Paula DiPerna, author of “Pricing the Priceless: The Financial Transformation to Value the Planet, Solve the Climate Crisis, and Protect Our Most Precious Assets,” posits that we need to value the atmosphere, forests, oceans, natural resources and nature. The Forest Resilience Bond quantifies the economic benefits of a forest to all of the beneficiaries. Many groups have contributed to the discussion of climate change; however, the United Nations has been the critical player in promoting Sustainable Development so that humans could use the resources but not destroy them for future generations. For over 40-years, the UN has convened the countries of the world to confront these problems. To be successful, policymakers must utilize science, policy and capital. Although some media outlets deny the climate crisis, the legitimate media must play a more proactive role to inform the public about the environmental crisis. Clean energy will produce millions of new sustainable, high-paying jobs and create a cleaner, healthier environment.

Dr. Bob Flax, a psychologist, organization development consultant, educator and activist, is the former Executive Director of Citizens for Global Solutions, and an Advisor to The World Federalist Movement (WFM) - Institute for Global Policy. The WFM was founded in 1947 with the goal of creating a world federation to achieve world peace, human rights and preserve the environment. Three areas of interest were UN Reform, build global institutions and that world unity was necessary to deal with issues such as climate change, human trafficking or violations of human rights. This global institution would be more structured, have more authority and utilize binding international law as opposed to the loose amalgamation of current treaties and other international agreements. Today, the UN has a voluntary membership of 193 member states or countries that maintain their sovereignty. The WFM is an organization that advocates for a democratic world government of a world federalist system by expanding international organizations and moving towards a unified system of governance.

Craig Mokhiber, Director of the UN Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights in New York, details how when the UN was established in 1945, the main goals were to eliminate the scourge of war, promote economic and social development and enhance human rights worldwide. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) defines the myriad of human rights and was adopted on December 10, 1948.  It included all political, cultural, economic, social and civil rights.  Eleanor Roosevelt, the US Constitution, the French Rights of Man and FDR’s Four Freedoms played a key role in developing the UDHR.  To guarantee that there is balance and impartiality in evaluating a country’s human rights progress, periodically all 193 countries in the UN participate the Universal Periodic Review which is an evaluation of their human rights record. Human rights are under pressure in many areas around the world, including in the US with attacks on democratic institutions. No country has a perfect human rights record.

Johanna Chao Kreilick is the president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a 501 c 3 scientific advocacy nonprofit based in the United States. She has represented the organization in lobbying Congress and business leaders to address climate change, attacks on democratic institutions and the threat of nuclear war. Regarding the number 1 challenge, climate change, the UN conferences and the UN IPCC have spearheaded the attack to combat this crisis. The UN is an important multinational organization that brings the countries of the world together to develop reports and products used by many expert agencies. The UN Paris Climate Accord is critical in challenging the world to hold to 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming. One reason that the US has been so successful as a world leader is due to its democratic institutions that have recently been under siege, especially since the January 6 insurrection to overthrow a free, fair and democratic election.   

Brenden Varma has served as a United Nations spokesperson and political affairs officer for over 20 years in New York, Baghdad, Jerusalem, Mogadishu and Pristina. He currently serves as the Deputy Director of the UN Information Center in Washington, DC. The UN Information Center works to inform, educate and update a wide range of groups, such as environmentalists, governmental agencies, businesses, DC based international institutions and the public. Public Opinion Polls over the decades show that Americans normally support the UN, depending on the issue, from 38%-84%. UN agencies assist in moving aircraft, mail, ships and weather information in international space, as well as working with Rotary International to eliminate the scourge of polio, assisting Ukrainians, empowering women, combatting climate change and human trafficking and promoting human rights. The UN’s budget is smaller than that of the New York Police Department’s.  All 8 billion people on the planet are positively affected daily by a myriad of UN agencies.

