Peace amongst nations means decreasing the wealth gap between rich and poor, between the industrialized nations and the developing nations.
Global poverty, aspects and issues 
are related to the problem of overpopulation.
People have to regulate their population by means that are voluntary and benign and have to take along with a fair proportion of other lifeforms. Proper Earth management will certainly be a necessary tool to achieve this goal. If not there will be a collapse of humanity and of the environment. From now on every global decision we do will have tremendous consequences on our future.
In general, populations of all lifeforms grow exponentially that is by a steady proportion of whatever was there before. When there is no practical limit on resource then populations usually grow maximally and the only limit is that of the reproductive capacity of the female animal. About 10,000 years ago, human beings were obliged to commit themselves more or less fully to agriculture and the human population was 5 to 10 million. By the time of Christ, after only 8,000 years of large-scale agriculture, the human population was 100 to 300 million. After this time, the exponential growth of the population entered its rapid phase. The billion mark was passed by 1800 A.D. By year 2000, the human population exceeded 6 billion. Thus agriculture allowed a thousand-fold increase in numbers over a period of 10,000 years.
In practical sense, agriculture cannot feed a human population
that has grown beyond the capacity limit. We must ask ourselves whether we can stop the growth by
means that are voluntary and benign, or whether the eventual environmental restraint will be out of our hands. At some questionable time in our future we will find that our
soil will no longer have the nutrients it needs to produce quality food. For some time we may counter this problem by fresh weathering of rock. Not for long! The loss of
lifeforms on Earth will be permanent.
Obviously something has to be done! Earth Government proposes a tight global policy, benignly implemented, or it will be very nasty indeed. In practice, a human population of 10 to 12 billion would be too uncomfortably high and would add a high strain on world resources. What kind of world population would be reasonable? What goal should we aim at? A population should be small enough to be sustainable indefinitely and still allow plenty of leeway for ourselves and other lifeforms. It should also be large enough to allow the formation of healthy civilizations.
We propose a world population of 500 million. The policy to apply is for every family to have only one or two children. It would take a thousand years to reach our goal of a population of 500 million.
The continued economic growth in India and China is an important factor to reduce world poverty. The rich-poor gap is getting wider in developing countries as well as within richer countries. Factors to help reduce the gap:
In 30 years an additional 200 million hectares will be needed to feed the growing populations in the tropics and subtropics, but only 93 million hectares are available in these nations for farms. Most of that land is forested and should be preserved. Other ways to feed this new population include:
With one-fifth of the world's total population, China has only 7% of the world's arable land. Mountains or deserts cover two-thirds of China, making only the balance of the land available to 1.3 billion people.
Beside the global warming, the human activity that affects Earth most is that of food production. We need to form a global ministry dealing only about agriculture and the protection of our soils. All nations will be part of the ministry. We have to design systems of food production that meet our own needs, and also leave room for these other lifeforms we want to take along with us. Western agriculture is designed in the end to maximize profit. As a primordial human right, the prime concern of the human species is to feed people. Therefore we have to do things differently. We will have to produce less livestock as we effectively double the population we need to feed: ourselves, plus the livestock that is supposed to be feeding us. We also have to apportion the land surface of the whole world more efficiently, using some for highhly intensive food production (which makes use of less land), some for extensive agriculture (combining food production with wildlife conservation) and designing some specifically as wilderness areas with global corridors between them.
In developing countries, the most important environmental pressure is linked to poverty. Poor people put pressure on the land and forests, over-exploiting them to survive. These countries must be helped. They must accept the implementation of the Scale of Human and Earth Rights and the Charter of Earth Government into their way of life. We must give them access to technologies that use fewer resources, energy efficient technologies, 'clean' technologies.
The debt of the poor nations or 'developing nations' to the rich nations was a form of global tax and therefore the poor or 'developing' nations dont have to pay it back. In fact poor nations should expect way more money as tax by the rich nations and not as loans. The state of the world today is the result of a specific set of interlocking institutions: the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. These institutions are designed to generate massive wealth for the few and poverty for the rest. The same people who make the decisions in government and corporation make the profit. They create a tight concentration of power. Together they are a form of anti-government whose only goal is profit. The IMF, through Structural Adjustment Programs, now directly runs the economies of over 70 countries. That means that about 1000 economists and bureaucrats control the economic policies for 1.4 billion people in these countries. That is a form of anti-government. The people that profit most from the global economy are white people. The people who are most oppressed by the global economy are people of colour. Racism and sexism have become the norm. The entire planet is in a state of low intensity civil war. The ruling elite profit off of the exploitation of the rest of the world. Earth Government was looking for a method of raising global taxes, of redistributing incomes to the poorest communities, of providing debt-free technical assistance to non-industrial and developing countries to help them out of poverty and to meet environmental and social standards, but there it was all along right on our eyes. The Earth Court of Justice will be asked to decide on the debt be changed into an actual tax to be paid by the rich nations to the poor nations, and to decide on the amount of tax to be paid. Developing nations will then be able to start rebuilding their communities as per the Scale of Human and Earth Rights and the Charter of Earth Government. They will not have to satisfy the economic needs and wishes of the rich nations. The Earth Court of Justice will also be asked to rule illegal the activities of the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO unless they become a part of a greater whole such as the Earth Ministry of Financial Institutions, a part of Earth Government. These institutions will be controlled by the greater whole.
