED at around 0%), well aware that the demand for dollars would never cease, this also keeping alive huge sectors of private and public enterprises (such as the coal industry, fracking industry, car manufacturing, food and farming industries, and most importantly the military industry which has always giving jobs to more than half of America's population). This set a course for a global economic system based on financial instruments like derivatives and other securities instead of real, tangible goods like gold. In doing this for its own benefit, the US has created the conditions for a new financial bubble that could even bring down the entire world economy when it bursts. 

To become great again, the US parlayed the world’s largest national debt, its trade deficit, budget deficit, capital account deficit and savings rate deficit, into a position in the global driver seat through the dollar remaining global hub currency. 

Naturally, the more the dollar was used in the world, the more America had the power to spend on the military. For the US, paying a bill of 6 trillion dollars (this is the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) has been effortless, and this constitutes an unparalleled advantage over countries like China and Russia whose military spending in comparison is a fifth and a tenth respectively. 

The United States found itself in the enviable position of being able to print pieces of paper (simply IOU’s) without any gold backing and then exchange them for real goods from other nations. 

This economic arrangement has allowed America to achieve an unparalleled strategic advantage over its geopolitical opponents (initially the USSR, now Russia and China), namely, a practically unlimited dollar spending capacity even as it accumulates an astronomical public debt (over 21 trillion dollars). The destabilizing factor for the global economy has been America's ability to accumulate enormous amounts of public debt without having to worry about the consequences or even of any possible mistrust international markets may have for the dollar. Countries simply needed dollars for trade and bought US treasures to diversify their financial assets. 

What would be the shape and fundamental goals of an expansive anti-capitalist movement against extinction and for environmental justice? It would have to commence with open recognition by the developed nations of the long history of ecocide. Such an admission would lead to a consequent recognition of the biodiversity debt owed by the wealthy nations of the global North to the South. Building on the demands articulated by the climate justice movement, the anti-capitalist conservation movement must demand the repayment of this biodiversity debt. 

This proposal is based on moving towards a situation in which all nations have the same level of emissions per person (convergence) while contracting them to a level that is sustainable (contraction). A country such as the United States, which has only 5% of the global population, would be allowed no more than 5% of globally sustainable emissions. Such a move would represent a dramatic anti-imperialist shift since the US is at present responsible for 25% of carbon emissions. The powerful individuals and corporations that control nations like the US are not likely to accept such revolutionary curtailments of the wasteful system that supports them without a struggle. Already there is abundant evidence that they would sooner destroy the planet than let even a modicum of their power slip. 

Massive fossil fuel corporations such as Exxon, for example, have funded climate change denialism for the past quarter century despite abundant evidence from their own scientists that burning fossil fuels was creating unsustainable environmental conditions. Such behavior should be seen frankly for what it is: a crime against humanity. We should not expect to negotiate with such destructive entities. Their assets should be seized. Most of these assets, in the form of fossil fuel reserves, cannot be used anyway if we are to avert environmental catastrophe. What remains of these assets should be used to fund a rapid, managed reduction in carbon emissions and a transition to renewable energy generation. These steps should be part of a broader program to transform the current, unsustainable capitalist system that dominates the world into steady state societies founded on principles of equality and environmental justice. 

A legally imposed contraction of the fossil energy supply and a rapid global conversion to renewable energy, is a necessary step toward saving our world, Earth. So what should Society do to avoid the worst impacts of climate change? Capitalism is based on ceaseless compound growth that is destroying ecosystems the world over, the goal in the rich nations of the global North must be to overturn our present expansionary system by fostering de-growth . Most importantly, nations that have benefited from burning fossil fuels must radically cut their carbon emissions in order to stem the lurch towards runaway climate chaos that endangers the vast majority of current terrestrial forms of life.

Pepe Escobar, China Widens its Silk Road to the World.
Pepe Escobar, Why Washington is Terrified of Russia, China.
Pepe Escobar, The Real BRICS Bombshell.
Peter Koenig, BRICS – Potential and Future in an Emerging New World Economy.
Peter Koenig, Beijing’s “Belt and Road” Initiative, Towards an Economy of Peace?
Federico Pieraccini, Challenging the Dollar: China and Russia's Plan from Petroyuan to Gold.
RI Staff, Putin Tells Beijing Forum: The Future Belongs to Eurasia.

Global Civilization has found that people from Wall Street live a dream life.

Global Community 30th Anniversary (1985-2015) and achievements

Vision of a new economic system giving rise to an adapting, evolving, surviving, successful and hopeful world with limits.

Table of Contents.

• Global social sustainability to save all life on Earth.
• To offer the young free education and free university education as it is a fundamental human right.
• Corporate 1 % should pay for the climate crisis.
• It's time to start teaching kids about climate change.
• Transitioning to renewable energy is more cost-effective than the present system.
• What must be done to keep global temperature rise below 2C?
• Climate Change has already affected nearly every ecosystem on Earth.
• The time for direct action on climate change is now.
• To encourage sustainable ecological stewardship by reinvesting externalized costs, i.e., profits, into the preservation of resources, and transforming global resources into Commons.
• To transform a natural resource into a commons.
• An effective global resource commons.
• A growing number of both suppliers and consumers who long for the opportunity to preserve the natural resources, will be motivated to preserve the resources they use and to prevent others from continuing to externalize costs.
• The imminent collapse of industrial civilization means we’ll have to organize human communities in a much different fashion from the completely unsustainable, highly-centralized, earth-destroying, globalized system we have now: capitalism of the global 1%.
• A commons must have the capacity to self-regulate its relations with the market and to assure that significant aspects of its common wealth and social relationships remain inalienable, not for sale via market exchange. A commons must be able to develop “semi-permeable boundaries” that enable it to safely interact with markets on its own terms.
• Contemporary struggles for protection of commons appear to be strongly intertwined with ecological matters which implies that there a direct link between the commons and ecology.
• A state has very different ideas than commoners about how power, governance and accountability should be structured.  A state is also far more eager to strike tight, cozy alliances with investors, businesses and financial institutions because of its own desires to share in the benefits of markets, and particularly, tax revenues. 
• We are entering in an age of aggressive privatization and degradation of commons: from privatization of water resources, through internet surveillance, to extreme air pollution. What should be the priorities of the movements fighting for protection of the commons? What about their organizational structure?
• Why America is terrified of Russia and China? Russia and China quietly advancing their agreement to progressively replace the US dollar's reserve status with a gold-backed system.
• Beijing’s “Belt and Road” initiative, towards an economy of Peace?
• Solution to avoid the worst impacts of Climate Change.
• The relentless need of people for consumption coupled with the relentless appetite of capitalists for accumulation, is sustaining the planetary crisis, and so the battle for survival is economized and clogged. Despite technological progress, the unholy alliance between human nature and institutional structure creates a dangerous strong-minded and reckless attitude that diminishes prospects for a livable future.
• A legally imposed contraction of the fossil energy supply and a rapid global conversion to renewable energy.
• A united Iran, Russia and China are changing the world for the better. Iran, Russia and China have fully understood that union and cooperation are the only means for mutual reinforcement. The need to fight a common problem, represented by a growing American influence in domestic affairs, has forced Tehran, Beijing and Moscow to resolve their differences and embrace a unified strategy in the common interest of defending their sovereignty.
• Economic integration.
• Beyond state capitalism: the commons economy in our lifetimes. Because our forbears did not account for the biophysical flow of material resources from the environment through the production process and back into the environment, the real worth of natural resources and social labor is not factored into the economy. It is this centralized, hierarchical model that has led to the degradation and devaluation of our commons.
• Requirements for ensuring a socially just, economically secure and ecologically stable global environment.
• Climate Change is an environmental issue and also a human rights issue.
• To Save the planet, businesses and investors must be a part of the solution.
• The assumption of unchecked exponential growth makes no sense. Production facilities would have to be built for the necessary solar panel and wind turbines.
• Our current economic systems have become addicted to “growth at all costs”, as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP). They assume that GDP growth is synonymous with increasing wellbeing and prosperity. However this approach has led to growing inequality, an escalating climate crisis, and the depletion of natural and social capital. We are no longer generating genuine progress. Our approach to economics and development needs fundamental transformation.
• BRICS, the potential and future in an emerging new world economy.
• Trade between Brics and the dollar.
• Brics development bank vs World Bank.
• Challenging the Dollar: China and Russia's Plan from Petroyuan to Gold.
• The reason why the United States has been able to fuel this global demand for dollars is linked to the need for other countries to own dollars in order to be able to buy oil and other goods. It may seem unbelievable, but practically all countries until a few years ago used US dollars to trade amongst each other, even countries that were anti-American and against US imperialist policies.
• This economic arrangement has allowed Washington to achieve an unparalleled strategic advantage over its geopolitical opponents (initially the USSR, now Russia and China), namely, a practically unlimited dollar spending capacity even as it accumulates an astronomical public debt (over 21 trillion dollars). The destabilizing factor for the global economy has been Washington's ability to accumulate enormous amounts of public debt without having to worry about the consequences or even of any possible mistrust international markets may have for the dollar. Countries simply needed dollars for trade and bought US treasures to diversify their financial assets.
• In recent years, it has become clear to many nations opposing Washington that the only way to adequately contain the fallout from the collapsing US empire is to progressively abandon the dollar. This serves to limit Washington’s capacity for military spending by creating the necessary alternative tools in the financial and economic realms that will eliminate Washington's dominance. This is essential in the Russo-Sino-Iranian strategy to unite Eurasia and thereby render the US irrelevant. De-dollarization for Beijing, Moscow and Tehran has become a strategic priority. Eliminating the unlimited spending capacity of the FED and the American economy means limiting US imperialist expansion and diminishing globald estabilization. Without the usual US military power to strengthen and impose the use of US dollars, China, Russia and Iran have paved the way for important shifts in the global order.
• For China, Iran and Russia, as well as other countries, de-dollarizationhas become a pressing issue. The number of countries that are beginning to see the benefits of a decentralized system, as opposed to the US dollar system, is increasing. Iran and India, but also Iran and Russia, have often traded hydrocarbons in exchange for primary goods, thereby bypassing American sanctions.
• The climate crisis and economic policy choices.
• To grow the economy and reduce carbon emissions at the same time can be done with various proponents of degrowth not denying that it is possible to increase the efficiency with which energy and materials are used in the economy. They do not deny that the amount of carbon emitted per unit of output can be decreased.
• An organised agency can be found with the political will and power to set an absolute ceiling on the amount of carbon based fuels that are allowed into the economy.
• A policy that would lead to a very dramatic process of “degrowth” because production is dependent on energy. With fossil energy availability radically reduced by a cap that really bites, the amount of production in the economy would be driven downwards.
• The Earth’s atmosphere is a Nature's resource that ought to be managed as a global commons.
• Why the Extinction Crisis Isn't Just About the Environment, but Social Justice. An anti-capitalist movement against extinction must be framed in terms of a refusal to turn land, people, flora, and fauna into commodities. The genomic information of plants, animals, and human beings is the common wealth of  the planet, and all efforts to make use of this environmental commons must be framed around principles of equality, solidarity, and environmental and climate justice.
• The capital for a guaranteed income program for biodiversity hotspots.
• Economic growth (measured as Gross Domestic Product) and value are seen as the same. Meanwhile, the actual value generated outside of market capitalism – the “care economy,” social labor, eco-stewardship, digital communities and commons – are mostly ignored or considered merely personal (“values”).  These types of “value” are seen as extraneous to “the economy.” My colleagues and I wondered if it would be possible to develop a post-capitalist, commons-friendly theory of value that could begin to represent and defend these other types of value.
• Cities need to begin making preparations for the incoming tides, and many coastal towns, both in the U.S. and around the world.
• The global socioeconomic system of capitalism, is forcing us to work harder to surpass previous consumption and population numbers until we have devoured everything that maintains life, ending up with a polluted, lifeless, and a scorched planet.

