System Change (Core Ideas)

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Fridays For Future Contact Information, References, and Version Information

Contact Information
email: map@fridaysforfuture.org

References
This page, Home of FridayforFuture Workgroups, Manuals and Documents

Version Information
Draft:
Version 1:

• This is the page about general ideas of the movement Fridays For Future - how to solve the existential ecological-social crisis we face.
  
  The first thing to do is to choose the right target, aim, goal. We choose the goal of ensure how much more happy existence for all inhabitants of planet Earth.
  
  Economic growth, creating more complex technology are good all time as they convien to this goal.
  
  About ways how to reach this target we think that the report Stockholm+50 Unlocking a Better Future summarized many of them pretty well. Dozens of scientists participated in the writing of the report that includes  an adult version and a youth version (which presents the views of over 1000 young people from 91 countries).
  
  In most of cases we adopt it conclusion even though not in all. Those are the main ways in our opinion:
  
  Living in harmony with Nature:
  
  Reaching carbon neutrality enough fast for temperatue rise will not pass the treshold of 1.5 celcius degree above preindustrial level.
  
  Living within the Planetary Boundaries.
  
  The environmental footprint of humanity should not exceed the carrying capacity of the biosphere.
  
  Environmental integrity and zero loss of nature.
  
  A world without environmental offsets.
  
  Health, Well being and Communal solidarity:
  
  Growth and progress should not be measured in economic termes but but by values that matter to people, such as health, happiness, etc.,.
  
  Instead of the classification of nations as ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ based on nature-agnostic metrics, amplify examples of nations prospering harmoniously with nature.
  
  Limiting production and consumption.
  
  Prioritazing solidarity and communities.
  
  Universal healthcare and education.
  
  Make sustainable lifestyle the easy choise.
  
  Purchase function, not product.
  
  Make supply shains better for human end environment.
  
  Aline national statistics with sustainability goals.
  
  Change the selection "environment for innovation" - common sustainability principles should guide innovation.
  
  Just transition - green and decent jobs.
  
  A low-carbon life can and should be a good life – and one that is easily
  accessible to all.
  
  The health of humans is closely linked to the health of the planet: Diseases such as Ebola and COVID-19 are zoonotic, which account for over 60% of known infectious diseases and 75% of emerging infectious diseases. Climate change, envirinmental degradation drives zoonotic epidemics.
  
  International Solidarity:
  
  Global cooperation is key for collective well-being
  
  Culture of global citizenship - living as one global family.
  
  Diplomacy for collective good.
  
  Unity in adressing transboundary risk.
  
  Policies required to forge resilient and just societies go hand in hand with peace.
  
  Eliminating military weapons globaly - among others because forincrease military potential you need to increase GDP.
  
  A world where all humans are equal (not mean "the same"):
  
  Equal opportunities for access and participation.
  
  No discrimination.
  
  Increased capabilities for human welfare.
  
  Zero poverty and inequality.
  
  No one is left behinde.
  
  Redefine relationship between human and nature  from one of extraction to one of care:
  
  Integrate nature in urban areas.
  
  Protect animal welfare, include it in governance.
  
  Expand nature based education.
  
  Recognize Indigenouse knowledge and rights.
  
  Recognize the rights of Nature.
  
  Recognize Nature as Value.
  
  Human-nature connectedness should be strengthened in our social norms, value systems, and in how we live our everyday lives.
  
  Governance:
  
  Full - scale Democracy.
  
  Policy coherence for sustainability.
  
  Increase multilateralism.
  
  Increase accountability.
  
  Transformative systemic change, including making global economy sustainable.
  -------------------------------------------------
  
  2 actions seems to us more important then others:
  
  1. Create an economy where the level of consumption is the best for humans and nature - Steady State Economy.
  
  For a long time scientist tell that infinite economic growth in a close system is impossible. Evidence support this these: while while the sixth IPCC report say clearly that we can not continue to use fossil fuels at current rate, there are also significant environmental effect to other sources of energy including solar and wind.
  
