globe
discussion forum
background
What of this beautiful planet of ours? Should we search
for an 'Earth 2' to colonise, or should we do our utmost to
preserve the blue planet? Are we on the brink of a global
catastrophe - either natural or technological? In this discussion
group, you could tell everyone your ideas about ecology, the
environment and globalisation.
What are your ideas about the globe? Here are some ideas
about the globe from others.
Whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the
fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms
beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved
... There is grandeur in this view of life.
Charles Darwin, Origin of the Species
The 'world' was never more than an image, a regulative idea,
a normative concept for planning and implementing a global
society. This concept has begun to crumble because of its
obvious relationship to the institutions of political power,
which know no limits in the use of force if it is necessary.
Long veiled and thus precarious, this relationship has become
evident. In view of the unjustified differentiation between
'First', 'Second', 'Third' and 'Fourth' worlds, it appears
that a search for ways to overcome the idea of 'one world'
is long overdue.
Dietmar Kamper and Christoph Wulf,
Looking Back on the End of the World, Semiotext[e], New York,
1989, p1
Three routes to catastrophe that we face unless we can tackle
the evils of overconsumption and the yawning gap between rich
and poor. Climate change, pollution and population growth
each has surprising and potentially devastating impacts. Aspects
of all three will strike before this century is out ... It's
often been said that our goal must be 'to save the planet'.
But that's plain wrong: Earth can manage fine without us.
What's really happening is that we are driving out own mass
extinction ... The real battle is to save ourselves.
Editorial, New Scientist Global Environment
Supplement, April 28, 2001, p 1
Awareness of the world is my movement and the nature of
my movement ... Mental mapping evolves with the transportation
revolution and the communication revolution. The faster I
travel to the end of the world, the faster I come back, and
the emptier my mental map becomes ... The threat, and this
is the great confinement, is having in one's head a reduced
mental picture of the Earth - an Earth that is constantly
flown over, traversed and violated in real size.
Paul Virilio, Politics of the Very
Worst, Semiotext[e], New York, p 42 - 43
Globalisation divides as much as it unites; it divides as
it unites - the causes of division being identical with those
which promote the uniformity of the globe.
Zygmunt Bauman, The Human Consequences,
p 2
Think globally, act locally.
Activist slogan used since the 1960s
Globalisation is not a vague, warm feeling about the future.
It is a specific economic strategy pursued by the countries
of the industrialised world and the transnational corporations
(TNCs) whose interests they represent. The core of this strategy
is to ensure open, unregulated access to the world's markets
- the model of 'free trade' liberalisation which allows TNCs
to sweep aside smaller local competitors irrespective of social
or environmental cost. Developing countries are 'opened up'
for exploitation, and the profits which they could have used
for their own development are whisked away to the bank accounts
of TNC shareholders overseas ... Happily, there have been
attempts to build alternative globalisations to the monoculture
of transnational business - and here communications technology
has played a positive role. Campaigns and community groups
swap local strategies of resistance from opposite sides of
the globe, forging new alliances and - sometimes - winning
new battles too. Today globalisation is an economic nightmare
threatening the poor, but tomorrow it could be a new model
of truly creative interdependence.
OneWorld.net, http://www.oneworld.org/guides/globalisation/
The entire range of living matter on Earth from whales to
viruses and from oaks to algae could be regarded as constituting
a single living entity capable of maintaining the Earth's
atmosphere to suit its overall needs and endowed with faculties
and powers far beyond those of its constituent parts...[Gaia
can be defined] as a complex entity involving the Earth's
biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting
a feedback of cybernetic systems which seeks an optimal physical
and chemical environment for life on this planet."
James Lovelock, The Gaia Hypothesis
cited at http://www.magna.com.au/~prfbrown/gaia.html
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