Fellow Earthians,

Never before has the Universe unfolded such a flower as our collective human intelligence, so far as we know.

Nor has such a one-and-only brilliance in the Universe stood at the brink of extinction, so far as we know.

We people of the Earth exist because our potential was there in the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago, as the Universe exploded into being.

So far, it seems like we are the lone thinkers in this vast, expanding Universe.

However, recent astronomy tells us that there are trillions of other planets circling Sunlike stars in the immensity of the Universe, millions of them friendly to life. So why has no one from elsewhere in the Cosmos contacted us?

Surely some people-like animals have evolved elsewhere. Surely we are not, in this crowded reality of countless other similar planets, the only thinking beings to have turned up. Most unlikely! So why isn't life out there contacting us? Why aren't the intergalactic phones ringing?

Here is one sobering possibility for our isolation: maybe life has often evolved to intelligence on other planets with biospheres and every time that intelligence, when it became able to alter its environment, did so with catastrophic consequences. Maybe we have had many predecessors in the Cosmos but all have brought about their own downfall.

That's why they are not communicating with Earth. They have extincted themselves. They have come and gone. And now it's our turn.

Whatever has happened in other worlds, here we are on Earth altering this bountiful biosphere, which has nurtured us from newt to Newton.

Unlike the hapless dinosaurs, which went to utter destruction when a rocky asteroid plunged into Earth sixty-five million years ago, this accelerating catastrophe is of our own making.

So, just as we are causing that destruction, we could be fostering its reversal. Indeed, nothing will save us from ourselves but ourselves.

We need a strategy. We need action based on the reality that this is our own responsibility - everyone's responsibility.

So democracy - ensuring that everyone is involved in deciding Earth's future - is the key to success.

For comprehensive Earth action, an all-of-the-Earth representative democracy is required. That is, a global parliament.

In his Gettysburg address of 1859, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed: 'We here highly resolve... that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.'

153 years later, let us here in Hobart, and around the world, highly resolve that through global democracy we shall save the Earth from perishing.

For those who oppose global democracy the challenge is clear: how else would you manage human affairs in this new century of global community, global communications and shared global destiny?

Recently, when I got back to bed at Liffey after ruminating under the stars for hours on this question, Paul enquired, 'did you see a comet?' 'Yes', I replied, 'and it is called 'Global Democracy'.

A molten rock from space destroyed most life on the planet those sixty-five million years ago. Let us have the comet of global democracy save life on Earth this time.

Nine years ago, after the invasion of Iraq which President George W. Bush ordered to promote democracy over tyranny, I proposed to the Australian Senate a means of expanding democracy without invasion. Let Australia take the lead in peacefully establishing a global parliament. I explained that this ultimate democracy would decide international issues. I had in mind nuclear proliferation, international financial transactions and the plight of our one billion fellow people living in abject poverty.

In 2003 our other Greens Senator, Kerry Nettle, seconded the motion but we failed to attract a single other vote in the seventy-six seat chamber. The four other parties - the Liberals, the Nationals, Labor and the Democrats - voted 'no!'. As he crossed the floor to join the 'noes', another senator called to me: 'Bob, don't you know how many Chinese there are?'.

Well, yes I did. Surely that is the point. There are just 23 million Australians amongst seven billion equal Earthians. Unless and until we accord every other citizen of the planet, friend or foe, and regardless of race, gender, ideology or other characteristic, equal regard we, like them, can have no assured future.

2500 years ago the Athenians, and 180 years ago the British, gave the vote to all men of means. After Gettysburg, the United States made the vote available to all men, regardless of means. One man, one vote.

But what about women, Louisa Lawson asked in 1889: "Pray, why should one half of the world govern the other half?"

So, in New Zealand, in 1893, followed by South Australia in 1895, and the new Commonwealth of Australia in 1901, universal suffrage - the equal vote for women as well as men - was achieved.

In this second decade of the Twenty First Century, most people on Earth get to vote in their own countries. Corruption and rigging remain common place but the world believes in democracy. As Winston Churchill observed in 1947,

'Many forms of government have been tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.'

Yet, in Australia and other peaceful places which have long enjoyed domestic democracy, establishing a global democracy - the ultimate goal of any real democrat - is not on the public agenda.

Exxon, Coca-Cola, BHP Billiton and News Corporation have much more say in organising the global agenda than the planet's five billion mature-age voters without a ballot box.