Solution to avoid the worst impacts of Climate Change.

The warning suggests five steps needed immediately. That was a generation ago. They can still help prevent the worst impacts:

1) “We must bring environmentally damaging activities under control to restore and protect the integrity of the earth’s systems we depend on.” It specifically mentions reducing greenhouse gas emissions and air and water pollution. It also highlights the need to address deforestation, degradation and loss of agricultural soils and extinction of plant and animal species.

2) “We must manage resources crucial to human welfare more effectively.” This one is obvious. Finite resources must be exploited much more efficiently or we’ll run out.

3) “We must stabilize population. This will be possible only if all nations recognize that it requires improved social and economic conditions, and the adoption of effective, voluntary family planning.”

4) “We must reduce and eventually eliminate poverty.”

5) “We must ensure sexual equality, and guarantee women control over their own reproductive decisions.”

The warning recognizes that we in the developed world are responsible for most global pollution and therefore must greatly reduce overconsumption while providing technical and financial aid to developing countries. This is not altruism but self-interest, because all of us share the same biosphere. Developing nations must realize environmental degradation is the greatest threat to their future, while rich nations must help them follow a different development path. The most urgent suggestion is to develop a new ethic that encompasses our responsibility to ourselves and nature and that recognizes our dependence on Earth and its natural systems for all we need.  

The relentless need of people for consumption coupled with the relentless appetite of capitalists for accumulation, is sustaining the planetary crisis, and so the battle for survival is economized and clogged. Despite technological progress, the unholy alliance between human nature and institutional structure creates a dangerous strong-minded and reckless attitude that diminishes prospects for a livable future.

To avoid ecological destruction, prosperity must be separated from economic growth. Endless economic growth endangers our future thus the need to envision a post-growth economy. If endless growth is essential to prosperity and, at the same time, leads to ecological destruction, what should we do? The structural affinity for growth impedes our ability to think clearly about our situation. Growth drives both prosperity and erodes the very preconditions for its sustainability. Within the actual measurement and calculation of economic growth, the real GDP, economic prosperity, and the annual budget, there is a contradiction between relentless expansion of income and throughput, on one hand, and ecological survival, on the other. The actual need for global growth is directly seen as a survival premise to the global capitalist system. Today the fear of a post-growth economy is totally inconceivable. People are told that without growth job creation will falter, leading to high unemployment and social instability, and that is a formula for ending the career of any politician. The complex relationship between growth, jobs, and survival is connected by labor productivity and technological advances. Politicians are mentally locked into a growth-jobs-prosperity process, a mindset which itself is a premise of the modern capitalism system. In order to get beyond this falsehood, we need to understand and debate the fundamental assumptions guiding modern capitalist societies. Many aspects need debating. For instance, we need to question the inequalities between the very rich and the poor that capitalism creates. Without a fundamental change in our ways the poor will still be poor, and the government will have no money to spend. Capitalism is sacrosanct in our ways, and we believe that it is the best way to achieve growth. It is a sociological phenomenon as much as an economic one. As we are educated to believe, there are no limits to growth, because there are no limits to human ingenuity and creativity. We associate the solution to the environmental impacts of unlimited growth to technoligical advances, hoping technology will have a way to save us all. But technological solutions will not be sufficient to save the world. Nothing positive can be accomplished in a society in which the entrenched forces of free market capitalism and the disregard for sustainable solutions of dominant institutions are committed to obstructing the change required. The relentless need of people for consumption coupled with the relentless appetite of capitalists for accumulation, is sustaining the planetary crisis, and so the battle for survival is economized and clogged. Despite technological progress, the unholy alliance between human nature and institutional structure creates a dangerous strong-minded and reckless attitude that diminishes prospects for a livable future.

The world needs an economy in which business provides outputs that enable people to flourish without destroying ecosystems; where work offers respect, motivation, and fulfillment to all; where investment is prudential in terms of securing long-term prosperity for all humanity; and where systems of borrowing, lending, and creating money are firmly rooted in long-term social value creation rather than in trading and speculation. The building blocks of a new economy are within reach. While current trends may well be cause for despair, history is replete with structural changes that redefine economic relations, for better or for worse. We need to question the fundamental assumptions of an economic system that is patently dysfunctional. What is going on today is largely attributable to the failure of growth-based capitalism. We need to address the structural deficiencies in the existing system. We still struggle to open up debates and minds to the nature of the system, to question the political influences seeking to turbo-charge a failed capitalism that continues to spawn growing inequality. Global Dialogue 2019 in fostering a post-growth dialogue, a societal transformation rooted in well-being, solidarity, and ecological resilience.

A legally imposed contraction of the fossil energy supply and a rapid global conversion to renewable energy.

With the response to the climate emergency following two necessary tracks, a legally imposed contraction of the fossil energy supply and a rapid global conversion to renewable energy, the economic onus will inevitably fall on our 33 percenters. First, there is the initial conversion to green energy capacity and infrastructure, the costs of which have been optimistically estimated at $15 trillion for the United States and $100 trillion globally (and the latter will require a large U.S. contribution.) The conversion has to happen over years rather than decades and will have to be heavily subsidized, with the money coming from taxation of higher incomes and slashing of military appropriations and other wasteful spending. And it will have to be regulated so that it provides plenty of employment but no profiteering. Meanwhile, the tightening of fossil-fuel availability and the consequent cutbacks in production will cut deeply into the profits of industries not involved in green conversion. Stock prices of companies not working on the conversion will fall. Owners, investors, and upper managers, the great majority of whom belong to the 33 percent, will take a big hit from all of the above economic forces. And if the economy stagnates or if shortages and inflation strike, then price controls, subsidies, and other assistance will have to be directed at vulnerable households and regions. That will require even greater shifts of income and wealth from the 33 to the 67 percent. Furthermore, the top one-third are not a homogeneous group. Most probably think of themselves as middle class, while up there at the high end are found those seven-, eight- and nine-figure incomes.

For purposes of funding the transition, the fattest target will be the infamous 1 percent at the peak of the pyramid. Nevertheless, rich as they are, all of the 1-percenters roped together wouldn’t have enough income to fund and sustain such a conversion. Those 1.2 million households at the summit are now bringing in about $1.8 trillion a year, Uncle Sam is already raking $600 billion of that back in taxes, and what’s left will dwindle rapidly in a climate-ready economy. Under a climate emergency, the 1 percent’s brobdingnagian wealth can be mostly taxed away, and the proceeds can be put to much higher uses; even so, a windfall of that size won’t be enough to spare the other 32 percent from feeling the pain.

But put the 1 percent and the 32 percent together and now we have a population of close to 100 million people, numerous and affluent enough to shoulder the economic burden of the climate emergency. Who are these 33 percenters? Currently, they are households with incomes that exceed about  $90,000 per year. Together, this one-third of U.S. households receives two-thirds of the U.S. population’s total income. The 33 percent own 94 percent of stocks by value. Their incomes are higher now than before the Great Recession hit in 2007, while the other 67 percent’s incomes are still lower. They have an average household net worth of approximately $700,000, in contrast to another 40 percent of households whose average net worth is negative, at -$22,000. The U.S. 33 percent are the global 4 percent, with higher incomes than 96 percent of the world’s people. And 33 percent doesn’t add up to 33 for everyone. Only 18 percent of Hispanic and 15 percent of black households are members of the American top third. Affluence versus survival An economy in which production is aimed at protecting the Earth and meeting human needs rather than maximizing profit could make long strides toward eliminating both great wealth and deep poverty. And, research shows, economic and ecological fairness form a positive feedback loop: if climate mobilization helps shrink inequality, it will drive greenhouse emissions even lower.

Increases in inequality of wealth and income are consistently linked with higher emissions. In explaining this, researchers note that the affluent have the most to gain from climate-disrupting activities and at the same time are able to shield themselves from the worst impacts of climate disruption. Then there is the longstanding observation that the opulent lifestyles of the wealthier classes influence the less wealthy, driving wasteful production and consumption at all income levels. To increase efficiency, that is, according to the economist’s definition: the dollar value of gross domestic product generated per ton of fossil carbon emitted. But that mathematically rigged metric is useless to anyone concerned about climate justice. The problem with inequality is not just that too many people are poor; it’s also that too many are rich, and the rich are too rich. The concentration of income and wealth into fewer and fewer hands (and even put the word "capital" in the title of his book), he did not adequately link increasing inequality to the gross imbalances of power that exist in a mature capitalist society, the imbalances between those for whom wages and salaries are the means of subsistence and those to whom they are an expense to be minimized. Foster and Yates endorsed Piketty’s proposal to address inequality, a wealth tax, but went on to write that simply calling for a tax is not enough, that “this would require in turn a reorganization and revitalization of the class/social struggle, and in every corner of the globe.”

That goes for the global ecological crisis as well. The powerful individuals, corporations, and institutions at the peak of the pyramid who have reaped the benefits of the atmospheric carbon buildup will continue to stand in the way of climate justice, because to act otherwise would cost them too much. It will fall to the 67 percent, along with millions of allies in the 33 percent, to upend the pyramid and tackle the climate emergency head-on.

Beyond state capitalism: the commons economy in our lifetimes. Because our forbears did not account for the biophysical flow of material resources from the environment through the production process and back into the environment, the real worth of natural resources and social labor is not factored into the economy. It is this centralized, hierarchical model that has led to the degradation and devaluation of our commons.

In considering the essential problem of how to produce and distribute material wealth, virtually all of the great economists in Western history have ignored the significance of the commons, the shared resources of nature and society that people inherit, create and utilize.

Despite sharp differences in concept and ideology, economic thinkers from Smith, Ricardo, and Marx to Keynes, Hayek, Mises and Schumpeter largely based their assumptions on the world’s seemingly unlimited resources and fossil fuels, their infinite potential for creating economic growth, adequate supplies of labor for developing them, and the evolving monoculture of state capitalism responsible for their provision and allocation. Hence, in the Market State that has emerged, corporations and sovereign states make decisions on the production and distribution of Earth’s common resources more or less as a unitary system, with minimal participation from the people who depend on these commons for their livelihood and well-being. Because our forbears did not account for the biophysical flow of material resources from the environment through the production process and back into the environment, the real worth of natural resources and social labor is not factored into the economy. It is this centralized, hierarchical model that has led to the degradation and devaluation of our commons.

Over the past seventy years especially, the macroeconomic goals of sovereign states, for high levels and rapid growth of output, low unemployment and stable prices, have resulted in a highly dysfunctional world. The global economy has integrated dramatically in recent decades through financial and trade liberalization; yet the market is failing to protect natural and social resources, the state is failing to rectify the economic system, and the global polity is failing to manage its mounting imbalances in global resources and wealth. Without a ‘unified field theory’ of economics to explain how the commons is drastically undervalued and why world society is amassing huge debts to the environment, the poor and future generations, policymakers and their institutions lack the critical tools and support to address the massive instability that is now gripping the global economy. Businesses and governments are facing the Herculean challenge of reducing climate change and pollution while alleviating poverty without economic growth, a task for which the Market State is neither prepared nor designed to handle.

Meanwhile, the essential ideals of state capitalism, the rule-based systems of government enforcement and the spontaneous, self-regulating social order of markets, are finding direct expression in the co-governance and co-production of common goods by people in localities across the world. Whether these commons are traditional (rivers, forests, indigenous cultures) or emerging (energy, intellectual property, internet), communities are successfully managing them through collaboration and collective action. This growing movement has also begun to create social charters and commons trusts, formal instruments that define the incentives, rights and responsibilities of stakeholders for the supervision and protection of common resources. Ironically, by organizing to protect their commons through decentralized decision-making, the democratic principles of freedom and equality are being realized more fully in these resource communities than through the enterprises and policies of the Market State.

