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“On this beautiful planet, in this astonishing universe, the drama of human survival is the ultimate issue of our time and our impending extinction the ultimate environmental pressure. The outcome depends on whether our collective goodwill towards life on Earth can draw back into control the blinkered self indulgence of the age.”
“Memo for a Saner World” by Bob Brown (2004).

"The world is as delicate and as complicated as a spider's web. If you touch one thread you send shudders running through all the other threads. We are not just touching the web, we are tearing great holes in it."
Gerald Durrell. Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust.

Dedication.
This website is dedicated to seeing the implications of living on a borderless planet, beyond religion and politics, with a diminishing Natural World. It is the thesis of this website that the LifeSupport of all living things and Human survival now depends on many more Humans becoming much more “ecologically aware” of what we may do about our enormous, common “ecological predicament”.

For Human survival education and governance must be designated in terms of Ecology, Environment and EcoLiteracy. Development economics is counter-survival. Jobs for today may mean no jobs for tomorrow.

The complex thing about ecological awareness is that one may be aware - but not able to act in an ecologically correct way. This is the nature of the ecological predicament.

This website is in service of the one organisation which reaches across borders by acting to give You and Me a future. The United Nations is the largest organisation on earth, doing things, researching and collecting information regarding people, health, food and environment, which we use each and every day for our survival.

In his paper on Transformative Education, O’Sullivan says, “I believe that educational vision in the 21st Century must be accomplished within a planetary context. We live on a planet not on a globe.” And in his book “Education in a Period of Historical Decline” O’Sullivan says, “Truly, we live in a momentous time of survival and we are in desperate need of a broad historical system of interpretation to grasp our present situation.”

Again he reminds us, “We are living in a period that appears to be the end of something of the order of magnitude that we do not yet fully realize.” The word survive, coming from the French verb vivre (to live), he says “connotes a sense of how to live in a time of death, disaster or ending of times.”

For Human survival planetary climate is everything. In his book “The Weather Makers” Tim Flannery reminds us that the UN World Meteorological Organization co-ordinates climate and weather collecting data in 185 countries and monitors 10,000 land based observation stations, 7000 ship-based ones and 10 satellites. This is just one of many actions the UN performs for us. Do we understand that the UN is You and Me?

Acting as individual citizens in a borderless world is as futile as trying to stop water in a river from crossing a border! In today's world of drugs, disease, terrorism and war - acting as global citizens is what matters. Lines on maps and concrete walls as borders mean nothing to the elements of Air, Water and Soil. Could nuclear radiation from Chernobyl stop at the Russian border and not drift into neighbouring countries?

Do we realize that through the UN we are “global citizens” of a borderless world? Do we understand that the LifeSupport of Air, Water and Soil is a borderless Natural World on which interconnected atoms of Plants, Animals and Humans depend together?

This website is “citizen reporting” - a term used by John Pilger in conversation with the ABC’s (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Romona Koval, to describe the kind of news dispersal we will rely on in an increasingly monopolized global media.

This website hopes to be a kind of "Chomsky for Children" and a "Capra for Kids" by explaining difficult concepts.

Adults who read Noam Chomsky’s “Power and Terror” would surely want their children to understand the hidden paradoxes of both power and terror. All is not what we think it is. Adults who read Fritjof Capra’s “Web of Life” and “ Hidden Connections” would want their children to understand that everyone's survival depends on the LifeSupport of the PLanet.

We’re all kids in our knowledge and understanding - when it comes to Ecological Awareness of our global Ecological Predicament.

The LifeSupport of You and Me.
The Natural World of Air, Water and Soil is both the LifeSupport and The Web of You and Me. Maintaining this fragile LifeSupport is the key to peace, in order to save future generations from “the scourge of war”.

In this website, Earth’s largest organisation, the United Nations, is asked to implement this ecological concept of survival, by bringing such understanding in words to the Preamble of its Charter. (LINK)

A new Preamble will bring global citizens the urgency of a new millennium change in emphasis. We must change our conceptual understandings of survival from borders to a borderless earth, from war to earth’s ecology, from a Security Council to an Environment Council.