Plutocracy, rule by the wealthy, is democracy's most insidious rival. It is served by plutolatry, the worship of wealth, which has become the world's prevailing religion. But on a finite planet, the rule of the rich must inevitably rely on guns rather than the ballot box, though, I hasten to add, wealth does not deny a good heart. All of us here are amongst the world's wealthiest people, but I think none of us worship wealth to the exclusion of democracy.

We instinctively know that democracy is the only vehicle for creating a fair, global society in which freedom will abound, but the extremes of gluttony and poverty will not. Mahatma Ghandi observed, the world has enough for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed.

So what's it to be: democracy or guns? I plunk for democracy.

The concept of world democracy goes back centuries, but since 2007, there has been a new movement towards an elected, representative assembly at the United Nations, in parallel with the unelected, appointed, General Assembly. This elected assembly would have none of the General Assembly's powers but would be an important step along the way to a future, popularly elected and agreeably empowered global assembly.

Two Greens motions in the Australian Senate to support this campaign for a global people's assembly have been voted down. However similar motions won support in the European Parliament, and in India 40 MPs, including a number of ministers, have backed the proposal. I will move for the world's 100 Greens parties to back it too, at the third Global Greens conference in Senegal next week. It fits perfectly with the Global Greens Charter, adopted in Canberra in 2001.

We Earthians can develop rosier prospects. We have been to the Moon. We have landed eyes and ears on Mars. We are discovering planets hundreds of light years close which are ripe for life. We are on a journey to endless wonder in the Cosmos and to realising our own remarkable potential.

To give this vision security, we must get our own planet in order.

The political debate of the Twentieth century was polarised between capitalism and communism. It was about control of the economy in the narrow sense of material goods and money. A free market versus state control.

Bitter experience tells us that the best outcome is neither, but some of both. The role of democracy in the nation state has been to calibrate that balance.

In this Twenty First Century the political debate is moving to a new arena. It is about whether we expend Earth's natural capital as our population grows to ten billion people in the decades ahead with average consumption also growing.

We have to manage the terrifying facts that Earth's citizenry is already using one hundred and twenty percent of the planet's productivity capacity - its renewable living resources; that the last decade was the hottest in the last 1300 years (if not the last 9000 years); that we are extincting our fellow species faster than ever before in human history; and that to accommodate ten billion people at American, European or Australasian rates of consumption we will need two more planets to exploit within a few decades.

It may be that the Earth's biosphere cannot tolerate ten billion of us big consuming mammals later this century. Or it may be that, given adroit and agreeable global management, it can. It's up to us.

Once more the answer lies between the poles: between the narrow interests of the mega-rich and a surrender to the nihilist idea that the planet would be better off without us.

It will be global democracy's challenge to find the equator between those poles, and it is that equator which the Greens are best placed to reach.

One great difference between the old politics and Green politics, is the overarching question which predicates all our political decisions: 'will people one hundred years from now thank us?'

In thinking one hundred years ahead, we set our community's course for one hundred thousand years: that humanity will not perish at its own hand but will look back upon its Twenty First Century ancestry with gratitude.

And when the future smiles, we can smile too.

That query 'will people a hundred years from now thank us?' should be inscribed across the door of Earth's parliament.

So let us resolve

that there should be established

for the prevalence and happiness of humankind

a representative assembly

a global parliament

for the people of the Earth

based on the principle of

one person one vote one value;

and to enable this outcome

that it should be a bicameral parliament

with its house of review

having equal representation

elected from every nation.

An Earth parliament for all. But what would be its commission? Here are four goals:

Economy.

Equality.

Ecology.

Eternity.

To begin with economy, because that word means managing our household. The parliament would employ prudent resource management to put an end to waste and to better share Earth's plenitude. For example, it might cut the trillion dollars annual spending on armaments. A cut of just ten percent, would free up the money to guarantee every child on the planet clean water and enough food, as well as a school to attend to develop her or his best potential. World opinion would back such a move, though, I suppose Boeing, NATO, the People's Liberation Army, and the Saudi Arabian royal family might not.

The second goal is equality. This begins with equality of opportunity - as in every child being assured that school, where lessons are in her or his own first language, and a health clinic to attend. Equality would ensure, through the fair regulation of free enterprise, each citizen's wellbeing, including the right to work, to innovate, to enjoy creativity and to understand and experience and contribute to defending the beauty of Earth's biosphere.

