Frequently Asked Questions
About UNME and the Natural World

1. What is our common “ecological predicament”?
2. What does it mean to be living on a “borderless Planet”?
3. Is the Natural World and LifeSupport diminishing and being reduced?
4. What is threatening the LifeSupport of You and Me (unme)?
5. What is Ecology and how does it relate to Economics?
6. How can we describe our “approach to” and our “perspective of” life?
7. What are EcoLiteracy and the conundrum of Awareness?
8. What’s changed with the forces shaping our understanding of the world?
    - the voice of civil society (UNME)
    - the world’s media
9. What impact does media and reporting have on our Ecological Awareness?
10. What impact does this have on the LifeSupport of UNME?
11. What else can we do to raise Ecological Awareness of our huge Ecological Predicament?
12. What are the web-of-unme and the Utopian Vortical Web?

1. What is our common “ecological predicament”?
Answer: (For Kids and Grown-ups) The Natural World is the interconnected world of Humans, Animals and Plants. All living beings are inter-dependent on each other, as part-organisms of one whole. Why is this? Because all living things are equally dependent on the LifeSupport of Air, Water and Soil.

"The atoms we take in from the air to become part of our bodies were once parts of other people, of trees, of worms, of snakes and spiders. The water we drink in Australia was once part of the Amazon jungle, the forests of Canada and the oceans of the world."
David Suzuki at the Australian Museum...

The interdependent chain of organisms and elements is physicist Fritjof Capra’s “web of life” and it makes up the Natural World. There are no borders and compartments in the web. The Natural World transcends and does not understand manmade borders. The “scourge of war” happens because we cannot see that all living beings are interdependent threads - in a very delicate global web.

This inter-dependency is our “ecological predicament”. We are first dependent on the LifeSupport as organisms - then, we are human and independent. Not the other way around.

This website calls the elements of Air, Water & Soil the LifeSupport. This LifeSupport keeps You and Me and all living things alive and is borderless. Beggar and Superpower are equally dependent on this Life Support, which cannot understand “homeland security” and which respects no national borders.

Neither religion nor technology can control the LifeSupport of Air, Water & Soil. Tsunamis, earthquakes and hurricanes have shown us that technology and religion can only help us cope with the effects of Natural World catastrophes. They cannot take the place of the LifeSupport.

Humans, Plants and Animals are completely dependent on clean Air, Water & Soil. This dependency, and interdependency, is our common “ecological predicament”.

It is a predicament because we cannot control what other countries do to their part of the LifeSupport and the global commons. Fish do not know borders, bees do not know which crops are genetically modified and birds cross borders without knowing they have bird flu.

Today survival is dependent on Cooperation and Ecological Awareness. Kofi Anan, Secretary General of the United Nations

2. What does it mean to be living on a “borderless Planet”?
Answer: (For Kids and Grown-ups). National Borders are manmade lines on maps, which Air, Water & Soil do not understand. The nuclear accident at Chernobyl, in Russia, proved that contaminated Air did not understand that there was a “border” between Russia and Finland.

When the accident happened, the wind blew radioactive air over land and water, right across manmade borders - reindeer in distant countries were found to have eaten contaminated grass. So manmade lines (national borders), mean nothing to Air, Water & Soil.

The implications of living on a borderless planet are that both the dangers of man made threats of terrorism, disease, organized crime and catastrophes of the Natural World do not understand borders. Neither does the Air, Water and Soil of the LifeSupport.

The survival of the LifeSupport is more important for You and Me than any thing else on Earth. The relationship between all these borderless interdependent factors is an “ecological predicament” for You and Me. This relationship also forms the ecology of our “planetary citizenship”.

Borderless Air, Water and Soil are the basis for survival on one planet. Without them there can be no security and no peace for rich people and for poor people alike. The LifeSupport of the planet is the Precursor to Peace.

To save succeeding generations “from the scourge of war” which has been the purpose of the United Nations for 60 years, we must first save the Natural World. Since Humans cannot exist without Air, Water and Soil, saving the LifeSupport is a pre-requisite for (comes before) Peace-making.

3. Is the Natural World and LifeSupport diminishing and being reduced?
Answer. (For Kids and Grown-ups) Yes, the quality and the quantity of this Natural World are both very rapidly becoming reduced. Across the borderless Planet, the Air, Water and Soil, which is the LifeSupport of “You and Me” (unme), is diminishing.

