Specific Global Issues - Crisis Between Rich and Poor

There are now 6 billion people on this planet, compared to 1.5 billion at the start of 1900. Three in every five people are hungry and very poor if current trends persist. The crisis between rich and poor causes increasing enmity. The increasing population leads to further degradation of the environment. Priority must be given to stabilising and reducing the population, and therefore the demand on world resources, by the use of family planning and contraception.

A Global Crisis of Social Values

The global crisis is symptomatic of the inadequacies of our social values. Ethical and moral value systems have not evolved swiftly enough to keep up with technological inventiveness, thereby keeping rampant greed in check. We are living through a crisis of international relationships in which only a profound social epiphany, leading to a paradigmatic shift unlike any other in history, can save us from total self destruction.

We must re-appraise the way we define ourselves and what it means to be a human being. We must re-examine and redefine concepts of good and evil and how we apply them to ourselves. We must stop valuing each other, and ourselves, by an unsteady hierarchical system which instigates suspicion, defensiveness and secrecy. Instead, we must develop an outlook of partnership and mutualism, whereby the individual is encouraged to develop fully and then contribute their unique abilities to the planet as part of a synergistic whole.

Environment and Resources

In the developing world a billion people live below the hunger line. Many of these people are illiterate. Environmental phenomena such as the greenhouse effect, climate change, ozone depletion and acid rain are intricately interconnected. Technology developed in the name of progress, and high resource and energy consumption by the developed world, is at the root of the destruction of the environment.

No threat is greater, no crisis more profound to common humanity, than the threat of nuclear war. There are between 40,000 and 50,000 nuclear warheads in the world today - enough to destroy sixty times Earth's population. Fifteen to twenty developing countries will have nuclear capability by the end of this decade.

For a fraction of arms race spending, about several hundred billion annually, sanitation and clean water could be supplied to all the deprived peoples of the world. Wide spread diseases could be prevented; schooling and medicine provided.

Education and Communication

People cannot live on beliefs, ideals and other imponderables alone. They need food, work, education and satisfaction of desires for themselves and their children. A sustainable society will look at new ways of producing sustainable energy and sustainable agriculture. A new global era implies the imbuing of education literacy and life affirming values in every global citizen.

For too long the vast populations of our planet, through ignorance, misinformation and silence, have been unable to understand the cause - effect relationships between the real origins of their misfortunes and the destruction of our planet.
Ingrained and elitist attitudes of governments and industries prevent non-polluting, free energy producing systems and sustainable production of food for all.

Economics and Politics

Social Political and Economic Transformation

Present economic, corporate and social policies are largely inconsistent with viable, long term global development and are being made without the vision of a viable global future in mind.

Structure of Relationship Between Developed and Developing Nations

There exists a crisis in transferral of technology and resources to the developing world. Further, there exists an overwhelming Third World debt.

Two conditions must be satisfied before international economic exchanges can become beneficial for all: the sustainability of ecosystems on which the Global economy depends must be guaranteed, and the economic partners must be satisfied that the basis of exchange is equitable. For living standards to grow in order to alleviate poverty, trends towards depressed commodity prices, protectionism, intolerable debt burdens and declining flows of development finance must be reversed.

Macro - Environmental Global Issues

The 1990s will see the largest number of children ever born in a single decade (1.5 billion). 82% of children in the world live in developing nations.

Every two seconds a child dies

A Planetary Culture

What is needed is a new international humanitarian era based on the common ground of humanity - looking to life and common humanism as the core value for a sustainable society. This means not just human life. It means the whole spectrum of life that creates the biosphere.

It is the consciousness of the ordinary global citizen which can create an alternative plan and a New World Peace Era for the planet.

A Planetary Culture implies science, technology, healing relationships, economics, government and education seen from the broadest perspective - not nation based, but global and holistically based, stimulating new ways of thinking to enhance our connectedness, and goes beyond isms and ideologies to recognising the sacredness of all life. It implies the creation of new art, literature and music, and the development of a life philosophy which is based on the universal principles inherent in human activity

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Dr Michael Ellis
Dr Michael Ellis Chief Editor and Creative vision behind The New Paradigm Magazine is an English trained Doctor with over 20 years of General Practice experience both in the UK and in Australia. He has higher qualifications in general medicine and paediatrics. He has a special interest in mind/ body medicine and in optimising the physical, mental and emotional health of the individual. As well as his medical qualifications, Dr Ellis also has qualifications in Literature, Arts, Philosophy and Social Psychology. He also has Naturopathic qualifications. He is Co Founder of The Centre for Change and The Medical renaissance Group Dr Ellis is a writer and author. Dr Ellis founded and convened an international conference - Conference Earth: Humanity and Planet Earth - 2001 and Beyond. This conference was held at and supported by Melbourne University on 17-19 November 1995 with 400 delegates, 50 workshop leaders and 10 international speakers attracting national media coverage. This series of Mindquest Conferences is now supported by the Research Institute "The Centre for Change" co founded by Dr Ellis in 2000 and he has since conducted regular seminars at Swinburne University, Melbourne on a wide range of topics related to the achievement of World Peace. His invited speakers have all been Leaders in their chosen fields. With Dr Pavel Kasyanov in 2002 he presented the paper entitled Transition to a Sustainable Civilisation at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002.