global movement dedicated to co-creating the foundations of a peaceful, just and sustainable world by the end of 2012.
http://worldshift2012.org/content/the-worldshift-2012-declaration
The WorldShift 2012 Declaration
http://www.worldfairtradeday10.org/
BIG BANG!! BEAT THE DRUM FOR WORLD FAR TRADE DAY 08 MAY 10
There is no doubt that we are now in a state of global emergency. This unprecedented worldwide crisis is a symptom of a much deeper problem - the current state of our consciousness: how we think about ourselves and our world. We have the urgent need, and now the opportunity, for a complete rethink: to reconsider our values and priorities, to understand our interconnectedness and to begin a new direction - living in harmony with nature and each other.
The Crisis And The Opportunity
Every person, community, and society
in the world is already, or will soon be, affected by the crisis, through climate change, economic breakdown, ecosystem collapse, population pressure, food and water shortages, resource depletion, nuclear and other threats. If we continue on our present unsustainable path, by mid-century the Earth could become largely uninhabitable for human and countless other forms of life. However, total system-collapse could occur much sooner caused by eco-catastrophes or escalating wars triggered by religious, geopolitical or resource conflicts.
These threats are real. The underlying causes of the present global crisis have been building momentum for decades and could soon become irreversible. Estimates of when the point of no return will be reached have been reduced from the end of the century, to mid-century, to the next twenty years, and recently to the next five to ten years.
The window of opportunity for pulling out of the current crisis and breaking through to a peaceful and sustainable world may be no more than a few years from now. This timeline coincides with the many forecasts and prophecies that speak of the ending of the current cycle of human life on this planet, and the possible dawning of a new consciousness by the end of the year 2012.
Today, forward-thinking groups and individuals all over the world are addressing the many opportunities presented at this critical time. Designs for sustainable systems, structures and technologies are being developed and implemented in all sectors, at all levels and in every society. This global awakening is a hopeful sign of the vitality of the human spirit and our ability to respond to the dangers we now face with insight and creativity.
The totality of our current efforts does not yet match the scope, scale and urgency of the necessary transformation. But if we collaborate and act with vision, foresight and commitment we can lay the foundations of a global community that is both peaceful and sustainable. We may then ensure our survival and wellbeing, as well as that of future generations. While the window of time is still open, our top priority, as global citizens, is to accelerate our evolutionary shift to a planetary consciousness and, together, lay the foundations for a peaceful, just and sustainable world.
An Urgent Call
We accordingly issue this urgent call to all the peoples of the world to deepen our awareness of both the dangers and the opportunities of the global crisis. We declare our firm commitment to work together to bring about a timely and positive WorldShift, for the survival and wellbeing of all the peoples of the human community and the flourishing of all life on Earth.
Sign The Declaration
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The Decision Window
It has been said that our generation is the first in history that can decide whether its the last in history. We need to add that our generation is also the first in history that can decide whether it will be the first generation of a new phase in history. We have reached a watershed in our socil and cultural evolution.
The sciences of systems tell us
that when complex open systems, such as living organisms, and also ecologies and societies of organisms, approach a condition of critical instability, they face a moment of truth: they either transform, or break down.;
Humankind is approaching a critical instability - a moment of truth. We can continue without decisive change and face disaster, or we can wake up and begin to transform.
The following two scenarios illustrate the nature of the choice before us.
The BAU (Business
As Usual) Scenario
produces drought, in others devastating storms, and in many areas it leads to harvest failures. In coastal areas vast tracts of productive land are flooded, together with cities, towns and villages. Hundreds of millions are homeless and face starvation.
tidal wave of destitute people India builds up its wall along the border with Bangladesh, the U.S. along the Mexican border, and both Italy and Spain build walls to protect their northern regions from their overrun southern regions.
into states and populations intent on protecting themselves, and masses of desperate people facing imminent famine and disease. The conflicts create unsustainable stresses and strains in the structure of international relations. Social and economic integration groups and political alliances break apart. Relations break down between the U.S. and its southern neighbours, the European Union and the Mediterranean countries, and India and China and the hard-hit Southeast Asian states.