Humans are increasing their spread very rapidly and in their wake the loss of Animal and Plant Species is enormous. The entire family of big cats, (lions, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, jaguars and lynxs), are being pushed off the Planet because there is now “nowhere for them to roam”. The “balance” for them has been tipped toward extinction. Our children will not see this wildlife in the real.

What humans need to understand is that in an interconnected Natural World, the extinction of Plants and Animals is enough to threaten the very survival of Humans. In Nature “balance” is delicate. It is little understood and slow to evolve.

The ancient forests are the lungs of the world. They support “ecologies” which provide medicines for animals and humans. They have taken thousands of years to evolve to their present state. Humans are removing these ecologies (the lungs and resources for future generations) for short term jobs and simply out of greed and unawareness. Take a stand for the ancient forests www.wilderness.org.au and find out why the survival of You and Me depends on wild-ness.

“A minute is a very brief moment of time. For the world’s forests there are too many minutes…As the 1990s began, the world’s forests were disappearing at the rate of 80 acres (32hectares) a minute. Each year, 40 million to 50 million acres (16-20hectares) were being wiped out. That’s an area more than six times the size of Maryland, an area about the size of the state of Washington. Minutes quickly add up to years. Years add up to decades. Between 1970 and 1990, the Earth lost more than 500 million acres (220 million hectares) of forests.
Jenny Tesar. “Shrinking Forests”

Due to enormous exploitation to satisfy the “market”, and simply due to population increase, the LifeSupport of Air, Water & Soil is under total threat.
(If you are looking for more facts look at the World Wildlife Fund Report, www.wwf.org The State of the Planet by David Attenborough www.abc.net & the David Suzuki Foundation www.davidsuzuki.org )

Living on a borderless Planet with a diminishing Natural World means “seeing” everything from an ecological perspective. It means becoming “ecologically aware” of our common “ecological predicament”.

4. What is threatening the LifeSupport of You and Me (unme)?
Answer. (For Kids) Many things as well as “population” and “exploitation” -disease, development, greed, technology, ‘state, group and individual terrorism’, Wars, climate change and the Natural World of tsunamis, quakes and hurricanes - all are responsible for the threat to the LifeSupport of You and Me (unme).

Try to think of other things that are a threat to the LifeSupport of You and Me (unme).

(For Grown-ups) The threat is complex and comes from everywhere. Most especially, You and Me being Ecologically Unaware, is a threat to the survival of our LifeSupport and our children’s future. Sometimes, we are aware but fail or hesitate to act in support of our knowledge.

In what is a terrible paradox for humans, in his book “Hegemony or Survival” Noam Chomsky quotes Bertrand Russell as equating peace with a lifeless earth, “ ‘After ages during which the earth produced harmless trilobites and butterflies, evolution progressed to the point at which it has generated Neros, Ghengis Khans and Hitlers. This, however, I believe is a passing nightmare; in time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life, and peace will return’.”

Read Tim Flannery’s “The Weather Makers” to see how we have created our ecological predicament. Read also “The 2030 Spike” by Colin Mason to see how urgent the threat is to leaving a safe world for our children. But at the same time - inform yourself of how we may turn the situation around and then act to inform and caution others.

Faced with tiger extinction, India pioneered the use of sanctuaries to try to save the Tiger. Says Time magazine, “India, with its neighbour Nepal, is leading the way in the next big phase in cat conservation: building links to turn isolated preserves into one continuous habitat. Scientists call this approach landscape conservation, and many believe it’s the best hope for saving the world’s tiger population, which, despite decades of effort, remains in peril: only 5000 to 7000 animals survive in the wild.” (Time. August 23, 2003)

“ The world’s “charismatic megafauna” on the verge of extinction - pandas, tigers, rhinos, bears, elephants poached for their ivory, gorillas subject to being wiped out by civil war; the world’s wilderness areas and wildlife preserves too small and disconnected to prevent extinction; amphibians, birds, and ten thousand “lesser” species a year, all disappearing as a result of accelerating human overpopulation; inadequate, and in some cases, insincere wildlife protection strategies, and lack of funds to adequately protect the few remaining wild ecosystems and to prevent poaching. Worldwide destruction of the last of the ancient forests. Marine mammals endangered by inane and expensive experiments.” George Sessions. Preface “Deep Ecology for the 21st Century”.

