I’d like to thank Global Community Earth Government (GCEG) for giving me this opportunity of talking to you about possible pathways to global sustainability and about the particular pathway that the Simultaneous Policy (SP) campaign offers.

Before starting, however, let me first be clear that to solve our many social, economic and environmental problems, we need to act at all levels. And by that I mean at the local, national and global levels. But today I want to focus solely on the global level; on action we can take to address global problems such as global warming, out-of-control financial markets, monopolistic corporate power and so on. Because the global level is where citizens are most in need of ways to take action.

But before we can discuss pathways to sustainability at the global level, we need a far better understanding of the underlying dynamic that presently causes the global problems we want to solve. I will now tell you what that underlying dynamic in my view is and why our problems will only get worse until we address it. And the ‘underlying dynamic’ I am referring to is what I call destructive competition.

So how does this 'destructive competition' manifest itself? Well, since policies which encourage ecological and social sustainability generally cost industry more, governments resist imposing them for fear of capital or corporations moving elsewhere and of the knock-on consequences of capital flight, inflation, unemployment and a loss of votes. Businesses, too, resist the implementation of environmentally responsible technology, not because it cannot be done but because increased costs will reduce their competitiveness. Mergers and acquisitions and their attendant job losses also occur, not so much out of greed, but out of fear for companies to retain competitive advantage and relative safety from themselves becoming the targets of hostile takeovers. And national governments often permit increasing corporate consolidation against the public interest for fear of their own corporations becoming uncompetitive with those of other countries. Governments also pay vast sums of tax-payers money in corporate welfare to compete for inward investment and of course the corporations happily play one government off against another. Net result? Corporations win - and society and the environment loses. Developing countries too, must compete with one another to attract investment from foreign multinationals by submitting to IMF-imposed 'structural adjustment' allowing their raw materials to be plundered, their forests clear-cut and their indigenous peoples displaced.

Seen in this way, global warming, global poverty, monopolistic corporate power and over-population are not the problems. Because they are merely symptoms of a far greater underlying problem: the vicious circle of destructive competition.

Now this wouldn’t be so bad if government could do something about it. But they can’t, because the threat of capital or jobs moving to other countries keeps all governments locked into a spiral of having to down-level social and environmental protection in a bid to remain relatively more attractive to global investors and corporations. It keeps them locked in a mental and existential framework which is called “maintaining our international competitiveness”. It’s a kind of code-word for justifying worsening social and environmental conditions for the sake of attracting jobs and capital. It’s a vicious circle: a game no nation can win and which all of us will ultimately lose.

To sum it up therefore, today, the main barrier to sustainability is destructive international competition and the fear it induces in national governments - a fear which prevents them from regulating in the social or environmental interest. The problem, in a nutshell therefore, is that democratic governance today remains essentially national whilst business and markets have already become truly global. Democratic governance urgently needs to catch up and to operate at the global level.

The creation of the World Trade Organisation can be seen as an attempt to close that governance gap. But because the WTO largely ignores social and environmental interests, favouring only the interests of trade, it perversely serves only to exacerbate destructive competition rather than reducing it.

The UN itself is also another focus for creating governance at the global level. But the UN, we must remember, embodies a critical contradiction. On the one hand, it has no binding authority over its member nations so it cannot possibly act as an institution of binding global governance. On the other, and from the point of view of its individual member nations, the UN possesses no democratically elected parliament, so there exists no legitimate justification for nations to relinquish any of their sovereignty to the UN. So it’s a ‘chicken and egg’ problem; a veritable ‘Catch 22’. Meanwhile, nations with the most influence over the UN as whole – or over the Security Council in particular - are hardly likely to voluntarily give up their influence.

My personal view, therefore, is that trying to reform the UN – ‘from the top down’, as it were - so that the UN brings global democracy down to the world’s people is unlikely to be successful. Instead, in my opinion, the people will have to bring global democracy up to the UN, from the bottom up! By this I am not suggesting that efforts to reform the UN should be abandoned – far from it. What I am suggesting is that there is now an alternative, complementary and highly effective means at our disposal in the shape of the Simultaneous Policy (SP) campaign. We can support the work of UNAs but we can also support SP.

