The Peace Party agrees with a recent article by George Monbiot that “Future lives should not be sacrificed to fuel our greed”.
It seems to the Peace Party that the present economic system is an unjust one and “that the founding principle of any just system is that those who are not yet alive will, when they are born, have the same rights as those who are alive today. At first sight, this doesn’t seem to change anything: the first article of the Universal Declaration states that ‘all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights’. But this statement is almost meaningless, because there is nothing in the declaration insisting that one generation cannot steal from the next. The missing article might look like this: ‘Every generation shall have an equal right to the enjoyment of natural wealth’.”
“This principle tells us that no renewable resource should be used beyond its rate of replenishment. No non-renewable resource should be used that cannot be fully recycled and reused. This leads inexorably to towards two major shifts: a circular economy from which materials are never lost, and the end of fossil fuel combustion.”
“In this densely-populated world, all land ownership necessarily precludes ownership by others. Article 17 of the Universal Declaration is self-contradictory. It says ‘Everyone has the right to own property’. But because it places no limit on the amount one person can possess, it ensures that everyone does not have this right. (The Peace Party) would change it to: ‘Everyone has the right to use property without infringing the rights of others to use property’. The implication is that everyone born today would acquire an equal right of use, or would need to be compensated for their exclusion.”
