Steps For a Sustainable World

-One should never be denied from their natural rights.

          All humans are born with natural rights. These are the rights that cannot (should not) be taken away from any being. At a UN summit in 1948, nations that gathered agreed on a set of 30 basic rights. Most importantly of these rights is that all human beings are born equal and free. The set draws on the United States Constitution’s “Bill of Rights.” These basic rights are rights that cannot be denied on account of nationality, race, gender, or religion. It was the first international document of its type and was quickly adopted.

            Compassion for others and compassion for themselves is a quality that all individuals should have. Sheikh Rahman, in “The Roots of Compassion,” makes note that all religions teach the virtue of compassion. In order to obtain compassion for others, we must have it for ourselves. When total compassion is achieved, all humans will be able to treat others with respect and many global issues will be resolved

-Progress should not be made at the expense of a people and their resources and a whole people should not be forced off the land they have always lived on.

          A great deal of what is defined as “progress” is superficial and unsustainable. Progress is considered by some as the ability to be consumers who are able to have such luxuries as video games on a large flat screen TV. These items are obtained cheaply considering the externalized cost of workers and the environment. An investigative documentary China Blue illuminates the exploitation of workers throughout the world. The specific situation in the documentary was a clothing factory in China. In these factories, workers are often underpaid, overworked and live in horrible conditions. Yes, one can buy a nice pair of jeans for $20 at the mall, but the true cost of the jeans is in the social cost of destroying the environment and denying workers basic rights.

            In the developed and developing world, many governments are making a move to “preserve” land. In Mark Dowie’s “Conservation Refugees,” the story of a small native village in Thailand is told. The people of this village lived on the land for centuries, farming sustainably and co-existing with nature. Under pressure from the World Wildlife Foundation and other NGOs, the Thailand government is quickly setting up national parks and “preserves”. The people of this village were told they could no longer farm on their land, disrupting their traditional ways of life. These NGOs have huge budgets and do a huge amount of good for the world and environment; however, they often operate with external biases that result in several negative social consequences for the local people.

-One nation or people should never be able to completely conquer another.

          History has recorded many cases where a nation has been conquered. The most covered up yet brutal is the post-Columbus conquering of the Native Americans throughout the Americas in the 16th century. Howard Zinn brings this violent conquering of the Natives to light in “A People’s History of the United States.” Columbus, and other early explorers and settlers in the Americas, saw the Indians as an easily conquerable people. They took advantage of them as slaves and huge numbers were killed off due to disease, violence, and forced labor. This is completely unacceptable by current standards, but the oppression of groups of people is still taking place in different parts of the world. Efforts need to be put in place to stop the exploitation and oppression of minority groups and indigenous people and to halt the occupation of territories by another nation.

            Today, the Palestinian people are being treated horribly by the Israelis. Ex-Communicated, an investigative documentary about the conflict brings a different side of the story to light that the mainstream media ignores. Israelis are constantly making life harder for the Palestinian people. The areas where they can live have decreased in size. The Gaza Strip is now the most densely populated area in the world. The strip is constantly being shelled and walls are built through people’s homes. This current issue is one that needs to have global attention brought to it and resolved.

-A great effort should be made for all consumers to purchase goods that support local economies and businesses or international fair trade.

          The idea of a local living economy is presented by BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies). A local living economy is one where people support each other from a local level. When one shops at a local store they are putting almost all of the profit from that item directly back into their local economy. Profits made at Wal-Mart go to executives in Iowa. Shopping locally creates sustainable business and sustainable communities.  

            Stock kitchen items such as: coffee, bananas, chocolate, etc. are grown and imported form overseas. Many of the people who participate in this farming are extremely poor. Large companies systematically take advantage of these people as a way to increase profits. Consumers also play a role in this system by their desire to find the cheapest prices possible.  Consumers often do not realize that there is a surefire way to ensure one is actually supporting the farmers who grew their coffee by buying fair trade. The “Fair Trade Resource Network” is a tool that provides information on fair trade goods. Fair trade goods can be obtained at nearly any grocery store. When one buys fair trade certified goods, they can be more confident that workers overseas are earning fair wages.

-Accessing resources should not compromise an areas environment or people.

          Valuable resources are spread all across the world. According to Annie Leonard in “The Story of Stuff,” southern Africa has an abundance of a metal necessary for cheap electronics, including the metal coltan. The Congo is one of the poorest nations in the world. Coltan mining in the Congo has created a huge rush to the metal. This has contributed to violence in areas with high concentrations of the metal. Situations like this should not happen; this conflict needs policing and other need not happen.

            In Northern Arizona, large amounts of coal lay underneath land that was given to the Navajo and Hopi people. In Judith Nies’ “Black Mesa Syndrome,” she points out the coal is estimated to be worth $100 billion. The Navajo and Hopi signed contracts with power companies and receive only a small amount of the profit. The unemployment rates of these nations are upwards of 45% and money and jobs are needed.  Clearly, the money from the power companies could go a long way in ensuring the well-being of the Navajo and Hopi. The well-being of a people should not be placed below the value of a resource, which is what is currently happening. 