  For example study shows that "Mining potentially influences 50 million km2 of Earth’s land surface, with 8% coinciding with Protected Areas, 7% with Key Biodiversity Areas, and 16% with Remaining Wilderness. Most mining areas (82%) target materials needed for renewable energy production, and areas that overlap with Protected Areas and Remaining Wilderness contain a greater density of mines (our indicator of threat severity) compared to the overlapping mining areas that target other materials"
  
  The same study says that: " Global conservation efforts are often naive to the threats posed by significant growth in renewable energies."
  
  Already now mining for this energy sources severly hurts biodiversity and human rights according to the site global whitness like it can be seen here and here.
  
  The sixth report of the IPCC says: ""Recent analyses, drawing on a range of lines of evidence, suggest that maintaining the resilience of biodiversity and ecosystem services at a global scale depends on effective and equitable conservation of approximately 30% to 50% of Earth's land, freshwater and ocean areas, including currently near-natural ecosystems."
  
  We passed the planetary boundary of Novel entities (chemical pollution introducing to much artificial chemicals) and for repair it we will need to reduce production of chemicals as can be seen here. Meaning reduce production of almost all products . Also generally the more technoogy is more sophisticated the more artificial chemicals it contain. Nature probably can not support to much "Unnaturality".
• 
  As says the World Ecobomic Forum: "over half the world’s total GDP – is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services". This means we need or use them in planified rate or expect fast collapse when they will end. In the same forum was published an article affirming this need.
• Conclusion: we will need to reduce consumption.

The health reasons for it are not less strong:

In recent years the number of deaths from obesity far outpassed the number of death from hunger.

At least third of humanity is suffering from differents diseases created by overconsumption what includes Obesity and Overweight, Sedentary lifestyle, over exposure to Ionizing and Non Ionizing Radiation, Screen addiction, Depression, Light pollution, Noise pollution, different diseases and injuries linked to car addiction, Diabethes.

All this is not choosed willingly: Someone who want to walk to work can meet problems: there is no work in walking distance, no bicycle lane neer the house and more. It is difficult to work without being exposed to radiation etc.
Stop overconsumption is possible and those are part of the proofs:

At least hulf of already existing environmental policies includes some reduction in consumption: promoting biking, walking, public transportation, regenerative agriculture, energy efficiency and more. It has been proved that those policies raised life level in many cases. Those policies in fact establish some level of consumption per capita for many goods and services.

The European bill forbiding import of deforestation-linked products is absolutely indispensable if we want to prevent disaster and it establish certain level of consumption for 14 types of products as the amount of land free from forest is limited.

When a doctor says, the best amount of carories is 2000-2500 per day, it is also part of a steady state economy - constant level of consumption per capita.

All this proves that we need such economy that are generally defined as Steady State economy. For reahing such economy those who consume to much will need to make some Degrowth, while those who consume too little should get some transmittion from those who consume too much.

There are many billionares who decide vountarily give hulf of their fortune ("the Giving Pledge"), video about minimal global wealth taxe was recntly published in the site of the World economic forum, the same forum published an article saying that when the income reach 75,000 dollars, additional raise in income did not raise life level.

So we believe we can reach a consensus about it.

2. Achieving Global peace and disarmement.

As already has been said the amount of suffering from overconsumption is huge and it was huge already at ancient times. Despite it, our economic system pushed then and is continuing to push us now to consume more. This stupid situation is largely due to the impact that wars make on the conscience of humanity: The higher is the GDP the bigger and more effective professional army you can hold. Therefore, countries will not reduce consumption significally all times as wars continue.

We can end poverty with a little global wealth tax, therfore eliminate the need for societies with little money to increase consumption and helping them with mitigation and adaptation of climate change, but it can not be implemented effectively at the global scale all time as the world is divided.

We can ban deforestation only if we ill use in the most effective way the land free from forest. If large part of it is destroyed, not used well as it is the case in the war in Ukraine, for replace it people will need to increase the amount of agricultural land, to cut forests. If a bill like the European bill to ban deforestation linked import will pass in such situation of too litlle supply, it can drastically increase prices destabilizing the situation in the Europian Unon.

The same is true for other natural resources.

All relevant organizations recognize that without international cooperation stopping climate change is impossible.

Wars in compound with climate change create huge waves of refugees, inflation, economic crises. All this often lead to rise to power of forces that do not want to take climate action and in any case, distray governments from climate action.

Fridays for Future is a growing and learning movement, therefore the pages above might still be under development with a few proposals!