These evolving dynamics, the decommodification of common goods through co-governance and the deterritorialization of value through co-production, are shattering the liberal assumptions which underlie state capitalism. The emergence of this new kind of management and valuation for the preservation of natural and social assets is posing a momentous crisis for the Market State, imperiling the functional legitimacy of state sovereignty, national currencies, domestic fiscal policy, international trade and finance, and the global monetary system. Major changes are on the way. The transformation of modern political economy will involve reconnecting with, and reformulating, a pre-analytic vision of the post-macroeconomic global commons. Another world is coming: where common goods are capped and protected; a portion of these resources are rented to businesses for the production and consumption of private goods; and taxes on their use are redistributed by the state as public goods to provide a social income for the marginalized and to repair and restore the depleted commons.

Although people’s rights to their commons are often recognized and validated in smaller communities, scaling these lessons to the global level will require a new dimension of popular legitimacy and authority. The world community is rapidly evolving a sense of social interconnectivity, shared responsibility and global citizenship, yet the sovereign rights of people to the global commons have not been fully articulated. In declaring our planetary rights for these commons, we shall be confronting many decisive questions:

(1) Are modern societies prepared to create a framework in which the incentives behind production and governance are not private capital and debt-based growth, but human solidarity, quality of life and ecological sustainability?

(2) How soon, and how peacefully, will the subsystems of the Market State integrate their structures of value-creation and sovereign governance with the greater biophysical system of ecological and social interdependence?

(3) Can the global public organize effectively as a third power to develop checks and balances on the private and public sectors and establish the resource sovereignty and preservation value needed for a commons economy?

These issues will be filtering into mainstream discussion over the next two decades. Already the system of state capitalism is breaking down, threatening the entire planet, its institutions and species. When this collapse can no longer be contained and a global monetary crisis ensues, world society will have the choice of creating an economic system that follows the universal laws of biophysics and commons preservation, or accepting a new version of 18th-20th century mechanistic economics, obliging humanity to continue living off the common capital of the planet under corporate feudalism and über-militaristic regimes. Our decision will likely come down to this: global commons or global autarchy. As an economist, I don’t pretend to speak for the conscience of humanity; but as a human being, my heart tells me that we shall see the beginnings of a commons economy in our lifetimes. The long-forsaken global commons are beckoning.

Requirements for ensuring a socially just, economically secure and ecologically stable global environment.

Ensuring a socially just, economically secure and ecologically stable global environment requires:

a) that rich nations consume less to free up the ecological space needed for justifiable consumption increases in poorer countries; and

b) that the world implement a universal population management plan designed to reduce the total human population to a level that that can be supported indefinitely at a more-than-satisfactory average material standard. This is what it means to “live sustainably within the means of nature.”

Fortunately, various studies suggest that planned de-growth toward a quasi steady state economy is technically possible, would benefit the poor and could be achieved while improving overall quality of life even in high-income countries. Considering the human suffering that would be avoided and number of non-human species that would be preserved, this is also a morally compelling strategy. The foregoing diagnosis is anathema to the prevailing growth ethic, the naive fallacy that well-being is a continuous linear function of income, and politically correct avoidance of the population question. Many will therefore object on grounds that the suggested policy prescription is politically unfeasible and can never be implemented. They may well be correct. The problem is that what is politically feasible is likely to be ecologically irrelevant or downright dangerous. Accelerated hydrocarbon development, better pipeline regulations and improved navigational aids for tanker traffic on B.C.’s coast, for example, don’t cut it as sustainable development in a world that should be abandoning fossil fuels.

The data show clearly that we are at a crucial stage of a slow but accelerating crisis. To be effective and timely, sustainability policy should already be consistent with the real-world evidence. Nature can no longer endure the consequences of “alternative facts.” Failure to implement a global sustainability plan that addresses excess consumption and over-population while ensuring greater social equity may well be fatal to global civilization. Indeed, adherence to any variant of the growth-bound status quo promises a future of uncontrollable climate change, plummeting biodiversity, civil disorder, geopolitical turmoil and resource wars. In these circumstances, should not elected politicians everywhere have an obligation to explain how their policies reflect the fact of global overshoot?

Denying reality is not a viable option; self-delusion can become all-destroying. If our leaders reject the foregoing framing, they should be required to show how the policies they are pursuing can deliver ecological stability, economic security, social equity and improved population health to future generations. Ordinary citizens should assert their right-to-know as if their lives depend upon it.

Climate Change is an environmental issue and also a human rights issue.

Climate change is an environmental issue, the atmosphere, polar bears, and carbon andhuman rights and politics. Thre are three reasons climate change is about human rights:

Let’s explore each of those points.

1. Responsibility, impacts and capacity are uneven.

Responsibility for climate change

The roots of climate change go back to the drawn of the Industrial Revolution, which kicked off in the U.K. in the late 1700s and quickly spread around North Western Europe and then the world. The discovery of coal, and later oil and gas, changed everything.

These three fossil fuels are fossilised organic matter from millions of years ago, hugely energy-dense, which release their pent up energy when burned. Being made from ancient dead plants and animals, they are full of carbon, and when burnt, that carbon goes into the atmosphere. The extra carbon acts like an insulating blanket, blocking heat from radiating out to space, making the Earth warmer. This is known as the “greenhouse effect” and is vital to life. Without it we’d be absolutely freezing, like a planet sized fridge-freezer. But when it comes to blankets, it’s not just ‘the more the better’ is it? You get too hot. And that’s what’s happening now.

Europe and later the other rich nations were blazing it up for decades before poorer countries came on the fossil-burning scene, and by the time industrialization took off in the rest of the world (which is still ongoing) we had already chucked enough carbon into the sky to start changing the Earth’s entire climate. Until the 1960s the top emitters were all rich industrialized nations (with the UK at the top of that list for roughly a century after kicking off the Industrial Revolution). In the mid 20th century China and Russia joined the big boys of carbon pollution. Today China is the biggest emitter, but it’s important to remember that 1) it has well over a billion people, roughly one seventh of the world’s population; and 2) China manufactures a large proportion of the world’s goods. If you put it in per person terms instead, the biggest emitters are all rich countries, with Australia and the USA topping the list. The point is, over the last 200-odd years, the vast bulk of the carbon emissions have come from the rich countries: Europe, North America, Australia, Japan. Apart from Japan, they happen to be Western and white.

2. Climate change deepens existing inequality.

The second key reason why climate change is about human rights, is because due to the uneven nature of its cause, impacts and adaptability, it tends to deepen existing inequalities. As discussed above, the (mostly) white rich nations have by far the most historical responsibility for causing climate change, have benefited the most from carbon-heavy industrialization, and yet it is the mostly black, Asian and Latino countries that will see the most catastrophic climate impacts, despite being poorer and less able to cope with them. But there’s more: obviously many countries are now very multicultural, so race is relevant within countries, too. Case in point of course is the USA: due to the history of racism, black and Latino people are  more likely to live in polluted areas. Remember Hurricane Katrina. A much higher proportion of the people who were stranded, lost their home or lost their lives happened to be black.

Of course, you could say it’s not really a case of race, but class. That’s kind of true, although you can’t ignore the reality that people of color tend to be poorer on average. The two are entwined. Arguably the clearest reason climate change is political is because it’s all about class and power. Like usual, the poor are most at risk simply because they are poor so don’t have the required capacity to adapt. They also have less political power, so governments are prone to policymaking that serves the richer classes instead. Whenever a crisis hits, it’s usually the poor who bear the brunt of it. Climate change can also deepen gender inequality, particularly in poor and rural societies that have a gendered division of labor that sees women doing work that is hit by climate change first and worst. For example, women may be gathering water, growing vegetables and gathering firewood, while men of the community are travelling to do paid work in the city or working on an industrial cash-crop farm. In these cases women will have their work more badly hit. Depending on how much understanding of climate change there is in the community, they could potentially be blamed for their lower yields and be seen as less capable, leading to a loss of power and worse prejudice against them. Also existing issues like women having less access to land, less legal rights and social inequality could see single and widowed women finding it harder to cope with climate impacts. Basically, without a huge concerted effort to level the playing field, climate impacts are likely to deepen existing inequalities.

3. Climate action has huge potential to enhance equality and human rights.

Lastly, climate change is political because it doesn’t necessarily need to deepen inequalities; it has the potential to do the opposite. The movements for climate justice and environmental justice are about healing deep wounds of injustice and oppression via environmental action. Climate action can, if done right, be a powerful force for making a society more equal and advancing human rights. It can be a catalyst for positive social change.

A climate strategy could include bringing high-tech green industries to the North of England that has never recovered from the deindustrialization of the 1980s; it could see parks, urban farms and green spaces bought to inner city areas; it could see run-down coastal towns becoming hubs for off-shore wind and marine energy; it could see struggling farms reinvigorated with an increased demand for local food and extra income streams from ecotourism and renewable energy; it could see public transport improve and also become more affordable. Such schemes wouldn’t only lower carbon emissions, they’d also create millions of good jobs, spread wealth more equally across the country, improve public health, regenerate poor neighbourhoods and improve quality of life for everyone – especially those on lower incomes. Also look at the global scale. Climate action has the potential to reduce the sickeningly-enormous gap in living standards, wealth and power between the rich and poor nations via transfers of money and tech. Such actions would not be charity. They would be a good start to paying off the huge debt of injustice discussed earlier. We’re already seeing a glimpse of this: there is an agreement for rich countries to send $100 billion a year in climate funding to poorer countries. Unfortunately this hasn’t been done yet, but it has been signed into the Paris Agreement as a key target. Concerted climate action has the potential to make the world a much fairer place. This is what the climate justice movement is all about.

Sooner or later, we will be moving to a post-carbon world. It could be one in which the rich huddle in their guarded air-conditioned mansions while starving environmental refugees clamour at the gates. Or it could be a brighter more beautiful world, one where we deal with the impacts of climate change with solidarity, cooperation and compassion. What that would look like is uncertain, there are so many possibilities. Personally, I see a world of egalitarian high-density high-tech globally-connected eco-cities surrounded by newly planted forests. So climate change is about way more than carbon. It’s about who lives and dies, who survives and thrives, who has power and who is powerless. Change is coming whether we like it or not, but that change can be harnessed in dramatically different ways. And politics determines what path we will take.

To Save the planet, businesses and investors must be a part of the solution.

Achieving climate and development goals without the full backing of business and investors is not possible. Fortunately, evidence shows that more and more businesses and investors are taking a lead—and saving costs and making money in the process. While the private sector is hugely diverse and different sectors have different contributions to climate change and opportunities to take action, a growing number of businesses have shown that reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be linked to significant cost savings and benefits without adverse impact on overall profits or performance.

Indeed, there is evidence that such actions can lead to overall improvements in corporate profitability. At the same time, the emergence of new technologies and the growth of climate policy around the world have created a global market in low-carbon goods and services with a value of around $5.5 trillion, larger than the global pharmaceutical industry. Thus, although many businesses remain powerful opponents of climate-related policies, it is unsurprising that many others are now leading the charge for climate action.