So, what is SP and why does it offer a credible alternative?

SP is two things at the same time: it’s both a policy to solve global problems and it’s a process by which citizens can drive politicians to implement that policy. As a policy, SP will contain the necessary measures to solve global warming, to enforce appropriate social and environmental standards across the world and to re-distribute wealth from rich to poor across national borders. In short, SP would contain all the necessary policies that we people know to be necessary to create a just and sustainable world. For SP is not a package of policies designed by politicians or by unaccountable global institutions, such as the WTO. Instead it is being designed by citizens around the world who support SP or with help from their chosen independent policy experts. The key point, however, is that SP is to implemented by all or sufficient nations simultaneously. Simultaneous implementation means that no nation, corporation or citizen loses out unduly to any other. Simultaneous implementation thus breaks the vicious circle of destructive competition, removes all excuses for inaction or delay, and allows us all – nations, businesses and individuals - to make the switch away from destructive competition to fruitful global cooperation.

But SP is also a process; a political process that is driven not by governments or political parties, but by citizens. To support the SP campaign, citizens all over the world are being invited to adopt SP. Adopting SP means we pledge to vote in future elections for any politician – within reason – who has pledged to implement SP alongside other governments. Alternatively, if we have a preference for a particular party, adopting means we encourage our party to make that pledge.

Many MPs are signing up to SP simply because they see it as a good idea. But since the outcomes of more and more parliamentary elections around the world are increasingly decided by a relatively small number of votes, not many SP adopters are required to make it in the vital interests of even reluctant or sceptical politicians to support it. So, by adopting SP, we citizens can create a situation where politicians who fail to support SP increasingly risk losing out to those that do. To date, 12 MPs from all the main UK political parties have signed the SP Pledge and we hope to increase this dramatically by the next general election. In parallel to this, we are also making progress in the EU and in other countries.

Commonly, we citizens expect our governments to solve problems for us. But citizens around the world are increasingly realising that we would be foolish to leave it to governments on their own. The present miserable progress with the Kyoto Protocol and other hoped-for agreements to solve global problems are either non-existent or unlikely to be effective. And the UN, as we have seen, is hampered by its own inherent contradiction. So that is why citizens must now take responsibility by getting behind a process which impels politicians to solve these problems, and yet does so in a way which is non-party-political, democratic, inclusive and harms no one’s competitiveness. The Simultaneous Policy (SP), through its condition of simultaneous implementation and its citizens voting pledge, is perhaps the only initiative that permits citizens to use their votes in national elections to drive politicians of all parties to implement global solutions.

Indeed, citizen action via SP is vital, not least because, without a mechanism such as SP by which citizens in the USA can force their government to cooperate, efforts led solely by governments, such as the Kyoto Protocol, will inevitably remain blocked or ineffective. So this is why SP offers citizens in all countries a potentially very effective alternative. And for politicians too, supporting SP is not in conflict with existing governmental efforts but is parallel and complementary to them.

So, whether it is corporate irresponsibility, global warming or any of our many other global problems, none of them is likely to be fully solved without simultaneous, transnational citizen action. If you agree with me that governments are likely to require electoral pressure to make that happen, adopting SP is the means we have at our disposal and I invite those of you here who have not yet adopted SP to do so. In fact I like to think that adopting SP is both our global democratic right and our global democratic responsibility.

In taking responsibility as citizens to solve our global problems, I am reminded of something that activist and campaigner, Marianne Williamson, once said: “Our deepest fear,” she suggested, “is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. … There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in Everyone! As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others!”

SP, I suggest, is perhaps the first and only form of global electoral politics so, in addition to supporting the UNA, I invite you also to adopt SP, and you can do so simply, and at no cost whatever, by visiting our website www.simpol.org. After all, in today’s age of globalisation; in this age of humanity’s increasingly dangerous species adolescence, it is through initiatives such as SP that we citizens can show that we are powerful and responsible beyond measure and can thus play our parts in helping all humanity to reach our long-awaited, but now urgently necessary, evolutionary species maturity.

