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Saturday, September 29, 301 AP
Web posted at 2050 UST.
Good evening, delegates of each nation on Vexillium, and thank-you Mr Chairman for those kind words. I wish to also welcome to this auditorium those who are listening and watching from Utania. I am mindful that the full assembly of the Utanian Parliament is watching, live, via satellite, and those citizens of the United Democratic Republic of Utania watching on Utanian national TV1.
I thank you for taking the time to listen. I am also very grateful to those who have provided the satellite link-up to TV1 in Utania, to have provided this in such short time. My grateful thanks to you.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the planet Vexillium, Citizens and Representatives of the great nation of Utania, I have taken this opportunity to speak to you this afternoon -- evening in Utania -- to speak to the issues that face the nation of Utania.
INTRODUCTION
I have been privileged these past two weeks to hear many a noted speaker address this assembly of delegates on a topic that may the most important issue to affect the people of this planet since there have been humans on this planet. The consequences being spoken of are devastating, frightening, and appalling.
As a species, our scientists are saying, we have overused, overcultivated, and wastefully employed the resources available to us on this planet. Why? Because our ancestors believed, as we still do, in the "infinite Vexillium principle", that land, and water and air were infinite, and could not be depleted, worn or degraded by any action on our parts. Afterall, two thousand years ago, indeed, even after the plague of only three hundred years ago, only a few million humans occupied the entire planet. The only smog our ancestors produced was hearthfires, and the only pollution was the animal or human waste-products.
Unfortunately, humankind, over the past three hundred years, has grown to flood the planet, with an estimated four to five billion Vexillians. In addition, we now have industrial plants, consumer goods, and toxic waste products that we bury underground, dump in oceans or pump into the sky.
We are now witness to the very real consequences of this false philosophy. They have been described to us these past days. In some of the larger cities of this world, an orange tinge to the air on certain days and a higher incidence of asthma. Lakes near industrial cities no longer support fish life, and the frog populations have been extinguished. In the seas, our scientists are telling us have gotten progressively warmer over the past few decades, and the mighty coral reefs that amaze and impress us may soon disappear.
We have beaches where the water is so toxic that even swimming is banned, and regions of sea where fish cannot be eaten. We have polluted rivers without fish, and viable water supplies are slowly drying up. We have forests disappearing, and viable crop lands doing the same. Our deserts are expanding, and because of irrigation on a massive scale, salt is appearing in inland seas.
A NEW IDEA
Fred Hoyle said in 248 that "Once a photograph of the Vexillium, taken from the outside is available... a new idea as powerful as any other in history will be let loose."
Less than twenty years ago, the first man rocketed from the surface of this planet into space, and looked down. He was able to confirm for us that the planet was indeed round, like a ball, and that though huge in breadth, it was finite. He circumnavigated it in a matter of hours, several times, before returning to earth.
What we once believed -- indeed probably still do in the depths of our hearts -- that this planet of ours is infinite, is found untrue: it is very much finite. And while enormous, it is only eighty days balloon-ride to circumnavigate.
Ladies and Gentlemen, this blue-green orb that floats in the middle of the dark, emptiness of infinite space is indeed... finite.
What is more, we have had numerous probes venture into space, hundreds of telescopes pointing skyward all searching for something that we have yet failed to find: another planet like our own. And the realisation is dawning that even should we find one, it may be thousands of light years from here.
Therefore, what is certain is that, for now, for at least the next few hundred years, if not thousands or tens of thousands, this enormous but finite blue-green orb floating in the inky black depths of space is our home. There is no alternative. This is the only life-supporting planet that we know, and it is billions of miles from the next planet. There is no lifeboat, no rescue ship for this planet. This is it.
I believe that the single most appropriate phrase I have yet heard these two weeks, has been "Spaceship Vexillium".
That statement says it all. This planet is all that we have, an enclosed environment, and without proper measures in place to keep it life sustaining, we may find ourselves without a viable home.
RESOURCES ARE FINITE
What is more immediately apparent is that her resources are also not infinite. In the middle of the 270s, the oil shock caused the world to realise that we do not have a limitless supply of fossil fuels. We have been informed that this world can expect to rely on continuous supply of oil for only another thirty to fifty years. That, while there may be more supply, it will be the extremely prohibitive costs of exploration and recovery that will prevent future oil supplies being available.
Less well-known is that our mineral resources are similarly in short supply. It was estimated in the early 280s, that the planet's gold reserves were thirty years, Cadmium for stainless steel and Tin, forty years. While deeper sources have been found, we must also come to the realisation that our mineral resources are also finite, and that a day will come when these minerals are no longer economically available from underground.
