We live in treacherously dangerous times. The recent attack on the life of Donald Trump, is just one of many pieces of evidence that every human on our planet is living under threat. Thanks to the actions of former PM, John Howard, the threat of gun violence here in Australia is less than that in the United States. But, as both the Club of Rome, and prominent Canberra Science communicator, Julian Cribb, have been saying for some years, we are not dealing adequately, with a series of interacting issues that threaten the very survivability of our human species.
These threats include climate change; destruction of essential ecosystems; over-exploitation of limited resources on which human survival depends; huge inequalities between the rich and the poor, (both between and within nations); the insecurity of food supplies; the use of weapons of mass destruction as instruments of war; pandemics of infectious disease and inadequate regulation of a range of new inventions, including artificial intelligence. There are more humans on earth than the planet can support, in the face of our current and projected demands upon it.
Many books have been written, and multiple organisations have developed around the world, which detail these threats, and argue the need for urgent global action., I draw attention especially to “Earth for All,” (2022) by multiple authors from The Club of Rome, “How to Fix a Broken Planet”, (2023) by Julian Cribb, “The Invisible Doctrine”, (2024) by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison and “The Path to a Sustainable Civilisation”, (2023) by Australians, Mark Diesendorf and Rod Taylor.
At present, no government on earth is adequately addressing these collective threats and that is certainly true, for our National, State and Territory governments in Australia. Extinction Rebellion (XR), is a global environmental movement, which seeks to promote government action to avoid tipping points in the climate and ecological systems and the risk of social and ecological collapse. XR has published a useful guide on the role that “Citizens’ Assemblies” could play in bringing citizens and parliamentary representatives together to help to set in train, the essential elements for a safer human future.
The book by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison highlights the inability of our global neoliberal economic system to build a safe future. To achieve this, they, and others, argue that we must quickly, generate a radical transformation in the way modern societies operate. Easier said than done of course! Transformative change will not occur without a commitment both by people in the community and those in power to bring such change about. The ACT could be showing the way to Australia, and indeed the rest of the world, on what needs to happen and how to bring it about. It is our children and our grandchildren who will feel the benefit of transformative action, or else suffer the disasters that are certain to follow without it.
Accordingly, I suggest that candidates for the forthcoming election to the ACT Legislative Assembly, should read the books mentioned above, and also the mechanisms discussed by the Extinction Rebellion group to hold a series of Citizen Assemblies on this topic. I would draw particular attention to the idea discussed in Julian Cribb’s book of an Earth System Treaty that Australia could help to initiate in The United Nations, whose Secretary-General has been particularly vocal about the threats to which we are all now exposed.
Em Prof Bob Douglas, AO is a retired Public Health Academic and a committee member of The Council for The Human Future (CHF) and The Canberra Alliance for Participatory Democracy (CAPaD).
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