Once the balance is tipped for the Natural World, conservation and restoration are almost impossible. This too is our “ecological predicament”.

5. What is Ecology and how does it relate to Economics?
Answer: (For Kids and Grown-ups)
Ecology is the delicate interdependent relationship between Humans, Plants and Animals. All living beings on this Planet are equally interconnected with each other BY their complete and utter dependence on clean Air, Water and Soil. The web of interconnection between the LifeSupport of Air, Water and Soil and Humans, Animals and Plants which depend on that LifeSupport, forms the habitat and Ecology of the Planet.

Economics is the management and use of the Planet’s habitat and resources. Unfortunately, today’s drive for profit and money, mean that the Planet’s finite habitat and resources are being used up and destroyed faster than they can be regenerated. The managers of You and Me are not acting sustainably and wisely.

David Suzuki clearly describes the difference:

“The words ecology and economics derive from the same Greek word, oikos, meaning household or home. So ecology (logos meaning study) is the study of home, and economics (nomics meaning management) is home management. These two fields should be companion disciplines, and yet with few exceptions there is little communication between them.” (“Inventing the Future” p113).

Protecting the Planet’s Ecology is protecting the habitat (home) of You and Me. When children at Arunda Primary School in Canberra asked Dr David Suzuki what more they could do to protect the environment other than recycling, propagating plants, keeping worm farms and planting trees, he said to them, “Don’t just plant trees, create habitat”. Create Habitat were such powerful words that staff and students created habitat by planting a forest of 4000 trees and a butterfly garden of herbs.

Sadly, Ecology has suffered as the poor cousin of Economics. Nomics or management of and exploitation of Earth’s resources, has become more important than the study of preservation Earth’s habitat and home of plants and animals. This has resulted in millions of managers and economists around the world and not enough ecologists. The habitat of You and Me is being “managed” into extinction! Instead of creating habitat we are surgically destroying it using very powerful technology.

“Create Habitat” means preserving the delicate Ecology of the Planet - the Web of Life. Our common “ecological predicament” is that we cannot survive outside the web of life. Science fiction may try, but as yet it is just “fiction”. Ecology, EcoLiteracy and Environment today should be the central focus of Education - not Economics.

Let’s listen to the experts and get job generating ideas from them. Physicist and writer, philosopher and inspiration of The Centre for EcoLiteracy, Fritjof Capra gives us the core areas of Ecology:
“Specifically, there are six principles of ecology that are critical to sustaining life: networks, cycles, solar energy, partnership, diversity and dynamic balance… “These principles are directly relevant to our health and well-being.”
Fritjof Capra. “The Hidden Connection” 2002.

This website feels that two areas where Ecology and Economics will have to agree to act together are habitat restoration and the creation of renewable energy. Jobs should be generated here. Tell your local politician this.

6. How can we describe our “approach to” and our “perspective of” life?
Answer: (For Kids) There are three approaches in our attitude to our lives and our habitat (the environment).

• The Egocentric, or self-interested, approach,
• the Homocentric, or human-centered, approach and
• the Ecocentric, or “ecologically aware” of our LifeSupport, approach.

The approach or perspective we must teach ourselves to have, in order to survive on this Planet, is the Ecocentric or “ecologically aware” approach - that is if “You and Me” want to keep our LifeSupport of Air, Water and Soil in a good enough condition to keep us alive.

(For Grown-ups) It’s instructive and satisfying to be able to discover more about oneself. It’s even more satisfying and instructive to be able to steer oneself in the direction of a new paradigm. Once we make the distinction between the way we “approach” life now and the way we wish to “trend” in order to improve life for oneself and more importantly for our children (future generations), it is empowering to feel that we can make the change.

And let’s admit, it is a “feelgood” feeling to know that we are doing the right thing by future generations. Alan Miller’s tables are an instrument of change for us, to help us do the right thing.

In his book “The Gaia Connections: An Introduction to Ecology, Ecoethics and Economics” (pages 30-33) Alan Miller incorporates ecofeminist Carolyn Merchant’s listing of assumptions made by humans in regard to the natural world.

