ABSTRACT: In the year 2000 the global population will amount to 6 billion: that is the maximum the planet can handle. The real environmental crisis, therefore, consists in the "population bomb". And while the Church and the lay milieus idly discuss environmental problems, developing countries are trying to check the crisis by squandering "their natural resources". The U.N. is unable to suggest a solution. Meanwhile, AIDS is spreading among cultural degradation and poverty. Among the consequences of this tragedy, apart from the economic and environmental ones, is a political danger: will the western democracies be able to face the problem of a tide of millions of non-EC immigrates pouring into the developed countries? To give an effective answer, we need to organize a transnational force capable of mobilizing human resources, energies and means on converging projects.

(1994 - IL QUOTIDIANO RADICALE - 8 December 1993)

The tragedy has already been predicted. Even the setting has been drawn, and it concerns us deeply.

In Year 2000, the global population will amount to some 6 billion individuals, the highest density which, according to unanimous assessments, the earth can bear. Nor is there want of signals pointing to the fact that the renewable resources are about to end: air, oxygen, water, etc. The biggest threat to the final "ecological" crisis is therefore represented by the population "bomb" (see pages 2-3) primed a long time ago in human reservoirs where the unrestricted population growth is closely related to under-development.

Ideological conflicts break out on the possible solutions to the threat: "Is it or is it not acceptable to plan a strict population control?" The Church and the lay milieus are uselessly discussing the issue. Indifferent to the protests of the environmentalists as well as to concerns for their near future, developing countries are squandering their natural resources, the only ones with which they can finance their own development. This is the policy of "each man for himself", in the face of the world disorder.

The task of regulating a balanced and agreed upon use of the resources should be entrusted to the U.N., which is incapable of handling it. Apart from a few exceptions all its attempts to take active steps have met with failures and disasters. The expenses for peacekeeping operations themselves divert the scarce resources allocated for development aid (see pages 4-5).

In the culturally degraded and poor areas the plague of AIDS is spreading (see pages 10-11) and planing a unanimous, global strategy seems like an impossible task. The ruling classes of these countries are mostly unprepared to manage growth with democratic methods: the very few who tried, using arguments such as non-violence and tolerance, paid with their lives (see page 8).

Among the consequences of this tragedy, beyond the economic and environmental ones, are even more dangerous emerging political consequences: the question is whether the democracies, or democracy in general, will be able to face the tide of millions of immigrants from non-EC countries, a flow of migration of poor people coming from the slums of the developing countries to Western cities, despite increasingly inapplicable laws, and disregarding an ever tight and violent repression. Will the ensuing social crises entail further, ever serious restrictions on civil and political rights?

In other words, will we be less free in 2000 as a result of the population bomb?

The initiative started by radicals with the Campaign against world starvation, with the Manifesto of the Nobel prizes, as early as in 1979-80 must be patiently and consistently revived. Today, party power has reduced development aid to disaster, polluting the radical project and manipulating it to satisfy their criminal interests. It is therefore necessary to reconsider that project from a wider basis. It is necessary to organize that "new" transnational party capable of mobilizing human resources, energies and means for unitary programmes converging on feasible and necessary objectives, under the aegis of the World Organization of States and Peoples. In conclusion it is necessary to create a "U.N. party".

This is the challenge that the members for the year 1993 have assigned to the transnational radical party. Have they realized this? And what are they doing now to ensure the party can survive and continue operating also on their behalf in 1994?