WWAT (Willing Workers in Alternative Technology):
Introduction 2000

Dear Friends,

Just before the turn of the last millenium, a group of the most educated and at the same time among the most decorated men on Earth - physicists, scientists, and roughly one hundred and ten of the one hundred seventy living Nobel Prize winners from sixty nine countries - signed a document - largely ignored by the corporate media - entitled "Warning to Humanity." In that text, the undersigned admonished that, in the next twenty years, mankind would be facing the most formidable of challenges. The combined results of the use of the Earth's resources at extremely high levels of extraction and consumption- air, water, and soil - and the effects of pollution, depletion of the ozone layer, the biggest extinction of species in the fossil record ever, the global planetary warming, the melting of the ice caps, and overpopulation would pose a serious threat to the continuation of human and other life on Earth, and cause severe irreversible damage to the eco-systems that sustain and make life possible on the planet.

About the same time, another set of remarkable and extremely prominent men, Sir Michael Atiyah, president of the Royal Society of London, and Dr. Frank Press, president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, issued a joint statement under the title - again largely ignored by the corporate media-"Population Growth, Resource Consumption and a Sustainable World." The Royal Society, founded in 1660, is sometimes called the United Kingdom's Academy of Science. This joint statement, issued by two of the world's leading scientific organizations, was unprecedented. The Royal Society, in particular, has been always very reluctant to issue pronouncements on matters of public policy that might stir controversy. Unfortunately, this important joint statement was again almost entirely ignored by the world's media. The statement says that if population growth continues and patterns of human activity - read consumption and extraction – remain unchanged," science and technology may not be able to prevent either irreversible degradation of the environment or continued poverty for much of the world." "The future of our planet is in the balance" the statement says. "Sustainable development can be achieved, but only if irreversible degradation of the environment can be halted in time. The next 30 years may be crucial."

I am not the most pessimistic person. Actually I am very optimistic even when faced with extraordinary odds as we all are in our human condition. But, if three quarters of the brightest, most intelligent, scholarly, well-taught, well-informed, erudite, and accomplished men on the planet tell me something, I cannot possibly be so square or dense or both that the message does not get through. Neither can I possibly, even for the flimsiest of moments, think of trying to argue with any of them. If it was only one or two, maybe it would be possible to dispute the conclusions, because he or she could have made a mistake and come to arrive at a faulty conclusion, but certainly not with seventy five percent - an overwhelming majority -and from countries from all over the planet. There's no angle here, none. What they are saying has to be the truth, and must be taken at face value. Period.

So we are faced with the biggest challenge ever to confront the whole of humanity, now that things seemed to be going so well. We conquered the skies, oceans, and land. We have power, steam, energy, and vast sums of capital at our disposal. Standards of living, in spite of outrageous contrasts, are improving almost everywhere around the globe. Yet we are faced with the extremely delicate question of what are we going to do, as a society as a whole, and as individuals at the personal level, to answer this most difficult challenge.

How are we going to use the resources that we have at our disposal as engineers, designers and average men and women - power, fuels, metals, computers, food, air and water - in ways that are sustainable, renewable, non-toxic, solar, and organic? We must find the answers to these questions in an infinitesimal window of time, before the door of time closes inexorably behind us.

This vast group of scientists from sixty nine countries that I mentioned above - there's no plot here also of one nation above the other – called for everyone to work on the solutions: teachers, educators, professors, professionals, men and women, scholars, and laymen. I call on you to join me in this quest, for our own sake, and for the sake of life on Earth.

--Tony Pereira
Email: bk931@lafn.org

Notes:

The complete text of the document "Warning to Humanity" can be read at the "Union of Concerned Scientists" web site http://www.ucsusa.org.

The joint declaration of the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Academy of Sciences can be read at http://www.spiritone.com/~orsierra/rogue/popco/warn/warn01.htm or at http://208.240.253.224/page7.htm.

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