Glasgow: “We the peoples, compelled to rebellion”

Monday, November 22, 2021

Despite the excellent scientific reports that have once again alerted us of the need to adopt urgent measures and implement without delay the Paris Agreements on Climate Change, and the 2030 Agenda from United Nations General Assembly -deemed at “transforming the world”-, despite the attendance of so many active institutions and representatives of the global citizenry, with a high rate of young people having a great communication capacity... despite the fact that there are countries that strongly believe that current trends need to be immediately redirected without any hesitation... finally “big powers” (financial, military, energy, digital and media industries...) have again  further postponed, with a complete lack of intergenerational responsibility, the implementation of measures that could still stop the current ecological drift.

Since decades -I cannot stop repeating it- many communities, especially the scientific community, have drawn attention to the need to radically transform the global governance, pointing out the urgency of a joint action at a global scale through a democratic, rational and efficient multilateralism that would also allow solving conflicts by means of the power of reason instead -as has been the case since the dawn of time- of the reason of power. “If you want peace, be prepared for war”:  this rather perverse adagio has been systematically adopted by the absolute male power that has had in its hands for centuries the reins of our common destiny... and still has them today -I will insist over and over again until this is no longer the case- since every day 4,000 million dollars are invested in military expenses and in the weapon industry while thousands of people are dying from hunger and extreme poverty, most of them girls and boys ranging from one to five years old.

Despite the attempts of three American Democrat Presidents to move from force to word - Wilson in 1919, Roosevelt in 1945, and Obama in 2015 - the truth is that their efforts in favour of multilateralism have invariably been countered by hegemonic convictions which are leading us today to a clear deterioration of the Earth's habitability conditions -after having ignored all warnings about the irreversible processes that are threatening humanity as a whole for the first time in history.

The failure of present generations to fulfil their urgent duties could irremediably lead to the rights of future generations being seriously violated.

Since the 1950s the UNESCO -thanks to the foundation of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature; the geological, hydrological and oceanographic programmes; and “Man and the Biosphere” ... as well as the Club of Rome that has been warning about the limits of growth... and the US Academy of Sciences in 1979, stressing the role of seawater... and then two "Earth Summits"! (In Rio in 1992 and Johannesburg in 2002)... and the "Earth Charter" in 2000 -.... and the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace (United Nations 1999)... all of them supporting guidelines for the future which have always been set aside by neoliberal plutocratic groups (G-6,G-7,G-8,G-20) driven by American Presidents belonging to the Republican Party...

Finally, in the hopeful autumn of 2015, the Paris Agreements and the United Nations Resolution on the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs were signed with President Obama... A duty of memory: a few months later, President Trump came into office and immediately said that America would not implement any of the agreements signed by his predecessor... And the European Union, unable to oppose him, remained silent... because there are some measures whose approval requires unanimity... and unanimity is the antithesis of democracy...! With a six-year delay, and already on the brink of the abyss, at the beginning of COP-26 some expectations were raised by "commitments reached between the major powers"... but it then turned out that these were "non-binding" commitments!

What an outrage, what a nerve!    If they are non-binding they may not be considered as commitments. This is how the great opportunity that Glasgow represented has ended in uncertainty and despair, because a large part of the conscious citizenry clearly knows that the last opportunities to face and redirect the current situation have now vanished.

It will therefore be necessary to substantially modify our daily behaviour, lifestyle, before red lines in ecological deterioration are reached... Citizens can no longer be, to a large extent, "distracted spectators" of what is happening.

The Arctic is melting and not only do the sun's rays lack a "mirror" to reflect them, the  permafrost has also been accumulating for centuries large pockets of methane which, when released, have a far worse effect on climate change than carbon dioxide.

Clearly, the solution is now "We, the peoples", as we are so wisely and prematurely referred to at the beginning of the Charter of the United Nations. In 1945, the “peoples” had no voice of their own and most of them were born, lived and died in a few square kilometres... Their possibilities to be informed were limited to their immediate environment. They were, thus, fearful, obedient, silent, submissive. In the last three decades, they have become capable to express themselves freely, owing to a large extent to digital technology, and discrimination based on gender, sexual sensitivity, ideology, belief, ethnicity, etc., has been largely eliminated.

Now, at last, “the peoples” may finally actively participate at a local, regional and global scale.  With great popular clamour, plutocratic governance may be eliminated and democratic multilateralism can be strengthened... Now, "the peoples" may demand once and for all that nuclear warheads cease to be an intolerable "sword of Damocles" for humanity as a whole... And that tax havens disappear from the map, and a new concept of security is implemented that shall reduce the enormous expenditure on weapons and current military spending, and shall allow the inhabitants of territories that are so efficiently protected by current defence systems to also have access to food, drinking water, quality health services, lifelong education for all, proper care of the environment... The peoples shall at last take action because the Universal Declaration of Human Rights itself –what a wonderful foresight! – states the following in the second paragraph of the preamble: ... "so that man is not compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion...". Some days ago I published “Glasgow, global consciousness to change the current path”. In the light of the poor results of the COP26 and, above all, the untimely and discouraging announcement that the USA will at very short notice significantly increase its military power- it has now become clear that it is up to the conscious citizenry, “compelled to rebellion”, to see -with joined hands and voices- that the requested transitions are made before points of no return are reached.  And we  “the peoples”, looking into the eyes of our descendants, shall call for governments that are willing to implement a diligent multilateralism, as well as for a United Nations that will still be capable of taking the most urgent steps leading to the radical changes that cannot be further delayed. Compelled to rebellion, we will achieve, in no time, the transition from power to word. We will invent a new future.


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