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Introduction Planets & Populations Tribes & Nations One Earth & Seven Seas Full Text People &Subsidiarity Kingship & Peacecraft Culture & Divinity Diasporas & Jigsaws HUMAN SCALE GOVERNANCE One Earth & Seven Seas Our Elizabethan seafarers used to think in terms of the seven seas. One of them eventually turned out to be an ocean basin, which we refer to as the North Atlantic Ocean.
Were a tribal gathering to be called from the North Atlantic Ocean, as one of seven tribal gatherings on the planet, our numbers would work out very nicely. So let us turn our thought experiment around, start with the idea of a Planetary Bioregional Assembly and see where this might lead us.
What is the nature of this beast?
It is a confederation of nations, which are each confederations of tribes, which are confederations of clans, which are confederations of families.
As a dweller in the North Atlantic Ocean Bioregion, you may act as a democratic representative for your family at your Clan Gathering; for your clan at your Tribal Gathering, for your tribe at your National Gathering, or for your nation at your Planetary Bioregional Gathering.
That is the scale of things for a few decades.
Going beyond that takes us into the population question. This we address by arguing that a curb on population growth would be the consequence of a shift to human scale governance rather than a prerequisite for it because the forces generating geometric growth in population would disappear. As a result there would be no problem to solve and no need to put ourselves in the position of playing God and devising population policy.
As an aside I would also add that what the people of Calais or Dover might do to keep their population within the carrying capacity of their bailiwicks would, in any event, be different to what would be decided by the crofters of Rathlin Island or the tin miners of Tintagel.
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e-mail: peteretherden@cesc.net
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