I hasten to add that these projections, as all projections, have been made on the basis of continued first world growing demand. They have no factored in the desire by the second and third world to share these resources.
To put it another way, at the current rate of use of oil resources, will the second and third world simply miss out? We do not have the technology, nor funding to develop it, for alternative fuel sources. No doubt we will be buying it from you in the first world. You who have used up the natural oil resources our planet had to offer.
This presents a very real threat to the second and third world: that we will be trapped in our poverty by the fact that the next generation of fuel resources require substantial investment in R&D, investment funding that we do not have.
We all know the joke: Scientists have discovered a new source of fuel to replace oil, made from camel dung. Of course, we all know who owns all the world's camels.
Do not underestimate this point. The concentration of fuel resources has been the bane of the world today in many respects, a great economic de-equaliser. It will continue to be just that, only this time, the camels are all the science laboratories of the first world.
THE IMPACT OF THIRD WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
There is also the same problem when it comes to the clean-up effort. The camels of environmental clean-up are chiefly in the first world. You have the resources, the funds, to reforest the plains, to clean-up the rivers. Indeed, this is much as it should be, because significant portions of the problem have largely been created IN the first world lands.
The problem of ozone depletion, of global warming, of mercury pollution all arise from first world practises, first-world smokestacks, first-world aerosols.
However, the crisis in the environment is not exclusively the domain of the first world. The third world has its own version of environmental crises, which could potentially be as devastating for the world, including the first world.
Allow me to describe one the consequences that will affect Utania should our deserts not be checked.
With overgrazing, deserts will expand, droughts will be more numerous. There will obviously be human dehydration, and with water shortages, waste water will become more polluted, making it more dangerous. Water borne diseases, such as diarrhoea, will break out in greater frequency, and because clean water will be in short supply, these diseases will more often be fatal.
During these droughts, cities may even find that their water supplies dry up completely, and then the pipes without water will crack, so that when water supply returns, they lose even more water to the underground, making water even more scarce. [Iran.]
Economic productivity will decline with animal and human populations dehydrating and declining, not to mention massive crop failures. Water intensive industries will collapse, such as most industrial plants, and as water supplies are invariably shared by nations, wars will increasing break out over threats to water supply, as has already threatened on several occasions already [Egypt and Sudan; Israel and her neighbours].
War and drought refugees will flee their lands, and fill cities less affected, straining these cities' water resources. Ultimately these refugees will go to wealthier, less water-threatened nations. In Utania's case, I would imagine Armatirion will be awash with refugees. [Sthn Europe]
In short, a humanitarian crisis will develop on a scale we have hitherto not imagined. And this is one consequence of environmental mismanagement, one that is more real to the poorer, agriculture-dependent nations of the world, invariably third world nations.
ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE FROM A THIRD WORLD PERSPECTIVE
Indeed, we must ensure that our populations understand the realities that we are facing. Yes, the world, through the technology of the Westrians and Christianans, is no longer facing a nuclear annihilation. Yes, it is conceivable that the doomsaying scientists are wrong and that overheating the planet by greenhouse gases does not come to pass.
But, what of these more immediate threats? Deforestation? Deserfication? Land salination? Depleted clean water resources per capita? Rivers drying up? Soil erosion that leads to crop failures? The impending energy crisis that we are all hoping never comes? The mineral shortages that we will start to experience within a century? And the accompanying death, by water-borne diseases, by starvation, and by means of free trade "rules".
Are we preparing ourselves for something that may never come to pass -- global warming -- and ignoring the very real possibility that by exporting environmental damage from the wealthy world to the poorer, we may cause even more droughts, more water shortages, more resource-related wars, and death by disease and starvation?
By "exporting environmental damage", I mean, for example, reforestation. Reforesting plains is an admirable pursuit, building tree stocks so that a renewable resource is constantly available. However, if this means that in the meantime, wood supplies are sourced from poorer nations cutting down their natural forest, I would ask "Is anything gained from a global perspective?"
This is the export of environmental damage. It is one of the greatest threats to the third world, because the lure of first-world money for good wood stocks is more tempting for a Afrazurian man earning one Crown a day, than to a Westrian earning a hundred or more.
