EARTHKEEPING NEWS A NEWSLETTER OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COALITION FOR CHRISTIANITY AND ECOLOGY Volume Nine, Number Two January/February 2000 Call to Action: Create New "Thought Structures" To Protect The Planet How do we build a global community to balance the global economy? How do we evolve from the Bretton Woods system of centralized global economic management through the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and World Trade Organization, to more equitable and diversified global economics? As Milbrath points out in his book, Envisioning a Sustainable Society, we need to learn new ways of thinking. We need to learn how to dissect policy proposals for their implicit values, and examine them to see if they are the values that are really important; and to ask what other values are not being served by the proposed policy. We must study beliefs and values as a package. Believing that science is value free has the effect of delivering the control of science and technology into the hands of those holding power and wealth. We must learn to think holistically, systemically, and integratively (pp.85-87). Ralph Nader challenged each one at the WTO protest meetings to be an epicenter for organizing new global thought structures to counteract "the homogenization" of the globe by the WTO. Nader's recipe for overcoming the "rationalization of futility" of the unorganized members of civil society is to become informed, then to organize as a challenge to tyranny. Our faith communities need to acknowledge that global economics is a religious issue! We could begin in Sunday School. As Thomas Berry has pointed out, "Our children need to be prepared for their role in the fruitful functioning of the Great Earth itself, the first and greatest of all corporations. They need to learn that the managerial role in all human corporative enterprises is to enhance the functioning and meaning and value of this primary corporation of the planet on which we live. (reprinted from Spiritearth, Nov. 1999) We might hold a series of forums entitled "What's the fuss? or, Why did 40,000 people from every part of the world come together in Seattle to stop the World Trade Organization from creating its next agenda — and succeed?" Information is available on web sites of 30 NGOs, including two of the major organizers, Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch and International Forum on Globalization. The World Trade Organization web site is www.wto.org. See also books listed in the Resources column of this issue. Home     Table of Contents