The Union of Concerned Elders' goal is to replace the monetary culture, the modern techno-industrial global society, the current form of civilization with an ecolate (systems literate) form of civilization perhaps based on 3 hydro powered megacities and 30 global sublates containing bioregions composed of watershed management units that accept limits on human demands on nature's resources.
As H.G. Wells noted in 1933, "the existence of independent sovereign states IS war." This is not an opinion, is evidence based, and so is among the consensus views the Union of Concerned Elders can agree upon (as compelled by evidence and reasoned discussion).
To maybe sidestep humanity's dissolution, a new paradigm, a social contract, must replace the non-viable civilization we are all products of and serve. The formation of 3 megacities as centers of STEM, evidence-based inquiry and art preservation, and 30 Academic Watershed Management Units (AWMUs) to preserve knowledge and renormalize humanity, is the sort of change that is needed.
Civilizational overshoot occurs when the core paradigmatic presuppositions of a whole form of civilization no longer enable the peoples or cultures that exemplify the form of civilization to make reliable sense of, much less enable them to cope with existing and emerging realities and challenges which characterize their time. For example, instead of contracting the global economy and population, an exponentially growing number of Schools of Sustainability seek to perpetuate a non-viable form of civilization and about 22,000 colleges and universities teach neoclassical growth-based economics as a required subject.
In short, if our expansionist form of civilization collapses, it means no culture of that form has a long-term future. All humans are descendants of an expansionist form of civilization that rapidly spread within and out of Africa 50,000 to 60,000 years ago. That form of civilization is climaxing this century.
Mounting evidence should compel us to seriously consider the possibility that our modern techno-industrial form of civilization is in overshoot (ecological and civilizational, e.g. our growth paradigm is no longer coherent) and facing collapse. If our form of civilization is non-viable, we have to transcend our techno-modernism and catalyze a personal to civilizational change that is change at every level from deeply personal to civilizational, into ways of being in the earth in which we live existentially satisfying lives more equitably, within the means of Nature to sustainably support humans as Nature's apprentices, as adaptive, evolvable K-strategists again.
The Union of Concerned Elders is not a group whose members are known to one another, nor need they be to develop a warning message as only the message needs to be known, considered, assessed, and evolved. Those who would be involved so indicate by offering their warning to posterity for consideration.
Some may be asked to help author the warning, but most will be asked, when there are at least 1,700 likely signators, to review the pre-publication version, provide critical feedback, and indicate whether they are inclined to agree enough to sign. Only upon publication will the signators be known to one another. Individuals will collaborate anonymously, not join a group or form factions so as to avoid the distractions of group dynamics.
Until there are potentially 1,700 signators, the pathway to a viable civilization as envisioned will remain potential. Posterity may not have 1,700 ancestors to thank.