Which brings me to the third goal: ecology. Ecological wellbeing must understrap all outcomes, so as to actively protect the planet's biodiversity and living ecosystems. 'In wildness', wrote Thoreau 'is the preservation of the world.' Wild nature is our cradle and the most vital source for our spiritual and physical wellbeing yet it is the world's most rapidly disappearing resource. And so I pay tribute to Miranda Gibson, 60 metres high on her tall tree platform tonight as the rain and snow falls across central Tasmania. In Miranda's spirit is the saving of the world.

And lastly, eternity. Eternity is for as long as we could be. It means beyond our own experience. It also means 'forever', if there is no inevitable end to life. Let's take the idea of eternity and make it our own business.

I have never met a person in whom I did not see myself reflected. Some grew old and died, and I am now part of their ongoing presence on Earth.

Others have a youthful vitality which I have lost and will soon give up altogether. These youngsters will in turn keep my candle, and yours, if you are aged like me, alight in the Cosmos. In this stream of life, where birth and death are our common lot, the replenishment of humankind lights up our own existences. May it go on and on and on...

The pursuit of eternity is no longer the prerogative of the gods: it is the business of us all, here and now.

Drawing on the best of our character, Earth's community of people is on the threshold of a brilliant new career in togetherness. But we, all together, have to open the door to that future using the powerful key of global democracy.

I think we are intelligent enough to get there. My faith is in the collective nous and caring of humanity, and in our innate optimism. Even in its grimmest history, the optimism of humanity has been its greatest power. We must defy pessimism, as well as the idea that there is any one of us who cannot turn a successful hand to improving Earth's future prospects.

I am an optimist. I'm also an opsimath: I learn as I get older. And, I have never been happier in my life. Hurtling to death, I am alive and loving being Green.

I look forward in my remaining years to helping spread a contagion of confidence that, together, we people of Earth will secure a great future. We can and will retrieve Earth's biosphere. We will steady ourselves - this unfolding flower of intelligence in the Universe - for the long, shared, wondrous journey into the enticing centuries ahead.

Let us determine to bring ourselves together, settle our differences, and shape and realise our common dream for this joyride into the future. In that pursuit, let us create a global democracy and parliament under the grand idea of one planet, one person, one vote, one value.

We must, we can, we will.

_____________________________________________________________________


About Bob Brown


Bob Brown was elected to the Australian Senate in 1996, after 10 years as an MHA in Tasmania's state parliament.

In his first speech in the Senate, Bob raised the threat posed by climate change. Government and opposition members laughed at his warning of sea level rises and it has taken 10 years for them to finally begin to acknowledge the causes and effects of climate change.

Since 1996, Bob has continued to take a courageous, and often politically lonely, stand on issues across the national and international spectrum. Some of the many issues that Bob has raised in the Senate include petrol sniffing in Central Australia, self-determination for West Papua and Tibet, saving Tasmania's ancient forests, opposing the war in Iraq, justice for David Hicks, stopping the sale of the Snowy Hydro scheme and opposing the dumping of nuclear waste in Australia.

Bob was re-elected to the Senate in 2001. Following the election of 4 Greens senators in 2004, Bob became parliamentary leader of the Australian Greens in 2005.

The 2007 election saw Bob re-elected to the Senate for a third term along with two new Greens Senators in WA and SA. Bob received the highest personal Senate vote in Tasmania and was elected with more than a quota in his own right.

In 2010 Bob led the Australian Greens to a historic result with more than 1.6 million Australians voting for the Greens and the election of 9 Senators and 1 House of Representatives member. As a result of this election the Greens gained balance of power in the Senate and signed an agreement with the ALP which allowed Prime Minister Julia Gillard to form government. A key part of this agreement was the Greens requirement that a price on carbon be introduced, which led to legislation being passed at the end of 2011.


http://bob-brown.greensmps.org.au/

error

error

The existence of the greenhouse effect was argued for by Joseph Fourier in 1824. The argument and the evidence was further strengthened by Claude Pouillet in 1827 and 1838, and reasoned from experimental observations by John Tyndall in 1859, and more fully quantified by Svante Arrhenius in 1896.

