INSIGHTS
Who Owns the World?
After 50 years of failed environmental diplomacy, we need to ask the obvious question: “Who owns the world?”
Half a century ago, 122 countries met in Stockholm for the first UN Conference on the Environment. Last June, the Swedish government hosted an anniversary summit with no political clout or ambition. This was emblematic of the failure of 50 years of environmental diplomacy due to the fact that our leaders have consistently avoided the central question – that of justice.
This essay by Right Livelihood Executive Director Ole von Uexkull originally appeared in the May 25, 2022, issue of the German magazine Die ZEIT. The article has been translated into English and edited for clarity by the author.
In his opening speech, the Swedish Prime Minister chose clear words: “We know that our resources, both renewable and non-renewable, are limited,” said Olof Palme, who had invited the world to Stockholm for the first UN Conference on the Environment. “These simple facts inevitably raise the question of equality, of more equal distribution between countries and within countries.” For the industrialised regions of the world, Palme demanded a “serious cutdown on luxury production.”
There were inklings of a new era in the air. Fifty-four ministers had come to the Swedish capital, and hundreds of journalists from all over the world had been accredited for the “United Nations Conference on the Human Environment”. Before leaving for Stockholm, the Austrian UN Secretary-General had set the bar for what was to be achieved during those days in the Swedish capital. Future generations, said Kurt Waldheim, would look back on the conference as “a turning point in history, when a major correction was introduced in the process of the industrial revolution.”
That was in June 1972. In June this year, the Swedish government has yet again invited the world under UN auspices. Stockholm+50 was the name of the event, a title meant to remind the world of the birth of environmental diplomacy half a century ago – and about Sweden’s role in it. But this time, there was no sign of any significant vision or ambition. In the bureaucratic lingo of UN diplomacy, the summit had been planned “as a contribution to the environmental dimension of sustainable development to accelerate the implementation of commitments in the context of the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development, including a sustainable recovery from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.” A sense of urgency, of a political turning point? Not here.
Put the two together – the sense of a new dawn in 1972 and the lack of vision today – and it becomes clear: environmental diplomacy is at rock bottom. But why?
When environmentalism entered the dominant global consciousness, it was a spectacular challenge to the post-war success story of strong material growth in many places. The year 1972 played a key role in this development. Ten years earlier, the American biologist Rachel Carson had published her famous Silent Spring, the first popular environmental book. The connection she described between agricultural pesticide use and the death of songbirds made the general public aware for the very first time that nature was not at our infinite disposal.
The most important event in the run-up to the Stockholm conference was the March 1972 publication of the report “The Limits to Growth“, commissioned by the Club of Rome, which had been founded 4 years earlier. The young systems researchers Dennis and Donella Meadows – he, an economist, and she, an environmental scientist – had calculated the development of world population, food production, industrialisation, pollution and resource consumption using a computer model with their research group at MIT. Their results showed that Carson’s finding about the effects of pesticides on the ecosystem was not an isolated case: Earth was a closed system and humanity was on its way to overstepping its limits within less than a hundred years with catastrophic consequences.
But even though the world was very much aware of these revolutionary findings in June 1972, the Stockholm meeting did not achieve a breakthrough on par with its preparatory rhetoric. A decent final declaration was achieved and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) was founded. But like so many of its successor conferences, Stockholm was marked by disputes about realpolitik. For despite Palme’s inaugural truth-telling, the rich countries showed little willingness to share. The poorer nations, in turn – with Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi as their most prominent representative at the conference – feared that rich countries would deny them their badly needed material progress, under the guise of their newfound environmental awareness.
Under the impression of the American aerial bombings and the use of defoliants in Vietnam, there was also a dispute about the condemnation of “ecocide” – which remains an unfulfilled demand of the environmental movement until this day. And the Eastern bloc stayed away from the conference altogether in a dispute over the participation of East Germany.
