What would a program look like that would effectively shift political power and economic responsibility from a global to a regional focus while encouraging sustainability on all levels? After some rumination, I developed a complicated but descriptive title: Regional Environmental Self-sufficiency and Self-determination through Community Underwriting and Enterprise. It mercifully abbreviates to the nice, neat acronym of RESSCUE. The plan includes recommendations for a series of policies determining how the world would better deal with the critical issues of food, forests, fuel and energy and population and human security.

FOOD:

Eight billion people might possibly be sustained at a minimum level of sustenance if certain steps are taken. These steps would include:    

     ·  Equitably distribute and share food among the entire world population.

     ·  Affluent populations should reduce their meat and dairy consumption by about fifty percent and adopt a simpler diet.

     ·  Promote maximum crop and biological diversity and use of open-pollinated seeds, and aggressive preservation of traditional seed stocks.

     ·  Employ best soil conserving and farming practices along with aggressive erosion control and soil desalinization measures.

     ·  Protect and conserve water supplies and avoid withdrawing water in excess of natural recharge levels.

     ·  Undertake agricultural research to develop more sustainable farming practices.

     ·  Preserve existing farmland and redistribute land to those groups and individuals best able to utilize it in a sustainable fashion.

FORESTS:

"Without trees, there is no life," warn the indigenous people of the world. With less than a quarter of the planet’s land surface (excluding Antarctica and Greenland) remaining in tree cover, we must make every effort to conserve what is left. A global forest conservation plan would:

     ·  Preserve and conserve remaining virgin forests and intact forest systems.

     ·  Replace clear-cut logging with sustainable forestry practices.

     ·  Use environmentally benign substitutes for wood and alternative building materials for construction purposes.

     ·  Restore secure land tenure to indigenous inhabitants of forest areas.

     ·  Use wood products more efficiently and recycle lumber whenever possible.

     ·  Insist on full ecological and economic valuing of living forest systems.

FUEL and ENERGY:

Humans cannot survive long without energy and the many necessities and conveniences its provides. Yet relying on fossil fuels for eighty percent or more of our energy needs is affecting our health, depleting a valuable planetary legacy, and dangerously disrupting our global environmental support systems. We need to change the way we make and use energy. We can do this if we would:

     ·  Switch from fossil fuels to a global solar hydrogen economy where energy generation and distribution is decentralized wherever practical.

     ·  Establish renewable energy farms on lands too degraded or not practical to use for crop production.

     ·  Establish manufacturing of renewable energy equipment in communities and regions throughout the world, thereby providing local employment and local energy generation. Ideally, these facilities will be worker owned and managed.

     ·  Use sales of excess electrical power and hydrogen as a means to provide revenues to communities where power generating facilities are located, and employing the excess heat from thermal power stations to warm greenhouses for supplemental food production.

POPULATION and HUMAN SECURITY:

Clearly, population is the most intractable of our four critical foundation components. Whereas forest, fuel, and food can be successfully addressed given sufficient amounts of money and technology, population is about people, and any initiatives for change must take into consideration what individuals think, what they feel, and what they believe. And many differences of opinion abound regarding what comprises a right or wrong choice or course of action.

A population stabilization and human security program will need to:

     ·  Make health services, family planning information, and contraceptive services easily available to women throughout the world.

     ·  Grant women the freedom to choose their mates, how many children to have, and the right to own land and property.

     ·  Provide basic literacy education and economic development assistance to women, especially in developing countries.

     ·  Provide gender awareness programs for men.

     ·  Provide public education regarding the environmental importance and the quality of life benefits of small families.

     ·  Provide social security programs for families in developing countries.

     ·  Grant all men and women the right to full political, religious, and democratic expression.

      Population means much more than mere numbers. We need to make primary the notion of "human security". National security is something easily understood. That’s why we’re prepared to spend many trillions of dollars on weapons and armies. But human security entails such important aspects of life as peace, environmental protection, human rights, religious and racial tolerance, and social integration. Human security raised to the level of national security will indicate that humanity has finally reached a higher level of maturity.