Abstract
It is clear from what has been described in the Introduction that human history has taken a terribly wrong turn. The future is more uncertain than ever. In what follows cosmopolitan changes are set forth to put our future and the future of the earth’s biosphere back on the right track.
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Notes
- 1.
Charter of the United Nations and Statute of the International Court of Justice (New York: United Nations Publication Edition, 2015), vi. Hereafter all references to the Charter will be derived from this work.
- 2.
Ibid., viii–ix. The eventual Charter adds a Trusteeship (Article 7).
- 3.
Willem van Genugten, Kees Homan, Nico Schrijver, and Paul de Waart, The United Nations of the Future: Globalization with a Human Face (Amsterdam: KIT Publishers, 2006), 32. The authors are quoting from a UN Report, “We the Peoples: Civil Society, the United Nations, and global governance.” Access at: https://www.globalpolicy.org/images/pdfs/0611report.pdf.
- 4.
The “We the Peoples Report…” triggered a good deal of hostility in that it seemed to downgrade the status of NGOs by lumping all sorts of entities under the rubric “civil society” which, it claimed, would include corporations, religions, etc., and that civil society, so bloated, would participate in “global governance.” One scholar writes that “…it is astonishing that it is still unclear how to characterize an NGO in legal terms.” Kristen Martens, “Examining the Non-status of NGOs in International Law,” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 10 (2003): 24.
- 5.
Michael W. Doyle, “The UN Charter: A Global Constitution?” in Ruling the World? Constitutionalism, International Law and Global Governance, edited by Jeffrey L. Dunoff (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 83.
- 6.
It is not necessary that the basic law of a constitution be entirely pervasive and be the foundation of all other law. For example, the USA Constitution is not the foundation or source of the USA’s municipal traffic laws. The UN Charter is the supreme governing body for the entire family of mankind, the ultimate deliberating body for world and nation-state issues. See the discussion in Michael Doyle’s article cited in Footnote 5. For an impressive list of reasons for regarding the U.N. Charter as a World Constitution, see Bardo Fassbender, The United Nations Charter as the Constitution of the International Community (Leiden and Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 2009), 173–189.
- 7.
Jurgen Habermas, “Kant’s Idea of Perpetual Peace, with the Benefit of Two Hundred Years’ Hindsight,” in Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitan Ideal, edited by James Bohman and Matthias Lutz-Bachmann (Cambridge, MA, and London, England: The MIT Press, 1997), 128–129.
- 8.
Martha Nussbaum, For Love of Country? Joshua Cohen, editor (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996 and 2002).
- 9.
A people’s chamber would require approval by the General Assembly and the Security Council: See Articles 108, 109 and 22.
- 10.
“Campaign for a More Democratic United Nations,” International Democracy Watch. Access at: http://www.internationaldemocracywatch.org/index.php/campaign-for-a-more-democratic-united-nations.
- 11.
The following should be excluded from consideration as NGOs: Corporations and businesses, religions, Government created NGOs, NGOs representing the people of a country, e.g., American citizens or Ghana citizens, strictly political groups, e.g., USA Democratic National Committee. NGOs must be international, virtuous, and beneficial to human life and the lives of the biotic community. Any non-virtuous NGO (such as the National Rifle Association) must be expelled from recognition by the United Nations.
- 12.
Cited by Joel Kovel, The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World (Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2007), 77: “Indonesian President Suharto, a great friend of globalization, put this clearly after being slapped with a Structural Adjustment Program. No need to worry, said the amiable leader of the world’s fourth largest nation, Indonesia could always exchange its forests for the money owed to the banks.”
- 13.
Susan George has shown in detail how the debts of nation-states result in environmental destruction. The 1970s was a decade of enormous loans to nation-states, resulting in a tremendous repay burden. One cause of environmental destruction is a government’s plundering and selling off its natural resources (forests, seafood, minerals, etc.) to pay on its enormous debt. Attempts at growing cash crops to pay debts resulted in depletion of soil fertility. No money remains for improving/rescuing the environment. Poor people are marginalized even more. See her The Debt Boomerang: How the Third World Debt Harms Us All (London: Pluto Press, Transnational Institute, 1992).
- 14.
These requirements will not affect small businesses. Executives and board members of all companies on the New York Stock exchange, or their counterpart stock exchanges in other countries, will be required to have a permit.
- 15.
The permit or license requirement is a descendent of Plato’s contention that only those who possess basic knowledge should rule. Universities would issue a certificate indicating successful completion and this will be the basis of the permit or license issued by the state (for state elections) and the federal government for federal candidates/appointees.
- 16.
John Michael Greer, Dark Age America: Climate Change, Cultural Collapse and the Hard Future Ahead (Gabriola Island, BC, Canada: New Society Publishers, 2016), 41.
- 17.
- 18.
Edward O. Wilson, The Future of Life (New York: Vintage Books, Random House, 2002), 28–29.
- 19.
Ibid., 31.
- 20.
The Vatican must rescind polices restricting birth control techniques. Saving the world overrides such matters.
- 21.
Robert Jackall, Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
- 22.
Some of these are: discouraging moral or political questions; avoidance of long-term planning; everyone sees him/herself as an object to be moved, replaced, ordered about, etc.; self-deceptive language, e.g., cotton dust is airborn particulate matter, acid rain is poorly buffeted precipitation; deferring capital expenditures for buildings, machinery, even safety devices, etc. in order to show greater return on assets (ROA); bureaucratic separation of people from awareness of the consequences of their action; loyalty to those above you, especially the CEO, such that if he plays golf everyone who can takes up golf; fear of whistle-blowing—you might lose your job.
- 23.
Published in The Economist, February 8, 1992.
- 24.
Quoted by Kovel from an article by Nikhil Duogun in the Wall Street Journal, May 5, 1997.
- 25.
See Kovel, 60–61, citing J. Ordonez, “An Efficiency Drive: Fast Food Lanes Are Getting Even Faster,” The Wall Street Journal, May 28, 2000. A Wendy’s manager, Mr. Tomney, is monitoring the seven drive-through employees: “The bun grabber retrieves buns from the warmer the instant she hears a customer order through her headset…. Mr. Tomney [notices] her hands aren’t positioned … [her] manager demonstrates, hands against the wall, legs slightly spread.” Every second saved is more profit.
- 26.
Kovel, 55–56. As a result of McDonald’s 2000 outlets in Japan, per capita fat tripled; Hong Kong has 25 of McDonald’s top outlets worldwide, with a 13% increase in the weight of teenagers and the beginning of the menstrual cycle at 12, as compared to 17 on mainland China.
- 27.
Ibid., 86: Fired executives at AT&T, Disney, Apple, and Smith Barney received payoffs of 26, 90, 7, and 22 million dollars, respectively. A fired CEO of Home Depot was given 211 million dollars upon leaving.
- 28.
Ibid., 62–63. Quoting Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) (New York: International Publishers, 1963), 41.
- 29.
Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, 167.
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DeArmey, M.H. (2020). Cosmopolitanism, Necessary Changes to World Institutions. In: Cosmopolitanism and the Evils of the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42978-2_5
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