Because governments of poor nations had to promote 'free trade', this situation cause barriers to trade to be eliminated and now we are seeing the globalization of 'free trade'. Poor nations are now asked to produce only the products they are good at producing and buy from other countries the products they are not as good at producing. This way the economy of a nation will function at maximum efficiency. So now governments are told to open up their borders and to stop meddling in markets, so that competition will be free internationally. Often what is called trade is really moving of resources across borders between subsidiaries of the same corporation. Nothing to do with free competition. Economic activity is centrally-managed and planned by the corporate elite. Capital move freely across borders as restrictions on the flow of money have been removed. Corporations can relocate their operations to the countries with the lowest wages, the least active unions and the lowest environmental standards. The reality is that more polluting industries are encouraged to relocate to poorer countries. A polluting industry tends to increase the chances that people in the surrounding area will have health problems. If pollution kills someone or makes them unable to work, the cost to the economy, or to the industry in the case of a law-suit, would be roughly equal to the projected wages that the person would have earned in the rest of their life. In a country with low life expectancy and low wages, this cost will be lessened. It costs less to dump a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country.
Today the watchdog, the 'enforcer' for 'free trade', and also the bedfellow of both the IMF and the World Bank, is the World Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO is responsible for monitoring national trading policies, handling trade disputes, and enforcing the GATT agreements. The World Trade Organization (WTO), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) encourage the privatization of public services and the settling of international disputes their own way. Any government, acting on behalf of a corporation, can challenge the acts of another government if they "interfere with trade." Complaints are taken to a WTO dispute resolution body which then make a binding decision. The WTO has forced governments to lower their environmental standards in favour of a corporation to allow more pollution into the environment, and that is a form of anti-government gone bad with absolute no respect or care for life and the global-life support systems. Corporations can sue governments if they harm their profits through any unfair barriers to trade. NAFTA and WTO tribunals usually rule in favor of corporations. So now we really have a new definition for the word 'property' to mean both what is currently owned and profits that could potentially be made. To compensate, we propose a new definition for 'pollution' and 'human destruction' to mean the pollution and human destruction that the policies of the IMF, World Bank and WTO are causing now in the world plus the pollution and human destruction that they will cause in the future to the next generations. By providing corporations with a mean to override governmental decisions, NAFTA and the WTO (and the proposed FTAA) shift power even more into the hands of the elite. And that is also a form of anti-government.
The global economy can be affected by the deregulation in the movement of capital and thus by speculation. Money is made off tiny fluctuations in the relative prices of currencies. Speculation makes it possible for huge amounts of money to be transferred half-way around the world in a matter of seconds. Whereas world trade associated with actual goods and services is estimated at $7 trillion a year, speculation is estimated at $1.5 trillion a day. If a country's economy starts to slow, billions of dollars can be transferred out of the country instantaneously, which can significantly affect its economy and the people. This has been the case in 1997 of a number of East Asia countries. They were bankrupted by speculation. The people were enormously affected for the worst. Speculation can exert tremendous pressure on the internal politics of a country. It can bankrupt a country's economy. Speculation should be de-institutionalized. Humanity has no real need for speculation, and it does way more harm than good.
Rich countries manipulate trade agreements in order to ensure profitability. Their governments insist on tariffs and protectionism in areas in which they are weak. For instance, Canada and the USA are now going through the process of an economic war in the softwood industry. The imposition of a 29 percent tariff on softwood lumber by the U.S. Commerce Department shows that Canadians were duped by the Free Trade Agreement(FTA) and NAFTA. The U.S. Government protectionism is itself aimed at reducing the value of the Canadian companies just long enough for American competitors to acquire them. Many Canadian industries have already been bought by US competitors. The energy sector is one of them. Free trade opens up a poor country's economy to competition with strong, developed, well-financed, multinational corporations. In consequence, most of the local producers and manufacturers go out of business thus leaving a poor country's economy entirely in the hands of the transnational elite. It is a form of colonization and of world anti-government. Rich countries force poorer countries to open up their markets, and then take them over.
are related to the problem of overpopulation.