Similarly shareholders and other investor stakeholders are increasingly aware that they need to take responsibility for the emissions associated with financial services provided to clients (called “financed emissions”). Using more than 20 percent of the currently listed coal, oil and gas reserves over the next 40 years would push global warming over the 2°C warming target. This indicates that if we are to meet our climate goals, then a significant portion of such reserves would become stranded assets. Financial investors must end ways to avoid exposure to stranded assets and to take advantage of the growing market in low-carbon goods and services. The scale and influence of major global businesses and investors means that any effort to decarbonize the economy, whether at the global, national or sub-national level, requires their engagement. Public policy plays a key role in requiring or incentivizing businesses to reduce their emissions and in stimulating innovation, but business and investor leadership is also crucial. Such leadership was highlighted in the chair’s conclusions to the United Nations Secretary General’s Climate Summit 2014 and by the Governments of Peru and France, who organized high-level events during recent climate negotiations showcasing business climate action. The Government of France also signaled the importance of business action by mandating the business community to hold a high-level summit dedicated to this topic in May 2015, with nearly 2,000 attendees, which was turned into an annual event with a successor in London in June 2016.

The private sector was active in the run-up to and during the 2015 climate negotiations in Paris—most notably through vehicles such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Non-State Actor Zone for Climate Action (NAZCA) Portal, which included commitments of action by 2,090 companies and 448 investors as of April 2016, and the Paris Pledge for Action, signed by over 688 companies and 176 investors with over $11 trillion in assets under management, that committed to help implement and exceed commitments made by governments in Paris. Other initiatives co-led by business that aim to catalyze action around the low-carbon transition include the Low-Carbon Technology Partnerships initiative (LCTPi). It is not just in the climate arena that business leaders have been playing a significant role; in January 2016 the Business and Sustainable Development Commission (BSDC) was launched with the aim of articulating and quantifying the economic case for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals agreed by governments in September 2015, with global CEOs at the heart of project. The commitments discussed in such fora are almost all the output of international cooperative initiatives. These initiatives bring business and investors together, often with other actors, to deliver activities like target setting and implementation of action such as increasing the use of renewable energy, reducing drivers for deforestation, developing roadmaps for new low-carbon technologies like carbon capture and storage, or agreeing on common reporting and monitoring standards. These initiatives have the potential to shift corporate behavior and scale up impact in significant ways.

Increasing numbers of major companies are taking part in such initiatives, but their coverage is far from universal and the level of their ambition is not yet consistent with a 2°C pathway to stabilize climate change, let alone the aspirational goal of 1.5°C in the Paris Agreement. By collaborating with other private sector partners and with public sector bodies, including national and local governments and international institutions, businesses can significantly increase the impact they are able to have. By working together to set and achieve commitments, businesses can share best practice, prompt positive competition, and improve their confidence that ambitious targets are credible and achievable. By pooling resources to engage with policy-makers, businesses can develop stronger arguments and more efficient engagement strategies. They make their voice more credible by demonstrating greater backing. Finally, to address systemic challenges such as deforestation, or rapid technology substitution, which requires simultaneous action from multiple fronts, businesses are increasingly realizing they need to be part of broad public-private partnerships that can change the terms of a whole market.

The assumption of unchecked exponential growth makes no sense. Production facilities would have to be built for the necessary solar panel and wind turbines.

The assumption of unchecked exponential growth makes no sense. An extrapolation of the historical annual growth rate (39.14%) means that the final doubling of capacity occurs in the last 25.2 months. Huge productions facilities would have to be built for the necessary solar panel and wind turbines – to be used only for a very short time.

What would a more realistic model be? As a biologist, I am acquainted with logistic growth models limited by a capacity factor such as the available food or land. But organisms will reproduce until the capacity is exhausted, often going into overshoot followed by a period of population collapse (die-off). Humans have foresight (at least sometimes). Investors calculate the profitability of investments.

The phenomenon of Climate Change has many other components to worry about as well, in addition to fossil fuel based energy systems. It is not just the transformation of energy scenario alone, which is required. We need an entirely different paradigm to the way we view the nature around us. Even if we assume that the political willingness across the world will allow the possibility of moving over to 100% renewable energy (RE) based scenario by 2040/50, it may not suffice. The enormous number of solar PV modules, wind turbines, batteries, bio-energy units, geo-thermal units, hydropower units, computers, control systems, communication systems, protection systems, energy meters, associated transmission and distribution systems etc. required for such a scenario with a business as usual approach up to 2040/50 will be so much overwhelming that we may end up being the losers anyway. Because, the total energy required by 2040/50 at the global level would have reached such high levels, if we continue with the energy demand growth rate as it is now (which may mean a CAGR of 3 to 5% between now and 2050). In this context, the projected energy scenario in the case of India can be a good example for discussion. The national energy policy draft has projected that India’s (i) energy related Emissions per capita may increase from 1.2 tons of Carbon Dioxide Equivalent/capita in 2012 to 2.7-3.5 tons of Carbon Dioxide Equivalent/capita in 2040; (ii) Per capita electricity consumption may go up from 887 kWh in 2012 to 2,911-2,924 kWh in 2040; (iii) CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of electricity supply may be 5.5% between 2012-2040. Most countries from the developing world are likely to have similar growth trajectory, because of which the total energy demand at the global level can be massive by 2040/50. Even if the global energy demand growth rate between now and 2050 is assumed to grow only @ 1% CAGR, the total energy demand would have increased by about 100% as compared to that of the demand today. Even to meet this much energy demand the global economy has to manufacture enormous number of appliances/gadgets/machineries (to generate and distribute commercial forms of energy such as solar power, wind energy, bioenergy, hydel power etc.). Such a vast economic activity alone at the global scale will require the mining and processing of large quantities of the ores of iron, copper, aluminium and many kinds of rare earth minerals, which in turn will require large amounts of energy, most of which may have to come from conventional technology energy sources such as coal power technology. Hence by 2050, the total CO2 emissions (or the total GHG emissions) would have gone much beyond 450 PPM as against the desired level of 350 PPM. And the CO2, which would have been accumulating in the atmosphere during this period, will last for hundreds of years. The ability of various natural elements to control the temperature rise would have been severely curtailed. Many of the natural process, such as glacier melting and ocean acidification, would have become irreversible. The forests and vegetation cover will have to come down considerably, and the pollution/contamination may exceed all limits.

Our current economic systems have become addicted to “growth at all costs”, as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP). They assume that GDP growth is synonymous with increasing wellbeing and prosperity. However this approach has led to growing inequality, an escalating climate crisis, and the depletion of natural and social capital. We are no longer generating genuine progress. Our approach to economics and development needs fundamental transformation.

A global movement is coalescing among a large number of individuals and organizations around the need to shift economies away from a narrow focus on marketed goods and services (i.e. GDP) to one more broadly focused on ‘sustainable wellbeing’. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a step in this direction, encompassing a broad set of 17 goals that go far beyond GDP growth, and include eliminating hunger and poverty, reducing gender and overall inequality, urgent action on climate change, and restoring marine and terrestrial ecosystems. So what is a wellbeing economy? A wellbeing economy has the fundamental goal of achieving sustainable wellbeing with dignity and fairness for humans and the rest of nature. This is in stark contrast to current economies that are wedded to a very narrow vision of development, indiscriminate growth of GDP. A wellbeing economy recognizes that the economy is embedded in society and nature. It must be understood and managed as an integrated, interdependent system.

Wellbeing is the outcome of a convergence of factors, including good human mental and physical health, greater equity and fairness, good social relationships and a flourishing natural environment. Only a holistic approach to prosperity can therefore achieve and sustain wellbeing. A system of economic governance aimed at promoting wellbeing will therefore need to account for all of the impacts (both positive and negative) of economic activity. This includes valuing goods and services derived from a healthy society (social capital) and a thriving biosphere (natural capital). Social and natural capital are part of the commons. They are not (and should not be) owned by anyone in particular, but make significant contributions to sustainable wellbeing. True freedom and success depend on a world where we all prosper and flourish. Institutions serve humanity best when they foster our individual dignity while enhancing our interconnectedness. To thrive, all institutions (including businesses) and society must pivot toward a new purpose: shared wellbeing on a healthy planet. To achieve a wellbeing economy, a major transformation of our world view, society and economy are needed to:

1.Stay within planetary biophysical boundaries – a sustainable size of the economy within our ecological life support system.

2.Meet all fundamental human needs, including food, shelter, dignity, respect, education, health, security, voice, and purpose, among others.

3.Create and maintain a fair distribution of resources, income, and wealth – within and between nations, current and future generations of humans and other species.

4.Have an efficient allocation of resources, including common natural and social capital assets, to allow inclusive prosperity, human development and flourishing. A wellbeing economy recognizes that happiness, meaning, and thriving depend on far more than material consumption.

5.Create governance systems that are fair, responsive, just and accountable.

There are many individuals and groups who have espoused versions of these basic ideas for decades. They may have used different approaches and different languages, but all share common approaches and, above all, a common goal. Perhaps more important are the many individuals and groups already putting the ideas of a wellbeing economy in practice. These include millions of activists and social entrepreneurs of various types from around the world. The challenge is to acknowledge these many diverse initiatives and harmonize these voices, while allowing a diversity of language to communicate with a variety of audiences. WE-All is fundamentally an effort to do just that – to catalyse a cooperative, harmonized, and unified approach to creating a wellbeing economy.

Here are a few examples of the many new directions, experiments, and models of the wellbeing economy already happening around the world.

•The ability to communicate in real time with everyone empowers millions of people at virtually no cost and makes social organizing easier than ever before. Peer-to-peer networking has become a reality, whether sharing information, data, software, goods, services, car rides, accommodation, lending and/or political strategies.

•Renewable energy allows for decentralized systems of production and consumption, turning households into independent nodes of a global network. Costs are now below fossil fuels, despite the $10 million a minute in subsidies that fossil energy still enjoys. Advanced economies and developing nations are already transitioning to renewable energy. Jobs are being lost in the fossil fuel industry, but are on the rise in renewable energies: the US solar sector employs 77% more people than coal mining, creating employment opportunities 17 times as fast as the job creation of the economy as a whole. By 2015, China alone had created 3.5 million renewable energy jobs. In 2016, renewable energy employment was growing at 5% a year globally.

•As the world realises the new era of the ‘anthropocene’ and accepts the UN Sustainable Development Goals businesses around the world begin to protect natural capital and ecosystems.

•The Senegalese government has equipped 100 villages with techniques learned from ecovillages, and aims to creat 14,000 ecovillages. More than a thousand Transition Towns have been initiated across the world.

•As central authorities fail citizens, more states, regions and cities take the lead. From Vermont to California, US states have defied Washington’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement by adopting their own climate change response plans. Civil society organisations are taking the lead in pulling together innovative funding to transform urban areas and at the same time achieve the SDGs. Two hundred city regions will be involved by 2022.

•California committed to double energy efficiency and generate half of the state’s electricity from renewable sources by 2030. They will actually achieve this by 2020. Nine New England states require car makers to shift to zero-emission vehicles. New York launched an energy plan to help residents produce and share their own energy. Smart villages using off-the-grid solutions are mushrooming in Asia and Africa. Sweden is on track to become fossil fuel free by 2040.

•Economic and social innovations: Millions of people are rethinking the economy by introducing alternative currencies, most of them in digital format, following the explosion of BitCoin and the ‘blockchain’ process on which it is based. Basic income experiments are underway, in places as diverse as Kenya, Finland and India. Transition Towns have developed a guide for creating resilient local economies and local currencies. The European Union has put forward a circular economy policy.

•More and more countries are joining the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) so that local people can follow the money generated by companies working within their boarders.

•Regenerative agriculture, pioneered in Africa, South America and South Asia, offers sufficient food for all using methods that restore ecosystems and capture carbon and increase yield.

