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For Our Common FutureWalt TaylorWe appreciated your article on " What
Do We Do Now?" (Connexions #48)....Peggy
Taylor, my wife of 47 years, and I enclose $25 for our subscription.
We need more paper coming into our home like we need nuclear submarines,
but I got a bit hooked by your article. The basic idea is quite obvious. In view of the precarious predicament of life on earth today, we need to plan ways for everyone concerned to work together for "Our Common Future."At stake is nothing less than “the security, well-being, and very survival of the planet." (Our Common Future, the 1987 Report by the World Commission on Environment and Development, chaired by Madame Gro Harlem Brundtland, Prime Minister of Norway, page 343.) A. Inventory: Researchers will prepare an inventory of the specific, high priority, life-sustaining work that must be done to avoid the unprecedented dangers we now face including the possibility of omnicide and to take full advantage of our unprecedented opportunities to prepare for a higher quality of life on earth than we can now even imagine. The necessary information including job descriptions, training and counselling needs, tools, facilities, and budgets will be obtained from cooperating organizations, coalitions and agencies concerned with environment, human rights, peace, education, forestry, agriculture, fisheries, "sustainable"community economic development, poverty, non-violent conflict resolution, and methods of "changing our modes of thinking"in order to end our "drift toward unparalleled catastrophe" about which Albert Einstein warned us in 1946. B. Invent-ory: (Place the accent on vent.) This research team will invent ways to provide the necessary resources for workers in one or more demonstration communities to earn a living while doing some urgently needed work identified and documented in the inventory. At present the most important work of our generations falls too often on volunteers and "bake sale" funding. It is unreasonable and ineffective to depend almost exclusively on volunteers for the enormous task of safeguarding our common future. It is also unwise and unfair to exclude from this challenging work those people who need to earn a living at it. Dedicated volunteers are essential, but insufficient. C. Mutual Aid Place: In each demonstration community or
region, people who want to earn their living doing life-sustaining
work will find appropriate opportunities in the Inventory. A "Mutual
Aid Place"may be desirable (under this or some other name)
to help connect interested people with whatever training, counselling,
or other resources they require in order to get started. Everyone's
help is needed. With so much constructive work demanding action
now, unemployment has become unnecessary and utterly inexcusable. Walt Taylor (CX3815)
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