Ecology and human survival : the project of a new Alliance for life.

In an important paper published by the Handelsblatt Global (24-11-2018), the German minister for foreign Affairs, Heiko Haas, called for an initiative for a new world order coming from the European Union. He correctly pointed the current crisis of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the unilateral decisions coming from the US without, or against, the United Nations votes( but nothing about the european alliance for life). He could have mentioned as well the failure of the Paris Climate summit, unable to reach any of its targets, the growing uncertainties about the European Union itself, or the coming of new worldwide institutions, the Shanghai Organization being the most important, but not the only one.

In his paper, Heiko Haas emphasized the ability of the European Union to regain full independence by building its own clearing and settlement system, its own European monetary fund, and pushing the euro to the status of a widely used currency both for trade and Central Bank reserves. He also pointed out the need of an European collective defense, even an European army, with a sharp eye onto the French seat at the Security Council of United Nations (the vice-chancelier of Germany, Olaf Scholz, insisted on the same point in a lecture about the European Union, Berlin, 28 nov. 2018, Germany having access as a temporary observer to the Council next year), and may be the hidden idea for Germany to share the French nuclear code. And he, quite ambitiously, called for a new and decisive role of the European Union in the equilibrium of world powers. This is the German project for the new world order.

As interesting and ambitious as it is, Heiko Haas’ declaration lacks long term views and perspectives. There is a lot of “déjà vu” in it. From a French point of view, he clearly positioned himself as a driving force behind the new German Holy Empire predestined to rule Europe. We don’t think it is the best way to renew a declining world order. From a wider point of view,

• We’ll try to explain how any world’s lasting system faced the main threat, and managed it for the common good (1).
• We’ll show how and why the main threat we face now comes from the collapse of our environment (2).
• And we’ll redesign the grand project of an European Union initiative for peace as the initiative of an Alliance for Life, with some consequences for free trade, businesses, and the way we live on earth—yet our only planet to live in (3).

From the Roman Empire to the Chinese Warring Kingdoms and the American order

From Alexander the Great to the Chinese empire

Coming from Eastern deserts or burning sands, with the Holy Kuran or the sword in hands as their decisive argument, they were a lot to run for world supremacy and a new order built for millenaries. Very few achieved something. Some of them just lack the basic thinking to cope with the current situation. Some of them have just limited and parochial views. Some of them reached enormous levels of military might and wealth, but failed to address correctly the real threat of their world. Perhaps the first exception came from Alexander the Great, an extraordinary open-minded man, but so ambitious and unconventional for the time being that the Eurasian order he spread from Greece to the Indus river immediately failed with his death.

The first world order to last for centuries came from Roma, and its achievement was to bring peace and prosperity by the law against the barbaric tribes and chiefdoms surrounding it. All Roman citizens were equal under the Law; when the Emperor Caracalla granted Roman citizenship to every man living inside the “limes”, in 322 AC, the Roman Empire was the most populated political unity in the World.

It is of great interest to compare the coming of the Roman Empire and the first lasting Chinese Empire. After the dark ages of the “Warring Kingdoms”, the first dynasty to unify mainland China is based on a clear and uncompromising principle; the divine mission of the Emperor is to bring food, rain and order all across its Empire (1). And, for centuries, the Emperor will be taken accountable for rice crops, for the Yang Tse and the Yellow River floodings, and for the yearly return of spring…

The millenium european order

The Christian Empire succeeded it, based on another credential; a common faith will achieve political and spiritual unity as well, and the dream of a unique world under Christ, the Roman Christian Empire, lived well across Europe for at least twelve centuries—never to be achieved. The Christian way of managing conflicts, “jus bellum”, aimed to protect women, children and civilians, was an immense progress from the barbarian wars.

