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Further Articles by José Argüelles/Valum Votan

Mobilization for Change

This document was originally submitted to the New Zealand Government and to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). However, this document can be adopted for any government, any NGO or any other group or organization as a formula for dealing with global climate change.

Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the UNEP had this to say about the proposal:

Dear Mr. Arguelles,

Thank you for your email dated April 2, 2007 on the Mobilization for Change, Responding to Climate Change - A Whole System Analysis.

We are also in receipt of your previous documentation on the Second Planetary Congress of Biospheric Rights and wish to thank you very much for sharing these important ideas with UNEP.

I hope these documents will be able to provide relevant input to combat climate change and help all major players to incorporate the elements therein into their wider climate change strategies.

I congratulate you on your work and thank you for seeking UNEP's input.

Yours sincerely,

Achim Steiner
Executive Director (UNEP)

Contents 

I. Introduction: Understanding Human Thought as a Geological Force
II. Whole system analysis and context for global climate policy changes

  1. The whole system principle of the biosphere: theory and principle of geochemical change — the biosphere-noosphere transition;
  2. The Unprecedented Nature of the Biospheric Crisis — creation of the technosphere, and its intermediary role in the biosphere-noosphere transition;
  3. The place of New Zealand in the global configuration and the resolution of the crisis. What must be done — areas of consideration for policy recommendations;
  4. 2007-2013: Six-year mobilization for change — implementation of policy recommendations.

III. About the Galactic Research Institute of the Foundation for the Law of Time
IV. Background and References

Mobilization for Change: An Opportunity for New Zealand

 

The Role of New Zealand in Responding to the Global Climate Change
A Whole System Analysis and Proposal for a Six-Year Program, 2007-2013

Application of the Hypothesis of the Biosphere-Noosphere Transition
According to Principles of Planetary Whole System Design

Submitted to the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade by
José Argüelles, Ph.D. Director, Galactic Research Institute – Foundation for the Law of Time

I. Introduction: Understanding Human Thought as a Geological Force

Mankind, taken as a whole, is becoming a powerful geological force. Humanity’s mind and work face the problem of reconstructing the biosphere in the interests of freely thinking mankind as a single entity. This new state of the biosphere that we are approaching, without noticing it, is “the Noosphere.”

Vladimir I. Vernadsky, The Biosphere (3rd edition) (2007), p. 414

We live in a time of unprecedented planetary crisis — the global warming and subsequent climate change. This is a crisis which affects everybody, regardless of where on Earth one might be. It is also unprecedented because the causative factor is nothing less than globalization itself — globalization understood both as an ideology and as a mechanism for transforming natural resources into commodities, the process of which releases unparalleled amounts of greenhouse gases and toxic waste into our environment.

As Al Gore makes amply clear in his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, the release of carbon dioxide alone, the chief culprit in the global warming process, is now accelerating exponentially.  “The Moral imperative to make big changes is inescapable,” Gore declares. If we do not make changes in our lifestyles, Mother Nature will make them for us. The recent flotilla of ice bergs, not far off shore from Dunedin, was a warning sign. If one of the great Antarctic ice shelves breaks apart in the near future, the sea level will rise considerably — enough to cause havoc in low lying places around the planet.

“There can be a day of reckoning when you wish you would have connected the dots more quickly,” Al Gore states toward the end of his masterful documentary, adding, “Are we capable of rising above ourselves and our history?” The point of connecting the dots is that we are dealing with a crisis that not only affects us all, but which has multiple, underlying hidden connections of causes and consequences. In other words, the crisis is one that involves the entirety of our species and its environment understood as a whole system.

To understand and respond to a whole system event requires fresh vision and fresh thinking so that we can make effective — not just superficial, short term or self-interested — decisions. In this way, we might avert the worst, while making the best of what is being churned up by an already out of control situation. If we can understand the whole system nature and global dimension of the problem and precisely where we fit into this planetary context, then we can make corresponding policy recommendations, and from those, derive a plan that will outline the kind of life style changes we need to make on the domestic front, and how we might accordingly adjust our trade and diplomatic policies in the area of foreign affairs.

This said, it is well to keep in mind that the global warming is not so much a political issue as it is a moral issue. The root problem stems from our inability as a species to comprehend the effects of our actions upon the environment, or more accurately, the biosphere, the geological envelope of life considered as a unity. Put in another way, the crisis is due to the failure of the human to comprehend the planetary dimension of its nature. Life is a planetary property and we are, first and foremost, a planetary organism.

The failure to grasp this point has been furthered by the present division of the human species into separatist nation states whose own self-interests often over-ride or inhibit the capacity to see the whole picture. This means that to resolve the global crisis politically is already a challenge, for, as the adage has it, you cannot legislate morality. Witness the Kyoto Protocol, of which the United States — responsible for 30.3% of the global greenhouse emissions — has refused to be a signatory.

Yet the crisis is upon us, and it is the responsibility of the enlightened elements of the human order to devise policies and procedures for curtailing further contributions to the crisis, and, even more importantly, for making relatively long-term adjustments in domestic, economic, environmental and foreign policies that constitute a creative response to the problem. History may well judge the nations and the peoples of the Earth of this time according to the courage which motivated, at least a certain number of them, to confront the problem as it should be confronted, and to make the corresponding changes in life style and policy that signaled the possibility of a sustainable future for humankind in general.

