Originally published on the CGS blog on March 8, 2014.
Books can provide us with valuable insights about our global problems and how to deal with them. A good example is Glen Martin’s The Anatomy of a Sustainable World: Our Choice between Climate Change or System Change and How You Can Make a Difference.
Martin is the Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Radford University in Virginia. In this book, he asks us to recognize “the deep connections between our collapsing global ecosystem and our current world system of militarized nation-states and globalized corporate capitalism,” and examines the root causes of our current situation and argues for the specific changes which are needed to move beyond them.
Focusing on the link between ecology and sustainability, Martin notes that economic theorists can no longer continue “as if investment, production, and consumption were self-contained without thought of the immense negative external consequences that production and consumption have on society and the planetary ecosystem.” A new holism is taking place which will mean a transformation of institutions. It will mean the end of militarism and widespread use and waste of non-renewable resources. There are two prominent global institutions that will need to be transformed as we move to a holistic planetary outlook–global corporate capitalism and the system of independent “sovereign” nation-states. The existing system of voluntary treaties among nation-states and voluntary cooperation among international corporations “are all hopelessly inadequate forms of action in the face of our global climate crisis.”
Martin argues that we need to shift from the idea of negative freedom linked to the liberalism of the past to the new idea of positive freedom based on the quality of life in the community. Democratic government is then seen as an instrument to promote the “common good of the social whole,” a situation which requires “reasonable economic equality.” But few thinkers see that the global community needs “planetary democracy.“
“Our global situation today requires the vision to create a constitutionally mandated planetary community of positive freedom in which human beings are empowered to deal with the global crises that threaten our existence and future generations . . . . The ‘common good of all’ needs to be the product of a global positive freedom that is only possible under a democratic Earth Constitution. . . . [T]he creation of government alone will not suffice. However, government as the mainspring of positive freedom . . . remains the necessary prerequisite for a truly transformed world order.”
The second chapter provides the long-term historical background for the changes now taking place followed by the recent development of the Constitution for the Federation of the Earth. The third chapter gives a detailed explanation of and argumentation for the Earth Federation which incorporates specific measures to maintain the environmental sustainability of the Planet. The Earth Constitution is a totally ‘green’ constitution. In the fourth chapter Martin indicates why a revolutionary approach such as adopting the Constitution for the Federation of the Earth is required. “At the dawn of the twenty-first century, we are . . . in a position to self-consciously found a just, democratic, peaceful, and enduring planetary society.”
“Resistance and criticism to the present system, while appropriate, are not enough. We need a concrete, positive blueprint that we can envision, work for, and actualize. The Earth Constitution provides the best possible blueprint for system change-for founding a truly sustainable and democratic world civilization.”
A more complete review as well as reviews of other books related to solving global problems is available at http://GlobalSolutions.org/books.
