12. elokuuta 1945, kuusi päivää sen jälkeen, kun Yhdysvaltain hallitus tuhosi Hiroshiman kaupungin yhdellä atomipommilla, Chicagon yliopiston presidentti Robert Hutchins toimitti merkittävä julkinen puhe. Speaking on his weekly radio program, the Chicagon pyöreä pöytä, Hutchins observed that Leon Bloy, a French philosopher, had referred to “the good news of damnation” under the assumption that only the fear of perpetual hellfire would motivate moral behavior. “It may be,” Hutchins remarked, “that the atomic bomb is the good news of damnation, that it may frighten us into that Christian character and those righteous actions and those positive political steps necessary to the creation of a world society.”
Hutchinsin mukaan, this world society would serve as the foundation of a world government, and, in the context of the existential danger posed by nuclear war, he was totally committed to creating it. “Up to last Monday,” he said, “I didn’t have much hope for a world state.” But the shock of the atomic bombing, he added, crystallized “the necessity of a world organization.”
In the following months, Hutchins created and, then, presided over a Committee to Frame a World Constitution―a group of farsighted intellectuals who conducted discussions on how best to overcome humanity’s ancient divisions and, thereby move beyond nationalism to a humane and effective system of global governance. In 1948, they issued a Preliminary Draft of a World Constitution, with a Johdanto julistaa, että ihmisten edistymisen, rauhan ja oikeudenmukaisuuden turvaamiseksi "kansojen aikakauden täytyy päättyä ja ihmiskunnan aikakausi alkaa".
Chicagon komitea muodosti vain pienen osan yllättävän suuresta ja vaikutusvaltaisesta maailman hallitusliike that, drawing on the slogan “One World or None,” flourished during the late 1940s. In the United States, the largest of the new organizations, United World Federalists, claimed 46,775 members and 720 chapters by mid-1949. The goal of creating a world federation was endorsed by 45 major national organizations, including the National Grange, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, the United Auto Workers, the Junior Chamber of Commerce, the Young Democrats, the Young Republicans, and numerous religious bodies. That year, 20 state legislatures passed resolutions endorsing world government, while 111 members of the House of Representatives and 21 Senators sponsored a congressional resolution declaring that the new United Nations should be transformed into “a world federation.” Much the same kind of uprising occurred in nations around the world.
Although this popular crusade waned with the intensification of the Cold War, as did the hopes for a sweeping transformation of the nation-state system, the movement did secure a number of vital changes in the international order. Not only did the Yhdistyneet kansakunnat alkavat olla tärkeässä roolissa maailmanlaajuisissa rauhan ja oikeuden ponnisteluissa, mutta maailman hallitusliikkeen alkuperäinen sysäys - ydinsodan eksistentiaalinen vaara - alkoi käsitellä maailman yhteiskunnassa.
Itse asiassa a massiivinen, kansainvälinen ydinaseriisuntaliike, often led by former activists in the world government campaign, emerged and rallied people all around the planet. In this fashion, it placed enormous pressure upon the world’s governments to back away from the brink of catastrophe. By the mid-1990s, national governments had reluctantly agreed to a sweeping array of international nuclear arms control and disarmament treaties and were no longer threatening to plunge the world into a nuclear holocaust.
Viime aikoina tämä maailmanyhteiskunta on kuitenkin murentunut vaarallisen takia nationalismin paluu. From the United States to Russia, from India to Brazil, numerous countries have been swept up in xenophobia, triggering not only a disastrous revival of the nuclear arms race, but an inability to work together to challenge the latest existential threat to human survival: climate change. Championing their own narrow national interests―often based on little more than lisäämällä niiden fossiilisten polttoaineiden teollisuuden voittoja-Nämä valtiot ovat joko irtautuneet menneisyyden rajallisista kansainvälisistä ympäristösopimuksista tai parhaimmillaan osoittaneet haluttomuutensa ryhtyä kriisin ratkaisemiseksi tarvittaviin merkittävimpiin toimiin.
And a crisis it is. With the polar ice caps melting, sea levels rising, whole continents (such as Australia) in flames, agriculture collapsing, and storms of unprecedented ferocity wreaking havoc, climate catastrophe is no longer a prediction, but a reality.
Mitä voidaan tehdä asialle?
Clearly, just as in the case of heading off nuclear annihilation, no single nation can tackle the problem on its own. Even if a small country like the Netherlands, or a large country like the United States, managed to quickly develop a system of 100 percent renewable energy, that action would be insufficient, for other countries would still be generating more than enough greenhouse gasses to destroy the planet.
Joten ei todellakaan ole muuta ratkaisua jyrkkään ilmastokatastrofiin kuin se, että ihmiset ja kansat unohtavat heimojen vihamielisyytensä ja alkavat käyttäytyä osana maailmanyhteiskuntaa, jota yhdistää tehokas globaali hallintojärjestelmä. Ilmastokriisi, kuten ydintuhon mahdollisuus, on todella "tuodon hyvä uutinen". Ja voimme voittaa sen vain tekemällä yhteistyötä.
Yksi maailma tai ei mitään!
Dr. Lawrence Wittner, syndikoitu PeaceVoice, on historian emeritusprofessori SUNY: ssä / Albanyssä ja kirjailija Pommin kohtaaminen (Stanford University Press).
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