A Letter to Al Gore ...

It is only common sense that a growing population consumes more energy, which in turn increases the CO2 emission and intensifies the green-house effect. Needless to say, a growing ‹overpopulation› accelerates this process. So in order to win the struggle against global warming, we must stop our global population growth through an effective program of global birth control and bring our planetary population count back into balance with nature, which for a planet the size of Earth is about 0.5 billion or more precisely 529 million (see ‹Stirbt unser blauer Planet?› by Heinz Haber and ‹Social Issues› at us.figu.org). Such a measure, by the way, would also reduce all other problems we currently face – whether social, economic or environmental – to a size that we could deal with far more effectively. To accomplish this, however, it is necessary to raise public awareness – via lectures and other forms of public communication – with respect to the cause of this problem, the effects it has on our planet and humanity and how we can resolve it. Education and insight, combined with the appropriate measures and legislation, are undoubtedly the best means of resolving this and other problems we face as a global humanity. For this reason, it would be desirable, if courses dealing with environmental and other human-related problems were made a standard part of every school curriculum. Moreover, schools in general should be opened to the public for lifelong learning, so that people of all ages and from all walks of life can learn to effectively deal with the problems they face in life. Putting their knowledge into practice however, especially on a global basis, would require an appropriate system of government to carry out the will of the people, such as a worldwide system of direct democracy, through which all people from all nations of the world could vote directly on issues that affect them and the rest of humanity in global referendums. An effective system of global democracy in turn would require yet another form of human progress, namely lasting world peace, which contrary to common belief could indeed be achieved, if universal values that unite humanity and promote world peace were taught in our schools and demonstrated in our social behavior, and also with the help of a multinational peace-fighting corps composed of several million peace-fighters from all nations of the world, whose task it would be to secure and safeguard world peace.