- Stabilizing and reducing human populations
- Developing and implementing smart energy policies
- Promotion of human rights.
- Reproductive health for women
- Justice for women
- Educational opportunity for women
- Protection of natural resources and the environment
- Promoting civil society
- Supporting performing and fine arts
- Promoting resolution of conflicts through peaceful negotiation
- Improving the abilities of other NGOs to perform their missions.
Discussion of Goals
- Stabilizing and reducing human populations.
The continuing growth of the global population is a threat to all of its members. Competition for scarce resources and resource depletion create fertile areas for conflict within nations and between nations and other interest groups. Shortages result in famine and death for people who had no part in creating the shortages. Industrial development and industrialized human activities pollute the air and water, and compromise the ability of future generations to live healthy lives and enjoy the abundance of Earth’s resources. Socially acceptable methods of reducing the overall global population, and the pressures which that population creates, need to be identified and implemented. The goal is a sustainable world where all of its inhabitants have health and prosperity.
- Developing and implementing smart energy policies
Over the past 150 years, humans have moved from an agrarian to an industrial economy. That shift has been accompanied by many technologies that have the effect of poisoning resources humans need to live. The two most dramatic are the impacts of global warming due to CO2 discharges into the atmosphere and radioactive contamination of areas around failed nuclear facilities, such as Chernobyl, Fukushima Daichi, Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, Savannah Plant, South Carolina, and Hannaford, Washington. Activities to extract energy-rich minerals, such as mountaintop mining and deep-ocean oil drilling, destroy entire ecosystems. Human society needs to move globally to clean, renewable sources of energy. This move necessarily means society also needs to operate more efficiently, and implement energy conservation measures in every way possible.
- Promotion of human rights.
Modern society has seen an increase in the influence of corporate and industrial interests, with a corresponding reduction in human rights. That shift isn’t healthy for human society’s long-term stability. The success of business and the exercise of a broad range of human rights does not need to be a zero-sum game. With enlightened leadership, a thriving society can see both unfettered exercise of basic human rights and the development of healthy business communities. In the United States, past expansions of human rights have helped, rather than hindered, in the expansion of business opportunity and success. This concept needs to be encouraged globally.
- Reproductive health for women
Basic human biology dictates that, so far, women bear the children necessary to continue the species. In the past, and unfortunately still today, that reality has been exploited, particularly by men, to relegate women to second-class status. That attitude is unacceptable for civilized people. Women need to be able to make their own decisions about their lives, and that begins with their decision if and when to have children. Child-bearing is a profound and, in some respects, dangerous activity for each woman and each woman should have the best possible health care to insure that both her health and the health of any child she chooses to bear are fully protected. Abortion should be legal, safe and rare. Effective family planning programs and sex education, for both women and men, are essential to prevent unplanned and unwanted pregnancies as a way to reduce the need for abortion.
- Justice for women
Too many societies still relegate women to a position subservient to the men in that society. Social, religious and legal structures need to be promoted, established and protected to insure that women are able to exercise all the rights exercised by men in society and that there are no barriers to their exercise of those rights.
- Educational opportunity for women
Women can contribute more effectively to human society if they are well educated. They are better aware of their abilities and rights if they are well educated. They will be healthier if they are well educated. Children will be healthier and better citizens if their mothers are well educated. Every woman should be encouraged and have ample opportunities to obtain the most complete education she desires, in whatever field she desires.
- Protection of natural resources and the environment
Popular social concepts often portray humans as somehow superior than their environment and aloof to the need to protect that environment. That idea is false and ultimately destructive to the health of society, societal institutions and to humans individually. All people are dependent on healthy natural systems, just as the wildlife of the planet are. We damage those systems at our own peril. Activities to recognize, describe and protect natural resources and the complex systems they make up are essential to the long-term survival of humans in civil society on this planet.
- Promoting civil society
Civil society requires that each individual, and all peoples in human society, recognize and respect our differences as well as our similarities. Diverse cultures are a source of strength. They help provide a variety of viewpoints on every issue and that encourages more thorough analysis of any question that needs an answer. Questions that arise need to be answered using the best science available; recognizing that the answers may change as new science is developed. Public participation in the activities of government is essential to a well-operated government structure. All adults should be able to participate fully, and all children should be educated on the responsibility of each citizen to be involved in governing society.
- Supporting performing and fine arts
Man does not live by bread alone. Human society is enriched by the creative activities of painting, sculpture, dance, music and theater. Many of these elements of modern society do not generate enough revenue to run on ticket sales, or similar income, and need additional support from philanthropy. We need the richness provided by the arts to fully realize our potential as human beings.
- Promoting resolution of conflicts through peaceful negotiation
Modern society necessarily involves conflict. Selfish individuals often intentionally generate these conflicts as a way of enhancing their own prestige or power. Groups sometimes emphasize their difference, and alleged superiority, over a neighbor, because of religion, ethnicity, or other quality. Racism, sexism, and other “–isms” only reflect weakness in the character of the persons displaying those attitudes. Differences, no matter what they are, almost never really amount to superiority over another. Each group has its own right to decide what is best for itself. Too often, conflicts escalate into hostilities that polarize groups and interfere with thoughtful analysis of the underlying issues. In every case, there will be a way to recognize mutual benefits of ending hostilities and resolving the conflict for the benefit of all concerned. That resolution will seldom, almost never, be easy, but is always worth the effort and deserves to be encouraged as much as possible.
- Improving the abilities of other NGOs to perform their missions.
There are hundreds of thousands of non-governmental organizations (“NGOs”) (in the United States we refer to them as “non-profit organizations”) that have identified a worthy mission, who work to achieve various goals to accomplish that mission. Many of these organizations, despite their best efforts, are underfunded or poorly managed, or both. Often, all that is needed, for a worthy organization to improve, is for the leaders of the organization better to understand their own role and duties as leaders, and to learn about other strategies to pursue their goals.