Common Human Purpose

Our Obligation to Future Generations

By Geoffrey Holland

The biosphere we all depend on is failing. The evidence is overwhelming. It’s getting worse by the day. The massive, climate-driven fire storms that recently incinerated Los Angeles are clear evidence. Human indifference and overreach are entirely responsible. Cultural transformation on a global scale is our only worthy option.

The human way of being is wired into us. We have exploited the natural world around us from our beginning. For the biggest share of our time on Earth, we took whatever we could from nature. It was about survival. Then, about 10,000 years ago, the pace of human cultural development began to accelerate.

The Humanity We Have Become

A giant fact of enormous consequence: It took about 200,000 years for our Earth to grow from zero humans to about 2 billion humans around the year 1927 A.D. Since then, in about a hundred years, the human population has quadrupled. We are now 8 billion plus humans on the way to 10 or more billion in the next few decades.

Here’s what that translates to…the latest World Wildlife Fund study reports that just in the past 50 years, as the human population has doubled, the number of wild vertebrate animals on Earth has collapsed by 73%.

The breakdown with mammals: including humans and the livestock animals we kill to eat, we are now 96% of the total mammalian biomass on Earth. Wild mammals, from squirrels to elephants, are only 4%…The picture is clear enough. The biodiversity of our planet is collapsing. We humans are entirely responsible.  

All of our Earth’s living systems are now at risk. The atmosphere, the biosphere, the range of earth systems that all humans, all life, depend on are headed to planetary-scale failure. That reality is undeniable.

It’s up to us to correct course now. We humans must come together and remake who we are as the most consequential species on Earth. We must stop being takers and start being nurturers. For the sake of our natural world, there is no alternative and there is no time to waste.

Transformation on a Global-Scale is Our Only Option

Business as usual is a dead end for humanity. We have to become our better selves now.

Fortunately, we have some things going for us. Ever more, men and woman’ together as partners, are seeing the big picture for humanity. They are taking on the social, environmental, and political challenges that define our current reality. A formidable swell of progressive activism is now lined up against an old guard determined to use their wealth and power to protect their tribalism and self-interest. 

Over the last few decades, add computers, cell phones, the social media, and the internet. The cultural polarization at play now is like nothing ever seen before.

The Missing Ingredient is Common Purpose

All of humanity must come together. That’s all of us – all gender identities, all ethnicities, and all nationalities. We are up against Earth scale challenges, that can only be addressed adequately if we stand together, and learn to trust and cooperate, by being Earth citizens.

Without question, we humans are divided politically on a global scale. Bringing the biggest share of us together behind worthy common purpose is a daunting challenge. Thus far, nothing on the media horizon has gained traction cross-culturally as a catalyst for worthy change.

The Look of a Global Scale Cultural Beacon

What would an idea designed to inspire all of humanity around our Earth look like? What would it have to include to secure the trust and cooperation of all the world’s people?

The Australian Council for the Human Future, led by best-selling author Julian Cribb, took on these planetary-scale cultural questions. In response, they came up with a very big idea shaped to encourage the trust and cooperation of all humans across our world’s cultures. They called it the Earth System Treaty. Its core is a set of principles around which law and public policy can be designed.

The United Nations is a formal collection of all of our world’s nations. It is the only globally recognized governing institution that has any credibility to serve the interests of all of our planet’s people. It must get behind and give substance to this global-scale initiative.

The Earth System Treaty is intended to serve as a beacon that represents the common interests of all of humanity. No thoughtful person would disagree with the treaty’s clearly and carefully articulated principles. 

Principles of the Earth System Treaty

• A universal ban on nuclear weapons
• An international plan to combat climate change
• An international plan to restore forests, soils, fresh waters, oceans, atmosphere and

biodiversity to stable, sustainable levels and end extinction

• An international agreement to operate a circular economy and end waste
• A plan for a renewable world food supply sufficient for all
• A plan to end universal chemical pollution in all forms.
• A plan to reduce the human population voluntarily to a sustainable level.
• A plan to anticipate and prevent future pandemic diseases.
• A Global Technology Convention to oversee the safe development and introduction of Dangerous new sciences and technologies and minimize the harms they cause.
• A World Truth Commission to expose and combat the deceit and disinformation that competes for the public’s understanding of issues.
• An Earth Standard Currency
• All 17 of the Sustainable Development Goals
• All 16 of the principles enunciated in the Earth Charter
• All of the Safe Global Boundaries described by the Stockholm resilience Institute.

The Earth System Treaty Offers the Best Kind of Human Future

The strategy is not complicated. Use the social media to attract the world’s attention to the Earth System Treaty. Encourage people everywhere to read and understand the treaty, then stand behind it as a reflection of what they want to see from our Earth’s governing bodies.  When enough people across our planet embrace the Earth System Treaty, that adds up to real political power, the kind of political power that drives genuine cultural transformation.

There is no other planetary policy initiative designed from scratch with this noble purpose in mind. The Earth System Treaty urges all the world’s people to come together and trust its call for transforming the human way of being. It’s how we must remake ourselves to protect and preserve the living biosphere we all depend on.

For all of humanity, the Earth System Treaty is a global scale rallying point; a Magna Carta for the 21^st Century; a reflection of trust and common purpose. The time for making it real is now.