John Bunzl – Founder & Trustee
March 2006

Adopting SP is free. Please go to http://www.simpol.org/dossiers/dossier-UK/html-UK/how_do_i_adopt_sp-UK.html

--------------
International Simultaneous Policy Organisation
http://www.simpol.org
SP: Rediscovering the Sense of Our Collective Humanity

Subbject: CC News Letter 29/03-Uncertainty In Iraq
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2006 10:55:12 +0200
From: "editor@countercurrents.org"
To: globalcommunity@telus.net

Hello

Kindly forward this newsletter to your friends and encourage them to join this mailing list.
http://www.countercurrents.org/subscribe.htm

In Solidarity

Binu
editor@countercurrents.org
http://www.countercurrents.org/index.htm


Uncertainty In Iraq
By Baghdad Burning
http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-burning290306.htm “The Ministry of Defense requests that civilians do not comply with the orders of the army or police on nightly patrols unless they are accompanied by coalition forces working in that area.”That’s how messed up the country is at this point

Mosque Massacre Deepens Occupation’s Crisis
By Bill Van Auken
http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-auken290306.htm

The massacre of as many as 40 unarmed worshipers in a northeast Baghdad mosque Sunday has triggered a political crisis that threatens to accelerate Iraq’s descent into civil war while sharply intensifying the hatred of millions of Iraqis for the three-year-old US occupation of their country
Wage War On Poverty, Not Immigrants
By Jesse Jackson
http://www.countercurrents.org/us-jackson290306.htm

We can spend billions trying to lock immigrants out and hold those that come in down. Or we can devote energy and resources now wasted on a civil war in Iraq to help lift our neighbors up, gain real trading partners and significantly reduce the misery that drives people from their homes
A War In Search Of A Justification
By Joshua Frank
http://www.countercurrents.org/us-frank290306.htm

Supporters of Iraq war still looking for a smoking gun
Hobson's Imperialism And The Desperate Uncle Sam As Naked As Ever
By Pratyush Chandra
http://www.countercurrents.org/us-chandra290306.htm

What else do all these abuses demonstrate about the state of the American youth pushed into the war, if not that imperialism necessarily dehumanises its own citizens? They are transformed into Full Metal Jacketed soldiers
Are Israel’s Interests In Americas’ Interests?
By Ghali Hassan
http://www.countercurrents.org/hassan290306.htm

The war against the Iraqi people proves to be a carbon copy of the war on the Palestinian people. In the same way Israel is destroying Palestine, US illegal war on Iraq has destroyed the entire nation. Why a premeditated mass murder of innocent civilians is good for the Jewish people or the American people?
It's The Media, Stupid
By Ramzy Baroud
http://www.countercurrents.org/baroud290306.htm

Israel's decades-long quest to bolster its media image has done wonders as American public opinion either sees Israel as a lone defender of democracy amid uncivilized Arab polities or not at all aware of the facts, basing its inane understanding of Middle East politics on media half truths that see Arabs as irrational, lazy and inherently violent, with the Israeli being the embodiment of the complete antithesis
Galilee Bishop Speaks For Justice, Friendship And Peace
By Sonia Nettnin
http://www.countercurrents.org/pa-nettnin290306.htm

Rev. Dr. Abuna Elias Chacour spoke about the need for security and peace between Israelis and Palestinians. He said people need to take responsibility for one another by befriending people they consider their enemies
Fitzgerald Will Seek New White House Indictments
By Jason Leopold
http://www.countercurrents.org/leopold290306.htm

The second part of the federal investigation into the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson is nearly complete.Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has started to prepare the paperwork to present to the grand jury seeking an indictment against White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove or National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley
Ball In The Supreme's Court
By William Fisher
http://www.countercurrents.org/fisher290306.htm

The U.S. Supreme Court this week heard arguments in what will almost certainly be one of the landmark cases of the past fifty years. Their decision will determine whether the Supreme Court will continue to assert its authority to review and check the executive’s power to detain and try individuals caught up in the “war on terror”
Introspection, The Key To Understanding
By Mirza A. Beg
http://www.countercurrents.org/beg290306.htm

