Edge: WE ARE AS GODS AND HAVE TO GET GOOD AT IT : A Talk With Stewart Brand

Environmentalists may not change. In a way it's almost irrelevant whether environmentalists change and take the lead because the political situation suggests that we don't have the global institutions to deal with a global problem. A lot of the best information comes from the United Nations, the United Nations studies on cities and slums and things like this and population are about the best source you can find.

If it weren't there, we wouldn't have good information about those things, but it does not have administrative power. We probably don't want a planetary government but I suspect that if we go too far down climate catastrophe that could be something you wind up with, a bad planetary government. What you want is planetary collaboration mainly of the main governments that exist now.

STEWART BRAND is cofounder and co-chairman of The Long Now Foundation. He is the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, cofounder of The Well, and cofounder of Global Business Network.

"International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic"

Ultimately, what this implies is that the future of the global political economy is one of increasing moves toward a global system of governance, or a world government, with a world central bank and global currency; and that, concurrently, these developments are likely to materialize in the face of and as a result of a decline in democracy around the world, and thus, a rise in authoritarianism. What we are witnessing is the creation of a New World Order, composed of a totalitarian global government structure.
It is imperative that the world’s people throw their weight against these “solutions” and usher in a new era of world order, one of the People’s World Order; with the solution lying in local governance and local economies, so that the people have greater roles in determining the future and structure of their own political-economy, and thus, their own society. With this alternative of localized political economies, in conjunction with an unprecedented global population and international democratization of communication through the internet, we have the means and possibility before us to forge the most diverse manifestation of cultures and societies that humanity has ever known.