People have to regulate their population by means that are voluntary and benign and have to take along with a fair proportion of other lifeforms. Proper Earth management will certainly be a necessary tool to achieve this goal. If not there will be a collapse of humanity and of the environment. From now on every global decision we do will have tremendous consequences on our future.
In general, populations of all lifeforms grow exponentially that is by a steady proportion of whatever was there before. When there is no practical limit on resource then populations usually grow maximally and the only limit is that of the reproductive capacity of the female animal. About 10,000 years ago, human beings were obliged to commit themselves more or less fully to agriculture and the human population was 5 to 10 million. By the time of Christ, after only 8,000 years of large-scale agriculture, the human population was 100 to 300 million. After this time, the exponential growth of the population entered its rapid phase. The billion mark was passed by 1800 A.D. By year 2000, the human population exceeded 6 billion. Thus agriculture allowed a thousand-fold increase in numbers over a period of 10,000 years.
In practical sense, agriculture cannot feed a human population
that has grown beyond the capacity limit. We must ask ourselves whether we can stop the growth by
means that are voluntary and benign, or whether the eventual environmental restraint will be out of our hands. At some questionable time in our future we will find that our
soil will no longer have the nutrients it needs to produce quality food. For some time we may counter this problem by fresh weathering of rock. Not for long! The loss of
lifeforms on Earth will be permanent.Obviously something has to be done! Earth Government proposes a tight global policy, benignly implemented, or it will be very nasty indeed. In practice, a human population of 10 to 12 billion would be too uncomfortably high and would add a high strain on world resources. What kind of world population would be reasonable? What goal should we aim at? A population should be small enough to be sustainable indefinitely and still allow plenty of leeway for ourselves and other lifeforms. It should also be large enough to allow the formation of healthy civilizations.
We propose a world population of 500 million. The policy to apply is for every family to have only one or two children. It would take a thousand years to reach our goal of a population of 500 million.
The continued economic growth in India and China is an important factor to reduce world poverty. The rich-poor gap is getting wider in developing countries as well as within richer countries. Factors to help reduce the gap:
* increase trade
* annulment of world debt
* national economic policy reforms
* creation of symbiotical relationships between high-income countries with those less industrialized and entrepreneurial cultures
* improved international financial governance
* educating people about the Scale of Human and Earth Rights
In 30 years an additional 200 million hectares will be needed to feed the growing populations in the tropics and subtropics, but only 93 million hectares are available in these nations for farms. Most of that land is forested and should be preserved. Other ways to feed this new population include:
* improved agricultural practices
* make use of salt-tolerant crops obtained by genetic engineering or use domesticated wild plants that are already salt-tolerant
* make sure of stem cells for meat production, i.e. mass-producing of muscle tissue rather than animals
With one-fifth of the world's total population, China has only 7% of the world's arable land. Mountains or deserts cover two-thirds of China, making only the balance of the land available to 1.3 billion people.
Beside the global warming, the human activity that affects Earth most is that of food production. We need to form a global ministry dealing only about agriculture and the protection of our soils. All nations will be part of the ministry. We have to design systems of food production that meet our own needs, and also leave room for these other lifeforms we want to take along with us. Western agriculture is designed in the end to maximize profit. As a primordial human right, the prime concern of the human species is to feed people. Therefore we have to do things differently. We will have to produce less livestock as we effectively double the population we need to feed: ourselves, plus the livestock that is supposed to be feeding us. We also have to apportion the land surface of the whole world more efficiently, using some for highhly intensive food production (which makes use of less land), some for extensive agriculture (combining food production with wildlife conservation) and designing some specifically as wilderness areas with global corridors between them.
In developing countries, the most important environmental pressure is linked to poverty. Poor people put pressure on the land and forests, over-exploiting them to survive. These countries must be helped. They must accept the implementation of the Scale of Human and Earth Rights and the Charter of Earth Government into their way of life. We must give them access to technologies that use fewer resources, energy efficient technologies, 'clean' technologies.
The debt of the poor nations or 'developing nations' to the rich nations was a form of global tax and therefore the poor or 'developing' nations dont have to pay it back. In fact poor nations should expect way more money as tax by the rich nations and not as loans. The state of the world today is the result of a specific set of interlocking institutions: the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. These institutions are designed to generate massive wealth for the few and poverty for the rest. The same people who make the decisions in government and corporation make the profit. They create a tight concentration of power. Together they are a form of anti-government whose only goal is profit. The IMF, through Structural Adjustment Programs, now directly runs the economies of over 70 countries. That means that about 1000 economists and bureaucrats control the economic policies for 1.4 billion people in these countries. That is a form of anti-government. The people that profit most from the global economy are white people. The people who are most oppressed by the global economy are people of colour. Racism and sexism have become the norm. The entire planet is in a state of low intensity civil war. The ruling elite profit off of the exploitation of the rest of the world. Earth Government was looking for a method of raising global taxes, of redistributing incomes to the poorest communities, of providing debt-free technical assistance to non-industrial and developing countries to help them out of poverty and to meet environmental and social standards, but there it was all along right on our eyes. The Earth Court of Justice will be asked to decide on the debt be changed into an actual tax to be paid by the rich nations to the poor nations, and to decide on the amount of tax to be paid. Developing nations will then be able to start rebuilding their communities as per the Scale of Human and Earth Rights and the Charter of Earth Government. They will not have to satisfy the economic needs and wishes of the rich nations. The Earth Court of Justice will also be asked to rule illegal the activities of the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO unless they become a part of a greater whole such as the Earth Ministry of Financial Institutions, a part of Earth Government. These institutions will be controlled by the greater whole.
