We dealt last week with the challenge of feeding seven billion people. World population is growing at an ever increasing pace: we were one billion in 1802; in 1927, 2 billon; in 1961, 3 billion; in 1974, 4 billon; in 1987, 5 billion; in 1999, 6 billion, and finally, in 2011, 7 billon. In 2025, if an abrupt global warming does not occur, we will be 8 billion, in 2050, 9 billion, and in 2070, 10 billion. There are biologists such as Lynn Margulis and Enzo Tiezzi who see in this acceleration a sign of the end of the species, like bacteria, when put in a closed Petri dish, (capsula Petri). Foreseeing the end of their nourishment they multiply exponentially, and then, suddenly, they all die. Would that be the last flowering of the peach tree before dying?
Independent of this threatening question, we face a stimulating challenge: how to govern seven billion people. That is the question of a global government, namely, a multipolar center, tasked with democratically coordinating the coexistence of human beings in the same fatherland and Common Home. This configuration is a mandate of globalization, because it implies an intertwining of all with all, from within a singular and unique vital space. A global government will appear sooner or later, because the need for it cannot be postponed, if we are to face the global problems and guarantee the sustainability of the Earth.
The idea itself is not new. It was already found in Erasmus and Kant, but it acquired its first real form with The League of Nations, after the First World War, and definitively after the Second World War, with the United Nations Organization, the UN. The UN does not function well because of the antidemocratic veto some countries have, that makes any global initiative contrary to their interests non-viable. Organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, (IMF), the World Bank, the World Organization of Commerce, (GATT), of Health, of Labor, of Tariffs, and UNESCO express the presence of a certain global government.
At present, the gravity of systemic problems such as global warming, scarcity of drinking water, poor distribution of food, the economic-financial crisis, and wars, demand a global government.
The UN’s Commission on Global Government, defines it as «the sum of the different forms by which individuals and institutions administer their common issues and resolve diverse interests in a cooperative way. It includes not only intergovernmental relations, but also non-governmental organizations, citizens movements, multinational corporations and the global capital market» (see the United Nations’ pertinent Internet site.)
This globalization also occurs in cybernetics, through global networks, a sort of government without government. Terrorism has provoked a security government in the threatened countries. There is a perverse global government that could be called government of the corporate world power, made up of the big economic-financial consortiums that act in a concentric manner, until they are reduced to a small group that controls nearly 80% of economic activity. This has been shown by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technological Investigations, that rivals in quality the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, and has been spread among us by the economist Ladislau Dowbor, PUC-SP. This government is not very well known, but beginning with the economy, it powerfully impacts world politics.
The basic functions of a healthy global government are: peace and security, avoiding the use of violence as a solution; fighting the hunger and poverty of millions; education available to everyone, such that they become the actors of history; health as a fundamental human right; minimally decent living quarters; human rights encompassing the personal, social, cultural and gender equality; the rights of Mother Earth and of nature, preserved for us and for future generations.
To guarantee these minimum rights, common to all humans and also to the community of life, we need to encourage a process by which national states will tend to disappear, in the name of the unification of the human species on planet Earth.
In the same way that there is only one Earth, one Humanity and one common destiny, a signle government must appear, a government that is unitary and complex, that takes charge of this new planetary reality and allows the continuity of the human civilization.