Then, came the Reform, Calvin and Luther, and the terrific “Guerre de Trente ans” mainly inside what we call Germany, which killed a third of the population of central Europe. The genius of the diplomats working on a peace treaty and striking a deal between the opponents in what we call the Westphalian Peace Treaty (1648) was to forget any idea of common faith, truth or virtue, to establish just formal conditions for peace between European powers. Forget the idea of an unique faith, the only way was to recognize the legitimacy of religious and political diversity. The road was open to the modern Nation State (2) and lasted to the 20^th century and the horrors of ideological conflicts between “we, the Good”, and “they, the Bad.”

From the Magna Carta to the Bill of Rights, something different was slowly taking momentum from British thinkers and politicians, something that will flourish under the United States’ independence and the French revolution. The Nation state came to be seen as the best way to ensure both individual freedom and collective safety to every man as a citizen (women and non-whites being out of the picture for the moment). The Vienna Treaty (1815) renewed the very condition of the Wesphalian Peace, achieving an equilibrium of powers across Europe, carefully balanced so that any power too strong for its neighbors to compete with will face inevitably the might of all other European Powers against it.

There is a clear common feature between all these international systems; they lasted and they succeeded because they addressed the main threat of the moment. Barbaric invasions for Roma; disunion for Christendom of Europe; religious hatred for the Westphalian Treaty; and equilibrium of military forces inside Europe up to 1914.

The new American order

What happened with the American-based order was not different. The price of isolationism clearly too high for them after the two tragic failures of the European order, the United States have had first to contribute, then to conceive and manage a new world order after the collapse of the “Société des Nations” (SDN) against Italian fascism and Nazism, and the rampant conflict with the Soviet Empire. The goal was to ensure peace, order and freedom, and to develop business as well.

The way to succeed was unlimited growth, economical development and shared prosperity. The political project was mainly one of soft power; to cut taxes, tariffs, and broadcast the picture of happy life under the stars and stripes flag. This belief designed a pattern more or less followed by any institutions, from the Organization of United Nations to the World Bank, and from US Aid to most of the NGOs of the last decades; trade brings peace, development is the way of human progress, and economy gets the keys of the political engine.

The rationale was one of getting man out of nature and living creatures; Air Conditioning is the perfect model of the better world to come (3). At the end of the day, anyone will share its part of the benefits flooding from the system, no doubt about that. And the American system succeeded because it delivers at least a great part of the promises it made. As former President Obama once said, “most of the people on earth, if they have had a choice, must have lived now” (nov. 2017). It is quite a noticeable figure of history’s irony that some of the worst enemies of the United States benefited so much from a system developed and promoted by them, from Germany to China and Japan.

David Attenborough speaking for “we, the people of the world” at the request of the United Nations told before the general assembly of the delegates at the Summit for the Climate, in Katowice (Poland), dec. 2018;” we are facing the end of civilization, and the end of nature as we know them”. This 24^th COP was a miserable failure, as is now the Paris agreement to tackle climate change, after so glorious expectations and triumphal comments.

After the sixth extinction of animal species, we could be soon facing the extinction of human beings on this planet. The real terrorist plot is to be find here. The true WW3 is to be fought on this field. The weapons are not to be found in AA, in algorithms or Big Data systems, they are forged now in biology, gene patents and industrial human production. Has the post-second World War system something to say about this unconvenient truth?

Our survival as human beings is at stake now

For the first time in human history, the major threats against human survival don’t come from natural events, from conventional or even nuclear war between superpowers, from plague or disease. The major threat we face now comes from what we cherished the most; unlimited growth, technology, radical individualism, high ROEs and a “no limits” world (4). The very means for growth, wealth and happiness are coming to be the seeds for war, destitution and poverty. They are always mixed with criminal activities and networks; just have a look at the 200 billions euros somewhere lost between Danske Bank, the Estonian central Banke and the Baltic States! And this is why our international institutions are out of order; these institutions which were built more than fifty years ago need urgent reform to be able to cope with the coming new threat, but they resist against any reform, they stay deeply rooted in their economic credentials; European nations must increase their efforts to create a new architecture for our common survival—what we call “an Alliance for Life”. 

