STWR - Share The World's Resources

16th October 07, STWR

Have you ever wondered what the International community could achieve if funding for war was diverted to urgent humanitarian needs? STWR have created this eye-opening cost calculator which shows what could be bought instead of arms and military equipment.

It's good to give, of course it is. Sir Tom Hunter this week announced that he is giving away £1bn over his lifetime. Compare that with the world's richest man, Carlos Slim Helú, who says he won't be giving away his £33bn fortune: "Poverty isn't solved with donations - my concept is to accomplish and solve things, not going around like Santa Claus."

What justifies the ownership of anything? All moral justification is based on natural moral law, as expressed by the moral imperative for humanity, the universal ethic. As recognized long ago by the natural-law British philosopher John Locke, every person is morally a complete self-owner. If not, then one is a slave to others. As Locke wrote in his Second Treatise on Government, biologically, human beings are equal and independent. Thinking and feeling are individual, and the individualities of all persons have an equal moral standing. All persons have an equal moral worth, and that creates equal natural rights, implemented as equality before the law.

Mobilizing to save civilization means restructuring the economy, restoring the economy’s natural support systems, eradicating poverty, and stabilizing population. We have the technologies, economic instruments, and financial resources to do this. The United States has the resources to lead this effort. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University’s Earth Institute sums it up well: “The tragic irony of this moment is that the rich countries are so rich and the poor so poor that a few added tenths of one percent of GNP from the rich ones ramped up over the coming decades could do what was never before possible in human history: ensure that the basic needs of health and education are met for all impoverished children in this world. How many more tragedies will we suffer in this country before we wake up to our capacity to help make the world a safer and more prosperous place not only through military might, but through the gift of life itself?”

With climate change now adding to the pressures, sharing rather than warring over the world's resources of fresh water represents the "challenge of the 21st century," the United Nations said Thursday as it marked World Water Day.

What we know with frightening certainty in this early spring of 2007 is that humanity and possibly the planet itself are in serious trouble. So much so in fact that a respected British scientist has not hesitated to predict that mankind had no more than a 50 per cent chance to make it to the 22nd century. That appears to be an excessively pessimistic prediction at this point in time but it did remind me of Albany’s prophecy in King Lear, Humanity must perforce prey on itself / Like monsters of the deep which, it is true, has a different connotation. The reality is that many things have dramatically improved since the great Bard’s time, but at a cost, and perhaps at a terrible cost. So let us not fool ourselves: it is very  possible – especially if one agrees with Hobbes (as most people do), rather than with Rousseau (who believed in the inherent goodness of men) --  that humanity will in the end prove itself to be too greedy, too selfish, and, far worse, too stupid to do what it takes to save the species it belongs to, and the planet it lives on, from destruction. However, throwing in the towel and retiring on a desert island to wait quietly for the end not being exactly a constructive option, one has to participate in the perhaps futile or quixotic struggle to save mankind and the planet from annihilation. And, to be entirely honest, there are some encouraging signs that in that respect the pendulum may have stopped swinging in the wrong direction (that of thanatos), and may even have started, very timidly, to move in the right direction (that of eros).