THE AGREEMENT, page 9
His analysis and his team’s research over the last decade had convinced him that there were two key areas which were vital to ensuring the unity of the members was strengthened. One was the transfer of spending on weapons of attack into the spending demands to save life on this planet as we know it. The second was the huge cost of managing reinstatement of the devastation around the planet caused by over one hundred years of storm damage combined with earthquakes, such that the individual countries had been unable to afford the reinstatement costs. In both of these areas the costs of meeting the need were almost beyond them all. Wasting resources and energy fighting each other was putting the plans to secure a better future at risk. The need for security was better met by developing lasting trust. The planet could not afford another world war.
The dangers were that some members could opt to a return to increased spend on military growth to defend themselves and to take from others the resources they need, while at the same time accepting the inevitable loss of life and living standards for a large swathe of their populations in favour of the wealthy majority, because they could not afford to do both. The power to look after themselves first and not to be concerned for their poorer population, nor for the planet, was driven by a sense of entitlement rather than a sense of wellbeing. His challenge was to show them that by working together and trusting each other, we can do the right things for our people as well as for the planet, and still enjoy a very satisfying life. He easily understood some would do better than others, but that was never the test. Equality was not the solution.
The principle of needing to feed and house a population relying mostly on local resources was designed to prevent significant starvation risks during pandemics and wars. However, the pressure on local resources caused by this policy often resulted in plentiful supplies from other areas on the planet not being utilised at the cost of desecrating elements of the local resources. This would be an important element in the water programme where crops were being grown locally with non-sustainable water supplies. The resulting problems were both varied and almost insurmountable. He sincerely believed he could lead them all. The planet could cope with the projected populations for the next few hundred years so long as these balanced management protocols could be adhered to.
Roald is already in China, as he has a holiday home in the mountains in the north. His brother lives there too, as they have extensive business interests in Russian territory north and east of China. He has already heard of Jo resigning and has sought out Col to discuss her issues. Col has yet to return his calls. Impatient as he is, Roald sends Jo a message of best wishes, but adds a note asking her if she might be prepared to work in his team. He realises Col will be angry with this if Col believes Jo will return to work for him, but time is of the essence. Roald believes Jo will be a very strong addition to his team if he can secure her services.
CHAPTER 7
DALTON
DALTON STOOD AT the window of his office in Manhattan. He is tired. Tired of the arguments, tired of the politics, tired of the greed and selfishness, tired of the relentless travel and talking and reaching conditional agreements but with the consequent failure of subsequent action. He probably needs a good holiday, or a change of focus, but he has reluctantly agreed to speak at this conference in Beijing. He wants to withdraw, to hide. He has done more than his share of persuading. Is this a good time for him to bow out. Dalton knows he needs to resign from The Agreement team.
On the other hand, he is still passionate about his subject, and still committed to the messages. He has written books and given lectures all over the world. He has been on television and radio, social media and bloggers wherever and whenever he could. It has been his life. He knows his story was well known by many, but he is encouraged to keep going because of the large number of people who have never heard it. However, he also knows everyone at the conference would find it slightly boring unless he adds in a stir or two. There needs to be a new twist to his strong and consistent messaging. This is his latest challenge.
In many ways he believes people are what they believe in. He is often asked what he did, people assuming this was not his real work. He realises that people categorise others by the information they have about them, but particularly about what they say they believe in and what they do about it. These were the keys to realising a person’s real identity and value. It has always perturbed him that being a senior official within The Agreement organisation, he is assumed to carry certain characteristics. He believes he needs to disturb some of this comfort about his story, and he is ready for it.
It was interesting that organisations and companies knew about publishing value statements and learning to live them. People didn’t publish theirs, and most significantly, didn’t live them either. Many people were still floaters. Mostly they were opportunists. They had been taught to be that way, always alert to the unforeseen, from the way the business world operates. Investment advisers were always looking for the opportunity to make a dollar. Wasn’t everyone? Elections of leaders were about people identifying the people they thought would give them the most, and then voting for them. Values and principles were not the key to success at the polls. Having policies that people could see would benefit them personally surely was a good start. Wasn’t that the message from every news media company? Didn’t they bang on about policy statements until the punters were asleep? Didn’t that make the singing and dancing about the principles of The Agreement less persuasive? Until the war starts, everyone wants to believe it won’t. Until the house is on fire, no one seems to worry about the dry undergrowth and trees on the boundary. We seem to believe we are invincible until it is too late and then, of course, it is someone else’s fault, or at the very least, someone else’s problem.