European nations must openly and honestly address the main area of the global threat. The hardest problem we face now is not about the sixth extinction of animal species (even if we are the following one on the list…), climate change or even scarcity of natural resources (mostly fresh water, clean air and fertile soil). It comes out for the human body and for human life themselves. Obesity, attention disorder syndroms, cancers, sterility, etc., are called “modernity diseases”. They already reduced the life expectancy in poor districts of Great Britain and the US—the first time a massive loss of life time happens since the 50’ (the average lifespan declines slowly in the USA since 2014). They multiply premature deaths, in a process called “Death by despair” by two researchers in social science from Princeton University—drugs, alcoholism, opioids and other addictions and sometimes suicide as well are the products of the demise of our civilization (5). Air pollution by itself is a factor of low-Q I for children and depression or mental disorder for adults. Heavy metals and plastic particles in the flesh of deep sea fish are the main factor of sterility for about one third of the population of young adults in Denmark. And they generate a very hard-to-say process; the process of degeneration of human beings. It is quite impossible to say what everybody feels perfectly well; addiction to sugar, addiction to digital screens, addiction to a “couch potato” lifestyle is actually producing by the millions these populations of fat, ugly and stupid individuals, promised to a short, violent and sad life—thank you M. Hobbes!

Is it that we call “progress” or “development”? Is it the gift we offer to these we call “underdeveloped” countries, mainly because they don’t share the same economic obsession and they value their well being, traditions and unity more than their bank accounts? Is that what the World Bank, the IMF, so many think tanks and ONGs are calling for? Industrial food, air pollution, chemistry in water and fish are producing a major gap in human history; the break up of anything we know as progress, as equality and wellness. And, of course, the massive extinction of mammals and birds, the extinction of many, many species of trees, plants and fruits, the warming of global temperatures far above the 1.5° Celsius proclaimed as a limit in the Paris Summit just make things worse for human beings and human rights—never so widely proclaimed, never so endangered.

We are not about growth, and the economy; we are about public safety, and crime on a wide scale—the same some tobacco companies have committed so long for so much money… Because we have to recognize that the first of human rights is the right to global safety, id est environnemental, cultural and moral safety as well as safety of private property and physical integrity, we have to recognize that individual rights don’t address this issue properly—and far more, that they could paralyze any society which struggle to effectively ensure these rights. Giving each individual some kind of blank check to be cashed out by any society able to pay for it, is to give also unlimited leverage on natural resources, even to the brink of exhaustion; this is the sad prospective of a world population growing up to the 12^th billion individuals. 

The global safety of us, human beings, is at stake now. And it is at stake not because of the failure of the American world’s system and the international institutions it has created, it is at stake because of their achievements. We are threatened by what we cherished the most. The ways of unlimited progress, of permanent betterment of our way of life, of wealth and prosperity everywhere, of unrelented “me, inc.” logics, are coming to be the ways of our demise, our destitution, our despair. We have to forget the idea of unlimited progress as the only way for peace and happiness.

The main threat doesn’t come from the outside, China, Russia, or any of those “rogue states” which doesn’t comply to Western rules. The main threat is coming from the inside, from the many achievements of the current successful system. How does it happen?

Five driving forces lag behind the existential threat:

• Globalization, which in its present shape means the end of any links between human life and a territory of its own and the end of geography, following the foolish idea that “the world is flat”; the close foolish idea of “me, sovereign individual” with no ground under his feet, no father and mother whom he owes his life, no community to give him a language, values and common sense, no cultural identity inherited from past generations and to pass up to future generations, is just a non-sense, and the shorter way to absolute loneliness, destitution and death.

• Industrial consolidation, which means enormous logistic needs, the fiction of “distance for free”, the fictitious gratuity of economical externalities, and management of giant organizations under financial constraints only; the numbers only count when anything else that makes a difference—age, origin, language, faith, culture, etc.—precisely makes no difference—or is told so (René Girard). To forget human societies as a whole, cultural differences and collective choices as well, will come at a price—and the price is yet to be paid by multinationals and globalists, and even more by strategists. Or it will be paid by democracies themselves.