And so, until the end of the East-West confrontation almost 20 years later, progress in environmental policy was mainly made at the national level. It was not until the world met in Rio in 1992 for the “Earth Summit” that there was a new spirit of optimism. The destruction of forests, the hole in the ozone layer and the fear for desertification had made the limits to growth more obvious than ever before, and there was considerable public pressure for an economic order more strongly oriented towards environmental protection. This time, some of the most important truth-telling was delivered by a 12-year-old girl. In her speech to the delegates, the Canadian Severn Suzuki demanded that those who had more than enough needed to share with others.
Conferences and “blah, blah, blah”
The Rio Conference adopted documents that still shape international environmental policy today, including the Framework Convention on Climate Change, which led to the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. But once again, there was no change to the economic system. Because in the meantime, another project had gained strength. The neoliberal economic order, tested by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher at the national level in the 1980s, set out for its international triumph. The yardstick here was not system boundaries and sharing, but eternal growth, unleashed through the elimination of regulatory restrictions.
This ideology became a resounding success. With the WTO founded in 1995 and hundreds of bilateral trade agreements, a global economic and trade regime was created that had everything the sustainability agenda lacked: enforceable rules, strong institutions and, not least, a supportive global elite. The globalisation of the 1990s became a project of excess, defying natural boundaries by continuing its destructive growth into the last intact ecological spaces of the planet.
International environmental and climate protection, on the other hand, remained subordinate, as the failed climate conferences in Johannesburg (2002) and Copenhagen (2009) demonstrated – in grotesque disproportion to the desperately acute need for regulation. Even the 2015 Paris Agreement was only made possible by foregoing any binding effect from the outset. Following the motto of Rio, “Think globally, act locally,” Right Livelihood Laureate Hermann Scheer therefore characterised the tortuous procedure of the climate conferences as “Talk globally, postpone nationally.” Greta Thunberg, another Right Livelihood Laureate, later spoke of the “blah, blah, blah” at such conferences.
Both express the feeling that the things that should be addressed – and decided – at the international climate and environment conferences will not even be put on the agenda. It seems that international environmental diplomacy has forfeited the interpretive space cautiously opened up in 1972 in favour of a description of reality that is not its own. A phrase like Palme’s dictum of a “more equal distribution” and “cutdown on luxury production” would no longer find a place at environmental conferences today. And that is the core of the problem.
The insights of 1972 should have completely changed our understanding of the world, but they are largely ignored until this day. Their historical significance is no less profound than the Copernican revolution. Before 1972, man was smaller than nature. Nature was out there, it was hostile and boundless, and man held his own against it. After 1972, it is not nature that is our enemy, but we ourselves have become our own enemy if we do not respect its limits.
This change of perspective turns many former certainties of human existence upside down, right up to the Western concept of property, which is still considered sacrosanct. According to the famous theory of private property by the English philosopher John Locke, the appropriation of land was justified by the fact that the owner “mixed” his labour with the natural resource of land. But even the liberal Locke, in his 1689 Second Treatise of Government, formulated an important proviso. For the appropriation to be legitimate, he demands that there has to be “enough, and as good, left in common for others” – a condition that is no longer fulfilled on a limited planet.
The concept of homo economicus, depicting man as a self-interested being optimising his own benefit with cold rationality, also falls short in a limited world – and has been proven wrong in the real world over and over again. The Senegalese economist and public intellectual Felwine Sarr for instance points to cooperative economic models in African societies that do not know the concept of unlimited growth. “Homo africanus,” he writes in his book Afrotopia, “is not a homo economicus in the strict sense.”
But how can it be that Western economic thinking, which originated in the context of a supposedly unlimited world, during the reclamation and enclosure of agricultural land in rural England and the open frontier of North American colonisation, still holds us captive today, despite its obvious fallacies?
The demands have become unmistakable.
The answer to this question has the shape of a champagne glass and is rooted in economic interests. The height of the glass describes the global distribution of property – the poorest at the bottom, the very rich at the top. The width of the glass, in turn, indicates CO₂ emissions – from the tiny narrow stem of the lowest groups to a slight widening halfway up to a sweeping width only in the upper tenth. According to Oxfam, the richest 10 per cent of the world’s population are responsible for half of the emissions, while the poorest 50 per cent are only responsible for 10 per cent. The richest 1 per cent cause twice as many emissions as the poorest 50 per cent of the world’s population.