He presents three tables, which lay out the three different ways in which humans look upon their destiny and on society. The tables show why humans place constraints on their behaviour, their views on responsibilities and duties, and finally the tables show the metaphysical base of each of the three perspectives and the main ‘exponents’ (individuals in history) of each “type” or class of perspective.

To use Miller’s words, “Although we currently function in virtually all of our relationships under the first and second approaches, we must at least be informed by the alternative worldview reflected in the third mode.” It is instructive enough to read his summary of them.

The “major historical tendencies in the human-nature relationship” are as follows:

•   1. The self-interest or egocentric approach - the dominant Western worldview - where reality is always seen as how we human beings can maintain our separateness and dominance over the rest of creation (see Table 2.1)
•   2. The homocentric approach, which stresses an essentially human-centered but still socially responsible way of living (see Table 2.2)
•   3. The ecocentric approach, which emphasizes that although human beings do have special characteristics distinguishing and to some degree setting them apart from the other animals, they are nevertheless interdependently involved with the global ecosystem (see Table 2.3)

(Link to Tables in Alan Miller, “The Gaia Connections” chapter 2)

The perspective or approach we adopt for our survival into the new millennium is critical.

The Ecocentric approach is typified by James Lovelock who called Earth “Gaia” after the Greek goddess. He thought of Earth as one whole living being which could change itself (evolve) to survive the worst onslaughts of human activity. Earth would survive long after humans had gone.

Carbon dioxide levels (in the carbon cycle) have been maintained delicately balanced between biosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere and atmosphere in the periods between the ice ages and there is great danger in disturbing this ‘system’ or cycle.

In a matter of two and a half centuries humans have deeply disturbed this cycle by the destruction of the world’s forests and the burning of earth’s finite fossil fuels. The Earth will survive this disruption but plants, animals and humans face hard times and extinction.

Consciousness of our fragility as a species on this Planet, will decide whether we survive the next 100 years safely.

The economic imperative for money and profit is driven by our egocentric and homocentric approach. But it is meaningless if we have no clean Air, Water or Soil which is our real LifeSupport.

Economics must be subsumed by the ecological imperative - or we will not survive as a species. Education must now be defined as Ecology, EcoLiteracy and Environment - or we will not have the ecological awareness to steer ourselves out of our ecological predicament.

Change will only occur when a “critical mass” of ecological awareness at grassroots (street) level forces change to occur at leader-level. “You and Me” must force our leaders to become earth-literate. Read this article on Earth-Literate Leaders. (LINK)

7. What are EcoLiteracy and the conundrum of Awareness?
Answer:(For Kids and Grown ups) Put simply EcoLiteracy is Ecological Awareness.

Being able to sort out and tell the difference between “information which will protect us” and “information which will harm us” in the future - in everything we read and hear and see - is the start of critical literacy.

When this Awareness and knowledge relates to the environment or the habitat and LifeSupport of You and Me, it becomes EcoLiteracy.

Sustainable survival on our finite planet is only possible through EcoLiteracy.
Fritjof Capra’s book about “The Hidden Connections” builds upon his book “The Web Of Life”, and in it he says: “… sustainability implies that the first step in the endeavour to build sustainable communities, must be to become ‘ecologically literate’, …”

“Ecological Awareness” (EcoLiteracy) is now the most needed substance in the world. Why?

Because right NOW we stand “at a great crossroads” - as we decide which fork in the road to go down. As the world’s reserves of petroleum run out, should we take the corporate owned nuclear option? Or, should we be “ecologically aware”, and take the renewable energy option fork of the road and be our own masters?

Grown ups (who make decisions at work, at leisure and at the ballot box) need EcoLiteracy and great will power and Ecological Awareness to understand what Tim Flannery means in his book “The Weather Makers”, when he says:

“The power technologies I have discussed place humanity at a great crossroads. Trillions of dollars will need to be invested to make the transition to the carbon-free economy and, once a certain path of investment is embarked upon, it will gather such momentum that it will be difficult to change direction.

So what might life be like if we choose one over the other? In the hydrogen and nuclear economies the production of power is likely to be centralized, which would mean the survival of the big power corporations. Pursuing wind and solar technologies, on the other hand, opens the possibility that people will generate most of their own power, transport fuel and even water (by condensing it from the air).