An economy based on the overriding goal of GDP-growth inevitably crashes through the boundaries of planetary capacity. By affording no value to unexploited resources and assets, and by making no judgments about the quality or meaning or consequence of production and consumption, its growth conflicts with natural and social equilibria. In contrast to this destructive path, the wellbeing economy model specifically strengthens social and natural capital while generating human development. A ‘virtuous circle’ can be created whereby value that is measured in terms of wellbeing feeds the improvements in the human and natural capitals upon which the creation of value depends. The negative impact on the environment will be greatly reduced as the ‘circular economy’ model of resource recycling and systems for up-cycling are integrated into mainstream business models. The ecosystem services that the GDP model considers free of charge will become fully valued components of society’s infrastructure, supported by new common asset governance institutions that connect people more closely to natural ecosystems. Economic ‘growth’ in this model lies not in the exploitation of natural, social, and human resources but in improving the quality and effectiveness of human-to-human and human-to-ecosystem interactions, supported by appropriate enabling technologies.

The climate crisis and economic policy choices.

A major issue in climate economics is whether it is possible to halt the growth in carbon emissions and to achieve, instead, a rapid reduction. Carbon emissions will never fall at a sufficient rate in a growth economy. An entirely different way of thinking about climate issues is needed, one that is consistent with the limits to growth paradigm. The alternative way of framing the climate debate is:

• Humanity is faced with the high likelihood of a catastrophic ecological tipping point and this crisis is part of a general crisis at the limits to economic growth
• There are many unknowns at that tipping point – beyond which there might be runaway climate change because of feedback
• This tipping point imposes the need for an absolute limit on what can safely be emitted and what must be clawed back out of the atmosphere – given the uncertainty with a need for a high margin of safety
• This limit trumps any growth agenda because the danger is so great and ecological scale limits must be imposed in physical quantities (e.g. of allowed carbon emissions) before the market can be allowed to operate
• The limits to economic growth require that climate policy be part of a more general transition of society and economy for which efforts must be made to enrol everyone.
• Techno-innovation may have a role in the transition but will not be the sole or even the main method of reducing energy consumption – moral, cultural, behavioural and other changes are also needed.
• Limits need to be imposed as equitably as possible as part of the larger transition
• We need to get on with this task now, as a matter of urgency

To grow the economy and reduce carbon emissions at the same time can be done with various proponents of degrowth not denying that it is possible to increase the efficiency with which energy and materials are used in the economy. They do not deny that the amount of carbon emitted per unit of output can be decreased.

The question at stake here is whether it is possible to grow the economy and, at the very same time, achieve an absolute reduction in the throughput of energy and materials, that is, to decouple growth from increased material and energy usage. More specifically, in relation to the climate crisis, is it possible to grow the economy and reduce carbon emissions at the same time? Various proponents of degrowth do not deny that it is possible to increase the efficiency with which energy and materials are used in the economy. They do not deny that the amount of carbon emitted per unit of output can be decreased.

No good or service can be produced without energy – even “information” requires energy to run the computers or make and print books, magazines and newspapers. As the economy grows it requires more energy and, because virtually all energy in our society is generated by burning carbon fuels, that means more CO2 emissions.

In the past, It was showed that energy production and world GDP are highly correlated and, since most of the energy is derived from fossil fuels, this involves increased emissions. Unless the connection between growth of production and growth of emissions can be broken, and to a sufficient extent, there can be no reduction of carbon emissions without an end to growth – indeed without contraction.

It may be that depleting fossil fuel supplies and the production crunch brought about by rising energy and material costs that was described in an earlier chapter, will achieve a considerable turn down in carbon emissions anyway. This would not be a particularly pleasant resolution of the crisis but it would certainly change the conditions in which the climate crisis would have to be resolved. On the other hand, the global power elite appear to be hell bent on continuing to extract and use carbon based fossil energy if they can, so we cannot totally be sure if things will evolve into this kind of crunch. This is despite the fact that in 2012 the International Energy Agency acknowledged that 2/3 of recoverable carbon in fuels needs to stay in the ground up to 2050 to have any change of staying below a temperature increase of 2degrees C. This matches findings from the IPCC working group 3. (IPCC.WG3.Final Draft AR5. Presentation 2014)

There is plenty of carbon here to bring greenhouse gas concentration levels well above 600 ppm. As we have already seen, fracking for shale gas is just one of several options being pursued to get new fossil energy sources out of the ground in the face of the depletion gradients, bringing with it the threat of high fugitive methane losses. Underground gasification of coal is another technology based on extracting the energy from deep coal seams by partially burning it underground to extract the energy in the form of syngas. When it comes to the surface, syngas can be burned to generate electricity. If this can be made to work, there are unfortunately very large reserves of coal in the world that can still be used as energy sources.

Worse still, attempts are being made to tap “frozen” methane from the oceans called methane hydrates. This is a dangerous process because methane hydrate unfreezes from its crystalline form directly into methane gas and, when it does so, it enormously expands in volume. The process is thus, very unstable and explosive.

The different components to explain the growth (or reduction) in total emissions are growth of the economy measured as GDP per capita (GDP/population); growth of the population; the energy intensity needed per unit of economic output (energy/GDP) and the emission intensity of that energy (CO2e/energy).
It can be readily appreciated that emissions from the last two components can be reduced as a result of:

• Increasing energy efficiency – the amount of energy used per unit of economic output/service is reduced brought about by more insulation in buildings, lighter more efficient vehicles, machinery etc.
• Decarbonising energy sources – the amount of carbon used in generating energy is reduced by switching to renewables – wind, solar, tidal, wave etc. It also requires changes to the grid to balance for “intermittency” as well as switching to an electric infrastructure (e.g. electric cars)

With global population increasing at 1.3% and the global per capita income increasing at 1.4% per year in real terms, the required technical improvement (reduction) in carbon intensity is greater than 2.7% (1.4% + 1.3%) per year. So what has the rate of technical improvement been? Carbon intensity has only been improving at 0.7% per annum. Thus, emissions have been increasing at 2% per annum. While the efficiency with which the global economy uses energy, as measured by the energy/GDP ratio, has continued to improve, the slow decarbonisation of the global energy supply has been put into reverse. The carbon intensity of energy is actually increasing, particularly as more coal is being used. The fact that there is so little sign of hope appears to be because, as depletion has driven up oil and gas supplies and prices, coal is being turned to instead, as well as more emission intensive sources of oil and gas (like Canadian tar sands and shale). Keeping global climate close to a safe range will require a long-term atmospheric CO2 level of about 350 ppm or less. If emissions reduction had begun in 2005, reduction at 3.5%/year would have achieved 350 ppm at 2100. Now the requirement is at least 6%/year. Delay of emissions reductions until 2020 requires a reduction rate of 15%/year to achieve 350 ppm in 2100. If we assume only 50 GtC reforestation, and begin emissions reduction in 2013, the required reduction rate becomes about 9%/year.

Just to stop global emissions growing, if GDP growth rates are 2.7% pa then carbon intensity must reduce at 2.7% per annum, which is nearly 4 times the current rate of improvement. In order for emissions to fall at 10% per annum, if growth continued at 2.7% pa, this would require carbon intensity to improve (reduce) at 12.7 % per annum. This is 18 times the current rate of improvement. Dangerous climate change can only be avoided if economic growth is exchanged for a period of planned austerity within Annex 1 nations at the same time as there is a rapid transition away from fossil-fuelled development within non-Annex 1 nations.

An organised agency can be found with the political will and power to set an absolute ceiling on the amount of carbon based fuels that are allowed into the economy.

Perhaps 1% of the global population accounts for 50% of all emissions and if we take the top 5% we are talking about the top 60% of emissions. It is above all the carbon intensity of the lifestyle of the global elite that is taking us all to climate hell, and it is the lifestyle of this elite that needs to be tackled. Of course, saying this begs the political question of how such a policy can be brought about, but we will park that question at this point and come back to it later. The assumption for now is that some organised agency can be found with the political will and power to set an absolute ceiling on the amount of carbon based fuels that are allowed into the economy. Or, put the other way around, an agency is created with the power to keep most remaining fossil fuels in the ground untouched. This will then, in turn, force a number of other processes such as:

• Lifestyle changes – eating less meat which is an energy and carbon intense foodstuff; cycling and walking more and less travel; more growing your own food; voluntary reductions in consumption with a culture of “sufficiency” reductions.
• Energy efficiency in buildings, production, transport plus…
• Renewable generation: wind; solar voltaics + thermal, concentrated solar power; hydro, tidal, wave power; some bio-
• Technologies to complement renewables: electric storage technologies and grid balancing
• Land use changes, ecological design, organic agriculture with protection against deforestation and degradation of peat lands; and
• Enhancement of carbon sequestration in land and biomass

But is it possible to impose a carbon price (or a cap)? How is it possible to drive a process of decarbonisation? What can be done about emissions from land use changes and deforestation? What is to be done about other sources of global warming like black carbon, methane emissions, N2O emissions, HCFCs and so on? There are lots of questions in climate policy that need answers. It is not straightforward by any means.

The very idea of a “cap” is greeted with scepticism by many climate activists because current policies of “cap and trade” have been so ineffectual. But, to be fair, the word “cap” has been abused. A “cap” should mean an absolute limit but in current policy frameworks it is no such thing. The so called “cap” operated by the European Union does not function as a real restraint. It has been designed to leak because fossil fuel business interests had control of the policy making process and the policy making implementation. The problem is not with the idea of a cap. It should not surprise that the cap and trade policy in Europe has failed. As we have seen repeatedly, policy is written by the polluters for the polluters and when the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme was set up, it was no exception. For a long time, the major fossil fuel suppliers had resisted any restraint on emissions but, at the end of the 1990s, some of them changed tack.

The starting point for understanding how a cap should work are the following easily available conversion figures. They show the carbon content of different fuels when burned, reduced to a common measure. Thus, 1 kg CO2 = 1 Carbon Unit (Note the Global Warming Potential of non-CO2 warming gases like methane are measured in units called “Carbon dioxide equivalents” which are noted with an “e” after CO2, as in “CO2e”). As examples natural gas = 0.18404 carbon units per kWh or industrial coal = 0.31304 carbon units per kWh (a tonne of industrial coal = 2339.1 carbon units) For each physical quantity of a particular kind of fuel, or for each quantity of energy, it can readily be calculated how much CO2 will be emitted when that quantity is burned. If the political will could be found, it is therefore entirely possible to construct a policy administration that could control how much carbon can be allowed to be burned in any time period. All fossil fuel sales would be banned unless first authorised by a permit. The number of permits, which would be denominated in carbon units, would be limited and reduced rapidly year on year.

In order to acquire some of the limited numbers of permits, the fossil fuel sellers would have to obtain them. As is obvious, the permits would be very expensive to buy if the cap were tight enough. The fossil fuel sellers would pass on the permit cost to their customers so that the price of fossil fuels would rise, perhaps very considerably. The prices of goods made with large amounts of fossil fuels would also rise. This would not be at all popular and would particularly hit people with a carbon intensive lifestyle, which, as we have seen already, is largely the very rich. However, poor people would be hit too. That is why it would be necessary that the large amount of money raised when permits are sold, should be recycled back to the population on a per capita or some other equitable basis. It might also be necessary to do more to help the high carbon poor in countries like the USA but that is a detail that I will not go into here. This scheme would cut the carbon intensive lifestyle of the rich most, while making a very large number of poor people better off, at least in the early stages of the process. The reason that they will be better off is that if the revenue from carbon permit sales is recycled back to the public on a per capita basis, then everyone, rich or poor, will get exactly the same amount of the revenue from permit sales. However, the poor tend to have a less carbon intensive lifestyle. Although prices for their lifestyle will rise, they will still get more from their share of the carbon permit revenues than they will pay extra in rising prices.