It is the duty of truly religious people to raise their voices against the individual terrorism, but even more so the state terrorism, because it is done in our name. Because of the hold of religion on average populace, it becomes imperative to not let our faith be enlisted by the state to harm others

Subject: Fw: [ENWL-eng] Action: Lake Baikal is in Danger!
Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2006 20:16:25 +0400
From: "enwl" enwl@lew.spb.org
Organization: Expedition
To: globalcommunity@telus.net

Please, distribute widely

----- Original Message -----
From: enwle@lew.spb.org
To: globalcommunity@telus.net
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2006 3:46 PM
Subject: [ENWL-eng] Action: Lake Baikal is in Danger!

Lake Baikal

Lake Baikal is in danger!

Stop the construction of an oil pipeline in a World Natural Heritage Site!

Please go to http://www.babr.ru/?pt=truba to say NO!
http://baikalwave.eu.org/Eng/index-e.html

Please give your support to stop oil pipeline construction next to Lake Baikal!

This might be our last chance to stop a project to build an oil pipeline through the Lake Baikal basin in the immediate vicinity of the lake (as close at 800 metres at one point, and crossing 10 major rivers flowing into the lake, and 113,4 kilometres of the UNESCO World Heritage Site).

In very dubious circumstances the state organisation responsible for carrying out environmental impact assessments has approved the project of the state oil pipeline monopoly, "Transneft." It is likely that only the intervention of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, can prevent the project going ahead before it is too late.

Thousands of signatures have been collected against the project via the Internet (to date - 12625). Thousands more (over 16,000) have been collected in Irkutsk region to a petition to President Putin to call off the project.

In the event of an accident, within 20-40 minutes, up to 40,000 tons of oil could enter the lake with catastrophic consequences. The area is one of the most seismically active in Siberia where, in 1911, the most severe earthquake on Russian territory occurred. Scientists of the Irkutsk branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences have warned that in the case of such an accident some 10 thousand square kilometres of the lake (one third of the lake) would be covered by oil, bringing about the destruction of the major part of the lake's endemic organisms.

Containing 20% of the earth's liquid fresh water, Lake Baikal became a World heritage Site in 1996. The IUCN report recommending it for World Heritage status describes the lake as "a classic case for a World Heritage site meeting all four natural criteria. The Lake itself is the centrepiece of the site and it is its largely unseen underwater features that are the core of its value to both science and conservation. The surroundings of the lake with its taiga-clad mountain scenery and wildlife resources still mostly existing in a natural state is an added bonus. LB is in a class by itself, limnological wonder and a region of superlatives:.Lake Baikal is one of the most biodiverse lakes on earth with 1340 species of animals (745 endemic) and 570 species of plants (150 endemic)."

Please give your support to stop oil pipeline construction next to Lake Baikal in
http://www.babr.ru/?pt=truba

You have to fill in the following fields of the site-form:

Your name
Your city and country
Your e-mail (not published in the site)
Who are you?
Your comments if you wish

After that please press blue button at the foot of the form

Thank You!!

Vladimir Levchenko
(ENWL-moderator
------------- * ENWL * ------------
Ecological North West Line * St. Petersburg, Russia
Independent Environmental Net Service
Russian: ENWL(discussions), ENWL-inf(FSU infomation), ENWL-talk(any topics)
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enwl@lew.spb.org, enwl-inf@lew.spb.org, enwlt@lew.spb.org, enwle@lew.spb.org
Subscription, Moderator: vflew@lew.spb.org
(C) Please refer to exclusive articles of ENWL
http://www.enwl.net.ru (for ENWL only)
-------------------------------------

Vladimir Levchenko
(ENWL-moderator

Dear Vladimir:

I am opposed to the oil pipeline construction next to Lake Baikal. It would be a catastrophe of global importance, and on the Scale of Human and Earth Rights it is crime against humanity and all life to allow such project to go forward.

Germain Dufour

President
Global Community Earth Government (GCEG)