The glass can be represented with many parameters – the shape is always similar. Income and resource consumption, for example, are distributed similarly to CO₂ emissions. When it comes to wealth, the injustice is even more extreme: according to the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report, the world’s 1.1 per cent dollar millionaires own almost half of global assets.
To these people, the idea of limits to growth must seem like a fatal misconception: they have been able to record the greatest material gains and multiply their wealth over the past 25 years. That is why the ecological transformation is in the interest of many, but NOT in the interest of all.
If one assumes that political influence increases significantly the further we go up the wealth distribution, then it becomes clear why there is so little political interest to question the growth narrative. After all, the wealthy part of humanity is least affected by climate and environmental crises and has better means to protect themselves and their loved ones. During the Covid crisis, the ten richest men in the world were able to double their wealth, while 99 percent of the world’s population is now economically worse off than before the crisis.
The myth of infinite growth is still the most important justification for the continuation of this radically unequal distribution. As long as the losers of unequal distribution see only themselves as responsible for their own material advancement, they will not perceive the excessive consumption of resources by others as a problem. If, on the other hand, the realisation prevails that the cake is in fact limited, then Palme’s demand for equality is the logical consequence.
That should have been the seismic shift in the way we understood the world in 1972: On a finite planet, extremely unequal control over its vital resources can never be legitimate. Indian lawyer and Right Livelihood Laureate Ritwick Dutta, who represents the poorest of the poor in the struggle against the takeover of their land by the coal and mining industries, calls this concept simply “ecological democracy”. For even more than the right to vote in elections, control over local resources determines the fate of these people. Just as the democracy movement fought for the equal distribution of political rights, today we must fight for people‘s equitable control of vital natural resources.
This could not have been expected from the anniversary conference in Stockholm. But the demands have become unmistakable. The Indian peasant protests last year, the resistance of the Yanomami Indigenous people against overexploitation of the Amazon, the Ugandan campaign against the EACOP pipeline: millions of people worldwide are fighting for climate and environmental justice. Fifty years after the world community invoked the “One Earth” in Stockholm, our best hope for its future rests on them.
Courtesy of Right Livelihood
Why is the Trump Administration trying to kill a small space science institute in New York City? Explanation begins with Galileo’s method of scientific inquiry and ends with the role of special interest money in the United States government.
By James Hansen
Galileo improved the telescope, allowing clearer observations of the planets and the Sun. Galileo differed from his peers, as he was unafraid to challenge authority. He claimed that the world should be understood based on observations, and he spoke directly to the public. He obtained philanthropic support for his observations and openly described the conclusion that Earth was not the center of the solar system – Earth revolved around the Sun.
Implications of Galileo’s approach rattled the establishment. Galileo was opposed not only by the Catholic Church, but by many professors who did not fully understand Galileo’s work and were reluctant to support a heretical viewpoint. At his Inquisition, Galileo recanted his views, to save his life. He could wait for history to vindicate him; the Scientific Revolution was beginning.
Science research and the primacy of observations were well advanced by October 1957 when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first human-made Earth satellite. The United States responded by forming NASA in 1958 and supporting universities to develop space scientists. I benefitted from that support and, as a 25-year-old post-doc in February 1967, drove with great expectations from Iowa City to New York City, pulling over only once for a few hours of sleep, my destination being the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) on the edge of the Columbia University campus.
GISS attracted scientists from around the world to carry out space science research, as described in The Universe on a Scratch Pad.[1] Patrick Thaddeus built a microwave telescope on the roof of GISS, which he used to discover numerous molecules in space, survey the molecular Milky Way, and help revolutionize understanding of the interstellar medium and star formation. In this citadel of research, I worked with Henk van de Hulst, the world-leading expert on light scattering, and led a team that developed an instrument for the Pioneer mission to Venus to investigate the veil of Venus, which shrouds Earth’s nearest neighbor. We measured the properties of Venus aerosols – fine airborne particles that turned out to be sulfuric acid – more precisely in the 1970s than aerosols on Earth are measured today.
