TC2

Terra City II; The Infrastructure of World Government

By John Taylor; 2007 July 06

Because the sky, seas, coasts and land masses of our planet do not have borders written on them, it is not surprising that national governments with their artificial divisions have proven inadequate and have in fact caused this deep, dire climate crisis -- to enumerate the crowding dangers would only depress. If enlightened world leaders firmly resolve to consult in all our interests, and do what is necessary, it would be by no means impossible not only to accommodate vast numbers of climatic refugees with a minimum of dislocation but also to reduce our collective environmental footprint to nill. If we do it right, we could actually improve the way of life even of the most wealthy.

Of course this would require measures that would have seemed extreme not long ago, including major changes in lifestyle for the individual. But surveys indicate that there is already a tentative willingness on the part of most people to make sacrifices. More problematic, though, is the need to reduce the hegemony of nationalism. Doing that would allow for an increase in the influence of local and continental governments, both of which are in a better position to deal directly with the more intractable causes of the climate crisis. Coordinating them all on the planetary level, a vigorous world government would enforce compatible standards among its continental executives.

Here is how I imagine this coming about.

A small number of far-sighted statespersons finally persuaded nationalist governments that they are structurally incompetent to manage the whirlwind they brought down upon themselves. Faced with drought, hurricanes, famine, pestilence, refugees, economic collapse, they determined to completely reverse the causes of climate change. They devised a new polity, with legal and technical standards designed from the ground up for rapid adaptation. These are the early stages of implementation.

On each continent, our new world government has laid out a continental capitol. In an essay written in early June we sketched a formula to derive a sweet spot at the center of each continent (India and China count as independent continents) where these cities can be built. For convenience we called them Primus Africa, Primus Australasia, and so forth. Since Europe is the most advanced in this respect, the European Community is the model; their negotiators and administrators were called upon to draw up plans for an accelerated unification process on every other continent. What the EC did over many decades is being fast-tracked on other continents in less than one decade. Because of the urgent need for both speed and radical infrastructural change, it was deemed expedient, unlike in Europe, to build a completely new city built on relatively empty land that has been declared continental territory.

Once the ground was broken for the Primus capitol cities, the next order of business was to lay down a high speed rail link between each continental capitol. To begin with, planners adopted a tried and tested system, the French TGV. Later on, they may replace this with faster technologies, such as evacuated, underground tubes. Where oceans separate the continents, as between America and Asia, Australasia and Asia, and Antarctica from all other continents, engineers are hard at work building tunnels, or establishing air and sea shuttles to link them as efficiently as possible. On land, these rapid TGV railway corridors cut a broad swath of Continental territory, sometimes many kilometers in width. Here optimum facilities are being erected to accommodate and assimilate the millions and even billions of environmental refugees displaced by rising sea levels. Here, rather than in concentration camps, they will build vibrant communities that will be the envy of those stuck in obsolete living structures on high ground.

Yesterday we looked at the provisional capitol where specialists, delegates and deputies from continental parliaments come together to meet, in a world capitol we called Terra City. TC is erected on neutral ground, somewhere at or near the South Pole. In Spartan living conditions under highly insulated structures, our continental deputies are already discussing problems that affect all humanity, issues that reach beyond the continental level. Their designers and builders have erected a large compound, the skeleton of a much larger Terra City soon to come.

Strange as seems at first, the South Pole is the ideal location for a world government determined to reduce our environmental footprint. The same technology that allows us to stop destroying ecosystems in habitable regions also sustains our bodies on the moon or in the cold of Antarctica. The same personal discipline, the same energy-independent technologies, such as wind turbines and solar panels, the same high density living structures are required for both challenges. In addition, it was agreed that Antarctica, because of its physical isolation from the rest of the planet, would be the safest place for a world parliament, at least in the early stages of unification. Not even the paranoid can make a persuasive case, even if some despot did stage a successful coup d'etat that plunked way out in the middle of nowhere he could do much militarily to take over other continents, each of which is far bigger and stronger than Terra City.

At the center is a large geodesic dome housing a multimedia conference center, serving as both world parliament and a world software workshop. With live A/V links to its counterparts, the seven parliaments in the continental Primus cities, this communication center, or "peace room" (a war room does the reverse of what goes on here), is the nerve center for every universal concern of humanity. Underfoot is a huge "data farm," a vast network of servers running the next generation of the Internet, known as Web 4.0. This will have all the proposed upgrades, including improved privacy and security, as well as many other innovations, including an integrated portal, home page and bank account for every living person on earth.

Around the data center, inside the same building, are residential units housing the deputies and their assistants. Radiating out from this central dome are about a dozen other domes devoted to specialized research needs. The first dome erected was devoted to science and technology. Here the representatives of world class universities were immediately set to work designing the new Primus cities, the corridors linking them, and other world infrastructure.

Let us look in order at the other ancillary domes at TC next time.