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the burning of fossil fuels has contributed to the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from 280 ppm to 390 ppm, despite the uptake of a large portion of the emissions through various natural "sinks" involved in the carbon cycle.[5][6] Anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2 ) emissions (i.e., emissions produced by human activities) come from combustion of carbonaceous fuels, principally wood, coal, oil, and natural gas.

Most scientists agree that humans are contributing to observed climate change.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Temperature_Anomaly_1880-2010_%28Fig.A%29.gif

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Glacier_Mass_Balance.png

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC

The URL is to my IndyMedia report, Science Is A Religion.

It is not a joke.

Both stories are filled with terrible gaps in logic, & sound unbelievably ridiculous.

Once upon a time there was nothing. Then a tiny pinhead just appeared & exploded, creating all that there is today. A bunch of stuff floating around over countless eons finally managed to drop into the water on a really big rock, & turned into amoebas. Some of them turned into little fish. But not all of them, because we still have amoebas & little fish. Some of the little fish turned into bigger fish, but some turned into little frogs. Some of them turned into little lizards. Some of them turned into really big lizards. But they were not really lizards. More like giant rhinos. But they were not really like rhinos. More like giant birds. Except for most of them didn't have any wings. Anyway, another big rock hit the really big rock, & made almost everything die. What didn't die turned into little mice. Some of them turned into bigger rats. Some of them turned into monkeys. Some of them turned into bigger apes, but some of them turned into bigger wolves & bears. Some of the wolves & bears spent so much time in the water that they turned into seals & whales. Some of the apes got really smart, & became men. Some of them starting killing a lot of people & stuff, & destroying big parts of the really big rock. They know that this is absolutely true, because they found a lot of funny little rocks & big bones & stuff while digging in the dirt. Except that every once in a while, they find something else in the dirt that proves that they were wrong before, again. Some of them found some funny papers in some funny clay pots, that told a different story. Some of them decided to believe the different story, & had wonderful things happen in their lives, & felt really good, so they didn't pay that much attention to the funny little rocks & bones & stuff any more. The ones that didn't have wonderful things happen in their lives, & didn't feel good, treated the other ones like they were stupid. But every once in a while, one of those does try the funny papers, has wonderful stuff happen, feels really good, & decides it's better to believe in funny papers than funny rocks. Some feel really good without the funny papers, & some of the others say that ignorance is bliss.

why were these comments hidden?
huckster for 'climate change'
by Global Farce • Monday, Apr. 02, 2012 at 2:47 PM

this individual has produced one grand scam with plenty of hot sauce.
there is no evidence of global warming even if this erratic piece of unsubstantiated flummery tries to imply it.
where does this guy get his data?
the part that scares me is his idea of residing somewhere between total extinction of the human species and current populations, meaning a 'reasonable' die off of the human overburden in order to protect this global parliamentary system..
I don't buy it.
and
where did that graph come from?
by "most scientists agree" • Tuesday, Apr. 03, 2012 at 6:55 AM

actually, most scientists don't agree with the doctored 'graphs' that have been discovered to have been subject to software cheat coding and other fraudulent deceptions to push a global carbon tax.
which in turn would bring starvation to billions as the costs of food and energy are driven up beyond their ability to pay.
look up:
climategate +UN

NASSA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration / Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Link: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

Another good source for study about climate change is the IPCC:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific intergovernmental body first established in 1988 by two United Nations organizations, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and later endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly through Resolution 43/53. Its mission is to provide comprehensive scientific assessments of current scientific, technical and socio-economic information worldwide about the risk of climate change caused by human activity, its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences, and possible options for adapting to these consequences or mitigating the effects.

Various scientific bodies have issued official statements endorsing and concurring with the findings of the IPCC.

Joint science academies' statement of 2001. "The work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) represents the consensus of the international scientific community on climate change science. We recognise IPCC as the world's most reliable source of information on climate change and its causes, and we endorse its method of achieving this consensus".

Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences. "We concur with the climate science assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001 ... We endorse the conclusions of the IPCC assessment..."

Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society. "CMOS endorses the process of periodic climate science assessment carried out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and supports the conclusion, in its Third Assessment Report, which states that the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate."

European Geosciences Union. "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change...is the main representative of the global scientific community....IPCC third assessment report...represents the state-of-the-art of climate science supported by the major science academies around the world and by the vast majority of scientific researchers and investigations as documented by the peer-reviewed scientific literature".