Jerry Glenn is a futurist who serves as the executive director of the Millennium Project.  He authors an annual publication, “State of the Future.” Previously, he was the executive director of the American Council for the United Nations University and the deputy director of Partnership for Productivity International. He was a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Malawi. The Millennium Project is a global participatory think tank in 71 countries, called nodes, which identify major global and local issues. Most participants are from UN agencies, governments, NGOs, and an admixture of others. A few of the 15 Global Challenges include achieving sustainable development and balance climate change; provide clean water without conflict; preserve democracies against authoritarian regimes; empower women and girls; and productively utilize artificial intelligence (AI). Given the potential danger of AI, the UN Summit on the Future should include discussions for a UN Treaty on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)– not the current narrow AI definition.

Chuck Collins is the Director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he co-edits Inequality.org.

His 2021 book is titled, The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Spend Millions to Hide Trillions. His newest book is a novel, Altar to an Erupting Sun, which is a near-future story of one community facing climate disruption in the critical decade ahead. The protagonist, Rae, lays the primary responsibility on the doorstep of a small number of powerful people in the fossil fuel industries that have actively blocked meaningful responses.    Another related study to climate change and income inequality shows that private jet travel of the ultra-wealthy adds to the harmful emissions that contribute to global warming and the taxpayers are subsidizing that industry for many wealthy people who do not need financial assistance. A corollary of the jet subsidy study and the novel is that the income inequality gap is growing dramatically. For example, Over the past 50 years, the highest-earning 20% of U.S. households have steadily brought in a larger share of the country’s total income.  One percent owns 44% of the world’s wealth. Income inequality in the U.S. is the highest of all the G7 and OECD nations, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Many of the following actions help create greater income inequality: deregulation, decline of labor unions, AI and automation, PACs and dark money donated to politicians, subsidies to industries such as fossil fuels and offshore tax havens.

Steve Schlesinger, author of "Act of Creation: Founding of the United Nations," highlights how the UN has expanded to deal with problems such as diseases, regional conflicts, as well as moving aircraft, ships, mail and weather information worldwide. Since creating the UN, there has not been a WW3; although there were volatile conflicts such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, potential Cold War miscalculations and a weakening of the multilateral security system. Although it is an imperfect organization, the UN is critically necessary. If the UN did not exist today, it would have to be created tomorrow. The UN Security Council has been partially paralyzed; however, many UN agencies have been working on the ground to assist the Ukrainians, such as through the World Food Program, UNICEF, IAEA, UN Refugee Agency and the World Health Organization. The UN is not a one-world government, has no troops and is unable to tax to fund itself, yet its moral standing has an immense impact on promoting world peace and development.

Kerri Murray serves as President of the global disaster relief nonprofit, ShelterBox USA. Since 2000, ShelterBox has provided shelter and life-saving items to more than 2.5M displaced people following more than 300 disasters in nearly 100 countries. ShelterBox has responded to earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, hurricanes, cyclones, tsunamis, or conflict situations. It collaborates with local partners and individuals such as Rotary Clubs and United Nations agencies, to customize each response, which can include disaster relief tents, tarps, blankets, cook sets, water filtration systems, emergency lighting, stoves, and other tools for survival. ShelterBox is the official project partner of Rotary International in disaster relief. ShelterBox was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 and 2019 for its humanitarian work in the world’s worst conflict situations.  ShelterBox also currently has programs in Pakistan, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. ShelterBox was founded in 2000 by a Rotary Club in Cornwall, England.

Mark Oettinger, Attorney and World Court of Human Rights Design Team Leader, discusses the concept of the World Court of Human Rights (WCHR). The concept was launched in 1947 when the UN was temporarily in Paris and was debating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which passed on December 10, 1948. The UDHR is often viewed as the “Constitution for the World,” having drawn upon concepts from the American “US Constitution” and the French “Rights of Man,” WCHR is viewed as the third leg of the Supranational Courts: ICC, ICJ and WCHR. The International Criminal Court, or ICC, was established by the UN, is not part of the UN System today and pursues criminal prosecution procedures against world leaders who have been charged with committing genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity It is intended to punish. The International Court of Justice (ICJ), one of the six organs of the UN, is a civil court which resolves disputes between and among nations when boundaries or treaties are contested, e.g., fishing rights between the US and Canada.  WCHR’s major purpose is to intercede when major violations of human rights occur, e.g., Russians in Ukraine, Rohingyas in Myanmar, or Uyghurs in China.  Funding for the WCHR is based on the percentage of wealth of an individual state, much as the funding arrangement at the UN today. Discussions are incubating at the UN as to how the WCHR would interact with the UN Human Rights Council, UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council.