What is the justification for such a small laboratory? Robert Jastrow, the first GISS director, described the “GISS formula” for research in cooperation with nearby universities, including Columbia, New York University, and the City University of New York. The formula put equal emphasis on observations – the foundation of science – and theory. The small added cost of location in an urban setting was justified by the gain from working with top-notch academia, as well as the proximity of national media to help promulgate scientific progress. Indeed, the GISS formula actually limited costs by employing only a small number of government scientists, along with students, post-docs, and university research associates.
The GISS formula has other merits: independent thinking and ability to rapidly change research focus. For example, as changes of Earth’s ozone layer emerged in the 1970s, it became clear that our home planet was more interesting and important than other planets. I began compiling Earth observations, including global temperature, and focused my research group on development of a global model for computer simulation of climate change on Earth.
In 1982, soon after I was appointed to succeed Jastrow as GISS director, I was instructed to move GISS to the main Goddard center, which housed about 10,000 employees in suburban Maryland. The GISS formula would have been lost. Thus, we refused to go, but we survived in New York with reduced government funding. In this setting, we investigated climate change with equal emphasis on (1) paleoclimate, the history of climate change, (2) global climate modeling, and (3) observations of ongoing climate change. Based on this multi-faceted research approach, I could testify to Congress in 1988 with a high degree of confidence that the world had entered a period of global warming driven by human-made changes of Earth’s atmosphere.
In 1989, Congress approved a multi-billion-dollar NASA “Mission to Planet Earth” to study global change. We GISS scientists proposed that the mission include small satellites for crucial climate measurements, especially of atmospheric aerosols and their effect on clouds. Aerosols increase reflection of sunlight to space, thus causing global cooling that partly offsets warming from increasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Unfortunately, our proposal was viewed by NASA management as a threat to their larger satellites,[2] rather than a complement.
We persisted in advocacy of small satellites for decades, which resulted in renewed efforts to move GISS to Maryland. Again, GISS survived with further reduction of support, but with our perspective and intellectual integrity intact. Finally, after we had carried out additional research and aircraft measurements, we proposed a small satellite aerosol mission in cooperation with Pete Wordon, director of NASA Ames Research Center. When this proposal was blocked by the director of Goddard Space Flight Center, I retired from NASA.
In 2013, I initiated a broad research program, Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions, based entirely on public and philanthropic support, with cooperation of Prof. Jeff Sachs and Columbia University. Our research, based on paleoclimate, climate modeling, and modern observations, has produced results that challenge the climate dogma promulgated by the United Nations. The UN climate assessment (by IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and the UN policy approach (defined by the Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement) are each so seriously flawed that they pose a threat to the future of young people and future generations.
The crucial science issue is climate sensitivity, which is a measure of global climate change in response to an imposed climate “forcing” such as a change of atmospheric greenhouse gases or aerosols. The common measure of climate sensitivity is the equilibrium (eventual) global warming in response to doubled atmospheric CO2 (carbon dioxide). IPCC’s best estimate of climate sensitivity (3 degrees Celsius, which is 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) is based mainly on climate models, which have many uncertainties. Clouds are especially difficult to model because even a small cloud change affects Earth’s reflectivity and energy balance. Thus, climate models, by themselves, cannot define climate sensitivity accurately.
Recent paleoclimate studies, especially improved data on global temperature during the last ice age[3] and on longer time scales,[4] show with more than 99 percent confidence that climate sensitivity is greater than IPCC’s best estimate. Another, independent, indication of climate sensitivity is provided by satellite observations of a change in the amount of sunlight reflected by Earth. Earth has become darker during the past 25 years, as reflection of sunlight by clouds diminished. This cloud change provides an empirical measure of cloud feedback, that is, the response of clouds to global warming. This amplifying cloud feedback confirms the high climate sensitivity derived from paleoclimate studies.
Explanation[5] of how IPCC underestimated climate sensitivity involves their reliance on climate models and their assumption that climate forcing by aerosols changed little in 1970-2005, as global temperature rose. However, even though global emissions of sulfur dioxide gas – the main cause of aerosol formation – were nearly constant in 1970-2005, emissions spread globally into more pristine air where emissions cause a larger climate forcing. Thus, aerosols had a cooling effect during 1970-2005. The upshot is that the average of climate models used by IPCC understated aerosol cooling and required a climate sensitivity of only 3 degrees Celsius to match observed warming. With more realistic aerosol cooling, larger climate sensitivity is required.