If we follow this second path, we will have opened a door to a world the likes of which have not been seen since the days of James Watt, when a single fuel powered transport, industrial and domestic needs alike, the big difference being that the fuel will be generated not by large corporations, but by every one of us.”
Tim Flannery, “The Weather Makers”. 2005.

The conundrum of Awareness is: It is not that we don’t care to know more about our LifeSupport and the issues surrounding it. It is more that we are not aware enough, to care enough, to know more.

The forces shaping our understanding of the world are pervasive and persuasive advertising by those who wish to profit from “manufacturing consent” - how Noam Chomsky expresses it.

On a borderless planet with a diminishing Natural World, are we too rich, too poor, too tired or too apathetic to know more about what should guide our decisions? The more we understand the connections, the more we will care and the more EcoLiterate we will become.

EcoLiteracy = better chances of survival for our children.

8. What’s changed with the forces shaping our understanding of the world?

• the voice of civil society (UNME)
• the world’s media

Answer (For Kids). The voice of civil society has become at once stronger and weaker. Networks of human connection through the technology of communication (internet, mobile phones, TV etc.) have become very powerful.

But the voice of civil society has also become weaker through the loss of the “public commons” or privatization of energy, water, education and most importantly communication media.

Most of today’s world media does not speak for You and Me (unme) - it speaks for corporations (banks, multinational companies, superstores) which are trying to sell things to You and Me.

To do this selling, these corporations must make you think like them, with them and for them. Any “commercial” media’s goal is to sell its goods to its listeners and watchers. Being aware of this helps us to watch out for the “manipulation of our minds”.

Becoming aware is also a way of becoming clever enough to see when we are being told lies; for example, do we really need to buy another new toy or another game?

It soon becomes a subconsciously addictive and fantastic game, to see if we can figure out when we must believe what we are being told and when we must question, and perhaps disbelieve, what we are told.

The force shaping our understanding of the world then becomes ourselves, because we are Ecologically Aware. This kind of awareness is positive skepticism.

Once we are aware of “listening to ourselves” we can become “critically literate” leaders of ourselves. From there it’s just a hop to EcoLiteracy.

(For Grown-Ups) Read the answer For Kids. Have you ever thought about whether the media you watch is “minding” you? Remember “cash for comment”? Have you watched the TV comedy “Frontline”? That will show you how it’s done!

Very few media sources today are free of commercial pressure and government pressure. Remember advertising to sell legislation - millions of taxpayer dollars spent on “information” not even debated in parliament to make it “legal”??

Even non- commercial media is subject to direct and indirect pressure from the government in power because, the government in power controls the funding of “public media”.

Governments are under the control of mega-corporations and financial institutions. Truth and trust get confused in this “environment”!

It is clear that the voice of civil society (You and Me) is being undermined in many ways. In many ways which are not clearly visible, the forces which are shaping our understanding are not always “on our side”.

Add to this the fact that many of the once publicly owned commons are being sold off to private owners (see “The Great Privatisation Grab” www.newint.org) and we can see that the voice of civil society is slowly being made less powerful because the major, “informing” forces are manipulative forces of the commercial arm.

Except for publicly owned media, (the ABC in Australia, the BBC in the UK and NBC in the US, etc.) most media no longer represents the Public (You and Me). But publicly owned media is another of the “public commons” under the threat of privatization.

In a discussion on the media (see the documentary “Manufacturing Consent”), Noam Chomsky contrasts two models: how the media ought to function (“as a counter-weight to government”) and how they do function (as the voice of corporations).

He speaks of American journalist Walter Lippmann’s description of the population as “a bewildered herd”, which had to be controlled by the “manufacture of consent” because this consent , in a democracy, cannot be achieved by force.

Chomsky says, “Recognition that control of opinion is the foundation of government, from the most despotic to the most free, goes back at least to David Hume, but a qualification should be added. It is far more important in the more free societies, where obedience cannot be maintained by the lash. It is only natural (then) that the modern institutions of thought control …propangada…should have originated in the most free societies. Britain pioneered with its Ministry of Information, which undertook ‘to direct the thought of most of the world.’” (“Hegemony or Survival” page….)

The media is surely able to direct the thought of the world!! Should 40% if it be owned by one man (Rupert Murdoch) and is this a media dictatorship? Watch “Outfoxed” and “The Corporation” available from the local videoshop.
See also Question 9.and read George Orwell’s “1984”.