Dalton knew that good people with sound values would make the best decisions because the right motivators drove them. In his corporate investment world, he knew this worked, and in his personal life it did too. He was convinced that democracy had gone too far when it became a euphemism for popularism. Implementing a sound democracy was about selecting people to make decisions that were in the best interests of the whole community, not pandering to groups, and not selecting winners. Democracy at its best relied on education and values. Leaders were not better qualified because they were like the voters. Women were no better than men to look after everyone’s interests. Splitting representatives into racial, ethnic or gender groups would not automatically be best for the whole community.
The substantial industry around the need for business groups and special interest areas to employ thousands of people solely for the purpose of seeking better deals for their constituents, was an attack on democracy. If these people were limited to educate and inform, that would be healthy, he believed, but if they are to threaten and seek to control the processes; this became a form of subterfuge he would not approve. On the other hand, he knew that listening to each of those groups was very important. History shows that once people get into positions of power, they develop a deafness that is critical. Leaders were, of necessity, not like the voters. Educated voters had a better chance of appreciating the need for communal connectivity and for appreciating that what is best for the community did not necessarily mean they would be given an advantage. People with real life values were the distinguishing feature of how people would react to situations. Dalton knew that his brief, if that was a fair description of it, was to both educate and appeal to those values. He was, however, sceptical of his audience.
And yet, he also knew that elections would be won by giving the voters something they wanted. It was a clumsy system but had, in his opinion, proven itself against the challenges presented by other systems of governance. He was the first to admit that manipulation of the democratic processes had been the death knell of the United States of America. The political elite in that country had failed to trust and respect democracy. They had gradually truncated the one person one vote principle to the point where money and wealth were what people wanted and so, that was what they promised. Failure to deliver combined with a withdrawal of any hope that a voter could change the outcomes had, he believed, led to the final eruption.
He was surprised by the history. Technology had permitted such interconnection between people that took many politicians down a path of popular decision-making rather than best decision-making. Just because systems could manage popularism and the complexity of millions of voters, was no reason to abrogate the historically proven best system. He strongly believed that an uneducated majority could destroy their own opportunities while at the same time trying to destroy the opportunities of those, they considered responsible for their parlous state. History will repeat itself unless we can focus on what’s right versus what’s popular.
In his company the leaders made decisions and took responsibility for them. Becoming a leader was not by the vote of the employees, but the principle still applied. Leaders needed to think about the company and the best decisions for it. It was their duty to do the right things for the company not for their own benefit as a shareholder, an executive or a customer of the company. Many companies had failed to survive past one generation of shareholders because they sought to benefit those shareholders to the exclusion of looking after the company. In the international realms of this conference, he believed the leadership must take a similar stance. It was not primarily about an individual country’s success. Choosing a leader could not descend into the realms of whose turn is it, which country or region now needs to have a leadership chance, or how can we keep the peace unless we adopt one particular pathway. The challenge was therefore to convince everyone that we had to find a leader who will best look after The Agreement.
He turned from the view of the city and opened his chord. A few minutes after he spoke into his chord a robot delivered a new disc for his environmental controller. Winter was finished, and spring was here. He always changed the controller over later than recommended. He never trusted the weather to understand mankind’s calendar of seasons. In New York he knew the seasons were a little later getting started after a cold winter. Today he felt the time was right to move to the spring environment in his office too. He was reminded of the groundhog in Punxsutawney coming to the surface after winter and signalling the start of spring. It didn’t happen on the same calendar day every year. Even the groundhog knew this!
He asked the chord to display his presentation onto the inside wall of his office and sat and watched it. He was pleased with the new bit about learning from the past mistakes of the WEAT. (Western European America Treaty). Over one hundred years earlier the group of European nations had formally tied themselves to the North American group. In accepting that climate change was real, whether controlled by man or not, and by putting their combined resources into changing cities and ports and sharing knowledge, they were able to lead the world in coping with a major change in the planet’s climate. They had determined not only to try to reduce the impact of climate change, but also to put resources into managing the change and coping with it. Not that they had many options by the time they made that decision. Already there had been catastrophic change with earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and weather storms of halcyon proportions. He now accepted that mankind had not been the dominant cause of the changes, but were a contributor. Adjusting to the new normal had been fraught. Money was always scarce for these projects.
Manhattan Island was almost a canal city now, and parts of London in England were also. Many walls and giant flotation stations were in place both to stop the oceans from covering thousands and thousands of hectares of developed city land and roading infrastructure but also, to provide energy to drive electricity generation. The economic reality of generating energy from these new platforms had been enormous. The additional safety shields to prevent tsunami damages to these energy platforms had a complimentary affect in that they stopped ocean surges into the cities.
