Terra City

Terra City; Envisioning World Government

By John Taylor; 2007 July 04

National governments are binge alcoholics on a nationalistic bender. Soon they will be forced to admit their own impotence and surrender their abused sovereignty to a higher power, a world polity. In spite of accelerating crises and even lately a sea change in public opinion, they stubbornly refuse to take a step to reverse climate change, reduce corruption, eliminate regional conflict or address the many clear and present dangers that threaten us all. For decades the impotence of nationalism has been evident, but, drunk on power, world leaders persistently refuse to recognize that the day of absolute sovereignty is done.

We all know that, but how often do we even try to imagine something better? That is what I will try to do today.

A democratic world government would be history's first government without borders, a dominion that extends from sea to sea, from mountain to mountain. Its sole sovereign bounds would be the planet's only real, non-imaginary borders, that is, the natural barriers formed by the oceans, the seven seas that divide the world's land masses into five habitable continents.

How would it work? Here is how it might go.

World citizens on each of the earth's inhabited continents would elect from among themselves a continental parliament.

Because of their large populations, it would seem fair to treat China and India as independent continents. That would make seven continents, comprising India, China, Europe, which of course is the current leader in continental unification, North and South America, Australia (including the Philippines, Oceania and the South Seas) and Africa. Each of these parliamentary bodies would elect from among themselves a number proportionate to their subject's population of deputies and representatives to go to the world parliament.

Where should this universal, borderless government be situated? What should be Terra's capitol city?

It seems to me that, to begin with at least, there is only one logical candidate, only one truly neutral ground, Antarctica. A parliament built on our planet's only virtually uninhabited continent would come together on true international territory. There would be no question of displacing a native population. And because of the harsh conditions outside, everyone there would perforce abide in a protected, artificial environment, isolated both literally and figuratively from the passions, cultural baggage and conflicting loyalties that grow and fester in inhabited regions.

Terra's first capitol city, call it Terra City for now, would be located at or near the South Pole. Its inhabitants' only exposure to the natural environment would be an observatory looking out over the coldest and most barren territory on earth. Here our world representatives would live under admittedly Spartan conditions. Living in small, modular living pods, it would be difficult to distract these first leaders without borders from their task at hand, doing what Buckminster Fuller called "world-around" planning. The fact that they were plunked into the middle of nowhere would mean that they would soon be yearning to get it all over with and go home as quickly as possible.

This would be a good thing.

Such psychology was used by at least one boss who wanted shorter, pithier meetings. To do this, he abolished chairs from the conference room. This forced his staff to keep it as brief as possible so as to be able to get back to their desks and sit down. Power, like the weight of our body, is a heavy burden that is best born briefly.

Plus, the severe climate of Antarctica would have a bracing effect on the hearts as well as the minds of our representatives. Without the luxuries, perks and bribes that becloud the vision, explode the ideals and compromise the integrity of leaders in benign environments, these men and women would breathe the heady air of freedom, perhaps for the first time. By accepting an altered, curtailed, luxury-free daily routine, sleeping in a small bunk and subsisting on a doctor-prescribed, high fruit and vegetable diet of locally grown, hydroponic produce, inhabitants would see for the first time how to be a citizen without borders, to be connected with the true needs of our planet.

The first thing human governance must do is avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. I am thinking of what happened at the first Earth Summit in the early 1990's when the leader of the American Empire barefacedly refused to "put the American way of life up for negotiation." By placing the world's nerve center at the South Pole it would be understood by every visitor that indeed our way of life is the problem. Our way of life can and must be improved, both by technical advances and improvements in our thinking, if we are ever seriously to address climate change. Our lifestyle is not only wasteful, especially that of the wealthy and privileged, it is also primitive and base, unworthy of the nobility of a human being. This in fact must be the first thing to put onto the chopping block.

The private sphere in what should be called "mis-developed lands" is bloated, overheated and overgrown, while the public thing has shrunk. The aboriginal way is the way of the future, if we are to survive. The entire town planning and architecture of Terra City would be designed to counteract the shrinking of the public thing, and to show how to grow into the huge power vacuum left by the collapse of nationalism. The strict discipline of polar living would prepare world parliamentarians to adopt world housing and transportation standards based on the practical lessons and technical advances worked out at Terra City.