Dr. Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organization, is a leader in highlighting this sanitation issue. Generally, humans use the toilet 6 to 8 times a day, however, over 2 billion people of the Earth’s 8 billion population do not have access to safe or sufficient toilet facilities and openly defecate. Two million people die each year from diarrhea. Dr. Sim has collaborated with a wide range of professionals to shine the spotlight on this, at times, sensitive topic by working with Bill Gates, Rotary International and several United Nations agencies. The UN has declared November 19 as World Toilet Day. Goal number 6, of the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals, has six outcome targets that include: Safe and affordable drinking water; end open defecation and provide access to sanitation, and hygiene, improve water quality, wastewater treatment and safe reuse, increase water-use efficiency and ensure freshwater supplies, implement IWRM, protect and restore water-related ecosystems.  

Steve Killelea, an Australian national, is the Founder and Executive Chairman of the Charitable Foundation and the Institute for Economics and Peace. He had a successful career as an IT innovator and global philanthropist.  In the pursuit of peace, he launched the Institute for Economics and Peace and the Global Terrorism Index. He has worked closely with Rotary International and the United Nations, two of the premier organizations striving for a more prosperous, equitable and peaceful world.  He maintains that peace is a hard-to-describe transformational concept that can be defined simply as an absence of violence and fear of violence. The economic cost of violence to GDPs around the world is estimated to be in the tens of trillions of dollars.

Examples of the most peaceful countries would include Iceland, some of the Nordic countries and New Zealand. The USA and China are ranked in the mid-range, whereas some of the most violent are Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

Jared Yates Sexton is an author whose recent book is: "THE MIDNIGHT KINGDOM: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis.” Mr. Sexton is also the host of The Muckrake podcast. The “Midnight Kingdom” starts very early in Western history and delineates how anti-democratic forces blossom and perpetuate lies, myths and rhetoric that protect entrenched power in the West. One major concern is the growing extremism of America’s right-wing and anti-liberal democracy movements, as recently exemplified by the violent January 6, 2021 insurrection that allegedly was invited, incited and partially coordinated by Donald Trump. The cycle of “protecting Western civilization” has continued throughout history and is maintained through oppression by white supremacy and patriarchal control. Additional fuel to exacerbate the problem is provided by extremist so-called news outlets, such as Fox, Newsmax and OAN that are pushing misinformation about the bogus threats of Critical Race Theory and WOKE issues, which are actually benign and non-threatening.

Charles F. “Chic” Dambach, Global Peacebuilder and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, has a wide ranging career that  includes being the former President of the Alliance for Peacebuilding, former President of the National Peace Corps Association, and past Chief of Staff for Congressman John Garamendi of California. His memoir, Exhaust the Limits, the Life and Times of a Global Peacebuilder, features a lifetime of service and successful initiatives for peace.  Mr. Dambach highlights how peacebuilding is the responsibility of everyone, especially for members of the U.S. Peace Corps, Rotary International and the United Nations. Previously, Mr. Dambach was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, and he led a grassroots peacebuilding effort between Ethiopia and Eritrea in the 1990s.  One hopeful trend today, as opposed to decades ago, is there are diverse educational programs on peacebuilding that are available to the general public so that people can learn helpful techniques to promote peace, and  realize that there are no winners in a war.

John Feffer, author of Splinterlands, and director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, focuses on  policies of the Trump and Biden Administrations. Support for Ukraine is critical to America’s interest. Donald Trump implemented several international policies that adversely affected the USA and endangered the world, such as withdrawing from the Iranian Nuclear Deal, the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accord. While the Biden Administration has had more positive policies, it needs to accelerate its efforts to bring Iran into a new nuclear deal, move more quickly to combat climate warming and re-prioritize its policies in dealing with the “international community.” For example, over $100 billion has been spent to support Ukraine, while only $2.5 billion has been dedicated to all of Latin America. Many of the apocalyptic predictions in the dystopian novel Splinterlands are unfolding today where some superpowers have fractured, global temperatures are soaring, the global economy is teetering and violent nationalism is rampant. 