The new sailing ship technology combined with ammonia and hydrogen powered vessels and the new ports that had been required to replace old ones had been expensive. Also, many large airports that were both flooded and reduced in importance for interconnectedness of countries had required redevelopment. Air travel had suffered, but environmentally this was a step forward as well. Noise, managing the atmosphere and controlling the quantum of x-rays from the sun onto the earth’s surface were all benefiting from reduced air travel. Over 30% of travel above the surface of the planet was now inter-space travel. That too was now being regulated and needing more careful management.
At long last, now, many years later, we need to address the issues around fresh clean water shortages and water pollution. For over one hundred and fifty years we have talked. For over one hundred years we have fought. The immediate question was clearly whether there might now be a willingness to combine some more resources and resolve to find a way of ensuring every person on the planet has access to a sufficient and potable water supply. This achievement is an action that can deliver another primary principle of The Agreement.
Dalton wondered how Col was progressing with his constituents in Asia. Will they see the need to fund these further changes to achieve a step up in reaching the ideals of The Agreement? Will they be able to afford it? How can we find the economic solutions that will enable the new leadership group to move on their newest plans now? Will Col assist or prevent a new development finance package?
Dalton was now required to deliver a paper that would push them into understanding the urgency. He was clearly aware his challenge was unenviable. Dalton was sure the Conference would like to agree with him. He accepted that, but knew their agreement was not as critical as getting the leaders to take up the challenge right now. His real audience was the new leadership group. He didn’t know who they finally would be, but he knew that they would be there. Dalton was focusing on educating them so they would bring their life values to the problem. He was going to give it his best shot. He didn’t think there would be another chance for him to try. This would be his last effort at this high level. He promised himself he would not get caught again! His speech would include some of the words now showing on his wall:
Whereas the world standard for potable water per person per annum had once been around 900 litres, the current recognised minimum was 300 litres per annum. Despite the technological developments that had made these changes realistic, there were still over 40% of inhabitants of the planet trying to survive on less than 100 litres per person per annum, and those typically were the people who did not have the technology to make the 300-litre divide, work. They were generally trying to survive on only 50 -75% of the level needed until they had the technology to achieve the lower acceptable limit of 200 litres. In addition, there were still a very large number who were using significantly more than these guidelines stipulated as appropriate. They too were unable to meet the criteria unless the technology was available to them. Their old-fashioned plumbing systems and large tracts of land growing food with clumsy irrigation were prevalent but needed to be modernised. While we need the food, that is an absolute, we also need careful management of the water. The balance is far from attained but is certainly attainable. There is plenty of water but not where and when we need it. We must produce the food anyway, but we can produce enough food with less water if we apply our best thinking to these issues.
Splitting the delivery of potable water for drinking and personal hygiene use from the water delivered for growing plants was an essential first step. The infrastructure cost is large, but the benefit will be to then provide plenty of irrigation for food production and at the same time, deliver potable water to every person on the planet.
The main political conclusion was many people on the planet were suffering in some critical way from a shortage of good fresh water. This resulted in a general lack of good health, of sanitation and therefore of an ability for self-help. Over one third of health spending related to the lack of a potable water supply to every living person. However, Dalton knew the counter would be that the planet relies on the historic food production systems to feed over 70% of the inhabitants. Accordingly, the investment in developing more efficient food production in conjunction with the need to provide sustenance to the billions of people was immense. His argument had to show that by spending more for the water we would save at least as much by reducing the health spend. So far this only worked over a timespan of several years which meant there would be a cash-flow argument in the shorter term. That by producing food more efficiently we could feed everyone but use a lot less water to do so was also a key plank of the raft of manageable changes he knew were needed. More importantly for this conference, that we can afford to do it was not a question. How we can afford to do it was the right question to ask followed by the obvious one, can we afford not to?
Civilisations of all creeds and race recognised that their populations required some basic services and circumstances to allow them not just to survive but to cherish survival. They recognised that to stop anger and envy becoming the de-stabilisers of our communities, we had to achieve some minimum delivery outcomes of essentials, especially shelter, water, and food. The real issue therefore seemed to be unnecessary deprivation, but the cause and blockages to achieving progress were frequently about nationalism and religion, more than about inept politicians or impossible equations.
In terms of measuring the outcomes of The Agreement, improving and monitoring water and air are jointly number one. Protecting and or re-arranging national boundaries is number two. Protection from weather is number three. The management of refuse and waste, and the delivery of energy were next. These had become the environmental parameters of the balanced global economy driven by The Agreement. Dalton would educate around these outcome statistics and progress, but his role was not to resolve the other political dimensions that were also inhibitors.
