The Urgent Need to Adopt a Global Manifesto to Save Humanity

By Donald A. Collins | 21 May 2019
Church and State

As it becomes more and more obvious many see human survival as in acute danger. Future scenarios abound and include the disappearance of democracy on the road to Brave New World or 1984 as predicted in the last Century.

What if by some remarkable cognizance humans could come to the mutual recognition of where we are heading!

What if we could impanel a world leaders meeting to agree on a global manifesto for human survival!

What would be the points of such a document?

Finding humane ways to slow the growth and then gradually reduce human numbers?
Recycling our offal
Outlawing nukes
You add your own to the list, Readers!!

First, certainly that we would all like to survive!

The growing evidence against that is already fully discovered.

There are limits to growth on a finite planet, limits to everything from human numbers to the resources to support them.

Second, what compromises are required?

The race to be the most powerful needs adjusting; how about the race to make livable options for all?

Third, when do we all take the first step?

When enough of us see the massive disasters which lie ahead.

So now the really hard part: deciding on specific priorities!

Here’s one! Deciding to allow our world governance by individual nations to be guided only by secular reality. In short you can still love Jesus or Muhammad but the rules by which we live are secularly laid down!

Does that end the goal of gaining a Global Manifesto for global survival?

Maybe. But with our growing awareness of our tiny place in the universe a growing number of us are “closet atheists”!!

So we can embrace the fantasies of religion but only when they avoid the absolutism of those faiths which demand violence and hatred! Impossible? Maybe but again consider the looming alternatives!

Calling such a meeting would be easy but the crazed egotism of top world leaders seems to foreclose that from happening.

I wonder if any of those eager Democrats seeking their party’s nomination would pose the question of the world being on brink of a long slide to disaster if we don’t take meaningful steps now?

This web site with Nobel laureates has set down the impeccable case for such a world leader confab; see below for a few examples.

If I ruled the world: John Mather
Living in the Anthropocene: Toward a New Global Ethos
Five and a Half Utopias
We have so many ways to pursue a healthy climate – it’s insane to wait any longer
Nobel prize winner Brian Schmidt: ‘Climate change … the great challenge for humanity over the next 100 years’
Dealing with Complexity: Discovering the Future
Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity
Climate Change: Predicting the Future

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC., has spent over 40 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013.

From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013