spending rises exponentially as governments attempt to protect their territories and re-establish a level of order. Strong-arm rgimes come to power in the traditional hot-spots and local food- and water-wars erupt between states and populations pressed to the edge of physical survival.
narco-traffickers, and organized crime syndicates form alliances with unscrupulous entrepreneurs to sell arms, drugs, and essential goods at exorbitant prices. Governments target the terrorists and attack the countries suspected of harbouring them, but more terrorists take the place of those that are rounded up and killed or imprisoned.
lobbies press for the use of powerful weapons to defend the territories and interests of the better-off states. Regional wars fought initially with conventional arms escalate into wars conducted with weapons of mass destruction.
The environment, its productive processes and vital heat balance impaired, is no longer capable of providing food and water for more than a fraction of the surviving populations. Chaos and violence engulfs peoples and countries both rich and poor.
Here, however, is another scenario...Timely
Transformation.
The TT (Timely
Transformation) Scenario
- The experience of terrorism and war, together with rising poverty and the threats posed by a changing
climate, trigger a widespread recognition that the time to change has come. In country after country, an initially small but soon rapidly growing nucleus of people pull together to confront the dangers of the global crisis and seize the opportunity it offers for change. - The rise of popular movements
for sustainability and peace leads to the election of political leaders who support economic cooperation and social solidarity projects. Forward-looking states monitor the dangerous trends and provide financing for the urgently needed economic, ecological, and humanitarian initiatives. - Non-governmental organizations link up to undertake projects to revitalize regions ravaged by environmental
degradation. Emergency funds are provided for countries and regions affliced by drought, violent storms, coastal flooding, and failures of the harvest. - Military budgets are reduced and in some states eliminated, and the resulting peace-dividends are assigned
to increase the production of staple foods, safe water, basic supplies of energy, and essential sanitation and health services for the needy disadvantaged populations. - Country after country shifts
from fossil-fuel based energy-production to alternative fuels, reducing the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and slowing the process of global warming. A globally networked renewable energy system comes on line, contributing to food production, providing energy for desalinizing and filtering sea-water, and helping to lift marginalized populations from the vicious cycles of poverty. - Leading business companies join
the classical pursuit of profit and growth with the quest for social and ecological responsibility. On the initiative of enlightened managers a voluntarily self-regulating social market economy is put in place, and the newly elected forward-looking political leaders give it full support. - As the new energy system and the self-regulating social market economy begins to function, access to economic activity and technical and financial resources becomes available to all countries and economies.
- Frustration, resentment, animosity and distrust give way to a spirit of cooperation, liberating the spirit and enhancing the creativity of a new generation of locally active and globally thinking people.
- Humanity is on the way to a peaceful and sustainable, diverse yet cooperative planet-wide civilization.
As you can see, it is a simple choice to make between Business As Usual or Timely Transformation.
The transition may be difficult for some, but it will be far more difficult for all if we don't start the process very soon. Before we can do that we first have to collectively and consciously decide that this is what we actually want. Are you ready to take The
WorldShift Challenge?
The WorldShift 2012 Challenge
The choice between these scenarios is not yet made. As of today, we are moving along the path of the BAU scenario, but more and more people are waking up and searching for ways to move to a scenario of timely transformation.
The question is: how much time is there for this shift?
The window of time is finite: when conditions in a complex open system reach a critical point the system becomes chaotic, and it either transforms, or breaks down. The longer the transformation is delayed, the more difficult it becomes to carry it out.
To define the feasible decision-window we must take into account both the time by which idividual trends reach a critical phase, and cross-impacts and feedbacks among the trends.
The unfolding of individual trends. Time estimates of when individual life-threatening trends would reach points of criticality have been reduced from the end of the century to mid-century, and for some trends to the next ten to twenty years.
