A global organisation could investigate world problems and solutions, and then work on a case by case basis to solve the increasing and growing problems of human expansion and climate change. An internet forum such as this could be used to draw attention to problems and brain storm ideas and solutions on how to address them.
The world needs to start thinking and debating now, about how many people can be sustained on this planet while still allowing space for plant and animal diversity.
We need organisations to look at war torn areas and search for answers on how to feed and manage the refugees, while protecting rare and threatened wildlife species.
This organisation could also start avalanches of global opinion (people power) to highlight the negative paths that some large corporations travel in their quest for greed.
Australia and in particular needs to know whether our water resources can sustain a population of more than 20 million.
This global organisation could be funded by a global carbon tax on all products. The rich consume more and therefore would pay more carbon tax.
A peaceful prosperous perpetual planet. Here's hoping...

YET anOTHER utopian, leftoid, "everything will be fixed by a one world government" kind of lunacy that could only EVER emerge from a socio/historical/political FANTASYland...

RUBBISH.. absolute, complete utter garbage..and the only reason I dip into this bowl..is that there are people who.. wait.. BELIEVE this tripe.

It is abundantly clear that those such as the author.. have completely missed out on the basic requirment for serious contributions of this nature.. an 'education'.....

Then..it is equally clear that the author appears to know NOTHING about the various competing religious movements in the world today.. or about their intensity and intransigent nature.

He must have been in the loo when 9/11 took place. Has he ever read the Hamas Charter...he appears to be ignorant of the 1.2billion Muslims in the world... many if not most of whom would not even think remotely about any form of government other than that of 'Allah'

It's like the author has been in a time warp.. and all that would conflict with his theories has been expunged from his consciousness chemically, something like in Total Recall...

Pericles.. you note this from the article:

"as the policy of defending our relative privileges through border protection and wars that we follow abroad will only be the prelude for more wars and more “need” to protect our borders."

Wellll 'duh'....... as IFFFF protecting our borders is JUST about protecting privilege.. myyy goodness..what planet is Lyndon Story from ?

Ok Lyndon.. we will tomorrow open our borders to EVERY refugee from EVery country who wishes to come here.. then we will have 'world peace'... forget our limited water.. our this or our that... nope.. utopia comes first..

MINDLESS LUNACY is all I can say.. you have just been 'alvinized'.

http://www.homestead.com/philofreligion/Plantingapage.html

BOAZ_David,

You're right in the sense that the article is pure idealism. I think it's wrong to call it complete garbage though, as the ideas expressed could conceivably become reality one day - but, you just might have to wait a century or two to see it.

The fact is that these types of initiatives only become reality when nation states have an INTEREST in making it so. I can think of a couple areas - one where this is happening and possibly one where it could - that fits the bill. The first, the International Criminal Court, was set up to catch and convict mass murderers who took advantage of the lack of law and order in their countries to carry out ethnic cleansing etc. The ICC is a perfectly reasonable attempt to bring the baddies to justice. The second is the setting up of international taxation law one day, particularly if there is a preponderance of businesses going offshore in order to cheat the taxation regimes in their home countries. Both these ideas respectively are, and could be, of interest to individual nation states. If enough states agree on a particular course of action, the critical mass is there and the initiative happens.

The system that is described in the article could happen one day, but would only work if built up on an issue-by-issue basis over time. Once it had some runs on the board, maybe it could look at other types of human justice issues as well. Whether or not it becomes a reality would be totally contingent on having a sufficient mass of backers.

Mr Storey's article invites us to imagine a reinvigorated political landscape. His is a landscape of co-operation, of coeval discourse, of problem sharing rather than problem making. And, his title, "a human union" invites us to reflect on some of the weightier prospects of being. The form of political organization he proposes is, as he points out, already in operation in the EU and as he rightly observes, this is not without problems. Critics of it, however, should remember that every relationship is predicated on dialogue and what the global human union model truly provides is the intellectual, emotional and practical space to engage in dialogue with the world around us. It also suggests a future that is tinged with hope rather than the dystopic smallness of vision that currently saturates our political imaginations. The Global Human Union is a model for relationships and models that seek to control aspects of human behavior tend to come unstuck. (Perhaps this is a characteristic of models that we should count on, something that is our built in safe-guard rather than endlessly attempting to perfect our own-made systems). Models however are also historically conditioned, and our times cry out for a way forward that acknowledges some of the fundamental aspects of our existence that Mr Storey draws attention to: our global predicament, our humanity and our relationships.

Pericles, I don’t know why you have this idea that my first post was some sort of knee-jerk reaction. I have been on this forum for a long time. Many times I have expressed concern over a possible loosening of border protection, increased immigration, forever increasing population and thus a total inability for us in Australia to ever reach sustainability without a major crash event occurring first.

So again, if some sort of human union concept can aid us in reaching genuine sustainability while also getting us to collectively better share our wealth with the world’s needy, in an efficient and effective manner that raises quality of life and directs them strongly and quickly towards sustainability, and doesn’t reduce our own QOL or sustainability momentum, then great.

But if it is in any way likely to lead to pressure to distributionally even out the world’s peoples to a significantly greater extent than is presently happening, or to balance global QOL by significantly lowering the QOL, environmental health and social integrity of some nations in the attempt to raise it elsewhere, then there is no way that it should be supported.

A high QOL needs to be treasured everywhere it exists now. We CAN work towards improving QOL for hundreds of millions of impoverished people while protecting and improving our own in Australia.

The basic concepts are pretty simple.

Please note that by quality of life, I refer to happiness, health, security, purpose in life, etc, and not to our consumeristic standard of living.

Lyndon Storey seems pretty strongly against strong border protection. That immediately struck me as something that had to be commented on. If you want to call that a ‘knee-jerk’, response then go right ahead. I’d prefer to call it a highly pertinent response.

I hope I have answered your questions.

A bit late in the day but this very interesting website supports the necessity for a global cooperative union/forum.

1. http://www.ispeace723.org