Riga 2012 Culture, Science, Environment and Strategies for Survival

Christopher Busby
University of Ulster/ Green Audit
Scientific Secretary: European Committee on Radiation Risk UK Ministry of Defence Depleted Uranium Oversight Board (DUOB) UK Dept of Health Committee Examining Radiation Risks from Internal Emitters (CERRIE) Leader: Science/ Policy interface; Policy Information Network for Child Health and the Environment (PINCHE; European Union). Guest Researcher: Julius Kuehn Institute, German Federal Agricultural Laboratories, Braunschweig Visiting Professor, Faculty of Health, University of Ulster, Ireland

christo@greenaudit.org c.busby@ulster.ac.uk

Everybody knows
Everybody knows the dice are loaded Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed Everybody knows the war is over Everybody knows, the good guys lost Everybody knows the fight was fixed The poor stay poor and the rich get rich Thats how it goes Everybody knows Leonard Cohen

Introduction
I will discuss some ideas present in two books which I have had a part in producing: 1. Green Economics Eds Miriam Kennett and Molly Scott Cato(Green Audit: 1999) 2. Manifesto for a Sustainable Society (Green Party of England and Wales 1989)

Diagnosis 1
The State of the planet Earth is critical and no one is addressing it. Without a major change in culture and human behaviour, human life is unlikely to survive. We will become extinct In the last 500 years there have been a few attempts to introduce new social systems, but all have failed. There are reasons for this. We are left with an uncontrollable free market dominated by a monster created out of undemocratic global cartels, undemocratic banks and infiltrated military power blocs.

Diagnosis (2)
Simple historical considerations reveal that we are now dealing with a system that is super powerful and instantly responsive to immediate changes but gives no thought to long term needs Historical considerations reveal that changes are driven by psychologically flawed individuals drawn from a human personality sub-class. Without dealing with this aspect of sociology psychology and politics, no novel system will succeed.

Current critical areas of concern are (1):

Limits have been exceeded on the contamination of the biosphere with radioactivity, EM (cellphone) radiation, and many toxic chemicals leading to a destruction of the genome of humans and other life forms. Genotoxic effects are plain to see in congenital malformation, fertility loss, birth rates, cancer rates, death rates and illness rates. Increased thermal emissions including carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, with changes in solar energy are resulting in increasing average earth temperatures, changing habitats and food supplies Limits are being reached for many natural resources, from oil and coal, clean water and wood to metals and critical manufacturing elements

The critical areas of concern are (2):

The distribution of resources between individuals and nations is biased by a culture which is based on the military control by deadly force of trade currencies, banking operations and a bogus free market dominated by powerful interests. Democratic change is controlled by media and psychological operations Education and cultural engineering with information overload through information technology removes any space for independent thought. The end of history is assumed. There is no alternative

Prognosis
Without major surgery, the patient will not survive. The main danger is genome destruction with loss of fertility below replacement. This is already happening. It is not possible to incrementally change the current system A new ideological solution is urgently necessary

How should we react?

You cannot cross an abyss in steps

Prescription
It is not possible to incrementally change the current system A new ideological solution is urgently needed Such a proposed system must differ from previous historical systems (e.g. French Revolution, Marxism, US Independence) by dealing with (a) human nature and personality and (b) environmental constraints

This is actually quite easy to do

The structure of such a system, apart from the psychological and personality aspect have been well researched and are embodied in the documents, writing and manifestos of the Green movement, a movement which began in the 80s by recognising all but one of the aspects of the problem I have outlined

What is missing from the Green Movement are three things

1. The problems of the personal psychology of leaders (which is why the Green movement is torn apart by internal strife and silly strategies) 2. A method for actually changing the current system (which is why the Green movement is unsuccessful in its attempts to do more than effect incremental changes in largely irrelevant areas). 3. Bravery

How can we change the system? The ECRR Strategy

1. EXISTING CULTURE / SYSTEM opposed by NEW SYSTEM

RESULT: if the opposition is head on, the result is SQUASHED

The ECRR strategy

2. EXISTING CULTURE/ SYSTEM bypassed by NEW SYSTEM (e.g. ECRR Model)

RESULT: ignore current system SUCCESS

Eysenk 2-D Ideology Space

RAF, Al Quada fascist communist USA Republican UK conservative USA Democrat

tough

radical
Green Party UK 1989 Green Party UK Liberal Victorian liberals Anti-slavery etc

conservative

tender

Ideologies are irrelevant

All these people in the Eysenk diagram spend their time arguing and struggling for control. But whichever ideology succeeds for a time, it is destroyed from within by the psychological and personality failings of those who get to the top. Robespierre, Stalin, Bush (snr), Tony Blair. And always the people suffer.

Personality Types
Various classifications. Enneagram, Myers Briggs, Jung Introvert/Extravert Individual personalities defined by nature and nurture and can be found by questionnaire methods Research shows that the personality types drawn to become politicians and leaders are the wrong types for the welfare of human societies. They are proud, selfish, arrogant, insecure, untrustworthy and dangerous. It follows that democracy must fail as a method intended to secure human welfare if it does not take this into account This is true whatever the ideological system and is the cause of ALL the failures in history of political systems

The Proposed Strategy

1. Figure out the crucial Truth in all crucial areas 2. Set up committees of experts to discuss the best way of dealing with each area 3. Produce a report from each expert area which lists various best options for a better society in the context of that area 4. Develop a computer model (Guns and Butter) to integrate permutations of these options to provide a list of best possible welfare state societies 5. Advise the government to make a referendum of choice of the society by the people 6. Implement the model

What the Green Books suggest

Nation States to cancel all debt, withdraw from private Banks and issue national currency; Interest on loans not permitted; acquisition of wealth prevented by time limited circulating money International agreements to develop new trade currency based on Carbon (?): New Bretton Woods Each individual resident in the Nation to receive as a right a annual income sufficient to live on without working All land to be taxed by nation according to usage Import and Export trade tariffs to control internal financial security Policies must include consideration of future downstream impacts Taxation limits to ranges of personal salaries

Fiscal control of Policy

The PII or Planetary Impact Index is a number, generated by consideration of any production process of proposed policy which takes into consideration the effects of the change on all systems The PII can be used as a multiplier on a PII Tax to steer society in directions which are good for the people and the environment

The ethical basis of sustainability

The only energy we should exploit is energy from the sun, which is transformed into geophysical energy (water, wind, solar, geothermal, biofuel) Each inhabitant of a Nation shares the wealth of the land of that nation Any resources we exploit are borrowed from our descendants and their product should enrich our descendants We should leave the nation for our descendants at least as rich as when we came to it and no less polluted

Finally
The massive squandering of resources and energy which is the current system is impossible to sustain. Therefore it must stop. To make it stop is easy in principle and bloodless. The creation of a new system ideology, in the form of an influential book (e.g Rights of Man, Kapital) can influence people to stop buying unecessary things, and the current banking driven system will quickly collapse. The new system will then be there to fill the vacuum. This could have happened in the Hippie Revolution in 1969 (in which I was involved) but there was no alternative model, and so the bad guys took over again.