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Sovereignty’s Struggle in a Search for a Common Future



By Chris Cote

In 1648, with the Peace of Westphalia, a system of sovereign states was established. Sovereignty gave these states’ complete self control over internal affairs, and since World War II, has evolved to include external sovereignty, a term defining the legality of inter-state interventions. European growth has contributed to an expanding evolution of the term, now subject to interpretation and debate. One thing holds true: a state’s rights to sovereignty are undergoing change.

Deep century old lines of territorial sovereignty are becoming blurred. Expanding global communication and economic routes are introducing new concerns regarding security and ethics. Transboundary concerns spur on international wars, internal crises and conflicts, and are redefining our politics, economics, and future on the whole. Security has always been the main concern of states, and as a state’s security, or ability to control the goings-on within its borders, erodes, states move to action. Factors that contribute to the erosion of state sovereignty include growing technology, economic interdependence, environmental degradation, poverty, human rights violations, and failed states. These can each be seen as having different levels of causation for one another, indicating that they are all interconnected and part of the same puzzle.

An easy example of the deterioration of sovereignty is the United States entering Iraq and Afghanistan. Our security was threatened (before?) September 11, 2001 by the Taliban and extremist Islamic groups, presumably encouraging the United States to eliminate the Taliban as a threat to its security. The United States’ “War on Terror” is immediately seen as a result of almost all of the factors listed above, except perhaps less obviously environmental degradation (although it is still a relevant factor).… Continue reading

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An Environmental Bonus: Finding the Missing Piece

By Chris Cote

Over the past few weeks, President Obama has sent an important message to the United States and the world: we will not sacrifice the environment. Sure, several pressing environmental issues have been put further back on the burner in order to stimulate banks and other economic sectors, but these issues are all connected. Stability is needed in all sectors to have any be truly effective. $70 billion (8%) of the stimulus package is being provided for our energy economy, and most of those dollars are directed toward green energy. The boost is aimed toward solar and wind technologies, infant technologies that are more vulnerable in economically difficult times. America cannot afford to have these technologies wiped out. We are in a period when their importance grows each day. Thankfully President Obama has shown that he is not just a fairweather friend of the environment and will continue to support it in hard times as well. To move forward in a sustainable manner, a manner which we can continue over many generations, we must link together our social, economic, and environmental issues.

Green jobs are an example of one way to link these three issues together. By developing new green technologies, such as solar or wind, we are creating jobs. These jobs can largely employ people with low incomes providing benefits to them as individuals, and to society at large. Whatsmore, we are clearly helping the economy, developing more jobs and diverting away from dead-end industries. With investment, these sectors will continue to grow and produce more jobs, becoming sectors indespensable to our workforce/economy, and leading America into a new future.

… Continue reading
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The Acupuncture Approach to Global Environmental Thinking

by Akio Matusumura

Photo from the Oxford Global Forum

I had the extraordinary fortune of having many visionary scientists in attendance at the Global Forums, including Dr. Lovelock, Dr. Sagan, Dr. Heyerdahl, and Dr. Capra, about whom Mr. Chris Cote has written previous articles in this blog. The Forums gained enormously from their perspective. Each of these scientists did more than research in a lab: they contributed in moving vertical thinking to the horizontal, and combined their scientific knowledge with philosophical viewpoints. There is certainly a common nature among them.

Their science carries through the steps to reach a new perspective, so their philosophies are on the forefront. They are always searching for a new perspective. In a way, they were each extremely optimistic, a cautious optimism accompanied by a great concern for the next generation. Their universal minds caused them to have great interest in human issues, and each did an outstanding amount to work to convey their messages to the public—a task not often though of or accomplished by most scientists. After all, it is the public, the tenants of the planet, who are damaging the ecosystem and must understand the repercussions of their actions.

I was especially impressed with Dr. Sagan’s ability to present scientific information in a clear manner. I asked him why he could present so well, unlike many other scientists I knew. Carl had returned to school to learn to act, knowing the importance of learning to perform well. An extraordinary man becomes extraordinary by making an extraordinary effort at tasks that others ignore.… Continue reading

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Spotlight: James Lovelock

“The Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival was without doubt the most significant gathering I have attended in a lifetime. It changed my life irreversibly, as it must have done the lives of many of the other delegates and participants.” -James Lovelock, foreword for Earth Conference-One, a book written by Anuradha Vittachi, founder of OneClimate.net and a friend of Akio Matsumura’s.

To my generation, the generation of university students, Dr. James Lovelock represents a hopeful new perspective for science and for humanity. Adept as an environmentalist, advocating for real, immediate solutions against fossil-fuel use that propels climate change, he also is famous for the Gaia Theory, claiming the earth as a superorganism, with microorganisms composing organisms composing ecosystems composing the regional spheres and the earth.

“The Earth system behaves as a single, self-regulating system, comprised of physical, chemical, biological and human components. The interactions and feedbacks between the component parts are complex and exhibit multi-scale temporal and spatial variability” (2006, Revenge of the Gaia Foreword)

In this system there are limits to growth and feedback cycles and interactions have repercussions, whether positive or negative.

“..If we fail to take care of the Earth, it surely will take care of itself by making us no longer welcome” (2006, The Revenge of the Gaia).