International Council for Science. "…the IPCC 4th Assessment Report represents the most comprehensive international scientific assessment ever conducted. This assessment reflects the current collective knowledge on the climate system, its evolution to date, and its anticipated future development".

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (USA). "Internationally, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)... is the most senior and authoritative body providing scientific advice to global policy makers".

United States National Research Council. "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue".

Network of African Science Academies. "The IPCC should be congratulated for the contribution it has made to public understanding of the nexus that exists between energy, climate and sustainability".

Royal Meteorological Society, in response to the release of the Fourth Assessment Report, referred to the IPCC as "The world's best climate scientists".[120]
Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London. "The most authoritative assessment of climate change in the near future is provided by the Inter-Governmental Panel for Climate Change".

Now its your turn to tell us your source of [dis]information...

climategate +UN


Here's the problem. The UN's Climatic Research Unit (CRU)
Global Warming ate my data • The Register
The world's source for global temperature record admits it's lost or destroyed all the original data that would allow a third party to construct a global temperature record. The destruction (or loss) of the data comes at a convenient time for the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in East Anglia
theregister.co.uk/2009/08/13/cru_missing/   

so... where is the raw data [ for parallel analysis, you understand ] to provide reproducible models?

“ Disgraced chief of Penn State University’s Earth System Science Center and creator of the discredited “hockey stick” graph Michael Mann, for instance, told the U.K.'s Guardian that the latest leak was "truly pathetic." Ironically, those are the exact same words used by one of his fellow climate scientists in the leaked e-mails to describe his hallmark graph.

But his own words are damning, too, according to critics. In one e-mail he sent, which was released this week, Mann said, “The important thing is to make sure [skeptical scientists] are loosing [sic] the PR battle.” He also blasted other scientists for “not helping the cause.”
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech-mainmenu-30/environment/9904-climategate-2-more-e-mails-leaked-ahead-of-un-summit

the same players seem to have financial connections, as in direct funding, from the primary parties involved.

In my opinion the only salvation for civilization and the human race lies in the creation of a world government, with security of nations founded upon law. As long as sovereign states continue to have separate armaments and armament secrets, new world wars will be inevitable.

Albert Einstein

what does living in a world of law have to do with the previously stated hoax of climate change, the proposal of a genocidal carbon tax or a current UN 'laws' which selectively enforces its will on victim nations?
One things is for dang sure, the agencies who are pushing this fraud are persistent even in the face of the crumbling facade of 'global warming' as real temperatures world wide are declining.

Fox News runs with global temperature decline falsehood ...
... size shown there appears to be a 35 year cyclical pattern between temperatures rising and temperatures falling. 1875 to 1910 (approx) temps appear to be declining ... 2001 as the eighth warmest year on record for the Earth, based on the combined average of worldwide land and ocean surface temperatures ...
http://mediamatters.org/research/200907010013

Fox News runs with global temperature decline falsehood ...
... size shown there appears to be a 35 year cyclical pattern between temperatures rising and temperatures falling. 1875 to 1910 (approx) temps appear to be declining ... 2001 as the eighth warmest year on record for the Earth, based on the combined average of worldwide land and ocean surface temperatures ...
http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Worldwide+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm

I could go on...I'm persistent too.
I have a problem with starvation as a tool for global mass murder disguised as a revenue stream.

We have, interests here who wish to reduce the population' overburden. Read the article. They also want a global government to enforce it, using a carbon tax for this purpose to drive up food and fuel prices for the third world and de-industrialize the 1st world.

Unforeseen climate 'crisis' - Washington Times
A climate crisis of worldwide proportions is unfolding right before our eyes, and not even the most powerful world leaders can do anything to stop it. It looks like 2009 may very well turn out to be the fourth straight year of declining global temperatures at a time when carbon dioxide levels
washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/20/unforeseen-climate-crisis/
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/20/unforeseen-climate-crisis/
or this
Christopher Booker: Planet-saving madness - Telegraph
This carefully ignores the latest US satellite figures showing temperatures having fallen since 1998, declining in 2007 to a 1983 level - not to mention the newly revised figures for US surface temperatures showing that the 1930s had four of the 10 warmest years of the past century, with the hottest ...
telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1570421/Christopher-Booker-...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1570421/Christopher-Booker-Planet-saving-madness.html

Remember, Hitler and the people who funded him also wanted a global government. That didn't work out so well.