Project Save the World's History and Plans

By Metta Spencer | 2022-04-01 05:00:00

Peace Magazine has existed since 1984, when its original founders incorporated as a nonprofit, Canadian Disarmament Information Service (CDIS) to discuss and promote nuclear disarmament. Since then, several other existential threats have emerged besides war and weapons: global warming, famine, pandemics, radioactive contamination, and cyber risks. In May 2018 Peace Magazine’s editor Metta Spencer, organized a two-day conference at the University of Toronto: “How to Save the World in a Hurry.” Experts spoke on the six global threats and break-out groups chose 25 “planks” for a “Platform for Survival,” which, if implemented, would greatly reduce the risk of all six threats.

Some of the participants, whimsically claiming the title, “Project Save the World,” have developed a website, https://tosavetheworld.ca with a special “page” for articles and discussions on each of the six threats, plus three “policy sectors”: economics, governance, and civil society. Three days each week we host a live Zoom discussion about a global issue with experts and activists globally. We post them on https://youtube.com/c/tosavetheworld and our website, with links on social media and we email weekly posters. Each talk show has a page on the website, with links to the audio podcast and a public comment column. To create a more enduring organization, we expect to adopt these changes: CDIS will become “Project Save the World,” still based in Ontario but with a wider audience. It will maintain three platforms: Peace Magazine, the website tosavetheworld.ca, and the Youtube shows.

There will be fifteen board members, each an expert on one of the threats or policy sectors or the president, secretary, or treasurer. The board will invite people who have contributed significantly to one or more of our three platforms to become members of Project Save the World and attend by Zoom our annual general meeting, which will elect a new board of experts every three years.

Each director will provide ongoing advice and be supported by two “co-editors” who will oversee their page on the website, solicit magazine articles about their threat or policy sector, and host talk shows on their topic.

We invite you to share ideas on the public comment columns of our website, as you might share on a listserv. On the home page of https://tosavetheworld.ca you will find instructions for navigating through its many resources.