New Zealand has a great potential for responding positively and taking a genuine leadership role in the universal crisis brought about by global warming and climate change.  For one thing, as a nation state, New Zealand is also its own distinct and self-defined bioregion. Of all the lands of Earth it was one of the last to be inhabited by humans — scarcely more than 1500 years ago. Until 1840 its people were culturally and economically self-sufficient and self-sustaining, and had little need of any kind of foreign trade or foreign relations in general.

This means that New Zealand remained in a naturally pristine condition far longer than most areas of the Earth.  Its colonization, beginning some two hundred years ago, by a principle power and agent of the industrial revolution, assured that New Zealand was no longer self-sustaining. Instead, it becomes woven into an empire whose technological processes have evolved into the present-day globalization — a world of economic interdependence held together by an invisible empire of transnational corporations. This, as we know, is often to the detriment of the local economy. Even though as a nation New Zealand has a progressivist reputation and a standing well out of proportion to its size, still, as a relatively small power — in population and economic productivity — New Zealand can hardly be considered in the same league with the major economic powers. Yet, it is well to remember that New Zealand was once, and still could be, a self-sustaining economy, thereby setting a new global standard of economic self-sustainability. This is said with a view in mind, as we shall see, to a diminishing of the present day reliance on such environmentally destructive aspects of globalization as the transport system.

If policy makers understand that the crisis is an all-encompassing one and, therefore, requiring solutions that take into account a whole system comprehension of the nature, causes and solutions to the crisis, then they might begin to make decisions on an entirely new basis, quite apart from the prevailing standard of monetary economic determinism. It is important, for instance, to truly comprehend how technology renders nationalism ineffective, while making once self-sustaining bioregions like New Zealand more and more dependent on a megacorporate transnational global structure.  Nationalism itself has created an ever-greater proliferation of nation states, of necessity incapable of competing in the world arena. How can Tonga with 104,000 people or Fiji with 900,000 keep up with New Zealand’s 4 million people, or Australia’s 18 million, much less with mega powers like the USA with its 300 million people, or India with upwards to a billion inhabitants and China with well over 1.1 billion people?   We need a new vision of our place in the world and new criteria by which to evaluate what needs to be done to assure that we have a sustainable future for ourselves. Let New Zealand leverage its high world standing — despite its small size — into a giant step forward as the exemplar of positive change for the preservation of our Earth and our future.

Climate change is no respecter of national boundaries, nor does the biosphere, as a living, planetary system of organic cycles and geochemical processes, recognize nation states. Equally so, our blood or DNA have little to do with national flags. Climate change is causing us to rethink who we are and how we might adjust realistically to our rapidly changing environment. To come to terms with this, we must grasp one simple point:  Within the self-sustaining planetary system of the biosphere, the human is a complex organism, both internally, with its unique intelligence and capacity for thought, and externally, with its resultant biogeochemical dependencies which are radically altering its environment. Yes, human thought has become a geological force bringing on changes to its biosphere as profound and dramatic as have occurred in the last 100 million years. “Now we are going through a new geological evolutionary change of the biosphere. We are entering the noosphere.” (Vernadsky, op.cit., p.417)

II. Whole System Analysis and Context for Global Climate Policy Changes

Since the human capacity for altering itself and its environment resides in its creative, scientific thinking processes, we must, therefore, understand that human thought itself has become a geological force, reshaping the dynamics governing the Earth as a whole system. This must be the starting point of our “growing up” as a species, and envisioning a response to the global crisis that, while based on an assessment and evaluation of local/national/bioregional resources and economic structures, does this in a context of whole system comprehension.

For this reason, and for ease of comprehension, this submission will be presented systematically in a manner which defines whole system terms, solely to create an enlarged framework for understanding global climate change and enhancing the potential for fresh envisioning of the kind of policies that might be creatively drawn up in response to the crisis.

1. The whole system principle of the biosphere: theory and principle of geochemical change — the biosphere-noosphere transition.

In the whole system approach you cannot explain a phenomenon without defining or describing its medium as well. Life cannot be defined apart from the geochemical processes of the environment in which it flourishes. This totality of life and its web of relations with the inorganic cycles and systems which support it constitute the biosphere. Furthermore, when we speak of life, we speak of it in the most general sense as living matter. The evolution of living matter has its climax in the appearance of the human species, in which two qualities are paramount: Planetary extensiveness through a superior adaptability to virtually any climate — and intelligence, the thinking element which, turned into technology, reorders the environment.

“In geochemistry, the principle task is the study of equilibrium systems resulting from the (chemical) element’s migrations. These systems can always be expressed in terms of mechanics, and in the form of dynamic and static systems, those of atomic equilibria. The laws of equilibrium, of homogenous and non-homogenous systems of any kind of bodies, embrace the whole of geochemistry. “

— Vladimir I. Vernadsky, Essays on Geochemistry, p.54

It is important to grasp the degree to which the human organism has upset the geochemical equilibrium. Particularly in the last 260 years, with the acceleration of the phenomenon of industrialization, has the impact of human thought — formulated as the laws of science and technology — radically reshaped the environment and brought about the global crisis of climate change. Industrialization is a new element in the biosphere that greatly intensifies the migration of chemical elements such as carbon dioxide — while upsetting the equilibrium of homogenous and non-homogenous systems.

The role of human thought in affecting change of such proportions is defined as the noosphere — the thinking or mental layer of the planet as a geological force. It is perceived that the role of the thinking element — albeit in a haphazard manner without regard to the whole system of which it is a function — has now come to be such a major force, that it is precipitating a new stage in the evolution of life. In this new phase, the thinking element becomes aligned to its elevated whole system purpose, resulting in a consequent reordering of human society, known as the noosphere.