An ecological approach to humanity’s problems will create a completely new perspective for global citizens, by turning them into planetary citizens.

This new Preamble, with a focus on the LifeSupport of You and Me, will provide a new benchmark for the UN, wishing to reform itself for its own survival. It would help the UN to configure its thinking along a nuanced, new institutional referent for decision-making in the 21st century.

Today, when we have become so powerful that we are now “The Weather Makers” and have a geological period named after ourselves (Anthropocene), we are also powerful enough to destroy ourselves by destroying the very LifeSupport of this planet.

For those who are in positions of leadership one insight stands above all others. In “survival” mode all individuals and institutions must equate Security with the safety of the LifeSupport. New millennium leadership is nothing if not Earth-Literate leadership.

The central point of this website is that the UN is an already existing instrument of global governance in a world where the problems which beset us are now borderless. When John F. Kennedy said “Dag Hammarskjold is dead but the UN lives”, he was saying that the UN was an entity which lasted longer than temporary governments and individuals.

This website says that the UN is more than an organisation - it is an Organism - but only because of the organic participation of its grassroots “global citizens” who are none other than You and Me.

National Government or Borderless Government?
In looking at Security and our Planetary future, it is not national citizenship which matters much more but, a global citizenship which is Aware of the borderless nature of Human, Animal and Plant dependence on Air, Water and Soil.

All together, these six interconnected things form the interdependent “web of life” of the Natural World.

Only by the creation of a “critical mass” of people who are able to understand the relationship between Humans,Plants&Animals and their interdependence on Air,Water&Soil (the LifeSupport) - can we create an Aware “global brain” for civilization’s continued survival.

A critical mass of Planetary consciousness is now required to survive the next half century. But how do we achieve this?

Neither religion nor technology can give us back the Natural World, once it has been polluted or made extinct. Religion and technology may make us feel temporarily better or safer - but they cannot return the Natural World once extinction has taken its toll, nor can they completely restore and “fix” up a damaged LifeSupport.

As holes appear in the “last chapter of the industrial era”, ( www.pirm.org.nz ), the future becomes more and more dependent on the remaining Natural World. As humans start to disagree over what remains of the Natural World, and as we start to realize that manmade borders give us false security - our understanding of our interdependence on the borderless nature of Air, Water and Soil will be critical.

Global Governance in a diminishing world.
In a world where the LIfeSupport is both borderless and diminishing in quality, only interdependent global governance will be of any use. Here we are extremely fortunate. We have infrastructure in place and an existing organization, which has both experience and current capacity for global governance. Such an organisation is already in place today, able to create a “critical mass” for change - but people are not Aware of this on a large enough scale.

This organisation is the United Nations. Much criticized and often dismissed by short term superpowers, it has longer staying power than temporary governments. Scorned for being weak, it is achieving remarkable things around the world. But even though many have heard of it - most men, women and children really do not know what its diverse goals, capacities and achievements are.

Towering above the morass of today’s reality, yet having its feet firmly grounded in grassroots, through its many land level organs and agencies, the United Nations is a multidimensional, ideal Utopian Institution. By the number of nations clinging to its sanity, the reach and spread of its global citizenship has risen to remarkable proportions.

But - do we all realize that we are all involuntarily, part of this largest organisation on Earth? Do we realize that we are global citizens by virtue of our national membership of the United Nations?

Bringing it to life, revitalizing it and making it relevant to all individuals is possible. This website will suggest that by creating a new benchmark referent, to reflect the centrality of the LifeSupport as a Precursor to peace - in the Preamble to the United Nations Charter - the focus of the United Nations is taken off War and placed instead on the prime condition for Peace - The LifeSupport of the Natural World.

Earlier in 2005 His Excellency Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the UN said, “The U.N. cannot expect to survive into the 21st century unless ordinary people throughout the world feel that it does something for them -- helping to protect them against conflict (both civil and international), but also against poverty, hunger, disease and the erosion of their natural environment.”

