Tag: world future council
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Renew Our Hope for Our Shared Future
We are all children of Mother Earth. We assert our deep desire, our firm commitment, and our inalienable right to live in harmony with each other and with nature’s laws of connectedness and interdependence.
We urge you as world leaders to fulfill your duty as guardians of our unique, beautiful and endangered Earth.
We call upon you to realize how your decisions and actions have threatened our future and have left us an unjust and destructive legacy.
Still, we trust that you can rise to your highest ideals and change course to provide us with visionary and ethical leadership to create the future we dream of and deserve.
We expect you to fulfill your obligations to us and future generations by:
- Committing to abolish nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction, including ‘depleted’ uranium.
- Ceasing the use of military force to resolve any dispute, and ending the arms trade.
- Redirecting resources from militarism to human and planetary security.
- Restoring the health of our Earth and ending the exploitation of her non-renewable resources.
- Upholding human rights and the dignity of all humanity, and fulfilling your responsibilities under international law.
We urge you to remove the obstacles that have been placed before us, and renew our hope for our shared future.
Signed by the World Future Councilors of the Disarmament Working Group:
Hafsat Abiola-Costello
David Krieger
Rama Mani
Pauline Tangiora
Judge C.G. Weeramantry -
Opening Remarks to World Future Council Meeting
On behalf of the World Future Council (WFC), I extend a warm greeting to each of you. I want to tell you a little about the World Future Council. I will then focus my remarks to nuclear weapons, nuclear power, and the relationship between them – an issue on which all Americans need to awaken and focus.
The WFC is a relatively new organization. It seeks to be a voice for future generations. I remember seeing a book many years ago entitled, Who Speaks for Earth? This is what the World Future Council is attempting to do for future generations – to be their voice in the decisions that will affect them.
The Council is composed of 50 Councilors from throughout the world, all of whom have dedicated their lives to pursuing a better future for humanity. The vision and achievements of these Councilors are quite remarkable. I am honored to be among them.
The founder of the WFC is Jakob von Uexküll, who also founded the Right Livelihood Awards, which are known as the Alternative Nobel Prizes. These prizes, presented in the Swedish Parliament the day before the Nobels, honor those who work for peace, justice, human rights and a healthy environment. The chair of the Council is Bianca Jagger, a tireless campaigner for human rights, the environment and future generations.
Two principal projects of the WFC are one on Climate and Sustainability and one on Future Justice. Of course, these are interrelated. You cannot have future justice without a sustainable planet, and issues of energy supply and its consequences will affect both of these areas.
My work on the WFC has been primarily in the area of Future Justice. Our concern is not only how to create a more just future that embodies principles of intergenerational equity, but also how to assure that there is a future. Our actions today that could foreclose the future need to be reframed as crimes against future generations.
What could foreclose the future? One area is certainly radical change in the earth’s climate, making the earth uninhabitable for humans. The other major area is nuclear war. Nuclear weapons continue to threaten the future of humanity, despite the fact that many, perhaps most, people on the planet think the problem went away with the end of the Cold War. Most of us in this country are ignorant and apathetic about nuclear weapons. Those who are aware of the serious threats posed by these weapons, often feel impotent to influence policy. I want to emphasize that the problem has not gone away, and humankind remains threatened by the devastating power of these weapons.
There are still more than 25,000 nuclear weapons in the arsenals of nine countries, with 95 percent of these in the arsenals of just two countries: the United States and Russia. There remain some 3,000 nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired in moments of an order to do so. It would take just one nuclear weapon to destroy a city and a relatively small number of nuclear weapons to destroy a country. Nuclear weapons place the future of civilization and the human species in jeopardy of annihilation.
It is for these reasons that 26 years ago I was a founder of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, a non-profit and non-partisan civil society organization. This name is meant to imply that peace is an imperative of the Nuclear Age. As most of the original atomic scientists understood, in the Nuclear Age we have to abolish not only nuclear weapons but war itself.
Let me share with you three ideas that are contained in a recent article I wrote in the form of a Briefing for the New President on US leadership for a world free of nuclear weapons. The briefing is called A Return to Sanity and this is the way it begins:
The most important thing to understand about nuclear weapons is this: these weapons do not and cannot provide physical protection to their possessors. Please let this thought sink in.
The second most important thing to understand about these weapons is that they are weapons of genocide writ large or, as the philosopher John Somerville has labeled them, weapons of omnicide, capable of the destruction of all. These weapons put at risk the future of humankind and most life on earth. Please also let this thought sink in.
The third most important thing to understand about nuclear weapons is that they are in the hands of human beings with all their frailties and fallibilities, and, as such, these weapons are disasters waiting to occur. Please let this thought sink in as well.