The period prior to the attainment of the noosphere is referred to as the biosphere-noosphere transition. It is characterized by two factors:

  1. The crisis of the biosphere due to the geochemical or biogeochemical disequilibrium resulting from the effect of human thought and civilization upon the environment — or as Al Gore puts it, “We are witnessing a collision between civilization and the earth.” And,

  2. The development of a worldwide network of virtually instantaneous information — the cybersphere, including computers, the Internet, mobile phone technology, video and television, etc. The effect of the greatly accelerated communications technology mimics the exponential increase of the accelerated carbon dioxide introduced into the atmosphere. But with the communications technology we are witnessing a social implosion where we are no longer able to keep up with, much less assess, the effects of every new technological innovation on our psyche and social life, which are already spinning out of control.

The sum effect of these factors is the precipitation of the global crisis. The climate change is the more or less externalized symptom of the inability of the human to control the chaos of its own social and inner life, which further manifests in the increase in violence, terrorism, war and social insecurity, in general. In this way we can see how, within the biosphere and its geochemical processes, the human element has brought about a crisis so immense, it is difficult to grasp its entire nature much less its consequences.

2. The Unprecedented Nature of the Biospheric Crisis — creation of the technosphere, and its intermediary role in the biosphere-noosphere transition.

“We are monumentally distracted by a pervasive technological culture that appears to have a life of its own, one that insists on our full attention, continually seducing us and pulling us away from the opportunity to experience directly the meaning of our own lives.”

Al Gore

In analyzing the human role in the biosphere-noosphere transition, it is necessary to define even more precisely the sum effect of human thought as an artificial construct of a planetary nature — the technosphere.

The technosphere is the planetary envelope or structure of the sum of human technology understood as a vast and complex artificial organism that encompasses, interpenetrates and disturbs the biosphere altogether. There is no sector of present day human society that is not a part of the technosphere. The phenomenon of globalization is the economic operating philosophy of the technosphere, for by means of this philosophy and its application through monetary politics, the technosphere attains its own sustainability and self-generation.

There are five principle components to the technosphere, the sum of which define and describe present-day civilization — including New Zealand — as a totality:

a.     Commodities. This refers to the entire process of industrialization from the extraction of raw materials and natural resources from their environment to the transformation of these materials into commodities to be sold on the marketplace, establishing the culture of consumerism. In principle, the stock market is the economic engine financing the systematic transformation of commodities into consumerism, inclusive of the transportation, communication and energy industries that support it, thus fueling an unprecedented acceleration and disturbance of the geochemical cycles.  Since the sequence of consumerism also involves the production of waste and waste technologies, further geochemical changes occur. The sum result of the entire transformative cycle of raw-commodities-to-consumer-goods-to-waste is a condition known as biogeochemical combustion, better known as global warming.

b.     Transportation. The raw resources could not be transformed into commodities and the commodities shipped to their markets, if it were not for the existence of a vast network of industrialized transportation systems: shipping, rail, trucking and air. While shipping is able to utilize the seas, there is a need of great container ports full of piers and docks with access to the two principle land systems, rail and trucking. While the rail systems are generally on the decline outside of port and highly industrialized zones, the trucking system has established great highways that slice through the landscape, accommodating vehicles with as many as 18 wheels — and dependent upon the petrol industry for fuel. It is the airline system however that is the largest fuel consumer, depending on a vast international system of airports. Without the airline system, the tourist industry would be insignificant. Think of direct flights from Sydney to Queenstown or Shanghai to Auckland. Yet today, the oil surplus is peaking and the threat of terrorism makes air transport more and more costly and uncomfortable.

c.      Energy. The modern energy industry — hydroelectric, coal, and nuclear — fuels the world. This is not to mention the petrol that is needed to drive the automobile. The industrial world is a world of energy consumption. The production of machines as well as their use and maintenance totally depends on different forms of energy. Obviously, the more the technosphere spreads, the greater is the amount of energy that needs to be consumed. Coal and petrol are the major contributors to the carbon dioxide that heats up the planet. Electricity, conveyed through vast systems of high tension power lines is the staple of virtually all of modern life. Fortunately, New Zealand does not utilize nuclear, and is ripe for solar and wind energy systems of a decentralized nature. And there are plenty of opportunities available for New Zealand to take a commanding role in the shift to non-polluting energy systems.

d.     Communication. The cybersphere, mentioned above, is the virtual intelligence apparatus of the technosphere. In addition to PC, cell-phone, television and Internet, electronic communications also include the radio and telephone. Without the intricate and complex systems of communication, the apparatus of the technosphere would falter. In addition, the communication system is the most effective way the commodities market is able to unload its “consumer goods,” and telemarketing and on-line business transactions account for an increasingly large share of consumerism.

e.     Urban center. The urban center with its intricate infrastructure is the hub of the technosphere. Here commodities, transportation, energy and communications are joined into vast complexes of geochemical transformation. A steadily increasing majority of the world’s population live in the urban centers. In New Zealand, more than one in four lives in Greater Auckland, and almost one in every two people live in Auckland, Greater Wellington, and Christchurch combined. From satellite by night, the world’s urban centers can be seen as the pulsing electronic nerve centers of networks of strings of light.

Such, in sum, are the five interlocking systems of the technosphere. In this system agriculture has been marginalized and for the most part has become “agribusiness,” an industry closely allied with the chemical industry — to the toxic detriment of the land and the people. The technosphere and structure of globalization and monetary politics, regulated by the WTO and the GATT, create a vast interdependent system in which bioregional or local autonomy is sacrificed to the marketing and economic policies of a few large transnational corporations. This system, as a whole, is the root factor generating the global warming.

