CHALLENGE
Value Life Itself Above All Else !!!

The following DECLARATION and PLEDGE form a proposal for a world-wide campaign, which has developed out of three Back Issues, in July 2004, January 2005, and January 2007 . It is being distributed to all relevant organisations and individuals in order to elicit widespread support.

Please click on the following link in order to SIGN THE PLEDGE on our new M4S Microsite. Only the text is given below. You can also commit yourself, on the Microsite, to SUPPORTING PLEDGES (also reproduced here), which you can make in order to make the main pledge effective for you, as well as to helping to build the Movement.

Value Life Itself Above All Else !!!

NEW MOVEMENT FOR SURVIVAL

DECLARATION

I give my wholehearted support to the New Movement for Survival, for its goal to develop a critical mass of public insistence that world governments and societies transform their priorities and values, as an essential step for averting calamitous climate change.

In committing my support in this way I recognise:

• The present world political system is too caught up in a vicious circle of short-term gratification with electorates and other interested parties, to be left to take the action needed within the necessary timescale - of possibly less than ten years from 2005;
  
  
• Leadership for mounting the necessary insistence on governments thus has to come from outside the governmental system - from those who are already convinced of the necessity for the Movement, while engaging with the political system from a position of increasing influence;
  
  
• The goal of the Movement requires it to address the dominant, exploitative, world-wide values system because it underlies not only the onset of climate change but all the other threats to the preservation of life on Earth in its present form;
  
  
• The Movement thus has to cultivate and apply alternative, inclusive values and beliefs, which already prevail in the rest of nature, appear spontaneously at times of community crisis and among oppressed people, and are increasingly shared among human beings who are developing a holistic view of the world.

PLEDGE

As part of my commitment, I pledge to Value Life Itself above everything else, including individual self-interest, and to adjust my lifestyle in order to do so, as well as to take collective action in order to uphold this value.

SUPPORTING PLEDGES WHICH YOU CAN MAKE

1. Save energy at home: e.g. turn off lights, use low energy bulbs, change to green energy supplies, wear jumpers and turn down thermostats, insulate and draft-proof, fit solar panels.

2. Reduce carbon emissions to a personally sustainable level, reckoned to be 1.1 tonnes CO2 per annum. Visit Quaker Green Action to work out how much effort you need to make.

3. Purchase: only what I need, locally, organic food, go vegetarian, cut down on packaging, re-pair, re-fill, re-use, re-cycle, compost food waste, buy efficient non-polluting appliances.

4. Travel: on foot, by bicycle, by public transport, and by car and air as little as possible.

5. Lifestyle: simplify my life; lead by example; inform myself more; and don't be put off by others. Increase awareness of everything around me and learn to delight in it.

6. Encourage Family, Friends and Workplace to do the same.

7. Lobby my Council, my MP, government and corporations.

8. Join a green organisation such as Save our World, WWF, Greenpeace and/or Friends of the Earth.

9. Participate in activities and organisations which are dedicated to promoting holistic values, practices and initiatives, as well as those trying to halt gross exploitation of natural resources, other species, vulnerable human groups and cultures.

10. Switch my investments to ethical causes, and review and adjust the balance of my expenditure between personal, household and wider social concerns, with regular giving or 'tithing'. Give fully without any expectation of return.

11. Become my own detective (by cross-checking differing accounts and perspectives) in order to get behind 'spin' and 'double-speak', and thus establish dependable viewpoints.

12. Try to start the day with inner peace and contentment.. Look for and see the best unfold throughout the day. Feel a connection with all Life and cultivate it through yoga (union), meditation, contemplation and appropriate study.

13. Practise letting go attachment to the fruits of my actions, detach from 'doership' and do what I know inside needs to be done. Practise listening to my 'small inner voice' and acting on it.

14. Develop faith in abundance and being the cause of what happens in my life, in place of being the victim of circumstances, never having enough and needy. Cease looking to others for help. Never give up.

15. Constantly practise being here and now in the present moment, let go of pre-occupations with past and future events, outcomes, and 'mental soap operas'.

16. Consider myself great. Never belittle myself. Think the very best and I will draw the very best to myself.

17. Be inclusive in loving all people, living beings and things, without picking and choosing.

18. Move forward into new ways, new and even uncharted waters without fear. Keep wide open. Never be wholly satisfied with my outlook on life. Changes are coming and I am part of those changes.

OTHER CHALLENGES

Air Industry Petition

Climate Change Petition to the US Congress

An Organic Alternative to GM Crops

The last two are linked to the same page on our global site.

Sustainable Air industry Petition

We call upon the UK Secretary of State for Transport to give the highest priority to the environmental, social and economic sustainability of Britain's Air Industry instead of acceding to the appetite of the market for unlimited growth on economic grounds alone.

We furthermore call upon the Secretary of State to recognise that the prevalent philosophy of regarding economic growth as a universal positive value, and the practice of its uncritical pursuit, are irreconcilable with the other essential components of sustainability.

We therefore call upon him to abandon the UK Government's plans for The Future of Air Transport in the United Kingdom, which were the subject of national consultation up until the end of June 2003. We propose instead the adoption by Parliament of an alternative future for air transport, which genuinely integrates all three aspects of sustainability.

The background arguments to this Petition are contained in the Response from Save our World to the national consultation, which is attached to this Petition.

