Open Letters

Apr

2022

A dialogue with Pope Francis on Peace and Sustainable Development

Pope Francis re-proposed a few days ago what He already had proposed in His Encyclical Letter “All Brothers”[1] of 2020:“With the money spent on weapons and other military expenditures, let us establish a global fund that can finally put an end to hunger and favour development in the most impoverished countries, so that their citizens will not resort to violent or illusory solutions, or have to leave their countries in order to seek a more dignified life.”How could we disagree on such a proposition of the Holy Father?

In the quoted Encyclical Letter, He also talks about the dramatic lack of big projects, widely shared world-wide, to inspire and motivate people to work for the development of the whole humankind. He also talks about the philosophy of expendability, according to which certain parts of humanity are seen as expendable, when they are not productive, such as the elderly, and the lack of children, which causes an aging population, and a culturally decaying society.

Considering all of these negative conditions together, the current age, characterized by a multiple global crisis, could appear hopeless. Namely, the complain about lack of children sounds as a desperate call, when the widely shared sentiment is that there are “too many humans on planet Earth”.

Yet, we think that Francis’s calls are right and fully worth of support, though they are not properly sustained by concrete programs and strategies. The real question should be: how to assure proper sustainability to human growth, in the 21^st Century?

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Mar

2022

Why civilian space development is key today, for us humans, to overcome the global crisis

The crisis of Cuba in 1962 – mentioned in the Lord Rees’s book “Our Final Hour” (2003) — was the event that brought us closest to a nuclear war. According to the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., one of Kennedy’s counselors, at that time: “This was not only the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. It was the most dangerous moment in human history. Never before had two contending powers possessed between them the technical capacity to blow up the world. Fortunately, Kennedy and Khrushchev were leaders of restraint and sobriety; otherwise, we probably wouldn’t be here today.”

I believe this is the main argument to respond to the nowadays under-estimators of the current war in Ukraine, and its effects on global economy, space policy and destiny of civilization at large. In addition to the Schlesinger Jr.’s statement, nowadays we have several leaders which are all but restraint and sober. First of all the new Zar, grown up in the paranoid environment of KGB. Yet we have other recent cases, in the western world too. Moving beyond the obvious condemn of the absurd invasion of Ukraine, suffocating any possibility for people to decide whether they want to be Ukrainian or Russian, the danger for civilization is extremely high, indeed. The availability of thousands of nuclear warheads in the hand of psychopathic leaders makes a WWIII extremely much more dangerous than the previous world wars, the very likely trigger of a global civilization implosion.

Relying on wars to solve conflicts and to relaunch economy through destruction was always a wrong way, yet nowadays is a total nonsense. It is not superfluous to restate this, since we perfectly know that, among Earthers, many secretely plauded to Covid19 pandemic as a “natural” agent to reduce population – the thought runs back to Nicolò Machiavelli, who plauded the pest, as a “purge” of society. The absurdity of such concept should be clear: a pandemic kills both bad and good people, useless and useful, including many which could offer solutions to thousands of shared small and big problems. And now such fellows of Armageddon, publicly sad for thousands deaths and million refugees, secretely plaud to the war, as another knight of Apocalypse, to “moderate” human growth.

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Oct

2021

A Planet B strategy, taking care of Planet A!

This is the right time to embark on grand epochal projects, fit to change our world and our future.
The Green Transition may only be useful if accompanied by a powerful development plan.
The internet society and digital money may require much more energy, not less.
The Green Transition alone has a high cost, and may produce new social inequalities.
Capable sustainable development is “off our planet”: kick-off civilian space development.

With reference to our analysis of the status of Civilization[1], updated in the 3^rd SRI World Congress 2021, we propose that the issue of the Climate Change should be approached within a widescale and holistic view, also addressing all SDGs Sustainable Development Goals and identifying other interrelated threats to civilization: the Covid19 Pandemics, the global economic crisis, raw materials and energy crisis, water scarcity, the growth of conflicts and refugees, the pollution of the seas, the loss of biodiversity and, in more general terms, the enormous social effects of such Armageddon. Specifically, the Coronavirus pandemics have quickly demonstrated how eight billion citizens, constrained within the narrow spaces of our mother planet, may see dramatically decreasing freedom to move, socialize, work together, love and have children. What we need is a Global Sustainability Initiative and a Global Sustainability Agreement to identify both threats and opportunities what would allow the global community to accomplish these tasks.

The “Green Transition” as undertaken by several Countries, will be useful, in obtaining a grace period, and allowing the development of strategies to combat the multiple crisis and retake the path of growth and evolution. Yet this incidental process is exactly the point: the Green Transition, alone, in being focused mainly on passive actions, does not represent an active strategy. It can be helpful, but only if sided and supported by a powerful development plan. Continue reading →