From the larger whole system perspective, the technosphere is like a large artificial planetary organism (or beast) that, to sustain itself, devours the worlds natural resources at a rate faster than they can be replaced, while it spews out more waste than can be cleaned up. The global climate change is a direct result of the technosphere’s various industrialized needs and their toxic side effects. The humans are like the bees or ants of the technosphere, performing its functions of maintenance and propagation.

Any national policy change instigated by a need to address the global warming, must take into account the nature — and the fragility — of the technosphere as a whole system. You cannot make a change to one part, without affecting the whole.  It is very possible that in the historical perspective, the technosphere is the intermediary state between the biosphere and the noosphere, understood as a new condition of terrestrial evolution.

“Statesmen should be aware of the present elemental process of transition of the Biosphere into the Noosphere. The fundamental property of biogeochemical energy is clearly revealed in the growth of the free energy of the biosphere with geological time, especially in relation to the transition into the noosphere … only man transgresses the established order … upsets the equilibrium, though whether he materially cripples the transforming mechanism or merely redistributes it, we cannot at the moment be sure.”

Vladimir I. Vernadsky (1944)

3. The place of New Zealand in the global configuration and the resolution of the crisis. What must be done — areas of consideration for policy recommendations.

“…And I believe we have a responsibility not only to our contemporaries but also to future generations — a responsibility to preserve resources that belong to them as well as to us, and without which none of us can survive.

“This means we must do much more, and urgently, to prevent or slow down climate change. Every day we do nothing, or too little, imposes higher costs on our children and our children’s children.”

— Kofi Annan, Final Speech as Secretary General of the United Nations, 12/12/2006

If global climate change — the result of a disequilibrium in the geochemical cycles of Earth — is a whole system phenomenon involving both biospheric degradation and technospheric proliferation — then any policy changes attempting to ameliorate or address this situation must consider carefully the degree to which New Zealand is inextricably a part of this system. Or, if there are connections to the global technosphere and its economic system that are expendable or modifiable, what are they and how do we alter our policies accordingly?  How much of our foreign policy and trade is currently wrapped up in accommodations to transnational or international technospheric processes and globalization in general — is this good in light of increasingly potential disruptions to the whole planetary system?

It is well to remember that the technosphere is an intrinsically fragile and vulnerable system. One bomb scare in a London airport causes havoc for days and results in even more stringent security measures at virtually all international airports. A rolling power outage can disrupt vast areas of the technosphere rendering them inoperable. Or an earthquake, or any other kind of natural disaster — such as the hurricane that hit the city of New Orleans — can easily cripple the local and even affect the national economy.

The point is, we must ask: How long can such a fragile system last, so dependent on soon to be dwindling fuel supplies, and what measures may be taken to preserve or maintain some kind of sustainable civilized system into the future? Indeed, we may even need to take stock of the priorities and values of our society and assess how they contribute to the global crisis. Once we grasp the changes we need to make, how can we go about making them? Whatever the answers, New Zealand can and must take a leading role in this process.

In order to begin to consider what kind of future policy we forge in foreign affairs and trade, not to mention internal affairs, education, conservation and the environment, we need to look at a few critical areas of policy and assess our present approaches, and consider how we can adjust or improve them to be in line with the kinds of changes the global climate change will be forcing on our society. In general, we must be looking at greater self-reliance and economic self-sustainability, a lessening of dependence on transnational corporate structures, and a greatly simplified life style. In light of a reformulated social economic position, we must then ask, what do we need from others that we do not have? What kind of trade policy do we need to sustain those needs? What can we do for ourselves that we are now letting others do for us, and paying more for it? With such questions in mind let us review briefly the areas we need to be assessing in order to make an across the board, “environmentally” sound national policy.

i. Environmental technology. Waste and sanitation: are we conserving the water and the wetlands well enough? How quickly are we filling up our landfills? How much of the matter in our landfills is from foreign production? What are our recycling policies? Are we recycling well enough? Land use and economics: How much land use for wool production or raising of livestock for frozen meat industry or vineyards for wine exports — these are staples of foreign trade. Is there room for promotion of organic farming and gardening? What percentage of food is imported today? Currently major imports are automobiles and vehicles of all kinds, petrol as well — where is this coming from? BP, Shell and Caltex — what is their share of the petrol market? Upon what other lifestyle staples is New Zealand 100% dependent? What about tourism — do we have an environmentally sound policy? What is the environmental impact of 1.3 million tourists a year on the Queenstown District, for example? What happens if in five years the airline industry is greatly incapacitated by factors of oil production and prices and terrorism? What would we do with overbuilt tourist havens like Queenstown?

ii. Environmentally sound technologies. How much of a study of the feasibility of alternative energy systems has been made? What would be the impact of a lessening dependence on foreign petrol, such as Brazil is in the process of doing? What about a switch to ethanol and the promotion of hybrid and energy efficient vehicles? What about decentralized wind and solar technologies and a lessening reliance on coal and hydroelectrical systems? What economic and social effects would there be due to decentralization of energy production?

iii. Production and consumption. We must assess the relationship between the promotion of consumerism, increased commodity production, environmentally sound land use and waste and waste technologies — is promoting consumerism in the best interest of the environment? This seems to be an economic issue closely allied to foreign trade issues, but it is actually an issue of values and national priorities. Do we have to be a consumer society? Is this the only way we can remain economically viable? Can we set standards of sustainable consumption and cleaner production? How do we move away from an incredibly wasteful, consumer-oriented society into one that, for instance, prioritizes culture and the arts? The tendency toward sustainable “life style” living can be promoted to enhance values of art, fashion, quality products, ethical land use, organic food production and environmental beautification. An assessment and profile should be made of the industries which sustainable life style living supports and draws upon; these should then be subsidized or given incentives and promoted.