 

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Response from
Save our World
to
The Future of Air Transport in the United Kingdom:
A National Consultation

This Response is submitted by e-mail alone because the standard questionnaire prejudges and pre-empts fundamental questions as to whether the Government's projections for the expansion of Air Transport are either sustainable or desirable.
The projected expansion is based on confused premises:

1) that the market will dictate it, yet:
2) evident attempts to promote the market invalidate its assumed independent variability as having its own 'inevitable' momentum;
3) the grounds for promoting the market are unexamined for either sustainability or desirability.

Sustainability of the Expansion of Air Transport

1. Macro-economic

Presumptions of economic growth as a universal value are unsound because UK citizens would already need three planets to support us if everyone on the planet consumed as much as the average person in the UK [WWF International's 'Living Planet Report 2000'].

Climate change could in effect reduce the world to bankruptcy by 2065, with world economic growth averaging 3% a year while insurance losses because of extreme weather increasing by 10% a year [Dr. Andrew Dlugolecki, climate change specialist with CGNU at The Hague Conference. The Guardian 24/11/00]

The aviation industry benefits from special tax concessions which can be adjusted in order to manage demand without the need for major new airport developments or runway expansion [Institute for Public Policy Research report 21 May 2003], and as illustrated in the re-run of the SPASM computer model agreed by the Department of Transport [Friends of the Earth Press Release 2 May 2003]

2. Short-term economic

Economic sustainability is currently affected by a global 'downturn in the industry (which has been) driven by lack-lustre economic growth, the impact of 9/11, the war in Iraq and the SARs outbreak' ['Global air slowdown hits home' The Guardian 18 June 2003]. Whilst these individual features may be transitory, fears remain of similar viruses to SARS which are particularly liable to being spread around the world via air-travel, and continuing and possibly increasing fears of terrorism as a result of the Iraq War and hostility to US and British military action.

A sign of the current desperation of the industry is an e-mail marketing initiative from British Airways which I received just yesterday (29 June), which acknowledges that 'the number of passengers flying world-wide has fallen dramatically' and offers return flights to London from any destination in the world in exchange for forwarding the e-mail to just five other people!

3. Social sustainability

'More airport expansion would reinforce economic inequalities between the UK regions, by increasing development pressure and economic activity in the south east while extracting jobs from other regions' [Institute for Public Policy Research report 21 May 2003],

Moreover, inequalities of opportunity for individuals in society would intensify, between those who can afford to travel by air and those who cannot, as well as adversely affecting those who have to suffer the consequences of increased air travel by others, in the form of:

Losing homes and livelihoods in the areas which are planned for additional runways and supporting facilities;
The effects of air pollution and transport congestion at ground level on personal stress and ill-health;
Aircraft noise and sleep disturbance.

Furthermore, there are already reports that 'Air traffic stress soars' [The Guardian 24 June 2003] among air traffic controllers, and there is an increasingly likelihood of this increasing with future airport expansion and more crowded skies - and the attendant increasing dangers of disastrous accidents.

4. Environmental sustainability

Enough has been written and acknowledged that aviation is the fastest growing source of carbon dioxide emissions, which are themselves the main causes of dangerous climate change. The effects of the proposed airport expansion on this form of pollution has been demonstrated by Friends of the Earth [See Press release 28 November 2002].

The fact that the Department of Transport announced the proposals for expanding the aviation industry just days after Tony Blair finally acknowledged, on 24 February 2003, the necessity for the 60% reductions in global emissions by 2050, which we challenged him to do at the World Summit last September, shows how absurdly out-of-step the Department is, not only with the rest of the UK Government but with world scientific opinion, expressed through the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Numerous examples have been published of evidence of climate change already occurring [See summary in 'Denial, Justification and Deception about the Climate Crisis' on the Back Issues page of the Save our World web-site at www.save-our-world.net]. Among the latest is a report that the World's largest ice-cap, near Mount Everest, is melting and has formed a lake over the last 30 years which is now a kilometre long and 100 metres deep - and poised to sweep away villages beneath it under a potentially 10-30 metres deep wall of water. [WWF Report 28 May 2003] It can only be a matter of time before it does so.

In this context, the expansion of the UK aviation industry is beyond comprehension as a responsible proposal.

Questionable Desirability of Expansion

Even were it sustainable, is expansion desirable? This question appears to have been ignored within the assumption of economic inevitability. Many thousands of shorthaul flights within Europe have recently been asserted as replaceable by rail. I have personal experience of travelling twice by that means to Montreux at comparable cost (even given the tax concessions to air travel), within comparable overall time, and with very much more scenic variety and general enjoyment than my experiences of travel by air.

So whose interests are really served by the proposed expansion? Surely only the large airline companies, operators and developers. Should the well-being of the citizenry, the survival of the communities that would be demolished by airport development and enlargement, the stability of the climate and therefore the habitability of the planet - be subservient to them?

(Cc) Jim Scott, Chairperson, SAVE OUR WORLD Monday 30 June 2003

.This page has developed out of an exchange of personal letters with the former UK Environment Minister, Michael Meacher, for the Prime Minister to set a challenge for stabilising the word's climate before all the countries of the world at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in September 2002. This correspondence is still retained in Archive but, following the Summit, we broadened the subject area from specifically Climate Change to Sustainable Development as a whole.

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