Rob Wheeler WPE Speaker

From Worldparliament

This is the wiki page of Rob Wheeler, Speaker of the World Parliament Experiment [1].

Friends,

I first met Rasmus Tenbergen and learned about the World Parliament Experiment in 2002 during the World Federalist Movement Congress in London. I was immediately interested in this web voting tool and became convinced that it could provide a good means for reaching common agreement about what could be done, and to take collaborative action, to solve our most urgent global problems. Since then I have supported the development of the World Parliament Experiment and participated in many planning and organizing meetings. All that is really needed to make it an incredible success is for tens of thousands, and then millions, of people to begin using, supporting, and promoting it.

During this same period I have represented a number of organizations at the United Nations and have participated actively in the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, along with any number of UN reform conferences and processes. I have become convinced that the United Nations could be, and needs to be, significantly strengthened and democratized in order to be able to solve our global problems. I have also participated in many UN and other meetings and conferences that have focused on how we could make a transition to sustainable energy; and I personally believe that humanity could do so within a period of 15 or 20 years if we would invest sufficient resources in doing so.

The biggest challenge is no longer in having to figure out how to do this, but rather to develop the political will needed to replace and retrofit un-sustainable machines, technologies, and buildings with sustainable ones and to provide the funding needed to be able to do this in both the developed and developing world.

A proposal was recently made suggesting that the World Parliament Experiment should be used to develop a Citizens Global Agreement on Climate Change, which we could then present to governments, the world’s people, and the media. I think that this is an excellent idea. Why should we, the people, wait for our governments to develop agreements, when they so seldom include the means, mechanisms, and funding needed either to fulfill them or to solve our most pressing global problems? We can develop our own agreement and then insist that our representatives either support our agreement or come up with a better one themselves.

I will thus do all I can during the upcoming year to encourage and support the use of the World Parliament Experiment to cooperatively draft a Citizens Agreement on Climate Change and to develop as much support for our agreement as possible. One of our first opportunities for presenting it will be at the UNFCCC meetings in Bonn Germany in May; and then again at the Climate Negotiations in Mexico City in December. So, we have our work cut out for us to complete our agreement and to develop support for it well before then.

However, if our governments will not take sufficient and responsible action to solve our global challenges, then we the people will have to lead the way.

Thank you for your support and assistance in developing and participating in the activities of the World Parliament Experiment.

Rob Wheeler Speaker

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Remarks by Bruce Eggum

Rob said: All that is really needed to make it an incredible success is for tens of thousands, and then millions, of people to begin using, supporting, and promoting it.”

Then he said: “I have become convinced that the United Nations could be, and needs to be, significantly strengthened and democratized in order to be able to solve our global problems.”

These are the problems in a nutshell. (1) World decisions must be done by all World People. (2)The UN has not been run democratically, the US and other major countries getting “their way”.

If we start with number 1, WPE must contact every country in the World and ask for at least two people to represent that county in WPE. WPE could than begin to identify initial World needs and ways to resolve them. Who will volunteer to make a list of countries and email contacts? I also acknowledge there are other sites which have developed good software similar to WPE and some addressing things WPE does not. Perhaps all would consider working together to make one total World Democracy Parliament Site? Others interested in joining together please respond on WorldCiti site.

Than number 2, after we have a World consensus, having the World peoples behind us we could demand the UN become democratic or replace it.