THE HUMANIST CHESS PLAYER

This time I don’t feel like sharing wishes for the end-of-the-year fests. This is not an SRI Newsletter, just a personal thought I want to share.

The reason is the dreadful situation of the world these last days, or should I say in these months or years.

We are witnessing the evident proof of the profound immaturity of our civilization. We are besieged by many global crises, such as pandemics, climate changes, and economic crises, just to name the main ones. Instead of uniting our efforts to go over, the craziness is gaining momentum. The primitive practice of war –the state’s legal murdering – is expanding to the neighbors of Europe. Humanity is not driven by the best practices but by the worst ones. Political leaders complain about the lack of financial resources, but they spend 2 trillion/year on military expenditure, and that will get worse, considering the continuous rise of new wars.

But really? Will we really still allow violence as the unique means of solution for any dispute? Should we allow old imperialist strategies – already and many times condemned by history – to raise their stupid and backward head once again over the sacrosanct right of all peoples to self-determine their future and how they want to govern themselves? Now it is enough. We are sick to death of these immature leaders, we shall get rid of them everywhere.

We have other things to do, and many worthwhile projects to deal with. We cannot keep on spending our time and resources going after these primitive leaders anymore. Just think about what we could do with 2 trillion/year! In space, we could develop a cislunar economy in 10 years, just like we have gone to the Moon in 10 years almost 60 years ago. We could start building O’Neill Lagrange Cities, with simulated gravity and duly protection from space-hard radiation. To start mining the Moon and the asteroids to produce propellant in space, and further downsizing the cost of any space transport. In a few words, to accelerate civilian space development, and civil expansion into outer space. On Earth, we could eliminate plastic pollution in a few years. About climate, I am not that confident that we can really reverse any ongoing process, yet we could for sure adopt active strategies to adapt, protecting coastal regions from the possible rising of the sea level, and placing in orbit shields for chilling or mirrors to warming some regions, to contrast in turn warming or icing ages.

But no, all of the above shall remain “too much expensive”, while we are burning 2 trillion/year and thousands of precious human lives! How can you claim that I will be reasonable, smiling, and sharing my Best Wishes for the New Year??! Also, my personal thought is that I don’t make any difference between “innocent civilians” and soldiers. The soldiers are humans too. The soldiers are 20-year-old boys and girls, our children!!! They are murdered like civilians, and if and when they are back home, they will forever remember – and be mentally disturbed by — the horrors they have lived. The leaders ordering wars and terrorist actions are murderers, guilty of homicide and genocide. Such immature leaders should stay in prison, not being publicly honored and acknowledged as persons having the right to order, rule, and decide for our destiny.

I am really pissed off. I am serious, not joking.

Nothing, I say nothing, can justify killing thousands of lives, whoever they are, for any possible reason.

The only thing I can wish, for next year, is that the United Nations will make a step upward, in interpreting the general wish of the Earth’s good willing people to turn toward progress and ethical evolution. To do so, the U.N. should take more power, and start acting as a real authority, bringing undisciplined states to stop killing people and ruining economies. U.N. should also finally bring the COPUOS, its space branch, to the light, giving public speeches, outreaching about the urgent need to start expanding civilization into the geo-lunar space region, and soliciting states and privates to invest in such a very worthy epochal enterprise. At the same time, the U.N. should strongly educate world powers on general disarmament, converting all military expenditure into peace and life projects, with civilian space development in the first place.

I am sure that, should a world referendum be organized, such a position would get a large majority.

SRI, together with the NSS and almost 70 space advocacy organizations, is promoting a Space 18^th SDG to be added to the U.N. 2030 Agency. Everybody is invited to support this campaign, and our delegation at COPUOS, that will restlessly work for this purpose, in 2024.

These are my thoughts, my bitterness, my mourning for the thousands of lives brutally assassinated, and my hopes for humanity for the next year. Since I remain a sincere humanist, and I am sure that the large majority of the people of Earth do not want such butchery to continue.

Please also try to spend some joyful hours with those you love, during these reflective and worrisome days. And if you really don’t feel like celebrating, think that I am with you and I hope that we can combine our efforts to give peace and love a chance.