Because governments of poor nations had to promote 'free trade', this situation cause barriers to trade to be eliminated and now we are seeing the globalization of 'free trade'. Poor nations are now asked to produce only the products they are good at producing and buy from other countries the products they are not as good at producing. This way the economy of a nation will function at maximum efficiency. So now governments are told to open up their borders and to stop meddling in markets, so that competition will be free internationally. Often what is called trade is really moving of resources across borders between subsidiaries of the same corporation. Nothing to do with free competition. Economic activity is centrally-managed and planned by the corporate elite. Capital move freely across borders as restrictions on the flow of money have been removed. Corporations can relocate their operations to the countries with the lowest wages, the least active unions and the lowest environmental standards. The reality is that more polluting industries are encouraged to relocate to poorer countries. A polluting industry tends to increase the chances that people in the surrounding area will have health problems. If pollution kills someone or makes them unable to work, the cost to the economy, or to the industry in the case of a law-suit, would be roughly equal to the projected wages that the person would have earned in the rest of their life. In a country with low life expectancy and low wages, this cost will be lessened. It costs less to dump a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country.
Today the watchdog, the 'enforcer' for 'free trade', and also the bedfellow of both the IMF and the World Bank, is the World Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO is responsible for monitoring national trading policies, handling trade disputes, and enforcing the GATT agreements. The World Trade Organization (WTO), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) encourage the privatization of public services and the settling of international disputes their own way. Any government, acting on behalf of a corporation, can challenge the acts of another government if they "interfere with trade." Complaints are taken to a WTO dispute resolution body which then make a binding decision. The WTO has forced governments to lower their environmental standards in favour of a corporation to allow more pollution into the environment, and that is a form of anti-government gone bad with absolute no respect or care for life and the global-life support systems. Corporations can sue governments if they harm their profits through any unfair barriers to trade. NAFTA and WTO tribunals usually rule in favor of corporations. So now we really have a new definition for the word 'property' to mean both what is currently owned and profits that could potentially be made. To compensate, we propose a new definition for 'pollution' and 'human destruction' to mean the pollution and human destruction that the policies of the IMF, World Bank and WTO are causing now in the world plus the pollution and human destruction that they will cause in the future to the next generations. By providing corporations with a mean to override governmental decisions, NAFTA and the WTO (and the proposed FTAA) shift power even more into the hands of the elite. And that is also a form of anti-government.
The global economy can be affected by the deregulation in the movement of capital and thus by speculation. Money is made off tiny fluctuations in the relative prices of currencies. Speculation makes it possible for huge amounts of money to be transferred half-way around the world in a matter of seconds. Whereas world trade associated with actual goods and services is estimated at $7 trillion a year, speculation is estimated at $1.5 trillion a day. If a country's economy starts to slow, billions of dollars can be transferred out of the country instantaneously, which can significantly affect its economy and the people. This has been the case in 1997 of a number of East Asia countries. They were bankrupted by speculation. The people were enormously affected for the worst. Speculation can exert tremendous pressure on the internal politics of a country. It can bankrupt a country's economy. Speculation should be de-institutionalized. Humanity has no real need for speculation, and it does way more harm than good.
Rich countries manipulate trade agreements in order to ensure profitability. Their governments insist on tariffs and protectionism in areas in which they are weak. For instance, Canada and the USA are now going through the process of an economic war in the softwood industry. The imposition of a 29 percent tariff on softwood lumber by the U.S. Commerce Department shows that Canadians were duped by the Free Trade Agreement(FTA) and NAFTA. The U.S. Government protectionism is itself aimed at reducing the value of the Canadian companies just long enough for American competitors to acquire them. Many Canadian industries have already been bought by US competitors. The energy sector is one of them. Free trade opens up a poor country's economy to competition with strong, developed, well-financed, multinational corporations. In consequence, most of the local producers and manufacturers go out of business thus leaving a poor country's economy entirely in the hands of the transnational elite. It is a form of colonization and of world anti-government. Rich countries force poorer countries to open up their markets, and then take them over.