-Effort should be taken on an individual level to reduce our current impact on the Earth and reverse the impacts of past damage.

          In Wessel’s “The Myth of Progress,” he discusses the issue of limits. The Earth may soon be reaching its population capacity and its people are quickly using all of its fossil fuels. Everything on the Earth has a limit. There are certain amounts of individual resources on Earth. Most resources are not recycled and are simply trashed. Production needs to be a closed loop with disposal. To avoid running out of resources, large-scale changes need to be made. One can make a small impact by: recycling, taking shorter showers, using alternative energy and driving less. Individuals in large numbers can make a large impact on the environment.

            Paul Hawken calls for a social movement in “To Remake the World.” In this article, he examined social uprisings in history. He notes these uprisings all had a common goal and they occurred when they were needed most. He is calling for a social movement to create a sustainable world. He says that current policies can change and will change.

 -Countries should place effort in the area of reducing inflation of their currency and creating a money system that has value.

 Chris Martenson explains the global money system very clearly in “Crash Course.” He explains that inflation occurs when countries print more money than they destroy, devaluing their currency with every dollar printed. This is result of the United States and other countries moving away from the gold standard. On the gold standard, every bill printed is backed up in value with either gold or silver. Money has value today because we say it does.

An NPR story “What if We Paid Off the Debt? The Secret Government Report” uncovers that the US dollar and how much currency gets printed is based on debt. After the gold standard was cut, money was no longer physically backed up. The United States has given out billions in bonds, most of these to large foreign banks as secure investments. In extremely simple terms, money is printed when these bonds are redeemed. The global money system is completely flawed. Currencies are not backed up, and the creation of money is based on debt. This is a system set up for failure and inflation.

-Countries should put policy in place to reduce pollution from large-scale sources in industry.

          The largest industry that affects the southern Appalachians is mountaintop removal for    coal. Mountaintop removal creates pollution on very large-scale. According to ILoveMountains.org, the biggest threat to nearby communities is sledge dams.  On site coal processing creates waste called slurry. This slurry is stored in pools that are known to contaminate water supplies or ruin the water supply completely. A dam in Martin County Kentucky containing 300 million gallons of toxic slurry breeched. This breech caused what the EPA called, “The biggest environmental disaster ever east of the Mississippi.” Countries should take measures to ensure these types of environmental disasters do not occur and enact policy to end destructive extraction.

            Bhopal, a city in India, suffered a huge disaster in 1984. This disaster was completely the fault of Union Carbide, a chemical company. In the middle of the night, a leak at the plant occurred. The leak immediately caused 2,259 deaths. Toxins still continue to leech and children play games on the plant grounds today. These toxins have caused many birth defects and permanently affected the health of the city. Union Carbide refused to take any blame and did not cleanup the site. A witty duo called the “Yes Men” tried to call out DOW Chemical, who obtained Union Carbide. The Yes Men went on international news posing as a representative for DOW Chemical saying they would finally compensate the people of Bhopal. They were eventually uncovered and DOW did not compensate, but it did bring global awareness to the issue.

   -Wealthy countries should help developing nations reduce pollution, reduce poverty, and achieve economic sustainability.

          Eric Zency in his “Theses on Sustainability” defines economic sustainability as a point where countries can support themselves. This is extremely important; when all developing countries in the world are stable, it will help globally by reducing the stress on wealthy governments to help with poverty issues. The developing world needs help in this environmental crisis. Third world countries produce large amounts of pollution because they do not have the resources for sustainable practices. Further, many of the industries contributing to the pollution in these countries are owned by multinational corporations.  Poor countries do break away from the consumer society the world has become. A lack of financial resources causes the people to reuse and repurpose goods in creative ways. The developed world can learn a few lessons from these nations.

            The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs hosted a global summit in Brazil in     1992. The purpose of this summit was to lay out a document that produced guidelines for global sustainable development. This “Agenda 21” laid out ideas for improvements to global sustainability issues. These improvements rely heavily on wealthy nations providing loans and support for poorer countries. Becoming a sustainable world will take large amounts of research and money that needs to be shared with the developing world.

-Countries and companies should make large-scale investments into alternative energy.

            Coal and oil are the fossil fuels that control our society. In Erik Reece’s, “Hell yeah, We Want Windmills,” he points out several issues with coal and coal mining. Coal is rough on the enviroment and mountaintop removal destroys landscapes. Reece makes a call for a move to alternative energy. The main solution he proposes is wind power. Wind is an abundant resource throughout the plant and is cheaply and easily turned into electricity.

            The White House recently announced they will be placing solar panels on the President’s home.  350.org and Sungevity combined forces and created an educatioinal petition campaign. The campaign gathered more than 40,000 signatures and went to White House officials and these officials finally agreed. This is extremely symbolic because it shows that governments are starting to address environmental issues. I am optimistic that many will also follow suit and move their own homes toward alternative energies.

            There are many problems that society has created that need to be addressed.  These changes need to be done quickly. Governments need to regulate at the policy level, forcing companies to become green. Individuals need to gather together and promote change. Efforts need to be made in the areas of alternative fuels, and social conflicts need to be extinguished. When all these goals are achieved, the world will be on its way to achieving sustainability.