In September, world leaders are coming to New York City for a UN summit on the climate crisis. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is urging governments to support an ambitious global agreement to dramatically reduce global warming pollution.
People will take to the streets to demand a world with an economy that works for people and the planet and a world safe from the ravages of climate change.
Sunday, September 21 in New York City. Come along with us!
Lou Steinberg will be coordinating efforts for our Society’s participation. You will be hearing more as details become available. Check out peoplesclimate.org/march and stay tuned.
I went to Climate march’s wesite, to see what it’s all about. I don’t get around much. There are roughly 600 organizations and associations registered to support this march. The first thing that stuck me is “That’s a lot of loosely organized people disgruntled with the ‘decision makers’ of the nation and the world. Of coursse the march to stop our polluting the air and affecting the climate is necessary, and I’ll be there. But it bothers me, in many ways, that the people of the United States have to take to the streets to , effectively, beg our representatives to use the power we gave them for our benefit. And then I realized that that fact underlies the losoe tie between all those cooperating groups. They all, us included, are acting on the assumption that we must influence the powerful to use their power, the power we gave them by voting them into office, to use it in a manner we want them to. This thinking came about partly because I’ve been angry with the government and more generally because I had concluded that revolutions put ‘good men’ into power who were soon corrupted by the power which then, in turn required another revolution. And this pattern was stamped broadly over history. Anyway, I thought that a possible solution was to alter our Representaive Democracy and replace it with Actual Democracy, where the people vote directly on the laws under which they live. It’s a step forward in the evolution of Democracy, I thought. A little reseach turned up that it was the very first intendended form of Democracy, see Pericles Furneral Oration in Thucydides, where he says the laws of Athens are made by the many. Of course the many didn’t include slaves or women. But the intent was universal sufferage on legislature, direct voting on their laws. The research further turned up Rousseau, Thomas Paine, Jefferson, J.S. Mill, Bertrand Russell, even John Kennedy, in his “Outlines in Courage” all concluding that the best form of democracy was the poeple voting directly on the laws: an Actual Democracy. They also all concluded that a compromise was needed because we could not all fit in the market place and openly debate issues, propose laws, and vote on them. So representative government, which Rousseau called ‘elected Aristocacy’ was the compromise. Certainly better than kings, dictators and oligharchies. Curchill said democacy was the worst form of government except for all the others. But I realized that the internet, telephony, the geo-sychronous communication satellites enabled us to argue, openly debate, roucously debate, lie, propagandise, spread the truth, every minute of everyday. Further we were voting everyday on who the best singers, entertainers, talented people were on various television shows: American Idol, The Voice, America has Talent. We are debating and we are voting. Seems a perfect entry point to we shoud debate the laws and vote on the laws, live in Actual Democracy. There is a website for the Association for the Advancement of Actual Democracy, which I also recently joined, advocating this position: http://www.assosactualdemocracy.com. I believe the idea of changing the Constitution so people take responsibility for voting on the laws they wil live under is a major step forward, a necessary evolutionary step in democracy, and what is the real, but unrecognized, driiving force behind the 600 organizations about to march, which I very unkidly see ad ‘beg’, their representatives to protect man’s future by stopping the level of suicidal polluting we do.
“…a possible solution was to alter our Representative Democracy and replace it with Actual Democracy, where the people vote directly on the laws under which they live” This is very interesting and, as you say, we can’t all fit into the marketplace anymore. However, we can access the internet from where we are and discuss, debate and vote that way…as long as we continue to have net neutrality. In order for a democracy to function at its best, though, we need to be well informed. Our standards of journalism have taken a dive and our reliable, in depth news sources have become scarce with sensationalism and infotainment taking over. Aside from public radio and TV, the media sources are in a few wealthy hands. This is one enemy of Actual Democracy that concerns me.