Thus, all three methods of analysis – paleoclimate, satellite observations, and climate modeling – indicate a climate sensitivity substantially higher than IPCC’s best estimate of 3 degrees Celsius; our best estimate is 4.5 degrees Celsius.[5] The practical impact of this high climate sensitivity and aerosol forcing will be enormous. Aerosol cooling constrained global warming in 1970-2005, but since 2005 aerosols have been on decline globally, especially in China, Europe and the United States and since 2020 aerosols from ships have decreased due to regulations on the sulfur content of ship fuel. The result is acceleration of global warming. The global warming rate in the past two decades is nearly double the rate in 1970-2005.
Confirmation of our analysis is provided by precise monitoring of Earth’s energy imbalance – the difference between absorbed solar radiation and heat radiation emitted to space. Because of the change from increasing aerosols in 1970-2005 to decreasing aerosols, Earth’s energy imbalance – which is the drive for global warming – has doubled since 2005, from 0.6 to 1.2 watts per square meter averaged over Earth’s surface. The latter value is equal to the energy in 800,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day (220 per second), with 90 percent of this excess energy going into the ocean. Because of the massive size of the ocean, warming is gradual but relentless. In the absence of effective policy intervention, regional climate extremes will grow in coming decades, and there will be effects that are practically irreversible, such as rising sea level.
The climate threat is no reason to despair. However, to keep favorable climate we must account for world energy needs. Fossil fuels, the main source of gases that cause global warming, are an amazing energy source: a gallon of gasoline contains energy equal to that in 400 hours of labor by an adult. Fossil fuels have raised living standards in much of the world and provide 80 percent of the world’s energy today. And energy demand is rising. Billions of people still strive to escape poverty. Fossil fuels are convenient and they will remain affordable as long as they are not required to pay their cost to society caused by their effects on human health and climate change.
Economists agree[6] that the main policy needed to phase down fossil fuel emissions is a gradually rising carbon fee.[7] With these funds distributed uniformly to the public, most low- and middle-income people receive more in the carbon dividend than they pay in increased energy prices, thus tending to lock in the policy. Governments also need to support modern nuclear power, which is available 24/7 to complement intermittent renewable energy. However, these policies, despite their low cost, are not well pursued in the United States by either major political party.
Our government’s failure to address climate change effectively and the present administration’s desire to exterminate a small science laboratory in New York City have a common explanation. I describe in Sophie’s Planet[8] interactions with the government that expose a decades-long, confounding, failure to take sensible, inexpensive, actions that would address energy needs and climate change. The problem is traced to special financial interests, especially the fossil fuel industry and the military-industrial complex, in affecting policies.
Corruption was recognized as a threat by our nation’s founders, who provided us tools to fight it. Fossil fuel executives fund both parties to assure that a simple, honest, carbon fee is avoided, and they chortle at environmentalists who believe that subsidizing renewable energies will lead to phase out of fossil fuels. Militarism[9] tends to create permanent enemies and inhibit the global cooperation needed to address climate change. Soft power emanating from a democracy that functions as it is intended would be far more effective. It is possible to fix our democracy, I argue in Sophie’s Planet, whether via a third party that takes no money from special interests or via bi-partisan legislation that constrains special interests, as Senator John McCain once advocated.
