Hans Joachim Schellnhuber’s dream of a world government and geocybernetic control.
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber
“While the borders of nation states have become almost irrelevant to global economic players (for instance) after the end of the Cold War, human and natural rights are still confined and dominated by thousands of frontiers. This situation can only be overcome by giving up a good deal of national sovereignty and establishing a true regime of global governance. As a prerequisite, the rather symbolic parts and pieces of the UN system must be transformed into powerful supra-national institutions: allons corriger le futur!” (Hans Joachim Schellnhuber)
Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber is one of the top players within the faction of climate research viewing man as responsible for climate changes. He currently leads the Potsdam Institute in Berlin and has served as an advisor to the EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Schellnhuber has been given wide powers and is involved in numerous contexts. In addition to his advisory role to the political elite, he has been part of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Climate Change, the European Climate Foundation and editor of several scientific journals. Along with David Wasdell and others from the British Meridian Programme, he developed the ideas of ”Tipping Points” in the climate (Apollo Gaia Project), which predicted that small temperature increases could lead to disastrous consequences, for example by the tundra thawing and releasing large amounts of methane gas. Since then he has been involved in the World Bank report, Turn Down the Heat – Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided, which discussed the consequences of a mean global warming of 4 degrees Celsius.
Schellnhuber, however, was not only an advocate for the Tipping Points theory, but he also proposes large-scale solutions to the climate problem. This is, as the opening quotation illustrates, of ideas of a World Government and the associated global governance of environment and development. This is also illustrated by other statements by Schellnhuber. In order to curb the “climate crisis” he wants to establish a Constitution for the planet based on the UN Charter, a Global Council, and a Planetary Court. He sees this as a sophisticated version of the idea of a World Government. He also suggests that a number of national parliamentarians should be replaced by Global Ombudsmen. These should speak for future generations and stand as a counterweight to national interests. This has been criticized for being undemocratic practices. For, who chooses the ombudsmen?
Geocybernetic control
How, then, shall this global governance be conducted? Schellnhuber referred in an article from 1998 to something he calls Geocybernetics. This is a form of geoengineering and is a great plan to ”create an acceptable and long-term interacting evolution (Coevolution) between nature and humanity.” The article describes that when the modeling of the ecosphere is complete, there will be a variety of sophisticated methods available for global control of Environment and Development.
This is not just about developing methods for controlling soil systems and hubris-reeking ideas about, for example, preventing future ice ages by pumping small amounts of ”designer gases” into the atmosphere in order to balance the system, but also about human aspects. How many people can the ecosphere support? How should mankind best be distributed in urban and rural areas? One example of geocybernetic fantasies about the management of people is FuturICT, funded by EU and George Soros. That is, however, a separate post and will be addressed later.
Implementing these plans requires, according to Schellnhuber, that nations give up large parts of their sovereignty. He refers to borders now being irrelevant to the global economic players. It is this global elite which Schellnhuber ultimately works for, despite his talk of a democratic society which protects the interests of the majority rather than of the rich minority. In actual fact, this rich minority have been highly involved in the whole process from the beginning. This is done by funding radical movements which then demand the very change the elite wants to achieve. Schellnhuber himself has been involved in the European Climate Foundation, created by Big Business, which funds numerous environmental organisations (and even creates new ones) in order to implement the Foundation’s long-term goals.
Today, the concepts have been developed even further. The Potsdam Institute is currently working closely with other institutions in a network by the name Planetary Boundaries Research Network. Here Johan Rockström and Stockholm Resilience Centre play important roles. Through Rockström nine planetary boundaries which may not to be transgressed were identified in 2008. It was claimed that if they were, global disasters may ensue such as drought, sea level rises and pandemics. Schellnhuber was one of the signatories to the article where the results were presented and then published in Nature. It all also touches on the concept which David Wasdell at Meridian Programme developed before the G8 summit in Glenaegles 2005. The problems could not be solved with the current system but required stronger global institutions. Getting support for this eventually required more alarming warnings than what the IPCC could deliver. This is also something which Anders Wijkman and the Club of Rome have long since embraced and towards which the World Bank report came as if to order.