TACKLING A HOT TOPIC
Severe threat now posed by climate change gives rise to support for world government
The west coast of North America had its most devastating forestfire season in recorded history this summer, with intense heat and drifting smoke stoking distress. Wildfires also roared through Sweden and Greece, killing scores of people.
The Middle East is forecast to increasingly broil under virtually unlivable extreme temperatures — with a city in Iran last year almost reaching 54 C., the highest-ever reliably recorded temperature. Water shortages, crop failure and extreme drought are the new normal in the region, leading to horrible conflicts, such as the Syrian war.
In India, the world’s second most populous country, politicians and corporate leaders refuse to co-operate, particularly in weaning themselves off massive reliance on coal, among the dirtiest of fuels. And the megalopolises of China, the world’s secondlargest economy, are not winning their battle against choking smog.
Meanwhile, with bald obstructionism by the powerful U.S., the leaders of the world’s nations are struggling to create binding agreements to reduce the carbon fuels that cause climate change, or to make significant headway on wind, nuclear, tidal and solar alternatives.
It is time for radical new responses to looming climate disaster. But are enough people open to the big idea — the very big idea — that could make solutions more likely?
That is, the idea of a global government, a world democracy?
The concept, when not the subject of snickering, appals some. But it may be gaining international traction.
The idea of a world government, comprising federated states, has been advanced by luminaries including scientist Albert Einstein, playwright George Bernard Shaw, poet Emily Dickinson and Pope Emeritus Benedict.
A prominent political scientist who advised U.S. president Jimmy Carter, Frederick Schuman, argued in the 20th century that the only way to overcome war is to overcome the nation-state system — through political unification of the world.
In his 1941 book, Power Politics, Georg Schwarzenberger also said “international anarchy and war are inseparable,” so the “antidote (to war) is international government.” In her 1980s book, The Global Politics of the Environment, Lorraine Elliott argued something similar to save the ecosphere.
A world federation is the only way, advocates maintain, to end destructive competition between nations (and transnational corporations), especially in the era of weapons of mass destruction and climate catastrophe. While many write off a global democratic legislature as a bizarre blue-sky fantasy, others are certain we’re doomed without it.
There are precedents. The United Nations only came into being in the 1940s to curtail international conflict because of the obliteration caused by the Second World War. A global government would be loosely based on the UN, but would have more clout.
The 17th-century British philosopher Thomas Hobbes was the first to explain the world’s political system basically operates in “anarchy.” He did not mean that in the popular sense of chaos. He meant that governments governed themselves in the absence of a superior power to enforce moral norms.
Even though, 400 years ago, Hobbes did not support the idea of a global democratic government, some political theorists now believe he would, because of nuclear weapons, the unprecedented scourge of global warming and the way technology is accelerating international interconnection.
Today one of the key advocates of such arguments for global democracy is U.S. philosopher and political analyst David Ray Griffin, who says we cannot expect the world’s superpowers to ever create a governmental system aimed at protecting everyone.
Even though some nations have learned to co-operate — the European Union for instance — Griffin says that in the current political state, national governments and transnational companies have few motivations to fully cooperate with others, since they’re designed to concentrate on their own security and self-interest.
Griffin, who first earned his reputation in the philosophy of religion, writes in The American Empire and the Commonwealth of God that a world government would govern itself on the principle of the “ideal observer.” It would be led by women and men practised in the art of impartiality.
Griffin says two of the main critiques of a global government are that it is impossible or would be tyrannical. But he is among those who think such a body is inevitable. While climate change is increasing the urgency for a world government to combat nationbased tribalism, Griffin notes that “technologies of global reach” make it much more possible.
The over-riding question for Griffin is instead whether a global legislature “will be a democratic government, freely created by the citizens of the world, or an imperial government, imposed by one nation on the rest. The former type is, at the very least, much less likely to become tyrannical than the latter.”
Griffin generally supports the approach of Joseph Schwartzberg, author of Transforming the United Nations System, for replacing global anarchy with a “democratic, federal world government.”
Such a body would reform the UN’s General Assembly so it can make binding laws, abolish the Security Council system that gives veto power to major countries, hand more authority to the Human Rights Council and expand the jurisdiction of the
A world federation is the only way, advocates maintain, to end destructive competition between nations.
International Court of Justice. A democratic world government would also need taxation authority. And Griffin notes it would require a comprehensive police force “to enforce the laws enacted by the global legislature.”
A world government, Griffin says, would also offer a shared aim to the millions of different charities and non-governmental organizations around the world, which he calls “moral NGOs.” They work for a broad range of things, social housing, ending AIDS, opposing torture, standing up for foreign trade. But their efforts are uncoordinated.
If such philanthropic groups could work together more, they could form a “global civil society that could become a powerful force ... united behind a common cause,” Griffin writes. Global democracy would become even more effective if it was backed by the world’s religions.
To some, the mere idea of creating a world government is dangerous, if not ridiculous. And, of course, it’s a long way from being a reality.
But if there is one thing most can agree on, it is that the northern hemisphere’s long hot summer shows that radical new ways of organizing the planet have become essential.