However, President Trump’s attempt to close climate laboratories and halt collection of climate data is a new threat that warrants special attention. No executive order can destroy knowledge of the scientific method; in the worst case, institutes using the GISS formula can be reconstructed later. The greater threat is to science data, the essential fuel to keep the science flame burning. Even the Pope did not stop Vatican astronomers from observing the planets and thinking about their motions. Especially important are satellite data[10] for Earth’s radiation balance and ocean measurements by deep-diving Argo floats,[11] with continuous measurements of both data sources required for absolute calibration of Earth’s energy imbalance.[12]
Science itself is under threat today, in a way that I thought was no longer possible. Scientists who see and understand the threat must speak out. The next 5-10 years are crucial for policy decisions to define a course that provides energy to raise global living standards, while allowing climate policies that cool the planet enough to avoid locking in irreversible effects such as shutdown of the ocean’s overturning circulation and large sea level rise.[13] These objectives require knowledge of ongoing climate change and the drives that cause change. We scientists must stand up against the forces of ignorance, fight for the collection of data, and work with young people to help them find a path to a healthy climate that benefits all humanity.
[1] The Universe on a Scratchpad, NASA film of the early 1960s.
[2] Hansen J Battlestar Galactica, Chapter 31 in Sophie’s Planet, 10 draft chapters
[3] Seltzer AM et al. Widespread six degrees Celsius cooling on land during the Last Glacial Maximum. Nature 593, 228-32, 2021
[4] Hansen J, Sato M, Simon L et al. “Global warming in the pipeline,” Oxford Open Clim. Chan. 3(1), 2023, doi.org/10.1093/oxfclm/kgad008
[5] Hansen JE, Kharecha P, Sato M et al. Global warming has accelerated: are the United Nations and the public well-informed? Environ.: Sci. Pol. Sustain. Devel. 67(1), 6–44, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1080/00139157.2025.2434494
[6] Discussion of the Economists’ Statement is at Hansen J Student leadership on climate solutions, 31 July 2020
[7] Hansen JE The eyes of climate change history are on Biden, Boston Globe, 8 August 2022
[8] Hansen J Sophie’s Planet, preface and several draft chapters of book to be published by Bloomsbury.
[9] Wertheim S. How Many Wars Is America Fighting? The Gravel Institute, last access 6 July 2025
[10] Loeb NG et al. Satellite and ocean data reveal marked increase in Earth’s heating rate, Geophys Res Lett 48 e2021GL093047, 2021
[11] von Schuckmann K et al., Heat stored in the Earth system: where does the energy go? Earth System Science Data 12, 2013-41, 2020
[12] Mauritsen T, Tsushima Y, Meyssignac B et al. Earth’s energy imbalance more than doubled in recent decades. AGU Advances 6, e2024AV001636, 2025
[13] Hansen J, Sato M, Hearty P et al. Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2 C global warming is highly dangerous. Atmos Chem Phys 16, 3761-812, 2016
About James Hansen
James Edward Hansen (born March 29, 1941) is an American climatologist. He is an adjunct professor directing the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is best known for his research in climatology, his 1988 Congressional testimony on climate change that helped raise broad awareness of global warming, and his advocacy of action to avoid dangerous climate change. In recent years, he has become a climate activist to mitigate the effects of global warming, on a few occasions leading to his arrest.
Hansen also proposed an alternative approach of global warming, where the 0.7°C global mean temperature increase of the last 100 years can essentially be explained by the effect of greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide (such as methane).
By 2045, there will be virtually nothing a human can do that a machine cannot to better for a tiny fraction of the cost. A robot that has a lifetime cost of $10,000, works 22 hours per day, and lasts 5 years would have an hourly marginal cost of just 25 cents. And when robots are building all the robots, they will cost a lot less than $10,000.
The marginal cost of labor will plummet toward zero as adoption of humanoid robots powered by increasingly capable AI explodes across every virtually industry worldwide. Humans simply will not be able to compete.
Join Adam Dorr, RethinkX Director of Research as he relays his latest insight on the inevitable and painful truth of the coming disruption of the human labor engine by AI and humanoid robots…
Visit the RethinkX Website for more groundbreaking insights: https://www.rethinkx.com
Courtesy of Pressenza
To confront the barrage of executive orders and undiplomatic policies from the U.S. government, the opposition is focusing on restoring institutions to their pre-Trump state—without recognizing that it was precisely those institutions that created the conditions for the current crisis.
The democracy they claim to defend was largely formal: it worked for some while leaving millions marginalized. For decades, no serious action was taken to stop the relentless concentration of wealth, the decline in living standards, or the dehumanizing effects of unchecked technological development. These issues remain unaddressed.