Can we foresee a time when the Utanian population is forcibly -- by means of famine and pestilence -- reduced to forty million people? Can we foresee a time when the Utanian land is 40% desert? When starvation is a real possibility, not because of economic factors, but because the land gifted to us by our ancestors is no longer viable? Why? Because we overgrazed, overcleared and deforested it? Are we prepared to say our "sorrys" to our descendants, two hundred generations on, whose scattered remnant live in South Bay, or Armatirion, or Westria?
The wealthier nations tell us that they are suffering under the weight of refugees coming to their doors seeking a better life. Imagine when it gets three or four times worse? Imagine a time when their own governments are not even able to feed them? When millions are begging to be let in because a war has erupted over water rights?
This is the future that we may inadvertantly gift to our descendants. I am wondering if we are preparing to reverse this.
THE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL COST OF REFORMS
In March of this year, as many of you know, I passed an executive order banning logging in the Ujam-Yoamith jungle, a vast natural jungle that is the last remnant of a jungle that covered the eastern slopes of the Utanian mountains. In the wealthy cities of Luka and Hamilton, there was applause for my vision and forthrightness. However, amongst the poor, rural families of Utani who have been logging this jungle for the past two or three hundred years there was a severe backlash. The very real consequences were felt, not by the environmentally-minded citizens of the wealthier cities, but by the rural poor who depended on the logging for livelihood.
I believe that this is an issue that will pervade the entire issue of environmental reform. These reforms will have an inverse proportional effect to wealth. Therefore, the consequences of environmental reform are likely to be most powerfully felt by the poorer nations of this earth, and the very real economic consequences that will result cannot be ignored as merely unfortunate, for they will sabotage the environmental campaign of the entire world, not just those in Rovens and Afrazure.
The challenge that I have heard most speakers here emphasise is that action is required, and that the problem is reversable. I see the wealthier nations lining up to stoically defend their natural forests, to clean-up their rivers and air pollution codes. They speak of voter backlash counteracted by the slow and steady pace of reform.
While this is admirable, let me assure you that this will do little toward solving the "other half" of the environmental problem, that which resides in the poorer half of the planet. Deforestation, declining land productivity, declining water resources.
I believe this is a problem that few here have addressed, and even fewer are aware of. The developing or stagnant third-world nations of this planet do not have the luxury of spending on forest preservation schemes, or decreasing their land devoted to overgrazing.
In Utania's situation, deforestation, overcropping and overgrazing are our largest problems.
Utania is now estimated to be no more than 14% forested, whereas five hundred years ago, our scientists tell me that 60% of the country was covered in forest. Large scale farming became the economic imperative handed down from the Guwimithian overlords, with Utania becoming the grain and cattle farms of the Empire.
Forests were cleared, and land was laid bare for productive farming.
The Chiquiti region is now showing signs of significant wear, and there is a desert expanding from the central region of Chiquiti in Utania's west. It is expanding at a significant rate, with the land increasingly degrading as cattle graze on less and less undergrowth.
It will be clear to all present that the solution Utania must accept is to reduce the level of grazing and farming in the Chiquiti region beyond that required by the increasing desert, so as to arrest the problem. Furthermore, to reforest the region, indeed the entire nation.
However, this will inevitably result in a decrease in agricultural export revenues, upon which the entire Utanian nation is highly dependant, as we are not a major industrial or technological exporter. Utania's foreign debt will increase, forcing us to return to the unhealthy practises of the past so as to service our debts.
Furthermore, agriculture in Utania is the primary domain of the poorest people in the nation. Living off little more than three Christianan Crowns a week per person, the decision to reallocate our land use to more environmentally beneficial practises will simply be devastating on these poorest of the poor.
As President of Utania, how am I to solve such problems, when the country's economic and fiscal resources are already stretched to their limits?
Well, I can tell you I honestly do not have a clear solution to this dilemma, and will seek wise counsel from expert policy advisers here at this conference and elsewhere.
ACTIONS
It is incumbant upon every nation to change their ways. Every nation is contributing toward the degradation of this planet in one way or another. However, it is certainly true that the developed nations of this world must bare the majority of the cost of this, and I cannot emphasise this point more forcefully.
The developed world contributes overwhelmingly toward the greenhouse gas problem, toward pumping of toxins into the air, and dumping them into the sea.
Furthermore, it is by the economic incentive schemes of your nations that the under-developed world may continue to be incentivised to destroy their own natural habitat, while the developed world repairs its own, that the environmental damage may simply be moved from the first world to the third.
Rest assured that your inaction will not only condemn your own populations into a world of increasing hunger, increasing climatic instability and change, increasing water shortages and the challenges to peace that this will result in, but you will also drag the majority under-developed world with you. We are all in this boat together, and we will either survive together, or together we will sink under the waves of our own excess.