• Free trade, which means a run to the “no-rules, no-norms, no-laws” territories and gives a leverage to criminal activities, closely embedded with industrial or financial legal businesses; the free trade introduces a bias between companies embedded in local communities they served and they are committed with, and those companies who use slave work, dictatorship regimes and failed states to grasp natural resources at no price, human work for free, and industrial production without taxation or norms. Is it what we call “fair trade, free market and equal opportunities to compete”?  

• Individualism against borders, limits and societies, which means free move of human populations to settle in the most fertile and diverse ecosystems, turning them quickly into unsustainable territories under demographic pressure; in the long term, the demise of any natural constraints on human settlement is totally unsustainable. Just look at the terrific impact of air conditioning on the climate change!

• Ploutocracy, with a growing class of very rich people claiming their rights to unlimited wealth against any law, any citizenship, any social and national responsibility, and chasing away any idea of shared prosperity, common goods and national committment. We have seen a complete revolution inside capitalist societies and democracies; under the false flag of “liberalism”, they came from inclusive societies, where the fruits of progress were shared by all citizens, to build exclusive societies, where the bounty of wealth is more and more concentrated on the very few and carefully transmitted to the upcoming generations.

To face the problem of our survival, the current trend of “painful ecology”—to tax and punish individual behavior—is totally irrelevant.  

The problem of human survival is not the problem of Diesel engines, of baths in hotel bathrooms, or even of meat consumption. Painful ecology is a dead end; in fact, waving a false flag, it just spreads confusion and makes things worse.

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The problem of human survival is one of industrial food, with terrific consequences on human health, from obesity to mental illness. The problem of strong, sustainable territories is one of the low cost airlines and mass tourism, one of the long distance carriers and hypermarkets, of the franchise boutiques which destroy local and regional diversity at a fast pace, and the network of SMEs and life in downtown as well. The problem is one of agrochemistry, with deadly effects on soils, insects and biodiversity. The problem is in free trade, which means slavery on a wide scale, expulsion of indigenous people, and extinction of human diversity (6). The problem is the hyperconcentration in the industrial sector, which calls for standardization, total dependence on few providers, like China for solar panels or rare Earth minerals used for electric engines, and the end of any territorial responsibility from management turned global and no more commitment to any citizenship or specific culture.

The problem is in bad water, dilapidated soils, air pollution, congested towns and poisoned food. The problem is the still growing carbon emissions, for the sake of development, of free trade and artificialization of human life—air conditioners and data centers are some of the main culprits. And the problem is the massive propaganda from NGOs, think tanks and lobbies to give us bad conscience as individuals, but never, never point out at the economic system as a whole, the global companies turned digital as the main actors against territorial responsibility, local commitment, and the financial sector as the driver of unsustainable requirements for revenues and profits.

And the problem is just about intelligence—what shapes our future, both for the best or the worst…

When annual growth of ecosystems is about 2% to 3% at its best, requirements for 15% or more of return on equity are totally unsustainable—are a deadly sentence against natural systems and resources (6).

When human life depends mainly on natural resources and ecosystemic systems (to drink, to breathe, to eat, to warm or refresh), our accounting systems grossly overestimate economic activity, and underestimate the natural services which are for free. So to speak; since the beginning of the industrial revolution, our overview of human activity versus natural services has suffered a bias from the accounting system. Just think about it; “natural resources are taking for free, because they are in unlimited supply, and at disposition of anybody” (Jean Baptiste Say, Lecture for the Polytechnic School, 1819); who dares say that now?

