Martin Luther King's heartfelt words “I have a Dream” were uttered at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on the 28th August 1963. Original Document HERE & text only HERE
Abraham Lincoln ended slavery arguing that all men are equal under the law and recalling Jefferson words in the US Declaration of Independence, all three men said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
This value of equality reverberates round the world to this day and tomorrow, President Obama commemorates it and faces the challenge of making that dream a reality.
The US President has now also committed himself to avoiding dangerous rates of global climate change. Here, the limit we need to observe is in the objective of the 1992 UN Climate Convention: - stable and safe greenhouse gas concentration in the global atmosphere. Lest we perish, compliance has to be observed and equality under that limit is the principled and many argue the only way of resolving the over-consumption and the under-consumption that has caused us already to exceed it.
This makes climate change and UNFCCC-compliance the ultimate challenge of inter-dependence. It is dangerous because unresolved it become a recipe for conflict that puts us all in the double-jeopardy of being vulnerable to it as well as to each other.
To deal with this, since 1992 the Global Commons Institute (GCI) has been advocating UNFCCC Compliance in an 'ordered framework’ that is founded on the principles of inter-dependence and equality under that limit. It is called ‘Contraction and Convergence’ [C&C].
C&C embodies the spirit of Nelson Mandela as it is a way of achieving 'Climate Justice without Vengeance', where the rights to future greenhouse gas emissions are shared by everyone equally, but under that UNFCCC limit.
Agreement to enact C&C globally helps fulfill the vision of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela.
King said, "The Arc of the Moral Universe is a Long One but it bends Toward Justice". In 1985 Michael Jackson’s “We are the World” brought together a wide array of famous & leading American 'black, brown & white faces & voices' communicating that Message to the World.
In that spirit, the C&C proposal is again before the UN with much support here & here
As the consequences of failure to achieve compliance with the objective on the UN Climate treaty are now also self-evident, GCI is also launching a Carbon Budget Analysis Tool (CBAT) to help calculate that limit. This too is starting to evoke critical support.
The 'wider context' of what Humanity is 'living through & experiencing' at present can be 'taken note of & enjoyed' here