iv. Chemicals. The issue of chemicals is a critical one. All of industrial production, to a greater or lesser degree, involves chemical use and/or production, as well as the release of chemical by-products into the environment, both as free energy (pollution) and toxic waste. Besides the production of commodities incorporating different kinds of chemicals — from plastics to pharmaceuticals — there is, in addition, the growth of agribusiness, which is chemically dependent, as well as a whole industry promoting domestic chemical use, mostly in the form of toxic cleaning supplies. It is increasingly coming to the public attention that the heavy reliance on chemicals is actually poisoning us — at home, on the land through pesticides and other chemical use, and through industrial toxic waste of all kinds.

The UNEP Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade was entered into on February 24, 2004. This accord specifies that all exporters of hazardous chemicals require the consent of importers before shipping. For an informed article on the theme of affects of domestic chemicals, see National Geographic Magazine, October, 2006, “Invaders of our bodies, the poisons in our homes.” The UNEP Stockholm Convention of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) of May 17, 2004, is another global treaty which addresses the issue of POPs (mostly pesticides), calling for a protection of human health and the environment through measures to reduce and eliminate their release into our food products and the atmosphere.

The point here is that the New Zealand chemical use needs to be assessed in all areas, including importation, as well as domestic production and agriculture, including studies of the effects of chemicals on our health. A policy should be formed stating the New Zealand position and plans for reduction and elimination of these toxic elements from our land, water and air. Equally important is determining what alternative measures are to be promoted — mainly in the form of organic gardening and farming, as well as research into non-chemical agents.

v. Energy. The current production of energy through hydroelectric, oil and coal is costly and environmentally damaging. The UNEP International Conference on Renewable Energies held in Bonn, 2004, set a standard for promoting policies of non-polluting forms of energy. Related to the Bonn Conference is the International Investment Forum for Sustainable Energy. In light of the Global Climate Change and the reduction and/or elimination of the causes of global warming, the future is certainly in the direction of renewable, sustainable energy. While this may not appear to be overtly an issue for The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, if New Zealand adopts a more aggressive policy promoting the development of a sustainable and renewable approach to energy, it will affect importation of oil, while potentially setting a standard for the rest of the world. (Also, see above, “ii. Environmentally sound technologies”)

vi. The Ozone. The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer is one that is critical to New Zealand. Its proximity to the Antarctic makes it particularly subject to the effects of ozone depletion. And while great strides have been made in the curbing of the production of chemicals that deplete the ozone layer, the hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic this past year was as large as it has ever been. Monitoring the trade in ozone depleting agents is conducted by the South Asia/Pacific UNEP agency. New Zealand should continue to take an active and leading role in this area.

vii. Economics and trade. In the overall process and structure of globalization, the economics, trade and finance sectors are the driving force of the technosphere. To assess the over-all environmental impact of this sector and how New Zealand is a part of it is critical to the development of a new policy promoting self-sustaining approaches to trade and finance. In some ways, the type of economics and trade supported by highly industrialized societies is the major underlying factor sustaining the processes of global warming and climate change. Therefore, a clear and honest assessment upon which ameliorative policies can be based is a major responsibility of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. This assessment should include:
  • an assessment of the macro-economic trade and economic policies and how New Zealand contributes to this process;
  • an assessment of the potential for New Zealand to develop a bioregionally self-sufficient and self-sustaining economic policy, including the formulation of incentives and subsidies for the development of local self-sustaining and renewable economic projects;
  • then, to assess mutually supportive trade and economic policies within the larger regional zone — South Asia/Pacific and how they can be strengthened, including promotion of Fair Trade policies;
  • promote more financing for sustainable and self-renewing economic programs.
The point is to develop a general policy of environmental economics, in which the assessment of the effects on the environment takes priority in the evaluation of which programs to promote and support. In this regard the UNEP Financial Initiative Climate Change Working Group is an important resource in assessing and formulating new policy in accord with environmental economics and subsequent policies in the areas of foreign affairs and trade.

viii. Regional activities and alliances. Cooperation is the keynote, especially when establishing policies that cut across the board and are striking a new direction altogether in response to the critical challenge of global warming and climate change. The UNEP Asia and Pacific Regional Office (ROAP), Bangkok, Thailand, is a resource that should continue to be drawn upon. However, the initiative to forge new regional alliances may be even more effective. The 1996 Trans-Tasman Mutual Recognition Arrangement (TTMRA) may be a step in this direction.

One other area that should be addressed in this category is the accommodation of refugees from natural catastrophes and disasters. As we approach the period towards 2012 — a deadline date set by the Kyoto Protocol, and hence one to use as a coordination point for the fulfillment of new domestic and foreign policy in general — there is a potential of increasing natural disasters. Local and regional relief agencies should be coordinated in a kind of Operation Earth Rescue network. Nations not in disaster zones, as perhaps New Zealand may fortunately be, need to consider the possibility of accommodating refugees, and of creating special emergency assistance teams to help in disaster area operations.

