Reading saves your world.
Redefining Global Security
A Worldwatch Institute Report on Progress Toward a Sustainable Society
by Michael Renner, Hilary French, Erik Assadourian, et alii.
Published by W.W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0-393326-66-7
Paperback, 237 pages, $ 18.95
Reviewed by Michael Pastore
A dog starved at its master's gate,
Predicts the ruin of the state.
--William Blake
In the great Utopian novels Looking Backward (in 1888 by Edward Bellamy), and News From Nowhere (in 1891 by William Morris) two protagonists wake up one morning in America/England in the year 2000/2003. Both dreamers, to their amazement, discover that the old world of pollution, crime, and economic injustices has been eradicated. In its place they find a new society — innovative, humane, carefully-planned — where people have learned to respect the needs of others and to wisely and gently satisfy their own genuine needs.
These books attempt to answer the perennial problem: How can we advance our present culture — where one glance at the daily newspaper is enough to rob even the strongest hearts of hope — and create a world where each living being has an opportunity to live a healthy and happy life?
We can change the world if we understand the cause of our problems, and how to heal them. And the cause of our problems is the values of modern life: we are obsessed with money, fatuous entertainments, and technologies that serve the two of these. We need to shift our vision, our values, and our day-to-day activities to embrace what is called "the sustainable-Earth society". According to G. Tyler Miller (in Living in the Environment, 7th edition), a sustainable-Earth society is a:
"Society based on working with nature by recycling and reusing discarded matter, by preventing pollution, by not unnecessarily wasting matter and energy resources, by preserving biodiversity, and by not allowing population size to exceed the carrying capacity of the environment."
Precisely how to create this sustainable society is the subject explored in State Of The World 2005. Unlike the novels of Bellamy and Morris, this theme is not explained in fiction but in facts. Since its inception, State Of the World (published annually) has been the most accurate source of ecologically-related information in print. In the past dozen years, State of the World has evolved. The work's first editions simply reported ecological facts and crises. Now, the book explores social problems as well (including issues related to economy, women's rights, disarmament and world peace), and offers valuable practical solutions for local thought and global action.
This 2005 edition contains a Foreword by Mikhail S. Gorbachev (founder of Green Cross International), and a Preface by Worldwatch Institute President Christopher Flavin. A recently-added feature, "A Year In Review" (compiled by Lori Brown), summarizes in chart form the good news (little) and the bad news (much) over a twelve-month stretch. There follows a courageous Chapter 1 titled Security Redefined, written by Michael Renner, which dares to tell the truth, and sets the tone for the entire volume with this theme: "The war on terror threatens to sideline the struggle against poverty, health, epidemics, and environmental degradation."
Eight more chapters follow, each one filled with facts and insights, authoritatively researched, straightforwardly explained, on these urgent issues: Examining the Connections Between Population and Security; Containing Infections Disease; Cultivating Food Security; Managing Water Conflict and Cooperation; Changing the Oil Economy; Disarming Postwar Societies; Building Peace Through Environmental Cooperation; Laying the Foundations for Peace.
It is heartbreaking to read that "nearly two billion people suffer from hunger and chronic nutrient deficiencies." And yet the facts show indisputably that although we have more than enough resources to feed and to raise the living standard for all six billion of Earth's citizens, we have failed to build this secure and sustainable world. Why? ... Our agenda focuses on military power and has forgotten the power of justice, compassion and love. Driven skyward by the United States, world military spending is almost one trillion dollars -- that is $ 1,000,000,000,000 -- whereas with a fraction of that money ( $ 118 billion) we could accomplish all this: provide the needy with clean water and sewage systems; cut world hunger in half; prevent soil erosion; provide reproductive health care for all women; eradicate illiteracy; give immunizations to every child in the developing world; and save millions of lives lost due to HIV/AIDS (worldwide) and to malaria in sub-Sahara Africa.
Fifty years ago, in a book titled The Sane Society, author and activist Erich Fromm wrote these words about the Harrison Brown work, The Challenge of Man's Future: "I know few books which present so clearly the alternative between sanity and insanity, progress and destruction for modern society, based on compelling reasoning and indisputable facts."
This same honest praise must be said about State of the World 2005. Thousands of books are called "indispensable" -- this is the book that is, and must be read, and understood, and carried into action. For the book brings us the message that too many of our leaders have forgotten or never learned. The foundation of security is not war. It is peace and justice, care for the environment that sustains us, and the sharing of the world's resources -- equitably -- among all human beings everywhere.
Michael Pastore is the Editorial Director of BookLovers Review and Zorba Press. Currently he is writing his fourth novel, and working to establish the Youthtopia Institute and Youthtopia website, devoted to children, creativity and the arts, humanized technology, and a sustainable world.
BookLovers Review is Copyright © 2005 by Michael Pastore. Copyrights to the reviews are owned by the individual reviewers.