The 1%”, however, will be paying a huge amount more because, directly and indirectly, their energy intensive lifestyle accounts for 50% of all carbon emissions and carbon will have become very expensive. Despite this, they will only be getting back the same share from the carbon permit revenues as everyone else. A majority would be in favour of maintaining a tight cap, since they gain financially. This is a force to counterbalance the vested interests who would push for a cap to be relaxed or abandoned, and this counterbalance gives a certain political robustness to C&S in the face of shocks and political events. If such a scheme was adopted in 2020, the number of carbon units permitted would need to be reduced by at least 10% per annum to have an outside chance of the planet staying under 2 degrees C. A reduction of available energy of this magnitude, if at all possible, would need to drive a massive reduction of production, chiefly, the production of things that enter into carbon intensive lifestyle of rich people in the manner explained above.

A policy that would lead to a very dramatic process of “degrowth” because production is dependent on energy. With fossil energy availability radically reduced by a cap that really bites, the amount of production in the economy would be driven downwards.

An upstream cap imposed on sellers of coal, oil and gas can cover all fossil fuels entering the economy and would be simple to impose, at least in administrative terms. Most countries already impose duties on fossil fuel sales so there are procedures already in place monitoring the input of fossil fuels into different economies.

Obviously, administrative simplicity is only a part of the problem of setting and operating a cap. Driving a contraction of the economy would be immensely unpopular, unless accompanied by multiple other policies and social changes to enable billions of people to achieve dramatic changes in their lifestyles. These changes should be, above all, concentrated on the rich and would have to be made anyway because of depleting fossil energy and materials resources. Needless to say, this is nothing like the working of the policy architecture designed in Europe by BP, its corporate allies and government. The European Union policy was designed, consciously or unconsciously, to deflect direct controls away from the fossil fuel industry onto its customers. It is riddled with loopholes and special clauses that make it easy for large businesses to game the system and generally to make it unworkable. Because of business pressure so many permits have been issued that there is no real restraint on emissions in practice. Rather than having a direct control over what fossil fuels are allowed into the economy, the policy architecture has been focused upon the users and uses of fossil fuels at the demand end. In the jargon, the policy is imposed “downstream” rather than “upstream”. As is obvious, the number of users and uses of fossil fuels “downstream” is much greater than the number of suppliers “upstream”.

It would have made sense to control emissions by capping the amount of fossil fuels going into the system at the source of initial supply. This is called capping the emissions “upstream”. The fossil fuel suppliers would have to have emissions permits (indicated by the yellow rectangles) to cover the emissions caused by the fossil fuels they bring into the system. What happened instead in Europe was that the ETS was imposed downstream on large fossil fuel users. These are companies running power stations, cement works, steel mills and the like. This covers 45% of the EU’s CO2 emissions. Individuals are not covered in this scheme but could be through “personal carbon trading” (PCA), based on “personal carbon accounts”. The problem is that this would be administratively complex. Everyone would have to have their own personal carbon account, presumably by using a carbon card rather like a debit or credit card. In the early stages of the European ETS, most permits to emit were initially distributed to the main emitters for free. This meant that, to the extent that the permits had any market value, it was the companies that captured their value. The mechanism and reasoning worked like this: companies that have to surrender their permits because they have been emitting CO2 reason that, because the surrendered permits have a market value, surrendering them means the loss of this market value to the company. Thus, as far as the company is concerned, this loss when their permits are surrendered is one of their costs of operation. So, even though they were given the permits in the first place, they pass on this “cost” to their customers in increased prices. Because it was designed by pushers of fossil fuels, the European Union established a system that runs on a “pay the polluter” principle. The idea is supposed to be that, over time, more of the permits will be auctioned by states which will capture the revenue raised. However, there has been some dragging of feet on this and governments are reluctant to implement this system in favour of their fossil fuel corporations. Poland has even wanted to use revenues arising from ETS permits to subsidise new coal fired power stations.

The Earth’s atmosphere is a Nature's resource that ought to be managed as a global commons.

What is at stake as regards who gets the carbon permit revenue is the question of who owns the right to use the earth’s atmosphere. The implication of allowing companies to capture the market value of the permits is that the right to use the earth’s atmosphere belongs to them. The implication of auctioning and revenues going to governments is that the right belongs to states. The idea that the earth’s atmosphere might “belong” to all of us – and that all of us have a responsibility for it – does not appear to have ever occurred to economists, corporate lobbyists, officials or politicians. Nevertheless, there have been more astute commentators who have grasped what is going on. Parcelling out shares of the global atmospheric commons to be exchanged among trading partners appears to be strikingly similar to the enclosure of the communal forests in 18th century Europe. Just as the enclosures put in place both property rights and forest protection, denying access to the common people, the assignment of emissions permits ensures protection by granting property rights, eliminating unregulated use by any player involved. Policy is not made on a level playing field and the ETS, with all its weaknesses, is what we have ended up with. It has been complemented within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol with a scheme called the “Clean Development Mechanism”. One can manipulate economic relationships in order to make environmentally benign behaviour pay in money terms. Good environmental/climate ends are achieved by means of incentive schemes which make them financially worthwhile.

The idea was to encourage “developing” country projects in renewable energy, energy efficiency and fuel switching which would not have otherwise taken place. What was supposed to happen was that “emissions reductions” in “developing” countries would entitle projects to credits. The number of credits were to be calculated by comparing actual emissions by the project concerned to a baseline of what would have otherwise have happened if the project had made no efforts to reduce its emissions.

Why the Extinction Crisis Isn't Just About the Environment, but Social Justice. An anti-capitalist movement against extinction must be framed in terms of a refusal to turn land, people, flora, and fauna into commodities. The genomic information of plants, animals, and human beings is the common wealth of  the planet, and all efforts to make use of this environmental commons must be framed around principles of equality, solidarity, and environmental and climate justice.

The extinction crisis is an environmental issue and  a social justice issue, one that is linked to long histories of capitalist domination over specific people, animals, and plants. The extinction crisis needs to be seen as a key element in contemporary struggles against accumulation by dispossession. This crisis, in other words, ought to be a key issue in the fight for climate justice. If techno-fixes such as deextinction facilitate new rounds of biocapitalist accumulation, . We must reject capitalist biopiracy and imperialist enclosure of the global commons, particularly when they cloak themselves in arguments about preserving biodiversity. Most of all, an anti-capitalist conservation movement must challenge the privatization of the genome as a form of intellectual property, to be turned into an organic factory for the benefit of global elites. Synthetic biology should be regulated. The genomic information of plants, animals, and human beings is the common wealth of  the planet, and all efforts to make use of this environmental commons must be framed around principles of equality, solidarity, and environmental and climate justice.

What would be the shape and fundamental goals of an expansive anti-capitalist movement against extinction and for environmental justice? It would have to commence with open recognition by the developed nations of the long history of ecocide. Such an admission would lead to a consequent recognition of the biodiversity debt owed by the wealthy nations of the global North to the South. Building on the demands articulated by the climate justice movement, the anti-capitalist conservation movement must demand the repayment of this biodiversity debt. How would this repayment take place? The climate justice movement’s call for a universal guaranteed income for inhabitants of nations who are owed climate debt should serve as a model here. Why not begin a model initiative for such a carbon and biodiversity-based guaranteed income program in the planet’s biodiversity hotspots? Of the twenty five terrestrial biodiversity hotspots, fifteen are covered primarily by tropical rainforests, and consequently are also key sites for the absorption of carbon pollution. These threatened ecosystems include the moist tropical woodlands of Brazil’s Atlantic coast, southern Mexico with Central America, the tropical Andes, the Greater Antilles, West Africa, Madagascar, the Western Ghats of India, Indo-Burma, Indonesia, the Philippines, and New Caledonia. They make up only 1.4% of the Earth’s surface, and yet, these regions are the exclusive homes of 44% of the world’s plant species and more than a third of all species of birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians. All of these areas are under heavy assault from the forces of enclosure and ecocide. A universal guaranteed income for the inhabitants of these hotspots would create a genuine counterweight to the attractions of poaching, and would entitle the indigenous and forest-dwelling peoples who make these zones of rich biodiversity their homes with the economic and political power to push their governments to implement significant conservation measures.

The capital for a guaranteed income program for biodiversity hotspots.

There is certainly no shortage of assets. The 1% rich people on the planet have accumulated their increasingly massive share of global wealth by siphoning off collectively produced surpluses not through hard work but through financial machinations such as dividends, capital gains, interests, and rent, much of which is then hidden in tax havens. Indeed, if we consider the massive upward transfer of global wealth that has taken place over the last half century, it would be fair to say that never before was so much owed by so few to so many. One way to claw back some of this common wealth would be through a financial transactions tax, of even only a very small percentage of the speculative global capital flows that enrich the 1%, would generate billions of dollars to help people conserve hotspots of global biodiversity. Such funds could also be devoted to ramping up renewable energy-generating infrastructures in both the rich and the developing countries. Yet a universal guaranteed income in recognition of biodiversity debt should not be a replacement for existing conservation programs. Instead, such a measure should be seen as an effort to inject an awareness of environmental and climate justice into debates around the extinction crisis. Biodiversity debt would thus augment existing conservation programs while militating against the creation of conservation refugees. Any and all such efforts to work against extinction should be undertaken as acts of environmental solidarity on the part of the peoples of the global North with the true stewards of the planet’s biodiversity, the people of the global South. Only in this way can the struggle against extinction help promote not simply forgiveness and reconciliation, but also survival after five hundred years of colonial and imperial ecocide.

The struggle to preserve global biodiversity must be seen as an integral part of a broader fight to challenge an economic and social system based on feckless, suicidal expansion. If, as we have seen, capitalism is based on ceaseless compound growth that is destroying ecosystems the world over, the goal in the rich nations of the global North must be to overturn our present expansionary system by fostering de-growth . Most importantly, nations that have benefited from burning fossil fuels must radically cut their carbon emissions in order to stem the lurch towards runaway climate chaos that endangers the vast majority of current terrestrial forms of life. Rather than false and impractical solutions such as the carbon trading and geoengineering schemes championed by advocates of neoliberal responses to the climate crisis, anti-capitalists should fight for some version of the contraction and convergence approach proposed by Global Community. This proposal is based on moving towards a situation in which all nations have the same level of emissions per person (convergence) while contracting them to a level that is sustainable (contraction). A country such as the United States, which has only 5% of the global population, would be allowed no more than 5% of globally sustainable emissions. Such a move would represent a dramatic anti-imperialist shift since the US is at present responsible for 25% of carbon emissions. The powerful individuals and corporations that control nations like the US are not likely to accept such revolutionary curtailments of the wasteful system that supports them without a struggle. Already there is abundant evidence that they would sooner destroy the planet than let even a modicum of their power slip. Massive fossil fuel corporations such as Exxon, for example, have funded climate change denialism for the past quarter century despite abundant evidence from their own scientists  that burning fossil fuels was creating unsustainable environmental conditions.  Such behavior should be seen frankly for what it is: a crime against humanity. We should not expect to negotiate with such destructive entities. Their assets should be seized. Most of these assets, in the form of fossil fuel reserves, cannot be used anyway if we are to avert environmental catastrophe. What remains of these assets should be used to fund a rapid, managed reduction in carbon emissions and a transition to renewable energy generation. These steps should be part of a broader program to transform the current, unsustainable capitalist system that dominates the world into steady state societies founded on principles of equality and environmental justice.

Economic growth (measured as Gross Domestic Product) and value are seen as the same. Meanwhile, the actual value generated outside of market capitalism – the “care economy,” social labor, eco-stewardship, digital communities and commons – are mostly ignored or considered merely personal (“values”).  These types of “value” are seen as extraneous to “the economy.” My colleagues and I wondered if it would be possible to develop a post-capitalist, commons-friendly theory of value that could begin to represent and defend these other types of value. 