(Check out the concepts of “media”, “democracy” and especially the difference between “state, group and individual terror” and why they occur - some good discussions with Noam Chomsky on these topics are to be found in “Understanding Power”, 2003 and “Power and Terror” 2004)

9. What impact does media and reporting have on our Ecological Awareness?
Answer: (For Kids) The impact of commercial media “management” to control our understanding for the purpose of selling us things, is huge. We begin to feel that we must be told what to think and do. Independent thinking is taken from us.

“Dumbing down” by media does exactly that - it makes us dumb. It either does not tell us anything or it tells us the opposite of truth. This prevents us from making “informed” decisions as we grow up. It stops us being “critically literate”.

The only media which can be trusted is publicly owned, non-commercial media - because it has nothing to sell!

(For Grown-ups) Only a conscious and Ecologically Aware civilization has the will to make changes appropriate to our survival on the planet in the new millennium. In a key article on “The Death of Investigative Journalism”, Phillip Knightly says, “In the old days the most valued thing about news was its truth. Now that has changed. An editor no longer asks whether the news is true, but whether it is interesting. If they don't find it interesting, then they don't publish it. From an ethical point of view, this is a major change.”

And, he asks, “Is the media, particularly TV, in the business of ‘the mass production of ignorance’? Is it possible that the more TV news we watch, the less we know? There is a case to answer on both counts. If it is the media's job to interpret the world for us, why has the total output of factual programs on developing countries dropped by 50 per cent in the past ten years - 50 per cent!”
Phillip Knightly.

In the book just published by geologist and oil-insider Jeremy Legget, “Half Gone Oil, Gas, Hot Air and the Global Energy Crisis” (2005) , the once teacher of petroleum engineers and consultant for oil companies now is one who believes that You and Me ought to know the truth about how we have been lulled into a sense of security about remaining oil reserves.

What he tells us is a classic example of how the truth is distorted by those who “have interests” (money tied up) in not telling the truth. First, he says, Shell’s Chairman Sir Philip Watts resigned because it was found that investors had not been told that the company had over-estimated its reserves by 20 percent.

Then, he describes how oil giant BP “viewed” and reported its reserves:
“The first hint that something might be amiss comes, as is so often the case in life, in the small print. Squinting through a lens if you have anything but perfect eyesight, you will find that the data in BP’s own report are not BP’s at all. The estimates have been compiled using “a variety of primary official sources, third party data from the OPECSecretariat”, and a few other places completely removed from BP’s headquarters in St James Square with all its accumulated research and knowledge. Think how many libraries of understanding BP must have gathered in over a century of aggressive oil exploration and production all over the world. And yet all they offer us as a guide to our own understanding of how much “proved” oil reserves there are left on the planet is a compilation of other people’s data. And much of that itself is second hand.

“After this revelation comes another. The small print continues: ‘the reserves figures shown do not necessarily meet the United States Securities and Exchange Commission definitions and guidelines for determining proved reserves, nor necessarily represent BP’s view of proved reserves by country.”

“They don’t even believe the figures they are publishing!

Referee! This is a publication used as an energy bible by researchers the world over! Students quote it as whole truth in undergraduate essays. Journalists quote it as gospel in legions of articles. They don’t insert caveats like this! Neither have they seen such caveats in earlier reports.”
Jeremy Legget. “Half Gone Oil, Gas, Hot Air and the Global Energy Crisis” (2005).

The LifeSupport of You and Me is most vulnerable to dumbing down by media and reporting.
(See essays at various sites on the white web of unme for “ecological awareness” of our “ecological predicament”).

10. What impact does this have on the LifeSupport of UNME?
Answer: (For Kids) When most of the commercial media around the world is showing bollywood, hollywood, stupid situation comedy and advertisement, then children who watch this “junk” only begin to think there is nothing else of importance to know. In fact they wouldn’t know to find out!

The effect on the LifeSupport of Air, Water & Soil is tremendous. We are then not aware of the Ecological Predicament all humans are in. Jeremy Legget has shown this in Question 9.

