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We Need a New World

STEP back and take a look at the conditions that surround you. Do you like what you see?

Perhaps you personally have a nice home in a pleasant, well-maintained area. You may also have a well-paying job that you like. Additionally, you and your loved ones may enjoy a measure of good health. All in all, you may feel relatively secure and happy.

But think of other neighborhoods, other parts of the country you live in, other lands. Take a look at the whole world. Is it a pretty picture that you see? Is it truly one of contentment, peace, and prosperity?

According to some predictions earlier in this century, science should by now have eradicated all major illnesses, provided abundant food for all, stabilized and improved the environment, and ushered in an era of peace. But what has really happened?

It does not take much examination to see that peace has eluded our planet. “Since biblical times, people have been admonished to beat swords into plowshares,” writes Michael Renner in State of the World 1990. “Never has such advice been more appropriate. The relentless pursuit of military might has brought humanity to the brink of annihilation.”

Reports abound of the civil strife and wars that decimate so many countries around the globe. According to one source, 22 wars were still being fought in 1988.a How many had died in those wars? Up to and including that year, “the total number of people killed in all the wars being fought in 1988 was 4,645,000. Seventy-six percent of those killed were civilians,” says the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Do current world developments indicate a peaceful world ahead? “Word has it that the Cold War is in remission and peace has been given a chance. But look again,” says an article in the San Jose Mercury News of California, U.S.A. “In the Third World, war storms on with little hope of resolution. These are the world’s hidden wars. They are largely conflicts that pit governments against their own people: bloody civil struggles over land, religion, ethnic and tribal differences, political power, even drugs. . . . From the Horn of Africa to Southeast Asia, war has forced millions of people to flee their homes. Crops go unplanted, health clinics get attacked, livestock is destroyed, parents are brutally killed in front of their children, 10-year-old boys are made into porters and then soldiers, young girls are raped. In these mostly forgotten lands, war has left a trail of wreckage and social disorder from which these societies may never fully recover. . . . Research shows the 1980s have seen more wars than any other decade in history.”

Many of those who manage to flee to more developed countries find the peace they sought shattered by the threat of violent crime. “The [United States] crime siege has continued through the 1980s despite predictions it would ease,” reports U.S.News & World Report. “In a typical year: There are 8.1 million serious crimes like murder, assault and burglary. . . . Most harrowing of all is the way the bloodletting has become pervasive and unpredictable. Victimization is a chronic state. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that 83 percent of children now 12 years old will become victims of actual or attempted violence if crime continues at current rates. . . . Punishment of society’s wrongdoers is neither sure nor swift. Nationwide, the police are able to solve only 1 in 5 major crimes.” Similar situations exist worldwide. The UN General Assembly reports an “increase both in the incidence and seriousness of crime in many parts of the world.”

But even if all war, weaponry, and crime were immediately to disappear from the earth, life would still be threatened. “Crushing poverty, rampant disease, and massive illiteracy characterize the lives of hundreds of millions in developing countries,” notes Worldwatch Institute in their State of the World 1990 report. “All of humanity​—rich or poor, militarily strong or weak—​confronts the specter of unprecedented environmental devastation.”

Yes, the very life-support systems on which all humanity depend are being undermined. “Earth as a whole is in worse shape [than in 1970],” writes editor Paul Hoffman in Discover magazine. “Garbage is spilling out of our landfills. Greenhouse gases are heating up the atmosphere. The planet’s ozone shield is thinning. Deserts are expanding, and rain forests are shrinking. Plant and animal species are becoming extinct at the rate of 17 per hour.”

Add to that the effects of continued contamination of land and water. Figure in the steady rise in the world’s population, which results in more and more productive land being built upon or paved over, thereby increasing the extinction of animal and plant species. Consider the rising scarcity of freshwater supplies and the problem of acid rain. Tag on the health-threatening consequences of heavily polluted air and the problems of hazardous waste. Together, they spell disaster for the human race. Whoever or wherever we are, we need air, food, water, and raw materials in order to exist. We need them unpolluted and in adequate measure. Already, “for the poor, the eighties were an unmitigated disaster, a time of meager diets and rising death rates,” says State of the World 1990.

With the human race being threatened in so many ways, can anyone deny that a new world is sorely needed? But is that a real possibility? From what source would such a world come? What obstacles must be overcome before our planet can really be considered safe and thriving? Let us see.

[Footnotes]

[Picture Credit Line on page 4]

WHO photo by P. Almasy