If other regional countries, such as Australia or Japan, also began to develop comprehensive policies in alliance with what this recommendation proposes, the facilitation of new kinds of partnership would accelerate the mobilization for the changes that are needed to develop the kind of economic culture that would no longer contribute to the destruction of the biosphere, and would instead, hasten the advent of the noosphere. This would be nothing less than a new era of human civilization, when the cooperative intelligence of the species harnessed its scientific thought and cultural resources on an unprecedented planetary scale to meet the challenge of a highly threatening global crisis — global warming and climate change. The world wars lasted some five to six years, with a comparable effort of economic and social mobilization but for different ends. The success of such an effort within six to seven years time for dramatically positive ends would demonstrate a new dimension to the human capability for re-ordering its priorities on a sound and rational basis. It can be done.

To begin with here are a few starting recommendations:

  • Though this document has been addressed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, like the whole system crisis which has inspired it, it is really calls for a coordination of all the government Ministries. Everyone is a stakeholder in a crisis of this scale.

  • The Prime Minister and heads of all ministries and their staffs are recommended to sit down together and watch Al Gore’s documentary film, an Inconvenient Truth. This could be followed with a round table discussion of the implications of global warming and climate change for New Zealand and to determine how to respond to it.

  • The Ministers could study the example of Dutch school children who bet their government that they could save more energy. They could then see if similar incentives could be promoted in the New Zealand school system. Or, for instance, to reduce the use of 22 million plastic shopping bags per week, to create a campaign urging parents and neighbors to use their own non-disposable bags. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6172468.stm

  • Study the Earth Charter. Drawn up after the 1992 Rio Summit on Sustainable Development, the Earth Charter establishes basic principles for the reorientation of priorities to be “earth sensitive.” This charter is a model of how to effectively begin to shift policy in a direction that is genuinely “earth friendly.”

  • A further assessment of Indigenous Maori beliefs and practices regarding land management and conservation and their implementation in the education process and public awareness, in general, would be very helpful in initiating and promoting a broad based climate of change. The renaissance of Indigenous values worldwide is a natural and inevitable consequence of an evaluation of the causes and effects of global warming and what to do about it. The change of lifestyle augured by climate change is one in which Indigenous values may be integrated into a campaign that fosters a new climate of change in our society, and should be vigorously promoted. This mobilization can be successfully accomplished by emphasizing the tremendous value in meeting challenges head on and rising to the occasion with nobility, dignity and vision.

4. 2007-2013: Six-year mobilization for change — implementation of policy recommendations.

The kind of whole system change which a response to the global warming crisis demands must be based on careful and honest assessments of present policies and the fearless and creative development of new policies. The implementation of such polices envisioning major changes in priorities and, consequently, social organization, must have some kind of timetable and deadline in order for the whole system response to be effective. Instead of a five-year world war, let us have a five-year mobilization for change to meet the Global Climate Crisis. To make the mobilization for change effective, let 2012 be the deadline — plus one year more, 2013, to assure the New has been fully established.

Year-by-year schedule of prospective policy changes and subsequent social adaptations

2007:

  • Establishment of various commissions to study the key points in the recommendation and begin to out line policies, for instance, in each of the categories listed above, section 3: “The place of New Zealand in the global configuration and the resolution of the crisis. What must be done — areas of consideration for policy recommendations.”

  • Begin mapping out New Zealand public awareness “Mobilization for Change” campaign regarding the global warming and climate change crisis. Incorporating Indigenous Maori values, this campaign should make it clear that we are in a type of global emergency in which it is necessary to raise our awareness, chart a new course, and make changes in how we live.

2008:

  • Presentation of policy recommendations to Prime Minister and Parliament for legislative action. A summary of policy change proposals should be presented to neighboring nations to explore a new kind of alliance for cooperative change. Enlist support of UNEP-ROAP in this process. Perhaps, in conjunction with Victoria University, the Ministry could host a regional “Summit on Creative Cooperation in Response to Global Warming.”

  • Begin to offer incentives and subsidies for Investment in New Zealand alternative energy (wind, solar) industries.

  • Begin campaign for reduction and elimination of use of pesticides and domestic toxic chemicals.

  • Continuation of “Mobilization for Change” public outreach campaign; offer incentives for creation of New Zealand Organic Production, Commerce and Lifestyle Network.

2009:

  • Beginning of implementation of new legislation curbing production of carbon dioxide and other toxic chemicals and waste. Introduction of new public education curriculum — education for change, including basic whole system principles underlying the biosphere.

  • Creation of Consortium of Asia Pacific Regional States, Council for Cooperation in Policy Confronting Global Warming. Presentation of coordinated policies to UNEP and UNESCO.

  • Public outreach “Mobilization for Change” campaign, New Zealand, media target: Regular program series on major media (television, newspapers and news magazines) on Global Climate Change, reflecting whole system analysis and solutions, new educational and policy changes as well as promotion of organic lifestyle as a choice for a better future.

  • Introduction of the concept of a new harmonic calendar as characteristic feature of new organic life style orientation. This 13-month/28-day calendar is mathematically precise and synchronizes the natural solar-lunar cycles.

2010:

  • On-going implementation of new legislation.

  • Continuing coordination of Consortium of Asia Pacific Regional States, Council for Cooperation in Policy Confronting Global Warming, with focus on emergency planning and relief councils.

  • Promotion of hybrid cars, use of ethanol becomes widespread.

  • Implementation of solar and wind energy generator system, both on a community and domestic scale.

  • New calendar introduced into school system as field test of its adoptability.

  • New Zealand campaign “The greening of New Zealand” target: Introduction of organic lifestyle education into public school programs. Incentives and subsidies for organic farmers and home gardening. Effects on foreign trade, both exports and imports, of new economic orientation assessed in terms of degree of self-sufficiency and determination of which products are still almost exclusively available only as foreign imports, i.e. coffee, automobiles, etc.

