Выступление на открытии IV конференции Глобального Форума духовных и парламентских лидеров за выживание человечества (1993)

{{Выступление |страна=Япония |город=Киото |год=1993 |дата=1993-04-20 |место=IV Международный глобальный форум (Киото) |фото=Kyoto International Conference Center.jpg |подпись=Международный конференц-центр в Киото - место проведения IV Глобального форума |описание=20 апреля 1993 года Михаил Горбачёв выступил на открытии IV Международного глобального форума парламентских и духовных лидеров в Киото с речью о ценностях и императивах «философии выживания». Это выступление стало одновременно учредительной речью «Международного Зелёного Креста» - новой глобальной экологической организации, официально основанной на этом же форуме. Горбачёв охарактеризовал нынешний кризис цивилизации как качественно новый - впервые в истории под угрозой оказалось само существование человеческого рода. Он призвал к созданию «экологии духа», формулированию экологического императива как абсолютного запрета для человечества и реформированию ООН с учётом экологических приоритетов. |тезисы=

• Нынешний кризис цивилизации - качественно новый: впервые в истории под угрозой находится не уклад жизни, а само существование человеческого рода на планете.
• В основе кризиса лежит наивная вера в безграничное всемогущество человека над природой; человечество, как и любой живой вид, - лишь один из компонентов биосферы и обязано подчиняться её законам.
• Без «экологии духа» и нравственного обновления все практические усилия бессмысленны: именно совесть и мораль - последнее, что может спасти человечество, когда наука и разум пасуют.
• Философия выживания строится на философии разнообразия: уникальность каждого народа и культуры - такая же ценность, как жизнь как таковая, и её сохранение есть условие выживания планеты.
• Необходимы: специальный независимый исследовательский институт планетарных экологических проблем в рамках «Зелёного Креста»; реформа ООН с созданием консультативного совета профессионалов; глобальная сеть экологической информации и новый школьный учебник по экологии.

|контекст=Форум в Киото стал ключевым событием в послеотставочной деятельности Горбачёва. Идея «Зелёного Креста» была выдвинута ещё в январе 1990 года на Глобальном форуме в Москве - тогда Горбачёв был президентом СССР. Спустя ровно девять месяцев после призыва форума в Рио-де-Жанейро (июнь 1992) организация была официально учреждена - на это символическое совпадение Горбачёв прямо указывает в речи. Форум собрал парламентских и духовных лидеров со всего мира; среди участников - путешественник и учёный Тур Хейердал, чьи слова Горбачёв цитирует в речи. Выступление задало идеологическую рамку для всей последующей деятельности «Зелёного Креста»: организация позиционировала себя не как экологическое лобби, а как площадка для выработки новой «философии выживания» цивилизации. |текст= Speech of President Mikhail Gorbachev to the opening of the Fourth International Global Forum Conference

Kyoto, Japan, 20 April 1993

Distinguished members of the Presidium and distinguished delegates to the Global Forum:

I would like to welcome all of you who have gathered here in the wonderful city of Kyoto, a city that is now in bloom. The cherry blossom is a reminder to all of us that we have met at a time when people are inspired by new hopes - when they are thinking about a better tomorrow. I am sure that from Kyoto will be heard not only the voice of wisdom and the voice of concern but also the voice of hope.

I thank you for all the words of welcome and greetings addressed to me, and also to the members of the Board of Trustees who have gathered, responding to your appeal, in order to launch here at the Global Forum, after long preparation, a new global organization - The International Green Cross. As you can see, the baby was born on time, in term, exactly nine months after you called last June for the creation of this organization. I thank you for your congratulations, and I hope we will be working together, hand in hand, thinking about our common future and looking for answers to the most difficult questions that we must face.

The theme of my speech today is the values and the imperatives of the philosophy of survival.

Today, everyone seems to agree that mankind is at a watershed in its history. The present-day global landscape is one of profound crisis, which could end either in the death of humankind or in the breakthrough to a new civilization. The one that has existed for many centuries is close to exhausting its potential, unable to sustain and manage life on planet Earth.