Watch some documentaries about really important things like what’s happening in the world of endangered animals, water conservation around the world and greenhouse treaties, like Kyoto. Try to think why we need to know more about these things. “Four Corners” on the ABC and other documentaries and discussions on these important matters are much more exciting because they are true. Truth is stranger than fiction! And that’s TRUE.

Take the case of the War in Iraq and try to think why we need to know more.

(For Grown-ups) In judging the impact of this thought control of You and Me, (by huge corporations which control governments), on the survival of the LifeSupport of the Natural World (Air, Water & Soil), we only have to look at the consumption forced on us by advertisement, supermarkets and “the market”. The effect of the juggernaut of advertising on Humans, Animals and Plants - forcing us to BUY, CONSUME, DISCARD for the profit of corporations - threatens our very survival on the Planet.

If looking for alternative energy or a hybrid car to buy it’s scandalous that the choice is so limited and that the issue is not pushed to the very front of our attention. If we are not aware that there is a problem how can our value system demand the change that is so necessary to be made.

In his gentle, sustaining style Fritjof Capra observes in his book “The Hidden Connections”:

“As this new century unfolds, there are two developments that will have major impacts on the well being and ways of life of humanity. Both have to do with networks, and both involve radically new technologies. One of these is the rise of global capitalism; the other is the creation of sustainable communities based on ecological literacy and the practice of ecodesign. Whereas global capitalism is concerned with electronic networks of financial and informational flows, ecodesign is concerned with ecological networks of energy and material flows. The goal of the global economy is to maximize the wealth and power of its elites; the goal of ecodesign is to maximize the sustainability of the web of life.”

The LifeSupport is very much in the hands of You and Me and we have it in our power to inform ourselves of what scientists are saying. Wouldn’t you rather trust a scientist - when it comes to Awareness of our LifeSupport!

Says Fritjof Capra, “The critical issue is not technology, but politics. The great challenge of the twenty-first century will be to change the value system underlying the global economy, so as to make it compatible with the demands of human dignity and ecological sustainability.” Will this happen soon enough?

11. What else can we do to raise Ecological Awareness of our huge Ecological Predicament?
This is something this website has been, and is right now through this website, working on. As they say - watch this space!

12. What are the web-of-unme and the Utopian Vortical Web?

The web-of-unme is a Utopian Vortical Web.

It is an attempt to create a vortex of ecological awareness through eco-writers, environmental magazines, Environmental NGOs and the UN.

This website is saying that the UN could be the protector of the borderless planet’s LifeSupport:

• That the UN could REFORM ITSELF by redefining SECURITY in terms of the borderless LIFESUPPORT.
• That this Ecocentric perspective would lift SECURITY above the plane of WAR, and give the United Nations new relevance outside the SECURITY COUNCIL.
• That the United Nations already has jurisprudence for a borderless environmental security through UNICEF, UNESCO, UNU, UNYA, UNIFEM, UNITAR, UNEP, WHO, plus other landlevel organs and bodies PLUS the respect and support of Environmental NGOs and nobel prize winners, scientists, writers and academics
• That the United Nations simply has to reposition itself for this paradigm shift in global direction by rewording the Preamble of the United Nations Charter to read:

“We the peoples of the planet,
Acknowledging that the borderless Natural World of Air, Water and Soil is the LifeSupport of the planet,
Agreeing that the security of this LifeSupport is the forerunner of Peace and Progress on the planet, Understanding that Humans, Animals and Plants are completely inter-dependent upon each other and upon the elements of Air, Water and Soil, and
Perceiving that all inter-dependent beings and elements are linked together in an inter-connected and unbreakable chain - which is the web of life:

Accept that the LifeSupport of the planet is common to all nations and thereby

State that the LifeSupport of the planet is the key to saving global citizens and succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”

The problem is will this happen soon enough to save Humans, Animals and Plants from the scourge of war and from extinction?

To end not only on an optimistic note but on a hopeful note, I quote from my mentor, Fritjof Capra:

“The question naturally arises: will there be enough time for this profound change of values to halt and reverse the present depletion of natural resources, extinction of species, pollution and global climate change?.......If we extrapolate current environmental trends into the future, the outlook is alarming. On the other hand, there are many signs that a significant, and perhaps decisive, number of people and institutions around the world have begun the transition to ecological sustainability.”
Fritjof Capra. “The Hidden Connections”

We can only hope that optimism isn’t misplaced.