2011:

  • New Zealand beats 2012 deadline on reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to levels lower than before 1990.

  • Consortium of Asia Pacific Regional States, Council for Cooperation in Policy Confronting Global Warming agrees to join Planetary Biospheric Congress to draw up regulations on bioregional re-organization, and new economic and trade agreements.

  • Wide spread development of alternative non-polluting energy systems. Dramatic changes in life style and social attitudes.

  • Select refugee centers set up both in major cities and in country settings.

  • New Zealand votes to adopt harmonic, natural time calendar as way of affirming new direction in both domestic and foreign policy.

  • As a complement to its “nuclear free” position, New Zealand adopts the Banner of Peace* in order to promote the principle of “peace through culture.” “Peace through culture” established as a national priority and, in its diplomatic policy, as a new path to international unity and permanent world peace.

*(Roerich Peace Pact and the Banner of Peace, was originally signed by the 22 member states of the Pan-American Union, April 25, 1935, and by 1952 it was adopted by UNESCO)

2012:

  • Planetary Biospheric Congress recognizes New Zealand as ideal bioregional microcosm for self-sustaining economy and self-renewing alternative energy system. New trade balance established, with special ties to member bioregions of the Asia Pacific Consortium.

  • December 21, 2012, Mobilization for Change Victory Day. Because of proximity to the date-line, New Zealand becomes first to declare the dawning of the New Way of Humanity and entry into the new solar age.

2013:

  • All goals met for creating minimally chemically dependent, toxic waste producing society. On-going success of alternative energy systems, new educational programs for a sustainable future complemented by a bioregional economy integrated with new cultural and organic lifestyle priorities, New Zealand designated by the Noospheric Spiritual Ecological World Assembly as a model of noospheric activation.

III. About the Galactic Research Institute of the Foundation for the Law of Time.

The foregoing recommendation has been submitted to the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, by the Galactic Research Institute of the Foundation for the Law of Time. The submission represents a synthesis of research stemming from its principle endeavor, the Noosphere II Project.

Originally chartered as a non-profit research and educational organization in the USA, 2000, early in 2006 it was determined that New Zealand was the ideal location for its research arm, the Galactic Research Institute (GRI). 

As a nonprofit educational research organization, the purpose of the GRI is to investigate the nature of time and human consciousness in relation to the evolution of the Earth and within the larger context of the galaxy of which our solar system is a subset. The principle research method is whole system analysis and the cultivation of a planetary whole system design science.

The South Island of Aotearoa/New Zealand was selected as the GRI site due to its general remoteness from the main currents of civilization; its alignment with the South magnetic pole; and the prominence of Aoraki (Mt. Cook) as its most distinguishing geomagnetic feature. These characteristics make the South Island of New Zealand the ideal place to conduct the kind of studies now being undertaken by the GRI. These investigations focus on an elucidation of the biosphere-noosphere hypothesis, as well as the relation of the electromagnetic energy fields of the planet in relation to the sun and solar activity as comprehensive components of an evolving galactic operating mechanism.

The GRI will be bringing to New Zealand a small research library — the Library of the Law and Science of Time — as well as copious archives including numerous rare scientific documents and a unique art collection. The principle means of research are interdisciplinary planetary whole systems investigations, studies in comparative cosmology and in the history and science of consciousness, including phenomenological investigation of advanced meditation techniques, all conducted within the framework of the Law of Time. This Law is based on the discovery that time is a universal factor of synchronization, and is the cause of the promotion of the 13 Moon/28-day calendar on a world-wide basis.

Once the GRI is properly located, a seminar and meditation retreat/research center will be developed, in relative proximity to Mt. Cook.

This seminar research center will be one of the coordinating bases of a network of twelve others known as the CREST13 project. Some of the Centers are already in the development stage (Argentina, Brazil, Bali). The purpose of these Centers is the investigation of human consciousness synchronized within a planetary network, and in relation to solar, cosmic and geomagnetic influences and perturbations.  Some of the experimental research will be conducted in conjunction with affiliate organizations in the Russian Academy of Sciences and with ISRICA (Institute for the Scientific Research and Investigation of Cosmic Anthropoecology) of Novosibirsk, Russia. The GRI is also affiliated with the Noosphere Spiritual-Ecological World Assembly of Moscow, Russia, with whom it will be co-sponsoring a major conference in St. Petersburg, toward the end of 2007.

As an internationally recognized educational research institute, the GRI will be hosting educational symposia, “think tanks,” and seminars bringing scientists and artists from around the world to New Zealand. The Second Planetary Congress of Biospheric recently held in Brazil, September 22-26, is representative of the GRI’s efforts to coordinate research and action for the betterment of the planetary environment. Summary, results and conclusions of this Congress can be found on the GRI’s official website, www.lawoftime.org.

The GRI of the Foundation for the Law of Time, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational, scientific and cultural organization, originally incorporated in the State of Oregon, USA (2000). It has two sister organizations, Institute for the Diffusion of the Law of Time, Brazil, and the Institute for Galactic Culture, Japan.