Now, the new administration is threatening to cut federal funding for public radio and television, accusing these outlets of being too “leftist” or “woke.”
But perhaps even more revealing than the threat itself is the reaction of public media institutions. WNYC in New York, for example, has leveraged this threat primarily as a fundraising opportunity, urging listeners to donate out of fear rather than conviction.
This response exposes a fundamental contradiction. These institutions speak of “democracy” and “public service,” yet they are unable—or unwilling—to mount a truly democratic response. Why aren’t they calling on people to stand up for public goods? Why not organize a large-scale campaign, like a concert in Central Park, to advocate for a federal public funding system that remains independent of presidential politics? New York has plenty of artists ready to contribute and stand up for others.
The question becomes clear:
Will institutions like WNYC and NPR help advance genuine democracy, or will they gradually transform into privatized versions of non-profit entities? If we want democracy, we need active public participation. If we accept privatization, we merely need people’s money.
Today, there is no visible leadership in our so-called democratic institutions that is mobilizing the population to build a new democratic system—one that addresses economic redistribution and real public participation. This isn’t just about public broadcasting. What future awaits Social Security, Medicare, the U.S. Postal Service, public libraries, and other essential public services?
These institutions cannot be privatized. No modern society can develop without deepening democracy, improving standards of living, and ensuring collective well-being. A society governed primarily by self-interest ultimately undermines itself.
So today, my call is to WNYC and NPR: Please stop trying to merely save yourselves in a collapsing system. Instead, help move the country forward. Mobilize people. Inspire engagement. Become a force in building a new, inclusive society for all.
The World Unites for a New Story.
Progress has a new home. Mobilized is transforming the event experience into a highly productive catalyst and social action network;...
Perspective Shift through Scientific Upgrade
Howard Bloom unveils his latest book, “The Case of the Sexual Cosmos: Everything You Know About Nature is Wrong.” Howard...
Now it’s easier to make more informed decisions
Sarah Savory, systems thinker, regenerative land steward, and daughter of Allan Savory, offers a unique window into the emotional, ecological,...
Can Media heal the traumas it helped to create?
Building a Trauma-Restoring Media System Matthew Green, author of The Resonant World on Substack and a longtime climate journalist with...
Arts and activism: Perfect together.
Re-imagining media and the arts as a public service: Michael Masucci, co-director of the pioneering media arts collective EZTV, offers an...
Building Infrastructure for Planetary Regeneration:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing...
Smarter Cities for Efficiency and Quality of Life
As a smart(er) cities researcher–and the host of What’s the Future for Smart Cities Podcast, Hungarian-born Australian, Fanni Melles is...
Main Street, not Wall Street. How can independent retailers and businesses thrive at a time of turbulence.
Main Street, not Wall Street. How can independent retailers and businesses thrive at a time of turbulence. Interviewing Jen Risley...
Preventative Cardiologist Dr. Michael Ozner
Leading preventative cardiologist Dr. Michael Ozner has committed his life to eradicating heart disease. As the author of “The...
Ecological Design and Systems Thinking
The death of “sustainability” and the rise of “Regenerative”. Promoting ethical models for agriculture, design, and economics. Learn about Systems-Thinking,...
How to feed the world without killing the planet
Adam Dorr, Director of Research at RethinkX and co-author of Brighter, offers an incredible opportunity to explore how exponential technologies...
Dr. Ozner’s on a quest to eradicate heart disease. So far, he’s right on track!
It is with great pleasure and honor that this recent conversation is shared and amplified. Michael Ozner, MD, FACC, FAHA,...
How to design the ecologically sensible city (or community)
How to design the ecologically-sensible sustainable city:Sustainability has become the most prevalent challenge in policy and business – the world...
Smarter cities for healthier coexistence
Corey Gray of the Smart Cities Council provides the opportunity to explore the leading edge of urban innovation, data-driven infrastructure,...
How to design the ecologically-sensible sustainable city:
How to design the ecologically-sensible sustainable city: Tom Bosschaert, founder and director of Except Integrated Sustainability, is a rare opportunity...