Can we make it right?
I should say I am not the kind of person that is motivated against things. Nevertheless I am having a tough time to agree to the 17 United Nations Global Goals to be signed by 193 United Nations Leaders on September 25th 2015. There are a few things wrong with them. Can we make it right before it is too late? Yes, I believe we can.
My first point would be the order. I believe we must start by Goal 17. The current human socioeconomic system is our trap, it is biased towards power and somehow against love, we need to move towards a better 
balance, we need also to understand the interdependent nature of the universe. I know I may sound a bit philosophical but we must face the things reason alone cannot explain for us. We lack enough scientific knowledge to understand it and we may never reach the point at which we can control every variable. Systems thinking is the best approach that I know of. So partnership could be the first. We are set for increasing climate change and it will bring about social crisis due to scarce access to safe water, land and food. The earth cannot bare 7billion people at our current consumption patterns. There might be enough for everyone but some of us waste too much, some of us lack access to satisfying basic needs and the unevenly distributed wealth might be the tiniest of our big maladies, but doesn’t help, it creates more competition when we need more cooperation.
You may say the order is “only” how we communicate them. The way we communicate such important statement is highly relevant. It has been studied and the human memory span is around 7 items, which means there is no way we will remember all of them. Our minds will focus on a few, those will be the ones that get most publicity and likely the first ones. If we pay closer attention to some of the communication available on The Global Goals webpage we’ll see there already some necessary shortcuts like “End extreme poverty. Fight inequality & injustice. Fix climate change.” Note the slight changes in the wording. For instance “no poverty” turns into “End extreme Poverty”, not exactly the same thing. Also “Fix climate change” is something we know we lack enough knowledge to do, we cannot fix it we can only reduce the actions we understand to contribute to it. Fixing implies we still believe we are in control of the situation, we must accept we do not control climate change we are only influencing it and not in a way that is conducive to sustain the current level of human inhabitants with our current consumption patterns. In my personal opinion the first five are only an outcome to which we will arrive if which fundamentally change our social systems. A final not so funny paradox is in the official page the portray a tweet post about dizzy goals, I think we are set to have get everyone dizzy with these goals.
I could write for hours about different things we could do different in order to try to improve this Global Goals but I will try, at least for today, to keep it short. The last additional comment would be that they still seem to believe economic growth is possible and desirable. We have nearly reached pick everything, we are facing the end of growth, we need to come to grips with it and find new ways to adapt to the situation we triggered but cannot completely control. Once again I need to make a comment about communication choices, it is interesting to see that economic is with and after good jobs. I resist to believe in conspiracy theories but it looks like we associated together too ideas so we cannot reject one because the other which is likely accepted would need to go with it.
A last very personal opinion: the promotional video ends in an incredibly arrogant and fatal assertion “We have a plan”… Do you believe in it? I don’t.
We have only a few days left so I #SAYNOTOTHEGLOBALGOALS as they are and am willing to get #7bNO. But as I cannot conceive myself in such negative terms I invite you to share your ideas on how we can get it right. Let’s write a different story, we can make history, one we are proud of!