Along with Carl Sagan, Fritjof Capra, and many others, Lovelock purports that the Earth shifts between states of homeostasis and although accommodates the human species right now, does not need to in order to survive.… Continue reading

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Spotlight: Fritjof Capra

Fritjof Capra is an Austrian physicist and educator living and teaching in Berkeley, California. His lessons of ecoliteracy, webs of connections, and sustainability, among many others, are integral to living more harmoniously, in terms of issues of the environment, culture, religion, nutrition, health, justice, and more. These lessons are embodied in his Center for Ecoliteracy (www.ecoliteracy.org), an organization based in Berkeley, California that is “dedicated to education for sustainable living”, and works to communicate and spread lessons of these topics and their interconnectedness throughout K-12 schools, especially in California. Author of several books, Capra has touched on the fundamental similarities between Eastern Mysticism (Taoism, Hinduism) and western physics, the importance of school lunch, and the teachings of Leonardo da Vinci. He is able to write on such a wide of array of subjects for his way of thinking.

His terribly strong scientific background has allowed him to think systemically, holistically about the world. Organisms are interconnected through their mutual dependencies in ecosystems, but social systems also rely on dependencies between organisms and functions. Capra recognizes these dependencies, cooperations and competitions, so evident in a biological study of ecosystems, between science and art, or the evolution of language. The recognition of systems and their contained mutualisms can extend to cultures, religions, or politics.

Capra, with the backing of the Center he cofounded, is a pedagogue of sustainability in California’s children. Ecoliteracy needs to pervade beyond a handful of California’s school systems and into the rest of the United States and then into each nation.… Continue reading

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Into the Invisible: Dr. Thor Heyerdahl and the Kon-Tiki Expedition

Often a scientist is comfortable within his or her academic field. They work where the grant money is and stay within its provided boundaries. Dr. Thor Heyerdahl could not stay so comfortable. A Norwegian anthropologist, archaeologist, geographer, ethnographer and zoologist, he did not confine his life studies to fit within the ordinary scope of work. Ancient civilizations traded and migrated across oceans, he believed, and so he added “explorer” to his job description in order to pursue his research.

The Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947 showed that it was possible on primitive materials to sail from Peru to Polynesia across the Pacific Ocean, a route that Dr. Heyerdahl believed was used for trade and migration between ancient South American and Polynesian civilizations. Most scientific evidence points out that these civilizations had little in common, and despite this rejection from the academic and scientific communities, Dr. Heyerdahl completed the expedition. The success inspired him to sail across the Atlantic on papyrus boats, Ra and Ra II, to prove that Egyptian mariners could have journeyed to the Americas.

On these expeditions and others around the Polynesian islands he noticed the polluted condition of the Pacific Ocean. Dr. Heyerdahl spoke to the Secretary-General of the United Nations and became a key player in developing a United Nations program on the environment.

His great imagination and confidence in his views inspired him to defy the commonly held scientific and academic beliefs and follow his own missions and explorations. He was willing to take a large risk that the expedition would not work successfully, and that his research would then fail.… Continue reading

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Social Time Bomb: migration in cities


The UN published a report (read summary here in the Guardian) that cities are growing and their inequalities are growing with them. Now over half of the human race lives in cities and that trend is not predicted to change. The cities are not growing equally, however, and become more fragmented and unjust with growth. The UN report finds that race is a crucial factor regarding equality in the US and Canada. Many US cities such as New York and Atlanta ranked as equally as high for inequity as did Nairobi. Racial inequality in cities stems from trickle-down theories and creates social tensions that lead to violence, political fractures, and over all destabilizes the society.

Most migration has been from rural areas to cities, thus creating mega cities such as Mexico City, Mumbai, Sao Paulo and Delhi. This migration has left rural areas weak without working-age men and little room for development, economically or communally. Flooding into the cities, migrants have created slums around the outside of the cities in an urban cone, such as El Alto adjacent to La Paz in Bolivia, or the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. These informal homes have shaken the economies and infrastructures of the cities that they surround. The governments can’t account for their activities nor govern them effectively. Poverty is the defining factor of these shanty-towns and from it stems a multitude of social problems. Cities are ruining themselves with their inequity and social divisions.

Paradoxically, as many cities have been facing the dilemmas of population growth, others are dealing with its converse.… Continue reading

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Beyond Wall Street: Our Ecological Debt


Welcome to Unhappy Earth Overshoot Day! Today is a milestone, and an unfortunate one at that. Today, September 23, we have already used up our natural resources for the year, in order to live within the biocapacity of the planet. The New Economics Foundation, nef, has calculated our ecological footprint on the Earth and where our sustainable use of natural resources would lie relevant to our year calendar. 1987 was the first year we were to consume our resources before the end of the year, and we have been encroaching quickly further into the year as time passes.

Although Wall Street is in shambles (or doesn’t even exist!) and soon the U.S. government and public will be after bailing them out, this is just a smaller piece of a larger system, which clearly is in dire need of a patch. Our system of investments, hyperconsumption, and flexible labor are coming to an end, whether we like it or not. The system doesn’t work any more on its own, and that will just be emphasized more as China and India grow and continue to exploit the very system the US prided its own growth on. There are Limits to Growth, as has been known at least in academic circles for 35 years, and we are pushing those limits right now. Each year that we ignore our ecological debt to the planet is another year we will have to pay it back, and sooner rather than later.

So does the system really need a patch?… Continue reading

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A Shifting World

To continue conveying the message of an approaching shift in global power and why a concordant shift in values is needed, watch this presentation, put out by the University of Minnesota. It’s full of great facts that help give perspective to the last post.

Did you know?

Enjoy. Change.… Continue reading