But it is still the fundamental basis of our current accounting standards. But it is still the basic assumptions of our economic figures. Just to know; natural fertilization by bees and other insects would have been priced about one third of any fruits and vegetables crops, have it be taken into account! We knew it just because where bees are on the verge of extinction, the cost of artificial fertilization, when and where it is possible, costs about the third of the value of the crops! With the global extinction of about one third of insects, the third of human crops is at stake – but who really cares ?

These things, and thousands others, are what we have to fix before it is too late. None of the current international institutions could do that. Actually, they are based exactly on the opposite; growth, development, financial results. And the diplomatic system is totally irrelevant, given the field expertises it calls for, and the interdisciplinary researches, methods and approaches requested.

A new world system based on the human quest for survival is the only one to face the major threat. And it could be a very effective and very productive way of the European Union to regain some form of credibility and legitimacy towards we, European citizens, and they, citizens of other Nations. Isn’t it the way cautiously tested by the Chinese President, M. Xi Jin Ping, when he placed the environnemental issue at the core heart of the Chinese Dream? Isn’t it the starting point of a new alliance from the West to the East to build a new and lasting world order, strongly based on the commitment for life and expansion of “everything under the sun”?

A European project for life on earth

The call for a new world order is widely recognized as relevant, if not urgent, in most parts of the world. But M. Heiko Haas’s paper missed the point. Emphasizing cooperation for growth, multilateralism and global organizations to bring win-win solutions, he looks back to the past. He calls for more of the same thing ; what we need is the new new thing ! History never turns back. And he completely missed the turning point; the collapse of natural living systems, with horrific consequences on European Nations—from mass migrations across the Mediterranean Sea to new figures of poverty, exclusion and despair at the heart of the European continent.

The system based on unlimited economic growth and financial revenues, the system based on infinite mobility and the continuous change of everything, the system based on the ability of human beings to design and redesign themselves indefinitely, is the system of the past. Just have a look at the way Narendra Modi is throwing away any territorial names coming from the Muslim world, to turn them into good Hindu names, and the same move growing all across Africa—no more “Victoria Lake” or “Victoria Falls”!

Have a look at the way the Knesset voted a law recognizing the exclusive identity of Israel as “the Nation of the Jewish people” (july 2018). And see how much identity politics and the quest for “we, united citizens of our Nation” are pushing radical individualism in the garbage can of history, side by side with the defunct “worldwide democracy” or “government of humanity”—the last version of totalitarianism!

The coming system is a system of separation between free societies, the decisive condition to effectively join sovereignty with peace. It is a system based on territorial responsibility and accountability, the opposite of a system based on mobility and continuous change—in fact, it ll be a system where keeping its ground will be of inestimable value for any people. And it’ll be a system of diversity, because the safest way to bypass the environmental crisis lies in the diversity of human beings, of patterns of good life to be dreamed of, and of human ideals to unite citizens of the same Nation.

We will survive because we are not the same, with the same desires, the same ideals, even the same needs. The false idea of humanity coming to its unity, as Noah Rafic Hariri successfully depicted it as the one way of history, is just the idea of humanity running like lemmings to the next cliff—and running to its death, by millions of us. If we are to survive as human species, we are to survive because we don’t share the same ideals, the same desires, the same will. And we will survive because our cultures and civilizations are deeply rooted in specific geography, climate and resources—because nature and culture both defines a territory and a community as ours (7).

The answer to the survival problem of human beings on earth will come from three issues:

• Human diversity, as borders and citizenship guarantee it, is the key point. We’ll survive because all humans are not the same; they develop cultures according to the geographical and natural conditions they live in, they follow different political and social models, they have different patterns of life, and all of them don’t share the same idea of what is a good life—in fact, being a hero, a saint, or a scientist, was the more common idea of what a good life really was till mass consumption and the pursuit of happiness get us rid of that. This is what we called civilization. This is what globalization destroyed. And this is democracy. National sovereignty and the free will of “we, the people” are the keys for a more diverse and more sustainable world.