For more information, GRI web site: www.lawoftime.org

IV. Background and References.

The work of a number of prior investigators lays the foundation for the hypothesis of the biosphere-noosphere transition, foremost among them V.I. Vernadsky, who defined the nature of the biosphere through his pioneering work, Biosphere (1926, third edition, 2007) and first explored the notion of the biosphere-noosphere transition though numerous works, most notably, Problems in Biogeochemistry II (1944) and the recently published, Geochemistry and the Biosphere, Synergetics Press, Santa Fe (2007). It was Vernadsky, along with French paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who coined the word noosphere in 1926. It is particularly in his summarizing work, Man’s Place in Nature, William Collins & Co. Ltd, London (1966), that Teilhard de Chardin fully defines the evolution of the noosphere as a planetary phenomenon, addressing the transition to its next stage — “superhominization” — or the  planetization of consciousness.

Other thinkers contributing to the planetary whole system design premise are R. Buckminster Fuller (Synergetics and Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth), James Lovelock (Gaia Hypothesis), and a host of Russian ”cosmist” researchers, including N. A. Kozyrev, V. P. Kaznacheev, Alexander Trofimov, and Alexei Dmitriev, all members of the Russian Academy of Science. Seminal works by Kaznacheev and Trofimov include: Cosmic Consciousness of Humanity: Problems of New Cosmogony (1992), and Reflections on Life and Intelligence on Planet Earth: Problems of Cosmo-Planetary Antrhropoecology (2004).

Background literature — books by principle GRI researcher, Dr. J. Arguelles:

Basic Information and Themes for the Second Planetary Congress of Biospheric Rights, Institute for the Diffusion of the Law of Time, Brasilia, Brazil. (2006)

Earth Ascending, An Illustrated Treatise on the Law Governing Whole Systems. Bear & Co. ITI, Rochester, VT. (1984, 1996)

Mayan Factor, Path Beyond Technology. Bear & Co. ITI, Rochester, VT. (1987, 1996)

Time and the Technosphere, The Law of Time in Human Affairs. Bear & Co. ITI, Rochester, VT. (2002)

Cosmic History Chronicles, Volume I Book of the Throne (co-author, S. South). Law of Time Press, Ashland, OR. (2005)

Cosmic History Chronicles, Volume II Book of the Avatar (co-author, S. South). Law of Time Press, Ashland, OR. (2006)

Transformative Vision, Reflections on the Nature and History of Human Expression. Shambhala Publications, Berkeley. (1975)

The 260 Postulates of the Dynamics of Time. Law of Time Press, Portland (1996)

Call of Pacal Votan, Time is the Fourth Dimension (A Treatise on Time Viewed from its own Dimension. Altea Publishing, Edinborough. (1996)

“A global crisis means it is time to stop 'business as usual.'” www.lawoftime.org (2007)

“Planetary Engineering Project, Noosphere II.” Galactic Research Institute, www.lawoftime.org (2005)

Additional Related literature:

Allen, John. “Ethnospherics: Origins of human cultures, their subjugation by the Technosphere, the beginning of an ethnosphere, and steps needed to complete the ethnosphere.” Inter-Research. (2003) www.int-res.com

Borisov, Vadim M. and Felix F. Perchenko, “Community as the Source of Vernadsky’s Concept of the Noosphere,” Configurations, 1.3 (1993) 415-438.

Capra, Fritjof. The Hidden Connections, A Science for Sustainable Living. Harper Collins, London. (2002)

Huggett, R. J., “Ecosphere, biosphere, or Gaia? What to call the global ecosystem.” Blackwell Science Ltd. www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1365-2699.1999.00158.x?journalCode=geb. (1999)

Jacques, Peter, Globalization and the World Ocean. AltaMira Press, Lanham. (2005)

N. A. Kozyrev, “Possibility of Experimental Study of Properties of Time.” (1967)

___________, www.kozyrev.ru

Levit, George S. “The Biosphere and the Noosphere Theories of V.I. Vernadsky and P. Teilhard de Chardin, A Methodological Essay,” Academe International d’histoire des sciences, 160-175, Vol. 50/2000

Masani, P.R. “The ecology of the noosphere: where the ecological movement falls short.” Kybernetes, Vol. 24, no. 9 (1995) pp. 13-34

Mckillop, Andrew with Sheila Newman, editors. The Final Energy Crisis, Pluto Press, London and Ann Arbor. (2005)

Moiseev, Nikita N. “The study of the noosphere — contemporary humanism,” Journal of Contemporary Humanism, July (1999), pp. 595-606.

Oldfield, Jonathan D. and Denis J.B. Shaw, “V.I. Vernadsky and the noosphere concept: Russian Understandings of society-nature interaction.” Geoforum, www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum. (10 November 2004)

Pettman, Ralph (ed.) New Zealand in a Globalising World. Victoria University Press, Wellington (2005)

The Roerich Pact and the Banner of Peace. The Roerich Pact and Banner of Peace Committee, New York. (1947)

Samson, P.R. and P. Pitt (Eds.), The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader: Global Environment, Society and Change. Routledge, London. (1999)

Shiva, Dr. Vandana, et.al., The Enclosure and Recovery of the Commons: Biodiversity, Indigenous Knowledge and Intellectual Property Rights. Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, New Delhi. (1997)

Smil, Vaclav, Energies, an Illustrated Guide to the Biosphere and Civilization. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. (1999)

Snyder, Tango, ed., The Biosphere Catalogue. Ecotechnics Institute, London and Santa Fe. (1985)

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man. Harper& Row, New York. (1959)

UNEP 2004 Activities and Performance, Division of Technology, Industry and Economics, Paris. (2004)

noosphere.princeton.edu “Global Consciousness Project Registering Coherence and Resonance in the World.”

Regarding the meaning of 2012, the recently released film, “2012, The Odyssey,” comprehensively and imaginatively explores the significance of this date. For more information: www.2012theodyssey.com & www.sacredmysteries.com.