What is “value” and how shall we protect it?  It’s a simple question for which we don’t have a satisfactory answer. For conventional economists and politicians, the answer is simple:  value is essentially the same as price. Value results when private property and free markets condense countless individual preferences and purchases into a single, neutral representation of value:  price.  That is seen as the equivalent of “wealth.” This theory of value has always been flawed, both theoretically and empirically, because it obviously ignores many types of “value” that cannot be given a price. No matter, it “works,” and so this theory of value generally prevails in political and policy debates. Economic growth (measured as Gross Domestic Product) and value are seen as the same. Meanwhile, the actual value generated outside of market capitalism – the “care economy,” social labor, eco-stewardship, digital communities and commons – are mostly ignored or considered merely personal (“values”).  These types of “value” are seen as extraneous to “the economy.” My colleagues and I wondered if it would be possible to develop a post-capitalist, commons-friendly theory of value that could begin to represent and defend these other types of value. Marx’s labor theory of value has long criticized capitalism for failing to recognize the full range of value-creation that make market exchange possible in the first place.  Without the “free,” unpriced services of child-rearing, social cooperation, ethical norms, education and natural systems, markets simply could not exist.  Yet because these nonmarket value-regimes have no pricetags associated with them, they are taken for granted and fiercely exploited as “free resources” by markets. The absence of a credible theory of value is one reason that we have a legitimacy crisis today.  There is no shared moral justification for the power of markets and civil institutions in our lives. Today, we have a dictatorship of one kind of value as delivered by the market system, which determines for everyone how they can live.  Consider how the labor of a nurse is regarded under different value regimes, he said:  A nurse working as a paid employee is considered value, creating, a contributor to Gross Domestic Product.  But the same nurse doing the same duties as a government employee is seen as “an expense, not a value-creator,” said Bauwens.  The same nurse working as a volunteer “produces no value at all” by the logic of the market system. It’s perfectly possible to talk about the ‘good life’ without the notion of value.”  The word “value” is useful to merchants and economists in talking about money and markets.  But it has little relevance when talking about ethical living or the human condition.

Economists are eager to protect their ideas about “value” as money-based and make them normative. Commoners and others, by contrast, want to broaden the meaning of the term to apply to all of human experience. The conventional economic definition of “value” has a significant rhetorical advantage over other notions of value/s.  It can be encapsulated in numbers, manipulated mathematically and ascribed to individuals, giving it a tidy precision.  Value defined as price also has an operational simplicity even though it flattens the messy realities of actual human life and ecosystems. This point is illustrated by open value accounting systems and by organizational experiments in finance, ownership and governance.

Cities need to begin making preparations for the incoming tides, and many coastal towns, both in the U.S. and around the world.

To protect coasts against tidal flooding, the city plans to reinforce beaches, build bulkheads, and protect sand dunes that act as natural barriers. The city may also enact rock breakwaters offshore to attenuate waves associated with storms, and erect storm walls and levees in areas that are particularly vulnerable to storm surge. The city’s plan contains a rigorous geological analysis of the landscape and makes recommendations specific to boroughs and neighborhoods based on what types of mitigation strategies the rock and soil in each locale can support. The only question is: will it be enough? The oceans are rising. The statistics bear it out and people can also see it with their own eyes. Over time, our coastlands are going to move further inland and low-lying areas will find themselves submerged. If cities are not prepared, the effects will be devastating. However, with proper preparation, the worst may be avoided. The science of Climate Change has come to be well established. Predictive models indicate its dangers to the existence and survival of the future generations. While future technologies can arrest the dangers and reduce the pace of increase of atmospheric CO2, it has already crossed the alarm level of 430 PPM much above the acceptable limit of 350 PPM. Yet it is not raising the needed alarm bells to eradicate the challenge. The world has come together time and again to address the global challenge. From Rio summit, to Paris agreement to Kyoto protocol has attempted at finding solution to this global challenge. From fixing of responsibility to addressing climate change on developed countries to agreement on development and transfer of green technologies has been part of the agreement. However, the conferences have hardly been able to show signs of arrest the emerging danger. While agreements have been arrived to reduce CO2 emissions, there are also parties which have broken away from the same.

The modern life is full of contradictions. While the dangers are agreed upon, there is reluctance for change. The change does not necessarily mean to go back to pre-industrial ages with lack of technologies and benefits of modern civilization, but to innovate and make a shift towards greener technologies and more sustainable lifestyles. These technologies need to be produced at a scale and made available that it arrests the pace of acceleration of CO2 levels. It does not necessarily mean giving up Cars, but definitely an increase in usage of Mass transportation. It does not mean stopping usage of thermal power generation but to gradually replace it with power generation through renewable energy sources, more particularly solar energy. It does not mean giving up Air condition (AC) completely, but to substantially reduce it. It does not mean negating modernity, but to accept modernity including the flaws and to give it a direction that ensures shift to more sustainable lifestyles. Modernity through industrial revolution did bring in changes which benefitted human civilization. The modern medicines did bring improvement in health and reduced mortality. The educational system did build in a new human being and vocations for meeting the needs of modern society. Transportation technologies reduced the time and spatial dimensions. Technologies reduced drudgery both at home and in economic activities. While these need to be welcomed and built upon, the dangers posed by modernity also need to be agreed upon. Modernity also under the garb of the new economic system also brought in new cultural values. The values related to achieving accelerated growth, industrialisation, increase in gross domestic product, consumption lifestyles, and increased usage of energy for higher level of comforts. It did create a necessary societal shift from pre-industrial to an industrial age. The modern values did break the trend of supremacy of religion over men, separated religion from politics, questioned inequalities – particularly political, and brought in the concept of liberty equality and fraternity. It did have its benefits at the societal level. At the same time it also established the concept of supremacy of men over nature. This also meant that human civilization took it for granted that resources of earth can be utilised in a manner to achieve maximal benefits. The limited capacities of resources of earth to support were not realised. It was only when dangers became imminent that it was realised that there is a limit to which resources of earth can be extracted. And it was agreed that there are ‘limits to growth’. Modernity and the modern economic system has resulted in benefits such as increase in production of food availability, increased availability of health care and medicines, increased availability of modern technologies which can substantially reduce human drudgery. Yet it also true that education, health care and modern technologies are increasingly becoming unaffordable as it is closely linked to an economic system driven by profit motive. The modern systems did bring substantial improvements in lifespan, health and education. But its increased connection with profit driven economy is making access to these basic services unaffordable.

The green technologies of future can have a potential solution to address climate change. But does an economic system driven by cultural values determined by profit motive, take it to a scale and make it available for the masses. Will the green technologies be accessible to all? When even agricultural technologies and gas cylinder hasn’t been able to reach the masses and the producers, how can the greener technologies reach the masses? Similar to acceptance of the earth’s capacities to support modern unsustainable lifestyles are to be agreed upon, similarly limits of the economic system driven by profit motive to make shift to sustainable future needs to be questioned.

The global socioeconomic system of capitalism, is forcing us to work harder to surpass previous consumption and population numbers until we have devoured everything that maintains life, ending up with a polluted, lifeless, and a scorched planet.

Civilisation’s present and ultimate mode, capitalism is the system that can only lead us to our annihilation. This isn’t any individual’s, or any group of people’s fault, it’s the economic system that took form first with the energy of slaves to produce the raw materials that were then manufactured with the energy of fossil fuels. The economic success of that was dishonestly attributed to the capitalist system but it came from the benefit of using slave, which was overwhelm by non-renewable fossil fuels that are burned as renewables. The work force was then educated to use fossil fuels in its entire myriad of uses and also to integrated workers in a system of contradicting values by using competition as the regulator in a social setting that must also be cooperative to be social. To maintain a general satisfaction in a social system that’s driven and motivate with competition, endless growth is needed, but in a finite system it must end when resources are exhausted. However, we also have a double whammy, that of pollution that impairs life and the carbon that’s heating the biosphere and acidifying the oceans, they would end life if the system is maintained to its exhaustion. It’s like been inside a spinning treadmill, the faster a few people run the faster each individual needs to run to stay in position. The only ones that can slow and stop that nonsense are the wealthy people, who have successfully blocked any attempts to head off that stampede, so the wealthiest are riding that wave of people and getting the benefits with little effort. To keep up with that momentum, society must take what it can, leaving nothing. Our options within the capitalist system is limited because competition entices and pressures us to keep doing more of everything or suffer the consequences of losing the little power we still have.

The power that controls the economy is with the 1% they have the power to stop and change that exploitive, chaotic violent world economy. The 1%, power comes from finance which’s depended on economic growth, and that can’t be jeopardised just to save a few millions poor people around the planet who are already suffering, which’s the present worry for concerned people. Sadly the 1% dominates and controls the information services; it’s the only power that is able to disseminate the needed information to change our self-destructive way of life to an inclusive positive one. If we can show the 1% that they’re facing a dire situation in a overpopulate world that’s depleted of vital resources, in an unliveable hot and violent climate. They are likely to avoid continuing on that path as wealth can’t have any value in that unendurable social chaotic violence, when the economy goes from sour to putrid and as well the 1% may be an early victim of vengefulness. Without affordable oil we can’t produce the quantity of coal, gas, and pump the vital water that’s also needed to grow our food, it will curtail transporting all that stuff around the world. The difficulty will also be magnified by global warming which will need much more energy to counteract its effects. Global warming alone can kill us all. One must understand that burning that vast store of carbon that nature managed to accumulate in the ground has never happen before, it will also release the carbon from the permafrost and methane hydrates that will produce a colossal positive feedbacks. To sustain life in those extreme conditions would require more energy but there will be less to share, especially with more people. There’s no certainty of how much time we have to turn the world economy from an exploitative one, to one that functions within nature, as a part of nature before it becomes irretrievable. We desperately need to show the 1% how closes they and we are in producing an unliveable world due to the outcome of capitalist economy. The 1% life is at stake like everyone, they must not only cooperate to live within nature’s ability, but promote it on a world scale. They are the only ones with the power to do so, and it may be the only way to survive. All living things have to have a survival instinct to be alive; it will save us all if we use it. However, that instinct will only kick in when those multi billionaires realise that their life is at stake and they can only be saved if they do their best to save everyone. That would mean an unreserved sharing with all people and a qualified one with nature, the sooner we can accomplish that, the easier and satisfying life will be, for the more cooperative our life is the more satisfying and secure it must be. In a cooperative based society there would be no advantage to be deceitful; people will then revert to honest relationships. That correlation in societies and also as a part of nature infers that people would see exploiting nature as destructive for us. The reason we are destroying our habitat thus ourselves is due to the competitiveness of civilisation and its intensification under capitalism, that competition is capitalism lifeblood and now it’s our foe. The more social one is the more cooperative one must be, the less conflict we have, and as well it’s the most efficient way to live, it’s our nature. That means having to share the efforts and the benefits, even of its unfamiliarity for the 1%.

Although the yearning for peace is deep-seated, it has never been achieved during civilisation due to its competitive nature. If we keep capitalism, the ultimate in competitiveness, it will finish us. Peace can’t be attained with military force; one can’t fight for peace or for cooperation, as they’re an outcome of mutual agreements to benefit everyone. Peace is now possible because we have to have it to survive. People have the intellectual and the emotional ability to work out the multitude of changes to enable us to be fully social and survive, if it’s our goal.

Global Community ethics

Global Community Ethics.

What Global Community stands for

Global Community is the new Faith, and the Religion of the 3 rd millennium

The dream of a new Eden: Global Civilization.

Glass Bubble concept of a Global Community.

My Global Community

Timeless Global Community values.