"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little." - Edmund Burke
This brings us to the question of action. The people at this conference should be asking themselves "What can we do?", while I know that right at this moment, there is millions of Utanians who are either telling themselves "There is no hope, we cannot reverse this", or asking themselves "what can we possibly do?"
To the first Utanian response, no doubt likely the response of many here, believe this above all: There IS hope, and this CAN be reversed. Some damage to this planet is, indeed, irreversable, and we shall be forced to admit the error of our ways to our descendants.
However, just like a smoker quitting cigarettes, whose lungs immediately begin to heal themselves, so too this planet can undo the damage we have wrought.
This will require, however, without a shadow of doubt, massive commitment by individuals, communities, corporations and governments to reverse our current practises, and pursue a direction in which damage is healed, practises are beneficial and resources are renewable.
Let me begin by explaining a three part strategy that my administration will pursue to participate in the reversal of damage to our own land.
FIRSTLY, LEADERSHIP
The first and foremost step is crucial, and essential, and, most of all, difficult. Because it begins with us, we few in this room. Environment Ministers, Presidents, scientists, campaigners and Industrialists. We have heard the prophesies, and now is the time to begin with action. We lucky few must show leadership. We must start the work ahead of the masses, because the world's population must understand that this is an issue that must be addressed immediately.
From this day forward, we must ensure that our plans and strategies at every level of government and corporate enterprise is a coordinated attack on environmental damage. This coordination must be directed at the highest level in the land. To that end, as President of the UDR of Utania, I shall be forming a special supra-Ministry position, reporting directly to myself, and a member of the cabinet, the Special Minister for Environmental Strategy.
This position shall have influence over every decision and every strategy of government. Only matters of utmost national security shall be hidden from the Special Minister, and he or she shall have the power to recommend Presidential veto on every item of legislation and every departmental strategy, budget or proposal. The Special Minister will also form a Presidential Department of Environmental Strategy, which shall make rapid recommendations and evaluations of policy and process at the disposal of the government to reverse the environmental damage inflicted on the Utanian landscape, seas and air.
This position is not yet filled, and I will be seeking applications, particularly from members at this conference, but also from the wider international community. I am seeking the very best, the most creative and most enthusiastic candidate. As this will not be a political cabinet position, but a Presidential appointee, I shall be offering a salary of one million pund.
This position is vital so as to provide the necessary direction and insight to the President and the nation as to the way forward. As politicians, this is a new field, and we require as much educating as the population at large.
SECONDLY, FREE INFORMATION DISSEMINATION
This brings me to the second most essential action that is awaiting us as we leave this conference: understanding and dissemination of knowledge.
The world's population have not benefitted from this conference, they have not seen what we have seen and have not heard what we have heard. We must dedicate ourselves to making the truth be known.
And I emphasise the word "truth". Much of what has been presented is still not clearly understood, and it is essential that experimentation is conducted dedicated to finding the truth of these matters, and to finding the real and practical solutions to these problems.
The Presidential Department of Environmental Strategy shall also be responsible for the funding of scientific research into this field, however, acknowledging Utania's limited scientific knowledge and resources, I cannot emphasise enough that the bulk of this research must be conducted by the developed world.
Secondly, this information MUST, and I emphasise "must", be freely available, not only to the wider scientific community, but to the populations of this planet.
We simply cannot allow patents and copyrights to ludicruously hold secret new solar cell developments or technology for reversal of deserfication, if these things are essential to the future of our planet.
I cannot emphasise this enough. The third world will be looking to the first for a solution to the energy crisis that awaits. We have not the resources or talents to provide a solution ourselves. Should the first world decide to hide the next generation of fuel resources behind a veil of patents and legal-ese, then the world will have simply transferred the wealth of energy resources from the oil rich nations to the patent-rich nations.
To those same nations I offer this thought: we have ALL certainly suffered under the yoke of inequitable oil distribution, with a massive proportion of Utania's exports simply going to pay for fuel imports, rather than paying for an improvement in the quality of life of the average Utanian, as it is for many other nations.
Will we continue this charade? Will we simply transfer the camels of the next generation to the first world laboratories and patent libraries?
Or shall we seize the day, and make such discoveries freely available, ending one of the world's most powerful economic development prohibitions?
Thirdly, this information must be disseminated to the populations at large for this battle to succeed.
We almost all live in democratic societies, and in order for these strategies and developments to hold in the longer term, we simply must educate the populations at large as to what is at stake.
