Managing our planet

Australian troops are now in southern Iraq working alongside Japanese military engineers involved in humanitarian reconstruction projects.

Concerns about these troops being exposed to uranium from previous conflicts in Iraq have appeared in the world press, while the world's biggest uranium miner has announced major expansion plans in Australia, the largest known source of uranium in the world.

Australian yellowcake uranium was the source of the energy released when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated in 1945. It was different in 1914 when the Japanese navy escorted Australian troop ships as they sailed across the Indian Ocean prior to the Gallipoli campaign.

In this 60th anniversary year of Peace in the Pacific, we need to focus on the new and revitalized friendships of the 21st century rather than the hostilities of the past. Japanese and Australian troops working together in the middle of a radioactive desert is an ironic symbol of the ultimate futility of armed conflict and a reminder of the path humanity must of necessity take to ensure the safety and well-being of the world's people.

The reform proposals the United Nations will vote upon just three months from now offer a unique opportunity to redefine the balance between that which is for the individual good of the planet's 191 nations and that which is for the greater good of the sum of those nations.

If our species has the intelligence to discover a new planet in the deep space of our solar system, why can we not harness our collective intelligence to solve the urgent and pressing problems of this planet?

In Athens two and half millennia ago, a new concept of how humans can more equitably govern themselves was born -- democracy. Today in this new millennium, we perhaps need to begin to perceive our planet as a new Athens if we wish to find a better way of managing it.

We need to learn how to govern the planet collectively. Three months from now, the individual members of the collective that is the United Nations should vote to give more power to their group, defined as the people of Earth, and less to the individual members as a way toward a better and more enlightened concept of the governance and management of our planet home.

GREG WARNER, Jakarta