John R. Wilmoth, Director of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs’ Population Division at the United Nations, discusses the role of DESA’s Population Division and the recent “World Social Report 2023: Leaving No One Behind in an Ageing World.”

Some of the findings indicate that people are living longer, for example the approximately 760 million people today above-65 will double by 2050, and the above-80 population will triple by 2050. This “demographic transition” shows a shift to longer lives, fewer births and smaller families. Spectacular improvements in health, survival and reductions in fertility have driven this momentous shift.  The Covid-19 pandemic was detrimental in several ways, especially since life expectancy for the world dropped a precipitous 1.8 years.  A major challenge is the lack of social protections systems that do not exist or are very limited in many countries.  Population aging has been a remarkable success because life expectancies have increased, yet population growth is slowing.

Suzanne Nossel is Chief Executive Officer of PEN America, and a leading voice on free expression issues in the United States and globally. She is the author of Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All. Over her ten-year tenure, she has established a Washington, D.C. office, and overseen groundbreaking work on free expression in Hong Kong and China, Myanmar, Eurasia, and the United States.  She was Chief Operating Officer of Human Rights Watch, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, and a diplomat in the Obama and Clinton administrations, where her work focused on the United Nations. PEN America has been at the forefront of the defense of free expression in the current climate of spreading book bans, classroom gag orders and other attacks on free expression and free speech in education, both K-12 and colleges and universities. PEN America also focuses on suppression of freedoms in Iran and Russia’s attempt to eradicate the Ukrainian culture.  

Lynn Levine Greenky, Associate Teaching Professor at Syracuse University in the Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies, authored “When Freedom Speaks: The Boundaries and the Boundlessness of our First Amendment Right. “Professor Greenky highlights the relationship of the First Amendment to our government, politics, and culture, especially in the areas of book banning, teacher and student speech, campus codes and cancel culture such as undertaken by Florida Governor DeSantis and Critical Race Theory demagogues. She delineates the difference between incitement and advocacy. For example, many of the January 6 insurgents who attacked the Capitol believed the election was stolen and were lied to by Donald Trump who, reportedly, admitted several times he had lost in a fair and free election to Joe Biden. First Amendment protections, freedom of assembly and a free press are critical to democracies that are under siege by anti-democratic forces such as those operating in the US, Brazil, the Philippines, Turkey and Hungary. 

Dr. Chuck Powell is the CEO for Encompassing Leadership Associates, and is a member of the board of the Daisy Alliance which challenges the establishment view that nuclear weapons make the world more secure. Daisy Alliance’s goal is to change the conversation by reframing how nuclear weapons are viewed by both policymakers and the public. Previously, Dr. Powell was in the US Air Force and oversaw up to 150 nuclear warheads. Some of the major questions are do nukes make the world safer, should the US have a “No First Strike” policy and is it effective to invest a minimum of $634 billion over the next ten years to modernize an aging nuclear weapons system, as opposed to reducing nuclear stockpiles? Three of the most important mechanisms to reduce nuclear threats and create a safer world are the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs; the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT); and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).

Olga Tokariuk, an independent journalist, is a fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in Oxford, England and a non-resident fellow at CEPA (Center for European Policy Analysis). Her professional interests include international relations and disinformation research. She details how resilient the Ukrainian people and military have been in confronting a more powerful Russian military. The former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin tried to destroy the identity of Ukraine; much the same way Putin is. Putin felt emboldened to invade Ukraine because he received no repercussions for his aggressive behavior in Chechnya, Georgia and the Crimean Peninsula. Major efforts should focus on continuing sanctions and aid, and combatting the propaganda campaign by Putin to use a myriad of disinformation techniques, such as humor, to undermine Ukrainian resistance and Western resolve. The incoming Republican House of Representatives’ leaders have indicated that the US aid will be reduced and there will not be a “blank check” to confront Russian aggression, although no “blank check” currently exists.