Education for Survival means Ecological Awareness.
One of the world’s greatest intellectuals, perhaps the greatest intellectual today, Noam Chomsky is a linguist and what he does best is talk - widely, deeply, clearly and factually. He says this about Awareness:
"Education is just the beginning ….there’s a whole series of things which have to happen, and they begin with awareness; you don't do anything without awareness, obviously - you don’t do anything unless you’re aware that there’s something that ought to be done, so that’s the beginning almost by definition. But ….It’s not, first you become aware, then you do things; you become aware through doing things." Noam Chomsky.

In reading many books before attempting to develop this website and during study for a post graduate degree I found that : Today most of society’s intellectual discourse, even critically literate discourse, is conducted outside an ecological framework. Most often without any hint of ecological reference to the fact that we are completely dependent on the LifeSupport of Air, Water & Soil for our existence.

In his book “The Unconscious Civilization” John Ralston Saul calls our civilization just that - Unconscious and unaware. But is he talking about “ecological awareness”? A serious, philosophical discourse is conducted without any discussion of deeply relevant ecological issues.

This Website calls consciousness being Ecologically Aware. Any kind of conscious decision or discussion today must engage ecological perspectives. But most often it doesn’t.

We are almost totally anthropocentric in our discourse. Ecological talk is depressing - it causes a glaze to spread over most eyes.

Why? Because we have become conditioned to talking deeply about shallow things. Because we are accustomed to the social small talk of consumerism. Because we love human centered activity. And because that’s how the profit makers must have it for their survival.

Economics for profit does not promote Ecological Awareness.

When Awareness about conserving the LifeSupport of You and Me needs to become a survival mechanism, then Awareness is also a matter of global governance and Global Education must be designated in terms of Ecology, Environment and EcoLiteracy, because:

"In the end we will conserve only what we love and we will love only what we understand."
Baba Dioum. African Ecologist.

Site direction. To maintain the unity and direction of this site and to fulfill its intellectual purpose, certain books in particular have inspired the thinking and writing behind the web-of-unme. Many other books, articles, videos, websites and individuals have assisted and will be linked, referenced and quoted for those who enter the web-of-unme.

Some of the books are Fritjof Capra’s “The Hidden Connections”, (pub. 2002 it is an extension of his book “Web of Life”), Tim Flannery’s “The Weather Makers” (pub. 2005) and “Understanding Power - The Indispensable Chomsky” (pub. 2002)edited by Peter R. Mitchell and John Schofield. Capra and Flannery guide understanding of the physical and spiritual complexity of the Natural World. Chomsky throws light on highly complicated forms of manipulative power and the paradox of terror - both of which eventually threaten the survival of that Natural World.

Bob Brown’s “Memo for A Saner World” (pub. 2004) touched a complex nerve. It is the story of a whole life given to the protection of the LifeSupport and to the bequeathing of all land assets belonging to that life, to future generations through the Australian Bush Heritage Fund- as you will see when you read the last chapter of this book. Perhaps we will be inspired to do the same.

When nuclear physicist Dr. Ron Nielsen wrote “The Little Green Handbook” (pub 2005) I felt lucky to have found this remarkable little reference book. It is full of facts and figures you would otherwise not find easily.

All books dealing with our fragile future have vital information in them. But unless you have the money and the time it is information tragically locked up and lost unless read and heard by You and Me.

This lack of time and money to become Aware of the LifeSupport of You and Me, is stopping the formation of a “critical mass” for action to change governments and to force governments to change direction.

Are we apathetic because we don’t know or because we don’t care? I would like to believe it’s because we don’t know enough to care enough - about our huge “ecological predicament”. Technology and religion cannot fix this predicament.

The fix we need is more in our hearts and heads. This is why we need to become more ecologically aware.

“Ecological Awareness” of our borderless “Ecological Predicament” is the biggest challenge humans face today - cooperation for controlling climate change, conservation of species and our own survival depends on it.

Janet Sealy.