STUDY WAR NO MORE
Scientist Carl Sagan calculated that the Cold War had cost some $10 trillion over 40 years. Noel Brown takes up the story: 'I asked Carl what can you buy with $10 trillion? He said everything. Every boat, every factory, every farm, everything.'
"Everything!" I don't think he's exaggerating either, if - the big if - we grasp the richness of a life of enoughness and develop the psychological and organisational capacities to resist the systemic pressures that lead us into the endless, nihilistic accumulation of quantities.
http://www.globalissues.org/arti…/…/world-military-spending…
“If you were to count at a dollar per second, it'd take twelve days to count a million, thirty-one years to count a billion, and for a trillion, a thousand-fold more, it'd take six times all recorded history.”
Raj Patel, The Value of Nothing 2009 p 79
Imagine using those figures to finance a programme to stabilize population growth, level off carbon emissions and secure Nature’s life support systems.
Standing in the way, of course, are certain vested interests which have institutionalised their power, ensuring that resources are channelled their way, as well as external systemic pressures arising from the economy's accumulative dynamic. Together, these work to ensure that public concerns and preferences do not translate into public policy.
A century dominated by war has issued in a concept of security which is defined almost exclusively in military terms. The military budgets of nations dwarfs those for foreign aid. It is all about choosing life over death. In the twentieth century, the means of production have been transformed into means of destruction. Instead of measuring a country's power in what it can destroy, we need to redefine power in terms of what nations can build together. We need a new concept of security, one concerned with an environmental security that protects each and all within a commitment to universal flourishing within the common good.
An ecological approach to politics looks to redefine the concept of security as part of the same process whereby we restructure the economy in a more ecologically sound way.
Redefining security in a conceptual sense entails its redefinition in fiscal terms. The world has a huge military budget, with costs continuing to spiral as a result of greater technological sophistication. And where one nation spends, another must follow. Ultimately, the nations are bidding against each other, wasting more and more resources.
The enormity of a $1.7 trillion military budget gives the lie to the claim that we lack the resources to create a sustainable civilization. The fiscal resources are already there. The resources that are deficient are other than technical and financial, they are organisational, political and psychological (we are working on it, whether we can get there in time is another matter).
Environmentalist Fred Pearce optimistically argues that ‘the technologies that could drag us back from the abyss are well known, if not yet fully developed. And the cash is there, too, though largely still in military coffers. So is the ingenuity. About half of all the scientists in the world work for the military. If all this creative energy and money were spent on helping to develop the world there would be plenty of resources to go round.’ (Pearce, Climate and Man, 1989: 166).
What is required is a change of existing priorities and directions, the appropriate use of existing technologies, a scaling back of energy demands, a reallocation of monetary resources through a new conception of environmental security.
The 'ecological security' of the planet is a more potent threat to human survival than any threat to the security of nations. The material resources exist to buy that ‘everything’ making for a secure and healthy life for all. It is the political and psychological resources that are deficient. The military establishment, with military bases scattered around the world, armies and fleets in every sea and every continent, will not save civilization, will not protect the environment upon which civilisation rests. We need to redefine the concept of security and achieve the goal of a safe and sustainable planet by expanding food production, redistributing resources to achieve even development, stabilising population, by building wind farms and solar power plants, and by building schools and hospitals to give everyone a decent standard of living. That is to build a world without conflicts and refugees, an environment that does not need protecting.
For Brown the Cold War showed that 'society is willing to make long-term investment of a significant magnitude in what it considers to be essential for its security. We need the same kind of investment now to ensure our survival on this planet. Let us say that we are engaged in a Cold War on behalf of the Earth and we need to make that kind of investment. Perhaps we will do it if we can see with the kind of immediacy and gravity that the other Cold War projected. Maybe the new slogan will be not "Rather dead than red" but "Rather green than dead."'
Given the enormity of the arms budget, it cannot be argued that we lack the resources to rescue civilization. It just requires a shift in priorities, from a situation in which the world needs protecting to one of human and planetary flourishing that requires no such protection. The military conception of security is self-defeating, wasting resources and making the world even more insecure. We can most effectively achieve our security goals by using these resources more positively, by securing food supplies, by building schools and hospitals, investing in renewables, supporting programmes of reforestation, and so on. The world now has the financial and technological and institutional resources to stabilize the climate, eliminate poverty, stabilize population, restore the life support systems upon which civilisation depends and, above all, to give hope and inspire effort to bring about the environmentally secure society.
We can calculate roughly the costs of the changes needed to move our civilisation off the decline-and-collapse path we know all too well and onto a path to the sustainable society of the future. We cannot calculate the cost of not doing so. As Lester Brown asks: “How do you put a price tag on social collapse and the massive die-off that it invariably brings?” You can't, and that renders arguments about discounting the future neatly redundant. Climate change represents an opportunity for us to get our global development house in order. In fact, it's not an opportunity, it's an imperative.