It is true that a crisis of civilization was announced many times in the past. But today's crisis is qualitatively different. This time, we are speaking not just about something that causes widespread malaise or about people's protest against inhuman conditions of their existence but about a threat - for the first time ever - to the very existence of the human race.

Of late, tensions between man and nature have degenerated into an outright conflict between them. A real threat has emerged that the very foundations of human existence could be undermined, threatening life on Earth. Technogenic progress based on perfecting the technology of civilization, far from having alleviated the conflict between man and nature, has in fact aggravated that conflict.

For the first time in human history signs have appeared of a breakdown in the stability of the biosphere. I am referring to the greenhouse effect, which is the biosphere's reaction to the alarming increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in it, currently exceeding 17 per cent. It is too soon to draw far-reaching conclusions from this fact but it is an indication that the biosphere may be losing its stability and that changes in it are becoming irreversible.

Let me speak about another indicator of a possible catastrophe, which is often neglected by the media and the scientific community. I am referring to nature's fundamental inability to increase its productivity indefinitely, without constraints.

The gap between demands and capabilities is widening at an accelerating pace and could assume the character of a planetary catastrophe within the lifetime of the generation born in the 20th century. We have to recognize in all responsibility and honesty, and say it publicly, that with the current levels of consumption, standards of living and technologies, biosphere may one day fail to withstand such anthropogenic pressure.

In saying so, I do not forget that there are hundreds of millions of people in the world who are hungry or undernourished. Nevertheless, mankind cannot build its civilization on an insatiable passion for consumption, on a thoughtless attitude towards nature.

The current crisis of civilization is above all the crisis of the naive belief in the omnipotence of man, a belief that there is no limit to his abilities and his pretensions over nature. We are paying the price of human pride. Industrial progress has not always - and far from everywhere - led to a growth of freedom and human happiness. As Dr. Thor Heyerdal said so aptly at our meeting yesterday, it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to define the criteria for and the concept of people's happiness.

I am focusing on these global threats to human existence because as a rule the environmental movement concentrates its efforts on local problems.

The time has come to understand that a sum of individual efforts and even a general "ecological literacy", though they are absolutely essential, are not enough to solve the problem of humankind's survival. Something qualitatively greater is necessary.

It is necessary, first of all, to declare this problem of human survival and of saving planet Earth to be the main issue today, one that has priority among the problems facing mankind; to understand that in order to solve this problem we need a totally different notion of man's place in the biosphere. The time has come to understand that mankind, like any other living species, is just one of the components in the biosphere, and that it cannot live outside of it.

As for the biosphere itself, it existed for billions of years without man, and will continue to exist even if the human race is no longer there one day. It is time we understood that mankind lives within the laws of the biosphere's development, interacting with it as part of an integrated whole.

• * *

I am calling for uniting the efforts of natural and social scientists in the cause of human survival, because the crisis of the interaction between man and nature is being aggravated by a crisis of social knowledge.

We should understand that humankind has difficulty adequately understanding its own interests. Too often, man errs and moves towards the truth through delusions and all kinds of myths. We have not yet found a way out of the ideological crisis that has become so apparent in recent years. The traditional forms of ideology, including its religious forms, have not always been capable of explaining what is happening, and even less to unite the people in order together to look for a way out of the current crisis and to address the problems of the magnitude that we see today.

We must see that the current crisis of our civilization has been caused, to a large extent, by the crisis of our fundamental values. At the end of the 20th century dramatic inherent conflicts have become apparent in the foundations of our knowledge about society and its progress.

Against the background of the increasing integration and internationalization of the economy we are witnessing an unprecedented outbreak of nationalism and clear tendencies towards autarchy, separatism and ethnic and religious isolation. The most archaic syndromes are resurfacing, bringing to the fore hidden ethnic conflicts accompanied by violence and unprecedented cruelty.

We have so far failed to find ways of harmonizing the principles that form the basis of international relations. We have yet to develop mechanisms of harmonizing the democratic principle of state self-determination of nations and the fundamental principle of international relations - that of the inviolability of borders, of the integrity of existing states.

All too often, the idea of development, of progress, conflicts with the need to preserve our planet, to assure mankind's survival. The idea of cooperation, of working together, often conflicts with the instinct of rivalry. Too often, modern