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

1) Old research papers on the definition of " a Global Community", "the Global Community"
http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/PeaceNow/Old1999Papers.html

2) Global concepts published in the 1990s
http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/globalcommunity/globalconcepts.htm

3) Short and long term solutions to saving the world.
http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/Dialogue2018/Newsletters/May2018/index.html
http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/Dialogue2018/Newsletters/May2018/scalepart1.html#part1

4) Criteria to obtain the Global Community Citizenship.
http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/Dialogue2018/Newsletters/October2017/globalcitizenship.html#becoming
http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/Dialogue2018/Newsletters/October2017/globalcitizenship.html

5) Global Civilization issues, values, solutions, and vision of the world for survival as a species.
http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/Dialogue2017/Newsletter/April2017/index.html
http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/Dialogue2017/Newsletter/December2016/index.html

6) Glass Bubble concept of a Global Community.
http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/Dialogue2016/Newsletter/July2016/glassbubbleconcept.html

7) Timeless Global Community values. List of values humans have developed over time to survive as a species.
http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/Dialogue2016/Newsletter/February2016/index.html

8) Global Community establishing a global action plan for the survival of life on our planet.
http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/Dialogue2016/Newsletter/December2015/index.html

9) Global Community needs a Commons Trust Fund to manage the Commons with the highest priorities.
http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/Dialogue2016/Newsletter/November2015/index.html

10) Global Community Ethics
http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/Dialogue2015/Newsletter/September2014/index.html

11) The greatest happiness of the greatest number is a measure of right and wrong
http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/Dialogue2015/Newsletter/September2014/ethics.html#happiness

12) A new global order.
http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/Dialogue2015/Newsletter/September2014/ethics.html#order

13) Guidelines, politics and ethics for human behaviors
http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/Dialogue2015/Newsletter/September2014/ethics.html#behaviors

14) Modern morality is a product of evolutionary forces.
http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/Dialogue2015/Newsletter/September2014/ethics.html#evolution

15) Symbiotical relationship in Nature.
http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/Dialogue2015/Newsletter/September2014/ethics.html#symbiosis

16) Knowledge is an essential good.
http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/Dialogue2015/Newsletter/September2014/ethics.html#knowledge

17) Ethics evolved over the course of many generations.
http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/Dialogue2015/Newsletter/September2014/ethics.html#generations

18) Reasoning generates important ethical conclusions.
http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/Dialogue2015/Newsletter/September2014/ethics.html#reasoning

19) Political ethics are also concerned with moral problems.
http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/Dialogue2015/Newsletter/September2014/ethics.html#political

Global Community Ethics

Non-Western societies, such as those in East Asia, are expanding their economic wealth, political strength, military power, claiming their own cultural values and letting go those constrained on them by the West. Nations with cultural similarities cooperate economically and politically. On the other hand, international organizations based on states with cultural commonality, such as the European Union, are far more successful than those that attempt to overshadow cultures. The reviving of religion worldwide is energizing these cultural differences. For instance, East Asian economic success has its primary source in East Asian culture. Power has shifted from the predominant West to non-Western civilizations, and global politics has become multipolar and multicivilizational.

When defining the culture of a civilization with respect to its behavior, a socially acceptable behavior would be a behavior that is accepted as normal or appropriate within a social culture or subculture. But today in world affairs, nation-states behaviors are shaped by the pursuit of power and wealth and also by cultural preferences, commonalities, and differences. The most significant and consequential groupings of states are now the world's major civilizations where local politics is the politics of ethnicity, and global politics is the politics of civilizations. Conflicts and wars will occur between peoples in association with different cultural groups.

Having defined what was meant by a nation-state, and a core-state within civilizations, and to a great extent within Western civilization, a much different attitude toward life in society can be found in non-Western civilizations, especially in China.

China as a civilization-state had a history of several thousands of years, and Chinese people lived on its soil and evolved its own unique civilization. The concept of a "civilization-state" was applied to mean that China was still faced with many difficulties when it was trying to make the transition from a civilization-state to a nation-state, and the Western-states blamed China's thousands of years of civilization for being a burden on its effort to build a modern state. In other words, being a civilization-state, China found it hard to evolve modern laws, economics, defense, education and political governance. Today's China has established an unprecendented modern state system which includes a unified government, market, economy, education, law, defense, finance and taxation. Yet the Chinese people still retains their many traditions associated with a civilization-state, and these traditions are playing a vital role today in China's success. There are many civilizations, Western civilization being one of them, but China is the only civilization-state, which is defined by its extraordinarily long history and also its huge geographic scale and social diversity. For China, unity is its first priority, and plurality the condition of its existence, and that is why China could offer Hong Kong "one country two systems", a model alien to a nation-state. The Chinese state enjoys a very different kind of relationship with society compared with the Western state. It enjoys much greater natural authority, legitimacy and respect, even though not a single vote is cast for the government. The reason is that the state is seen by the Chinese people as the guardian, custodian and embodiment of their civilization. The duty of the state is to protect its unity. The legitimacy of the state therefore lies deep in Chinese history. This is utterly different from how the state is seen by Western societies.

In China's long history, all governments are expected to show special concern for improving people's livelihood, tackel natural and man-made disasters, and cope with all the challenges posed by China's huge population and vast territory. It is unimaginable that most Chinese would ever accept the so-called multi-party democratic system with a change of central government every four years. The Communist Party of China (CPC) is not a party as the concept "party" is understood in the West. In essence, the CPC continues the long tradition of a unified Confucian ruling entity, which represents the interest of the whole society, rather than a Western-style political party which openly represents group interests. In China, political ideas and practices over the past millennia are the most important source of the Chinese perception of legitimacy. One could well apply the Chinese concept of "selection of talents based on meritocracy" to the Western society and question the Western concept of legitimacy. Without this legitimacy based on meritocracy, how could a regime be qualified to govern? How could a regime be accountable to its people and to the world?

As a modern state, China accepts the concept of the sovereign equality of states and prevailing conceptions of human rights. China is unique due to the many traditions and features originating from its civilization. This is also the key conceptual difference between a civilizational state and a civilization-state. The civilizational state represents an amalgamation of an old civilization and a modern nation-state. On the other hand, a civilization-state reflects the tension between the two. As a civilizational state, China is both old and young, both traditional and modern, both Chinese and global. At least eight features can be distilled from the civilizational state of China: 1) a very large population, 2) a vast territoty, 3) very long traditions, 4) a unique language, 5) richest cultural heritages, 6) a political system with Chinese characteristics, 7) a distinctive society, 8) a unique way of running an economy.

'Sinic' includes the culture of China and Chinese communities in Southeast Asia and outside of China as well as the related cultures of Vietnam and Korea. Confucianism is a major part of Chinese civilization. A vision of a new world has begun centuries ago, and is based largely on civilizational values. The world order is now one of diverse civilizations many of which have contributed to human progress toward a harmonious world. China is the first authentic world power with a genuine, real global vision because the Chinese government approach to global politics has been civilizational, not imperialist. What made the Chinese different from the Europeans was that the Chinese people command the interest of others by their power to give. China claims to be a uniquely ethical power because the Chinese people have no notion of the 'other' outside the system. So China has never wished to colonize anyone and has never had a civilizing mission. The leadership of China today is more about a mutual cooperation, a true harmony of interests between civilizations, one that is more ecologically friendly in reflecting the balance of Nature. But that is unlikely to appeal to the Democrat or Republican people of the United States. What appears to be emerging is a world of two different orders, a US-centric and a Sino-centric system.

Within China development model, the four features of the civilizational state (population, territory, tradition and culture) all constitute China's greatest strengths. China has the richest human resources and potentially the largest consumer market; China has an unparalleled geopolitical and geoeconomic status; China has its tradition of independent thinking, and has the richest cultural resources in the world. China is a civilizational state generating its own standards and values and making unique contributions to the world civilizations. China's rise is that of a civilizational state with a strong historical and cultural traditions. The original, continuous and endogenous nature of these traditions is indeed rare and unique in the world. It does not imitate or follow other models and has its own intrinsic logic of evolution and development. The civilizational state has a strong capability to draw on the strengths of other nations while maintaining its own identity. The Chinese people have a deep respect of Nature and have applied the secular application of ethics and political philosophy to social, economic, and political governance. Chinese culture is more inclusive than exclusive, within the broad conceptual framework of the Confucian idea of 'unity in diversity". The greatest wisdom of a civilizational state is its long tradition of seeking common ground while reserving differences, and this wisdom is first reflected in the Chinese language. Chinese characters are commonly made up of various components, and the components often give a hint of the pronunciation and the meaning of the word, and they are structured in such a way that they often follow the principle of "seeking common ground while reserving differences". The Chinese language seems to underline the fact that seeking commonality from diversity is a trait of Chinese culture. The governance of a civilizational state follows the same logic, and if one can focus on seeking the commonalities of different interest groups, one stands a better chance of solving the tensions among them, whether it is a tension between regions, between enterprises, between social groups or between rich and poor.

The rise and evolution of China is not the rise and evolution of another ordinary country but the rise and evolution of one fifth of the world's population, 1.3 billion people. It is the rise and evolution of a civilizational state with a long history and a vast territory. With their diligence, sacrifice and wisdom, the Chinese people have created a miracle and pioneered their own model of development which includes education, healthcare, housing, global environment, and the quality of life in any given place in China. China's rise is the rise of a civilizational state which has amalgamated the world's longest continuous civilization with a huge modern state. If a civilizational state like China was to follow the Western model of development rather than to its own path, the country would experience chaos and break up. The nature of China as a civilizational state determines that given its cultural traditions, China is not likely to be a country bent on confrontation. Rather, it is likely to seek peaceful co-existence, mutual learning and win-win outcomes with other countries and other political systems.

China's civilizational state is a product of hundreds of states amalgamated into one over China's long and continuous history. In China 92% of the Chinese identify themselves as Han Chinese. China's rapid progress in such areas as tourism, automobile industry, the Internet, high-speed trains and urbanization has demonstrated China's capacity for learning, adaptation and innovation.

The average Chinese today has far more freedom of personal choice regarding jobs, housing, education, marriage and leisure, study or work. The success of China shows that whatever the political system, it must emphasize good governance which should be an objective of all governments in the world including Global Governments, Global Parliament, and should also be the base of Global Civilization. If there is any chance to resolve or at least mitigate the impact of global challenges, one may have to draw on the Chinese ideas of harmony and moderation. Indeed, as global crises of all sorts further intensify, the Global Community may have no alternative but to show solidarity and help each other out of crises, and such solidarity can only be built on the basis of harmony and moderation, and on respecting the political and cultural diversity of this troubled world. In the world today, cultural identities (ethnic, national, religious, civilitional) are central, and cultural affinities and differences shape the alliances. The traditional society of China was based on family and kinships, and Chinese ancestors were mainly settled farmers engaged in agricultural activities, in which family and kinships played a uniquely important role.

Chinese society has always been more secular than religious in its long history. Chinese culture was influenced by Confucianism, which is moralistic and humanistic, and this morality and humanism are embeded in the Chinese language. China's Confucian heritage, with its emphasis on authority, order, hierarchy, and the supremacy of the collectivity over the individual, creates obstacles to democratization. Yet economic growth in south China is creating high levels of wealth, a dynamic bourgeoisie, accumulations of economic power outside governmental control, and a rapidly expanding middle class. In addition, Chinese people are deeply involved in the outside world in terms of trade, investment, and education. All this creates a social basis for movement toward political pluralism.

This 21st century is very crucial for humanity as it will determine our survival or not as a species and, consequently, the survival of the next generations. The Biosphere is our world, our home. The lives of all lifeforms and plants on our planet deserve protection, preservation, and care. The genomic information of plants, animals, and human beings is the common wealth of the planet, and all efforts to make use of this environmental commons must be framed around principles of equality, solidarity, environmental and climate justice. 

Democratic socialism advocates that the control and management of natural resources be under the control of the people. The 1 % super rich people worldwide who thrive within capitalism, must be overthrown. This new way of governing can be achieve through legitimate democratic means by voting in a party that represents this way of governing. Democratic socialism plus implies public owership, not private ownership of natural resources.