Environmental and social security go together. A poverty eradication effort must be accompanied by an earth restoration effort. Behind the environmental crisis is a social crisis. The way we organise our interchange with nature reflects the way we do business with each other. The fact that 85 billionaires have as much wealth as 3.5 billion people points to a basic injustice that skews priorities, misallocates resources and does a violence to people and planet that is unsustainable (to say the least). Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the population. (Oxfam International, “Working for the Few.”
The resources are there. The external funding needed to eradicate poverty and stabilize population requires an additional expenditure of $75 billion per year. Protecting topsoil, reforesting the earth, restoring oceanic fisheries, and other needed measures will cost an estimated $110 billion in additional expenditures per year. Combining both social goals and earth restoration goals into a budget yields an additional annual expenditure of $185 billion. This is the new defence budget, the one that targets resources to social and environmental needs and thus removes the most serious threats to both national and global security. It is equal to 12 percent of global military expenditures and 28 percent of U.S. military expenditures. (Lester Brown 2011 ch 13).
Lester Brown puts it this way:
‘for less than $200 billion of additional funding per year worldwide, hunger, illiteracy, disease, and poverty can be eradicated and the earth's soils, forests, and fisheries can be restored. The resources exist to build a global community which satisfies the basic needs of all people — a world that will allow us to feel secure and, on that basis, come to thrive.
And that is before we come to the resources we release by shifting taxes from work to environmentally destructive activities. Such tax shifting alone, apart from additional expenditure, could suffice in financing the restructuring of the way do business on the planet in order to achieve social and environmental security.’
With a new concept of security comes a new concept of power. Under the military-industrial complex, means of production have been turned into destruction. In the past, the power of a country has been measured in terms of what could destroy with respect to the power of rivals and enemies. We need a concept of power that measures how much we can build together as one world.
The choice is ours. Worldchanging is a team sport, not a spectator sport, and there is a place on the team for all of us.
Just as the forces of decline and collapse reinforce and build on each other, so too can the forces of hope.
“One of the questions I hear most frequently is, What can I do? People often expect me to suggest lifestyle changes, such as recycling newspapers or changing light bulbs. These are essential, but they are not nearly enough. Restructuring the global economy means becoming politically active, working for the needed changes, as the grassroots campaign against coal-fired power plants is doing. Saving civilization is not a spectator sport.
The choice is ours—yours and mine. We can stay with business as usual and preside over an economy that continues to destroy its natural support systems until it destroys itself, or we can be the generation that changes direction, moving the world onto a path of sustained progress. The choice will be made by our generation, but it will affect life on earth for all generations to come.” - Lester Brown, World on the Edge, 2011 Earthscan
Nobel winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman says human beings struggle to deal with large numbers. So break it down, make it simple, we can do 'everything' if we study war no more, including ending the war our socio-economic systems are waging on the planet.
'Pope Francis called out war profiteers and demanded an end to the arms trade. Just as simple and as powerful as that.' 'Why do so many powerful people not want peace? Because they live off wars?' (Pope Francis). “Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society?” He answered it himself: “Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood. In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade.” Stop the arms trade. What a simple, clear call. In responding to the call, we set about creating the right relationships which ensure that our resources are no longer misallocated, means of production are no longer turned into means of destruction, and our technics no longer misfire. It's not about money, it's not about technology, it's about right relationships. Now that would be studying war no more. Once we have learned the way of peace, there will be no more war Willie Dixon - Study War No More
Won't that be one mighty day,
when we hear world leaders say
We don't have to cry no more,
were giving it up, were gonna let it go
Ain't gonna study, study war no more,
ain't gonna think, think of war no more
Ain't gonna fight, fight the war no more,
were giving it up, were gonna let it go
Were giving it up, were gonna let it go
We will take gun powder to have fun,
then get rid of the atom bomb
Something else that we can do,
get rid of all those rockets, too
Ain't gonna study, study war no more,
ain't gonna think, think of war no more
Ain't gonna fight, fight the war no more,
we're giving it up, we're gonna let it go
We're giving it up, we're gonna let it go
The money spent on bombs alone
can build poor people a happy home
And some good we can do,
you treat me like I treat you
No more starving in the nation,
everybody getting an education
Ev'rytime a baby is born,
we know hell have him a happy home
Ain't gonna study, study war no more,
ain't gonna think, think of war no more
Ain't gonna fight, fight the war no more,
we're giving it up, we're gonna let it go
We're giving it up, we're gonna let it go
No more sleeping in the street,
were all happy, whoever we meet
Then we all will shake a hand,
and make this world a promised land
Ain't gonna study, study war no more,
ain't gonna think, think of war no more
Ain't gonna fight, fight the war no more,
we're giving it up, we're gonna let it go
We're giving it up, we're gonna let it go,
we're giving it up, we're gonna let it go
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhJHMbbh8ZQ
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