Meet Spin Doctor 2006, alan atKisson, new "International Transition Director" of the Earth Charter Initiative.
atKisson, who consults, sings, writes and blogs, is the emerging shill for the likes of Earth Charter originators Maurice Strong and Mikhail Gorbachev.
Writing to the world on New Year's Day 2006, atKisson informed the masses of his arrival on the international stage.
"Last year, my firm was asked to perform a strategic review of the Earth Charter Initiative, and to make recommendations for the next five years. We did not know much about the Charter when we started…and to make a long story very short, at the end of that process, I was invited to change hats from consultant to CEO. This was both a surprise and a "challenging honor"…and I surprised myself by accepting."
During the review process, says atKissson, he had "changed from an Earth Charter skeptic to a fan, based on both the people and work we found happening around the world, and nudged a bit by watching what happened in New Orleans."
For those who wonder what taking over the Earth Charter has to do with the folk of New Orleans who were traumatized by Hurricane Katrina, it's all because of the Deep Easy's lack of sustainability before Katrina hit.
"all the government processes affecting that region clearly lacked a deeply held ethic of sustainability; and things would have at least gone better for the region had a stronger commitment to sustainability been in place earlier," says atKisson.
atKisson and Company luckily were not on the scene of Katrina devastation last summer to ask victims whether they wanted a sustainable roof or plain harbour from the storm.
Meanwhile, he is "hoping that by increasing the visibility of, and global commitment to, the Earth Charter, decisions will be made that will help the world avoid some of the worst and create more of the best, in terms of possible outcomes from current global trends."
"More Earth Charter," he says, "will help create more world changing."
What atKisson doesn't say is how Strong and Gorbachev envision world changing.
"The real goal of the Earth Charter is that it will in fact become like the Ten Commandments." (Maurice Strong).
"Do not do unto the environment of others what you do not want done to your own environment…My hope is that this charter will be a kind of Ten Commandments, a "Sermon on the Mount" that provides a guide for human behaviour toward the environment in the next century." (Mikhail Gorbachev, Lost angeles Times, May 8, 1997).
Devised at the Earth Summit in Rio by Maurice Strong, the Earth Charter document is carted about in a gilt and goatskin box that despite all hype is a pale pretender to the ark of the Covenant. at last count, it was a show and tell exercise in New York City public schools, conducted by United Nations employees.
atKisson makes much of an Earth Day conference in amsterdam last November, where Queen Beatrix "was actually pulled to her feet at the closing concert of african music".
Queen Beatrix is not the only bigwig lending support to the Earth Charter.
"The Earth Charter Commission, which created the document, includes twenty-five important leaders from around the globe. …This group ranges from former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff to Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangan Maathai to Maori leader Pauline Tangiora to legendary Sri Lankan community leader a.T. ariyaratne.
"Steven Rockefeller, who chaired the Drafting Committee and remains a key leader in the organization, personally spent untold hours poring over the comments and submissions."
In 2006, you can follow the progress of atKisson's hard work on behalf of the Earth Charter via a new set of blogs and (by) supporting the network of people using his firm's "accelerator" packet of sustainability tools.
Isn't technology wonderful?
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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