• Every human being shares a responsibility of the territory where he was born, whom he belongs to. He receives it from the past generations, it owes it to the generations to come, more beautiful, more friendly, more affluent. The idea of individual right to mobility is the worst threat against any sustainable ecological system, and particularly for Europe. The treasure of cultural diversity came from the need felt by every human society to adapt itself to climate, geography, endemic species, and nature as it was given to it. The false idea of a world turned flat, the blooming reality of air conditioners, digital entertainment, and low cost flights, promotes a worldwide uniformization of human beings. Mass migrations and mass tourism as well and the compulsory commitment to multiculturalism are the main threat against European soil, climate and biodiversity, as well as European civilization itself. And they are a threat against civilization itself, if, as Claude Levi-Strauss wrote, “there is no civilization at all if there are not civilizations”. 

• The promotion of fair trade, to restore the true meaning of open market, free competition and equal opportunities, is full of delusion. From multinational companies, using workers for free, exploiting mines, soils or seas without environmental constraints, destroying social and moral structures of societies, are not fair trade practices. We have to fight against destructive trade and extorting financial practices. Promoting fair trade means that European countries could impose environmental norms, social conditions, minimum wages to the countries they buy products or services from.

Facing these three basics of the new world order, the truth is too evident to stay hidden. No political party, no international institution, across European Union no more than in other regions, is really in a good shape to face the coming issue of human survival and the fall of civilization.

The commitment of major international institutions to free trade, individual rights of mobility across borders, against national sovereignty and singularity of Nations, makes them totally irrelevant. They are part of the problem, they won’t be the solution.

The idea of technology as the means to solve any problems caused by technology is a dead end. For example, the electric powered vehicle has a very bad global ecological footprint, especially if the electricity it uses comes from coal power plants. The only benefit for it? The main pollution is far away the cities where his driver moves. Is it actually a real benefit?

The idea of economic growth, development and wealth as the way for peace is a false claim. They turn to be exclusive, and the main product of globalization is the coming of under-development processes inside the most developed countries—from the USA where 40 million US citizens lived on food-stamps to Europe where the main social issue is the growing number of “working poors”—, and the end of the middle class as we knew it is on sight with terrific consequences. The start-uppers turned billionaires by the global trade have made millions of their co-citizens unemployed, pushed hundreds of thousands to become homeless, and heavily contributed to savage infrastructures, social order and common goods in the area they live. Does someone says something about justice or equity?

We know that technology, growth, development and unlimited wealth are not the solution, they are the problem. We know that a world of 10 billion people will not give more consumers to big business, but a lot of soldiers for lost causes coming from despair, starvation and expulsion of their grounds—indigenous people chased of to become nomads are the most violent societies on earth. And they are worsening our current situation. We know that individual greed goes hand in hand with globalization to destroy our commons. And we know that digital age means the switch from unlimited satisfaction given by nature itself to limited satisfaction given by screens and networks—against payment (8).

Green washing is worsening the problem we cope with because it gives corporate interests the golden bullet to do nothing with consequences.

An Alliance for Life must unite European Nations for survival. And it has some powerful proposals to be turned in politics:

• The Alliance must complete the declaration of individual rights with a declaration of collective rights to maintain and protect singularity and sovereignty over their territory. The Alliance must make it clear and simple; the singularity of any Nation in Europe is under protection as the first asset of European citizens. Europe is the land of Europeans. Any European citizen shares rights to environmental, social, cultural, linguistic and religious safety against any corruption attempt from the outside. And all European citizens have an undeniable right to commons in good shape (from a report to the European Parliament, may 2017, “Le coup d’Etat du droit”, by Hervé Juvin).

• The Alliance must replace free trade by fair trade, with taxes or tariffs differentiated according to environmental, social, cultural criteria. The Alliance countries will promote no tariff trade only with countries committed to 0 carbon emissions to 2040. Trade agreements will specify requests on minimum wages, freedom of speech and association, environnemental safety, etc.

