‘Following two previous Impakter articles, Planet Earth: Averting a Point of No Return and Planet Resilience: The Choice is Ours, author Dr. George Lueddeke now completes the trilogy with this article, a heartfelt call for a global reset. Reinforcing major threats facing the planet, he highlights the latest results of World Happiness reports and discusses the causes and consequences of system failure across the globe – drawing particular attention to the International Rescue Committee’s Watchlist reports and growing politically-driven humanitarian crises involving over 800 million people.

A key stumbling block to preventing and mitigating these and other potential tragedies is the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) which allows any one of the five members – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States in place since 1946 – to veto any proposal, including cases of mass atrocity. Existential threats now facing the planet – climate change, nuclear war, autonomous artificial intelligence, to name several – have brought the world to a critical juncture where the future looks very uncertain. 

Arguing that we cannot go on as we are and in support of the UN Secretary-General’s proposed rescue of the UN-2030 SDGs,  the author calls for a United Nations and international University Community global forum or summit to consider ‘the kind of future we are heading toward and the future we want’  – The Editors

PEAH readers are invited to comment on the article generally and the recommendation in particular