The Earth Needs a Global Environmental Protection Agency
August 5, 2024
by William P. Meyers

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Global Government is the only solution to the ecology crisis

The earth needs an Environmental Protection Agency. A better one, still, than we have in the United States of America, but our EPA can serve as a general model. In order to have an effective global EPA, we need a real Government of Earth. There are several possible paths to getting to a Government of Earth, notably by making the United Nations a real government. Or by setting up a Provisional Government of Earth (PGE) that can convince every nation of earth to be part of, and subordinate to, it. In this essay I will focus on how a global EPA could work.

First, consider what has not worked very well so far: global environmental agreements. The record is mixed. International agreements have worked relatively well for small scale projects with little major economic impacts, like protecting whales. The ban on CFCs, which were destroying the ozone layer, under the Montreal Protocol of 1987, has largely succeeded. But in general the population of the earth has continued to grow and consumption per person has continued to grow, leading us to our current and future crises. The earth's nations have not been able to agree to or enforce a regime for making sufficient reductions in carbon dioxide emissions to stop global warming. A global EPA might have fossil fuel reductions at the top of the agenda, but it should also be given the job of cleaning up and protecting the environment in general.

The U.S. EPA was created in 1970 by an executive order from President Richard Nixon. That followed the enactment by Congress of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. The U.S. did have some national, state, and local environmental controls before that, but it was a poorly-coordinated system. The rivers and streams of America were overwhelmed with pollution, as was the air near industrial plants. It took some time, and some industries resisted change as best they could, but in general the air and water quality in America improved greatly during the 1970s.

However, there were secondary effects of the change. These illustrate why a global EPA is so important. To some extent manufacturing has always tended to move to low-cost areas. Many American industries started to move overseas (or to Mexico) spurred by the cost of complying with environmental regulations (plus attracted by cheap labor and lower taxes). So pollution did not really decrease, it was simply moved further away from home.

In one other essential way the EPA was too weak: it was possible for corporations to sue to evade regulation. In some cases years or decades passed before certain businesses could be forced to comply. Often the business owners pocketed profits and then declared bankruptcy so they would not have to pay to clean up the messes they created.

When thinking about a global EPA, we should want it to have all the power it needs to do the assigned job: saving the earth and its life forms. No nation, locality, or business should be able to block its regulations. It should have a well-equipped enforcement arm. If enforcement is sometimes delegated to nations, they should be strongly supervised. Our Earth EPA should be able to protect anything that needs protecting, from the lungs of humans to the habitats of invertebrate organisms.

To set up an EPA with that level of power we will need a Government of Earth with the power to overrule individual nations. As with the United States federal system of government, it need not micromanage every issue. But in addition to its EPA powers it should be able to enforce the peace and collect taxes enough to carry out its assigned duties.

The United Nations has undertaken some environmental tasks. More commonly nations negotiate protocols or treaties, which means typically not all nations are willing to sign. Worse still, to get more nations to sign on, they are often written to be too weak to do what is necessary. The Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement serve as samples of the world's governments doing too little too late.

Instead of having weak, unenforceable climate change and environmental treaties, we should have a treaty to create a Government of Earth. Then when that government passes laws, they would be applicable to the entire earth.

It is possible the United Nations could be transformed into a Government of Earth. However, there are historical and structural problems with this. The current United Nations ignores the democratic principle of one person, one vote. It has largely served as a mechanism for the imperialist powers that won World War II (the British Empire, American Empire, French Empire, and Russian Empire) to protect their dominance over weaker nations. Also, the ability of Homo sapiens individuals to ignore the effects of their actions on the environment (including other human individuals) requires some way of representing the other species of the world.

An Earth EPA would require a human justice component to be fair and effective. For instance, if a species has been overfished, and fishing of that species needs to be prohibited, there has to be a provision to take care of fishing people, transitioning them to new jobs.

First and foremost, an Earth EPA would need to quickly ramp down the production of fossil fuels. Say by 10% per year. Doing this would disrupt the fossil fuel economy that has become entrenched this last two hundred years. So the Government of Earth would also need the power to coordinate a new economy based on more reasonable consumption and renewable energy sources.

I acknowledge that a powerful government can be a dangerous thing. But at this point in human history I think the risk must be taken. The other path goes straight to an apocalypse where the only certainty is massive human suffering and death. Likely, failure to act now means the near-term collapse of ecosystems and global food supplies. I believe setting up a powerful global government, led by environmentalists, is the only path that has a chance of success. We need to insure that the fossil fuel industry and its political hacks have no say in the new government. Their wealth should be seized so that they cannot use it to hurt the earth or influence political decisions.