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Article 20177The United Nations has a broad mandate and transparent decision-making processes withprospects of giving guidance in implementing sustainable environmental practices and the socialprocesses that support them. Enforcement powers, however, are well below the necessary level.There is hope that the information age will produce an unprecedented political movement. Capra(2002) postulates that use of the Internet by non-governmental organizations will foster developmentof a network capable of mobilizing members with unprecedented speed. Castells (1997) proposesthat social change in the network will be a result of the rejection of present dominant valuesand, thus, will not originate within traditional institutions. Cairns (2003a) proposes a set of ecoethicsbased on a sense of belonging to the interdependent web of life and a preliminary declarationof sustainability ethics based on a wish to leave a habitable planet for future generations of thehuman species and those of other life forms. Environmentalists usually assume that these two setsof ethics are identical — they are not. Peace within the human species will not be sustainableunless humankind makes peace with the interdependent web of life and the species that compriseit. Even though the two sets of ethics are not identical, they must be compatible.Human aspirations change, but natural laws do not. Indefinite use of the planet by one species,Homo sapiens, does not conform to the paleontological record, which shows that species comeand go, although some persist for considerable periods of time. The living network endures, but itscomponent parts (i.e., species) do not. Without the system, the species cannot survive. The systemis the aggregate of all living species, but not any particular one for an indefinite period of time.At present, humans are both inflicting major damage on the system and simultaneously expectingto persist as a species indefinitely. This war on nature will have consequences for humankind.The glorification of materialphilia (love of material possessions, see Cairns 2003b) is now carriedto the point of creating severe disequilibrium in the ecological life support system. An uncharitableperson might understandingly conclude that humankind is suicidal. Ecological ethics is an attemptto establish a more harmonious relationship with natural systems and is clearly ecocentric (Cairns2003c). Sustainability ethics attempts to be both homocentric and ecocentric (Cairns, 2003c),based on the assumption that they are compatible.It is difficult to imagine protecting the global ecological life support system without a fair, equitable,effective system of world governance. As Hoffman (2003) remarks, the very complexity of theinternational scene makes it unlikely that such a system can develop. McNeil and McNeil (2003)assert that, to preserve what is here now, humankind and its successors must change their waysby learning to live simultaneously in a cosmopolitan web and in various and diverse primary communities.Reconciling such opposites is the defining question of the present time, and probablyinto the future. McNeil and McNeil (2003) conclude that humankind is living on the crest of a breakingweb; however, with luck, intelligence, and tolerance, it may be possible to keep the web frombreaking. I am convinced that a systems level approach, combined with compassion for local andregional issues, is essential to both peace and sustainability.THE AGE OF SYNTHESISSustainable use of the planet requires a level of synthesis unprecedented in human history.Arguably, humankind must accomplish synthesis in the first half of the 21st century because ofboth exponential population growth and rapid depletion of natural capital. Without peace, this transitionwill be exceedingly difficult, arguably impossible. Information about the components ofsustainability (such as sustainable energy, agriculture, water use, and the like) has promise, but theconnections between them at the system level are almost non-existent. In short, “bottom-up”