There are many reasons to oppose nuclear weapons. They are immoral, illegal and cowardly; they waste our scientific and monetary resources; and they undermine democracy by concentrating power in the hands of a few individuals. The most important reason, however, is pragmatic. These weapons threaten the human future, just as climate change does. And they undermine the future of powerful states, including the US, as well as of those that are not so powerful.
There is only one way out of the nuclear dilemma, and that requires US leadership. Without US leadership, we will drift toward nuclear annihilation. We are likely to witness the further proliferation of nuclear weapons to states and terrorist groups. One thing we know with certainty is that terrorists cannot be deterred. Therefore, there is zero room for error in preventing terrorists from obtaining these weapons.
For nearly every country that has developed nuclear weapons, the path has been through civilian nuclear reactors for research or energy. That is the best argument I know of, although there are many more, as to why nuclear energy is the wrong path to a sustainable energy future. Nuclear power is a pathway to nuclear proliferation. In addition, it generates waste that will burden thousands of future generations. Despite trying for the past sixty years, no one has a good answer about how to store the tremendously dangerous waste from nuclear power plants. Nuclear energy also requires large societal subsidies, such as assured low limits on liability for accidents that may occur and the decommissioning of the nuclear plants no longer generating power. Nuclear power plants are also attractive targets for terrorists.
These large, expensive, dangerous and heavily subsidized plants are not the answer to our energy problems. They cannot provide the truly safe and clean energy that can be found in the sun, the winds, the tides and other forms of renewable energy.
At the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation we are calling upon the next president of the United States to make a world free of nuclear weapons an urgent priority and to take seven critical steps:
- De-alert. Remove all nuclear weapons from high-alert status, separating warheads from delivery vehicles;
- No First Use. Make legally binding commitments to No First Use of nuclear weapons and establish nuclear policies consistent with this commitment;
- No New Nuclear Weapons. Initiate a moratorium on the research and development of new nuclear weapons, such as the Reliable Replacement Warhead;
- Ban Nuclear Testing Forever. Ratify and bring into force the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty;
- Control Nuclear Material. Create a verifiable Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty with provisions to bring all weapons-grade nuclear material and the technologies to create such material under strict and effective international control;
- Nuclear Weapons Convention. Commence good faith negotiations, as required by the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to achieve a Nuclear Weapons Convention for the phased, verifiable and irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons;
- Resources for Peace. Reallocate resources from the tens of billions currently spent on nuclear arms to alleviating poverty, preventing and curing disease, eliminating hunger and expanding educational opportunities throughout the world.
Let me end here with a quote from The Little Prince: “‘It’s a matter of discipline,’ the Little Prince told me. ‘When you’ve finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend your planet.’”
I wish you a very productive meeting and great success in tending to our planet.
David Krieger is a member of the Executive Committee of the World Future Council, and a founder and president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org)
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Responsibility in an Era of Consequences
The inaugural meeting of the World Future Council was recently held in Hamburg, Germany. It brought together 50 Councilors from all continents, chosen for their diversity and pioneering commitment to building a better world. At the conclusion of the four-day meeting, the Council released the Hamburg Call to Action, a document calling for action to protect the future of all life. It began, “Today we stand at the crossroads of human history. Our actions – and our failures to act – will decide the future of life on earth for thousands of years, if not forever.”
The Call to Action is a challenge to each of us to take responsibility for assuring a positive future for humanity and for preserving life on our planet. The document states: “Today there is no alternative to an ethics of global responsibility for we are entering an era of consequences. We must share, co-operate and innovate together in building a world worthy of our highest aspirations. The decision lies with each one of us!”
We are challenged to consider what we are individually and collectively doing not only to radically undermine our present world through war and its preparation, resource depletion, pollution and global warming, but also the effects of what we are doing upon future generations. Those of us alive now have the responsibility to pass the world on intact to the next generation, and to assure that our actions do not foreclose the future.
The Hamburg Call to Action is a great document and I urge you to read and reflect upon it. But I draw your attention specifically to the section on nuclear weapons: “Nuclear weapons remain humanity’s most immediate catastrophic threat. These weapons would destroy cities, countries, civilization and possibly humanity itself. The danger posed by nuclear weapons in any hands must be confronted directly and urgently through a new initiative for the elimination of these instruments of annihilation.”
With this in mind, we should unite in demanding the abolition of these weapons – eliminating the weapons before they eliminate us. There is much to be done in this regard, most important being the negotiation of a new treaty for the phased, verifiable and irreversible elimination of all nuclear arsenals, as required by the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. While these negotiations are in progress, there is much to be done to lower the level of reliance on nuclear weapons and to safeguard nuclear materials, including taking deployed nuclear weapons off high-alert status, ceasing all nuclear weapons tests and ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and implementing strategies to bring all weapons-grade fissionable materials and the technologies to create them under strict international control.