For example, the
sea level has been rising one and a half times faster than predicted in the IPCCs Third Assessment Report published in 2001. Forecasts published at the end of 2008 project global sea-level rise that is more than double the 0.59 meter rise forecast even by the Fourth Assessment Report.
Carbon dioxide emissions and global warming have likewise outpaced expectations. The
rate of increase of CO2 emissions rose from 1.1 percent between 1990 and 1999 to over 3 percent between 2000 and 2004. Since 2000 the growth-rate of emission has been greater than in any of the scenarios used by the IPCC in both the Third and Fourth Assessment Reports.
The warming of the atmosphere progressed faster than expected as well. In the 1990s
forecasts spoke of an overall warming of maximum 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. Then the time-horizon for this level of increase was reduced to the middle of the century, and presently some experts predict that it could occur within a decade.
At the same
time, the prediction for the maximum level of global warming rose from 3 to 6 degrees. The difference is not negligible. A three degree warming would cause serious disruption in human life and economic activity, while a six degree warming would make most of the planet unsuitable for food production and large-scale human habitation.
Feedbacks and cross-impacts.
Most predictions of points of criticality take only one trend into consideration global warming and attendant climate change; water quality and availability; food production and self-reliance; urban viability, poverty, and population pressure; air quality and minimal health standards, or others. They fail to consider the possibility that a criticality in one trend could accelerate the unfolding of other trends toward a point of criticality.
There are multiple feedbacks and cross-impacts among the relevant trends, both in regard to the
biosphere and conditions in the human world.
In the biosphere, all the trends that affect human life and wellbeing also impact on the cycles that maintain the planets ecology within a humanly viable range. This is the case in regard to the global water and the global carbon cycle: the alteration of these cycles by any one trend affects the way the other trends unfold.
For example,
an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads to global warming and that affects rainfall and the growth of forests. That, in turn, reduces the biospheres carbon absorption capacity. Feedbacks are also conveyed by air and ocean currents. Warmer water in the oceans triggers hurricanes and other violent storms alters the course of major ocean currents,
such as the Gulf and the Humbold. And that triggers further changes in the climate.
Feedbacks also obtain between ecological and societal trends. For example: The warming of the atmosphere produces prolonged drought in some areas and coastal flooding in others. Starving and homeless masses are impelled to migrate from the highly impacted areas to less hard-hit regions creating critical conditions in those regions as well.
A drop in the quality of the air in urban and industrial megacomplexes below the minimum required for health creates a breakdown in public health, with epidemics spreading to vast areas. A breakdown of the financial system would impact not only on banks and stock markets, but would interfere with industrial output and trade the world over, creating critical conditions first of all for the poorest countries and eonomies.
Cross-impacts among accelerating global trends reduces the feasible decision-window. The precise time for effecting meaningful change is not predictable with certainty, but due to feedback and cross-impacts among the trends, its likely to be less than the forecasts of critical points for individual trends.
The decision-window may close within ten years and possibly sooner - conceivably by the end of 2012, coinciding with the famous Mayan prophesies that predict if not the end, then the transformation, of our world.
We do have a choice. We can determine our own destiny and secure not just the future of humanity, but it's conscious evolution. By rising to The WorldShift Challenge, we ask you to commit to the positive transformational change required to co-create at least the foundations of a peaceful, just and sustainable world by the end of 2012.
Read and sign The WorldShift 2012 Declaration. http://www.clubofbudapest.org/mission.php
I am a stroke survivor and deal daily with a speech disorder called Aphasia. This disorder is a result of my stroke in 2005. I am thankful God has given me the ability to express myself through my images and films. For more information, visit these websites:
http://www.azimagery.com/stroke/
http://steetsblog.blogspot.com/
http://stroke-azimagery.blogspot.com/
http://my.opera.com/dcimagery/blog/
http://my.opera.com/azimagery/blog/
http://www.vimeo.com/user428906
http://www.youtube.com/user/azimagery
http://steetsblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/
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