JV Question: At your first State of the World Forum, Zbignew Brezezski said, that the New World Order would be established step by step and stone by stone, where are we in that process in your assessment?
Gorbachev: I think we are just thinking about the design of that new order. Of course we experience in different countries is being accumulated as stones in that New World Order. Important to build a new order, we should have the design, we should know how to build that bridge. Some people think that the world's future should be for that golden .....that live in the industrialized countries. The advanced countries would take advantages of their psychological advantage but of the new openness of global economy. In that way they would multiply their advantages and would be even more....so that would create a situation when the world's population would be working for this one gold millennium.
Some are saying that the whole world is industrialized in the same way that the advanced countries have industrialized. I believe that that would be a utopia. A utopia similar to the communist utopia to the communist idea of making people happy this way and we know the results of that utopia.
Let us not indulge in another utopia in trying to impose the values of the west on the rest of the world. The world is globalizing, it is getting is smaller and smaller, the world is more .....a single nation may consider any problems without taking account what is happening in Russia. But that does not mean that we should steam roll the world to one culture, one set of morals. We should steam roll the world to other religions, other cultures. I think that we can forgive the people in utopias of the past. At that time, people did not have enough knowledge, now that they have this knowledge, now that ....difficult experience of this century, we should not try to impose any blueprint for the world. Therefore, I believe that the world should be one of unity in diversity and harmonize for security taking account the unique features of every nation and country. So the stones will emerge as we come along in this process and the design will emerge as part of this process.
Q. What is the model that you see which is successful in the world for the nation-states which could be mirrored for the success that we are all looking for?
Gorbachev: I think that the model should be democratic. Democracy of the parliamentary kind or presidential democracy. We know that all democracies have flaws and there are many that are a lot worse.
Q. How do you see the future of the United nations?
Gorbachev: While still the president of the USSR, and as now I have the position that we should do all that we can to make sure while the world is uniting and realizing a second wind to the United Nations. This is a time for the UN, even though it was a difficult year...the UN was able to accomplish something. In order for it to continue, we need some institutions of the UN should be expanded and changed but we need the UN structure and we need a Security Council that will reflect the new world. The UN should also have better legal opportunities to be influential. I believe that it is a mistake as some are saying that the UN is a kind of burden. Those who think the UN is useless are politicians of a time-serving kind. Those who think about the future and our long-term goals should galvanize the UN and reactive the UN with new mechanisms and institutions.
Q. You seem to be in favor of the global economy is it not harming the environment? Companies can move to other countries without environmental regulations.
A. To be more precise I am not saying that I support globalization but I accept it as a fact and we will have to live with it. The global economy, information...the world is globalizing. This is a fact and an objective process. Our task and goal is to understand. In order to make sure like things which you have mentioned do not happen, TNC's do not act to siphon the resources of the world and they do not take advantage of open economies and pollute, we should make sure that there are new ground rules, new rules of the game. This is an urgent task and we should act now. The Gorbachev Foundation of which I am president has now decided to focus on one research project. The Global World of the 21st Century. The challenges, scenarios and alternatives for the 21st century . Within the global framework we will be considering a number of issues and this issue that you raise is very much on our minds. We are also considering does the global economy mean that national economies will disappear? What kind of process should we have, this is not clear.
Q. What in your view is the greatest environmental threat to the planet?
A. I think that today we have come to appoint when man's intervention in nature is at a point that we cannot continue. In 20 or 30 or at the most 40 years, if things continue the way they are today, the changes, in the biosphere of the earth will be irreversible. There certain laws of development of the atmosphere and there is a sudden mechanism of self-regulation in the biosphere. We cannot replace? such a mechanism or a different mechanism that would replace the mechanism of natural self-regulation.
We can only incorporate ourselves into that niche. WE have to restrain and restrict activities that are destructive of nature. I m not panicking or an alarmist but I see the drama of it. If we just let such things go, it would just ....that somehow things would work themselves out. It is quire clear that they will not work themselves out. At some point, nature will just have to live without us....we should find our place in the narrow corridor that we have in the biospheres. So conflict between the biospheres and its laws on the one hand, and the current way mankind operates , on the other hand. So we should restrict and limit our consumption and also reassess our way of life, we should be more modest. That means that we should make a transition to a new set of commandments of ten or fifteen ecological commandments. Five years after at the Summit level, little has changed....some things have changed ....and the situation in the political and business community will continue to change slowly if civil society, citizens do not speak up. They should speak out and the Earth Charter will give...to the citizens... and this should be the most important factor in changing policies and everything in the world.
Moral questions are unclear today.......This world will inevitably explode and I think God that there is more understanding in developing...so let us be optimistic even though some upheaval may be in the works.
COP
Joan stayed after the press conference for emissions and spoke to Frank Joshua with UNCTAD, Director for Greenhouse Gas Emissions Program in Geneva.
Off the record he told Joan Peros that he has a press release in two weeks which will be from the Earth Council. Everything with Kyoto is already done. This is a U.S. agreement, it is already done. It will be difficult but they will get it all done. The White House set up a special task force of negotiators and technical people to get this thing passed in addition to members of the EPA, State Department and the Department of Energy who are already working on this. They are part of the U.S. negotiating team.
All the new reports on Greenhouse emissions are funded by the United States. The Kyoto Accord is primarily a U.S. document (90%), and a done deal. Even though it has to be adopted by Congress, everything is in place. There has never been a major accord that we not adopted by the U.S.