•  The Alliance must promote an equilibrium between social upgrade, shared benefits, environmental wellness, biodiversity, the commons, and economic development, according to the Declaration of Rio (1948) and the Coyoqoc agreement (1974). A new age of democracy is on the way (9). Progress means something only if its benefits are shared by all citizens. For instance, The Alliance must promote the free trade or exchange of seeds without any relation to industrial producer and manager of “authorized seeds”, which is just the privatization of the genetic capital of territories and the extinction of endemic species for the sake of the industry.

• The Alliance must actively foster a greater autonomy of any Nation by closer links between energy, food and goods producers, and the territories they serve, which means relocalisation of industrial activities, promotion of autonomous sources of energy, unalienable rights of indigenous people upon biodiversity and genetic capital of endemic species. And the Alliance must focus on sustainable territories, with banking and financial capacities of their own, with industrial and numeric resources free from global trusts, with services and administration self centered.

• The Alliance must rely on mass movements of citizens associated in the protection and the enrichment of their own territories, vegetal and animal species, and cultural goods as well, and put under control foreign NGOs relying on funding from big companies or affluent individuals, or foreign governments or institutions (10).
• The Alliance must support private companies with a deep sense of national and territorial responsibility, a real commitment with local communities, and a strong goal of sustainable activity by discriminatory taxes and requirements. It will promote such links and works to integrate these criterium in his commercial treaties and agreements. We must drive companies from global “Corporate Social Responsibility” to “National, Environmental and territorial Responsibility”, id est corporate behavior respectful of local communities, behaving well according to local and national laws, cultures and traditions.

• The Alliance will be the key for a new world order based upon human diversity, freedom of “we, the people, good gardeners of our territory”, and the sovereignty of Nations. All laws, treaties, international commitment of the Alliance will be placed under the Authority of a Council for Life. Nine members, named for life by the allied governments, will have an initial say and the final authority upon any issue related to the human survival.

• The Alliance for Life will be the key for a new world of peace, of enlightment, and true human civilization, which means the blooming differentiation between civilizations. It promotes political and cultural unity against multiculturalism, regionalism and territorial responsibility against mobility, Nations against global institutions, and; “We, the people”, against; “Me, sovereign individual”. 

The Chinese government, when publishing the program of the 19^th Congress for the coming century, emphasized its commitment to build the first “ecological civilization”. The President Xi Jin Ping himself coined the formula as a main issue fo “the Chinese dream for the coming century”. And some voices call for a Chinese leadership on the issue, a call made easier after the US retreat out of the Paris agreement on climate change. Some Nations or States have positioned themselves as co-leaders on the way, the State of California being not the last one on the list.

These calls address the main issue we are facing now. They call for our survival kit, diversity, limits, and common goods. And somewhere they are calls for the global leadership of the current century. The European Union has to make a call for this shared leadership. The Alliance for life will entirely fullfill the expectations of European citizens and by far exceed the project of M. Heiko Haas; build the new world order from the unique historical and cultural experience of the European Nations, give a stronghold for national and social priorities and, shared with the whole world and any living creature on earth, from elephants to raccoons and orchids to edelweiss, from lakes to sand dunes and mountains to rainforests, simply give life a chance.

                                                           Hervé Juvin

1. Zhao Ting Yang, “Tien Tsia—everything under the sun”, 2018
2. Henry Kissinger, “Diplomacy”, 1996
3. Daniel Quinn, “Ishmaël”, Bantam-Turner, 1992
4. Tim Marshall, “Prisoners of geography”, Elliott and Thompson, 2016
5. Deacon, and al. “Death by Despair”, aug. 2018, Princeton U P
6. Sasskia Sassen, “Expulsions”, 2014
7. Andrea Wulf, “The invention of Nature”, John Murray, 2015
8. David Lofskin, “Digital Leisure”, Stanford U P, may 2015
9. Timothy Mitchell, “Carbon democracy”, 2013
10.  Erika Bolstad, “High ground is becoming hot property…” Climate Wire, 1^st may 2017