I emphasise this for the developed world in particular: as you will bare the majority of the effort it is tripley important that your populations are made aware as to why these sacrifices and hardships are necessary, lest we witness the collapse of this worthy movement within months of leaving this conference.
To this end, the Utanian Presidential Department of Environmental Strategy shall form its own Communications Office, which shall be supplied with a significant budget to ensure that every Utanian understands the situation, and understands the sacrifices that all will be required to make.
I would recommend that similar action is undertake in each nation represented here.
Therefore, leadership must first be shown, and in Utania, a special department under my own personal supervision shall be formed. Secondly, information must be assembled, reviewed, scientifically checked, and made freely available. To this latter point, public education campaigns must be established to provide the necessary FACTS to the population at large to ensure that this issue is understood and fully accepted. However, this is not where the story ends.
THIRDLY, WE CANNOT ACT ALONE
Next, after the strategies are developed, after the populations understand, we must put our plans into action in a coordinated approach.
When a problem such as this is a global problem, it will require a global solution. There must be a means by which we can coordinate our solutions, so that their efficiency is maximised, and the economic and social consequences are not borne by a minority or by one particular segment of the world.
Be aware that the environmental problem will be most critical, after global warming, in the third-world, that the problem is as much tied to economic poverty as it is to industrial practises.
We must face up to the fact that we share this "Spaceship Vexillium" either united or divided. The permanent drought in Afrazure will effect the Westrian, indeed the whole world's population eventually, and cannot simply be regarded as the problem of the Afrazurian population.
Indeed, as a third world nation, it has the least resources available to allocate to the solutions of environmental reform, and may in fact struggle to simply prevent further environmental damage.
So, fuelwood exports to deforested nations, the gift of the Westrian forests, while reforestation is allowed to take root? I think these are the actions that we must consider if we are serious about solving this problem for good.
Should we choose to not coordinate our efforts, and most importantly, to pool our resources, our efforts may be in vain, they may result in greater pain for our populations than first thought, and may result in complete rejection of our strategies and plans.
Furthermore, beyond coordination, action requires support and encouragement. Indeed, it may even require incentives and disincentives, to cajole those nations who refuse to join the solution and desire to remain firmly part of the problem.
Action requires follow-up, wise counsel, and support from the unity of humankind.
To this end, I would recommend that this Canhoto Conference be a regular event.
I recommend that there be a system in place for international pressure to be applied to non-complicit nations, and that we must regularly gather to ensure that we are on track and that this problem was less urgent each time we gather.
We cannot face these problems alone. We cannot seek to redress the imbalances of the world as individual nations. Without a firm commitment to action, and without the mutual examination of that commitment, we are guaranteed to see this conference turn into just another talkfest.
CONCLUSIONS
Decisive leadership. Information assembly and dissemination. Action and follow-up.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the conference, Members of the Utanian Parliament, citizens of Utania, it well-appears that we stand on the precipice of history.
We can either commit ourselves to ensuring that our descendants live on this planet, with trees, soil, clean water and clean air, plentiful food supply, equitable food distribution, and diverse animal and plant populations, for two hundred generations to come, or we can condemn our descendants to a world we cannot begin to imagine. War, famine, poisonous water, poisonous air.
In the book of Revelations, in the Good Book, there is a prophesy foretold of four horsemen. One is a conquerer with a crown. Another, bearing a large sword, turns nations against one another. The third holds a pair of scales and uses means of "fair trade". While the fourth is death. Between them, it says, they spread death by sword, famine, disease and wild beasts. I challenge any of you to see that this is true for yourself.
While I know in my heart that such a day will come, I also know that it is a day that can be delayed. Frankly, it will not come "on my watch". I challenge each of us here, and those outside this auditorium to see that this tragedy does not come during our time.
We shall not only be held accountable for our actions by our Lord and God, we shall be held accountable by the successive generations of humankind that survive our excesses. Shall they judge us fairly, as a generation that took the challenge by the horns? Or will they curse our days, saying there was so little we did when the opportunity was afforded us.
We live on a spaceship. "Spaceship Vexillium". It is finite, and there is no alternative.
We shall have the tools to avert disaster, and we have the means. All that remains is the willpower and action.
I thank you for your patience. God bless you all, and the entire human race.
(NB; 5,000 words. Approx. 40-45 minutes.)
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©Zeitgeist Magazine, 300 AP.
<TECH> ©Mike Ham, 2000. All rights reserved. No reproduction without, at least, tacit approval. ;-) |