Ad Astra!

Adriano V. Autino, SRI CEO and Founder

There have been rumors in recent weeks, that the United Nations Secretariat was now looking beyond 2030, and that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was somewhat outdated. We don’t know if that is true, or just a speculation. If true, what does it mean? Have the United Nations realized that the 17 SDGs were an unattainable utopia, and are they preparing to move on? What we knew, before hearing such voices, was that some kind of review of the 2030 Agenda was scheduled in 2024 / 2025, to measure the achievement of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and possibly to update it, according to some relevant developments, which occurred after 2015. The need for an overhaul of the 2030 Agenda was easy to be seen, even for the most blind bureaucrat. Several historical milestones have been achieved, in 2015 and subsequent years. First of all, the new space economy revolution, boosted by the rockets’ reusability, developed by SpaceX. The space economy is nowadays the most progressive industrial segment, trying to balance, alone, the profound global crisis, which grips the world economy. Notwithstanding that, space is still stubbornly out of the 2030 Agenda. That’s the main reason motivating the Space 18^th SDG initiative, supported now by 47 space advocacy organizations^[1]. Such a proposal was already presented at COPUOS 66^th session in Vienna, last 5 of June, in a historical discourse^[2] pronounced by Karlton Johnson, on behalf of NSS, SRI, and the whole coalition of the co-promoters. The Space 18^th SDG will be presented at United Nations General Assembly 78, the 15 of September, in a hybrid panel at United Nations in New York^[[3]. There will be other announcements and news about this significant event.What we want to reflect on, today, is the actual social relevance of the 17 SDGs, and if it makes sense to maintain 2030 as a deadline for the achievement of such key socially relevant goals.Looking back some decades, the National Security Agency (US) had foreseen a very critical period from 2025 to 2030, possibly an irreversible civilization-implosive crash (I am sorry that I cannot provide any link to proper articles, yet I had commented on such a forecast in some of my newsletters). While we are approaching 2025, have those concerns lowered or increased? Considering the many symptoms that we are witnessing – pandemics, extreme climate events, enduring economic crises, and wars in the “advanced” world countries – it is easy to reply to the question. That devastating crisis is already here, some years in advance, with respect to the NSA’s prediction. Should we use Hari Seldon’s psychohistory^[4] terms, even if we don’t own his “Radiant” tools, we could say that we are very close to a “cusp”. No doubt that several crazy events are occurring, in reaction to the multiple crises. No doubt that it makes sense to interpret the current age with the tools of psychohistory, at least from a conceptual point of view. Thus, is 2030 still an important date, or should we forget the 17 SDGs and start looking beyond? My first answer is yes, definitely: 2030 is even more important than it was in 2015 when the UN 2030 Agenda was approved. Since most of the 17 SDGs are social goals, it is of paramount importance to fight for their sustainability and to underline that the only way to achieve them is to kick off a new, strong, development strategy, i.e. to accelerate civilian space development.

The European Parliament has passed (by a very narrow majority) a law to divest 20 percent of farmland in favor of restoring a “natural” environment. On the wave of panic caused by the climate crisis and suffocating plastic pollution, the European Union Parliament decided to penalize farmers – the same farmers who are currently beleaguered, finding entire crops destroyed by rampant wild boars and animals reintroduced into areas where they had long since become unsustainable by local economies.

Thinking of “restoring nature” in a super-urbanized and super-industrialized territory is like wanting to put the toothpaste back into the tube once it comes out. This would unavoidably penalize various sectors.
Particularly unfair is hitting first the very sector that provides us with food! With prices already on an upward ramp (due to post-pandemic circumstances and the current war in Ukraine), it is easy to foresee further surges in vegetable prices. Who will subsidize the “restoration of nature”? The less affluent classes will clearly find even traditional chip food unaffordable. After all, Serge Latouche had already warned us about this in his delirious little booklet on so-called “happy de-growth” (2008): “De-growth will certainly cause some social problems, but this is a problem of governments, it does not concern us.”