We must also withdraw our support from any programs that seek to maintain nuclear arsenals into the future. A prime example is the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program now being developed at the US nuclear weapons laboratories. This is but one example of a dangerous weapons program unworthy of our humanity. Rather than continuing the nuclear arms race, largely with itself, while ignoring its obligations under international law for nuclear disarmament, the United States must take a leadership role in ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity. This is only likely to happen if US citizens demand such action from their government.
At the University of California, students are challenging the University’s management and supposed oversight of the US nuclear weapons laboratories. They are saying, in effect, “Enough is enough. It is time for the University to stop providing a fig leaf of respectability to nuclear weapons laboratories engaged in a dangerous continuation of the nuclear threat to humanity.” The students are a voice from the future that is with us today. It is their future, and they are demanding nuclear sanity. They deserve our support as they speak out and confront the University of California Regents, political appointees who seem content to promote any nuclear weapons program proposed by the nuclear labs.
The Hamburg Call to Action challenges each of us to change our way of thinking, and to engage in meaningful actions to assure the future. The time for global sanity has arrived – none too soon.
David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and a Councilor of the World Future Council (www.worldfuturecouncil.org). Please send comments to him at “dkrieger@napf.org”.
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Jakob von Uexkull Speaks on Humanity’s Future
Jakob von Uexkull, a former member of the European Parliament, recently delivered the 6th Annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future in Santa Barbara, California. The lecture series, a project of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, honors Frank K. Kelly, a founder and Senior Vice President of the Foundation.
The lecture series was created in the belief that humanity’s future deserves our consideration and best thinking. Our future today is imperiled by the power of human-created technologies that threaten civilization and even human survival on the planet. Those who will inhabit the future deserve our advocacy and our stewardship of the planet. Those alive today have no right to threaten the future of humanity by depleting or seriously diminishing the resources of the planet or by destroying the environment of those who will follow. Rather, we have a moral responsibility to preserve the planet and to pass it on intact to future generations.
Jakob von Uexkull was born in Sweden and currently resides in London. He is one of the world’s leading visionaries, and is a man who has acted upon his vision to create a better world. Understanding the power of the Nobel Prizes, he went to the Nobel Foundation over 25 years ago with a proposal to add two new categories to their award prizes: one for protecting the environment and one for alleviating poverty. He even offered to raise the funds to support these awards.
After consideration, the Nobel Foundation, which had added only one new award to the initial awards, said no to his request. Von Uexkull then decided to move forward on his own with these new awards, which he named the Right Livelihood Awards (www.rightlivelihood.org). He funded the first awards with the sale of his stamp collection. The first awards were presented in Stockholm on December 9, 1980, the day before the presentation of the Nobel Prizes.
At first, the Swedish press questioned whether von Uexkull was working for the CIA or the KGB in seeking to undermine the Nobel Prizes. The next year the press ridiculed the awards. But within five years, the awards were being presented in the Swedish Parliament and soon became known as the “Alternative Nobel Prizes.”
The Right Livelihood Awards have now been presented for more than 25 years, and each year three or four recipients of the Award split a prize of approximately $250,000. Awards have been made to more than 100 leaders throughout the world who are working in the areas of environmental protection and sustainability, development and poverty alleviation, peace and human rights.
The overwhelming majority of Nobel Prizes go to American and European men, with countries in the southern hemisphere having received only 11 percent of the Nobel Prizes. By contrast, 44 percent of the Right Livelihood Awards have been made to groups and individuals in the Global South. Women have received only five percent of the Nobel Prizes, whereas women, including women-led organizations, have received 34 percent of the Right Livelihood Awards.
Von Uexkull’s latest innovative project is the World Future Council (www.worldfuturecouncil.org) . The purpose of the Council is to bring together wise elders, pioneers and youth leaders to be a voice for shared human values and for fulfilling our responsibilities to future generations. The Council will recommend best practices to ensure a positive future for humanity. The first meeting of the Council will take place in Hamburg, Germany in May 2007.
The title of von Uexkull’s Kelly Lecture is “Globalization: Values, Responsibility and Global Justice.” It will be posted on the Foundation’s www.wagingpeace.org website. A DVD of the talk will also be available from the Foundation. Previous Kelly Lectures on Humanity’s Future by Frank K. Kelly, Richard Falk, Anita Roddick, Robert Jay Lifton and Mairead Maguire can also be found at the www.wagingpeace.org website.
David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).