To correct our physical and cultural wobbling, we need more than smooth talk and technological brilliance--we need a global framework for ecological and political designs. We need to redesign the planet to address the entire suite of problems from atmospheric heating to gross economic inequity, from extinctions to religious conflicts. We agree that there are emergencies, we see that there are catastrophes, and now we need to work together to respond to these challenges, to create regional and global ecological designs.
We the undersigned ask that you consider and promote an approach to the really big picture, the health of the entire planet.
A lot of big ideas have been showing up in Scientific American, National Geographic and other fine international magazines. Most of them have been technical proposals for geoengineering as the best solution to atmospheric heating. But, these have many potential downsides, such as damage to the ozone layer, and they ignore social problems, such as the inequity of wealth, which would make any technical fix irrelevant.
We do need a climate plan, but we need it in socio-political context most of all. We need a coherent framework for addressing the wobbling global environment and the weighty pattern of problems, such as extinctions and violence. We can do this--not with piecemeal technical brilliance, but with a flexible framework at the global level, a kind of eutopias, perhaps coordinated by an empowered United Nations, that would address all of these problems at once and redesign whole planetary patterns of impact and movement.
Some of us have been proposing simple, logical, pragmatic solutions since 1969. Although we have had some successes locally, the global scale seems out of our reach. So, we ask you to consider these rough ideas on global ecological design and its applications to wild ecosystems and human communities (a comprehensive draft outlining these designs is available at www.redesignpla.net, www.syngeo.org, and www.ringling.edu.
