TO - My dear Japanese Article 9 loving friends,

I am so sorry that a bad case of "writer's block" has caused me to be unable, until now in this 2012 year, to write and send to you one of my "peace and justice" messages of hope. Sadly it is difficult to see much "hope" out there in this crazy world in which we live.

You are a significant part of my hope. Thank you for keeping your Japanese and my USA government from completely killing that great "war-renouncing" Article 9 wisdom that resides in your constitution.

My "writer's block" arises out of feelings of anguish, pain, anger, and even depression at the current "killing and destruction" state of affairs on our beautiful home, dear Mother Earth -- with much USA involvement with our over 800 foreign military base, planet-circling, empire. Sadly, more than 80 of these bases are in Japan.

I have also had difficulty getting my "2012 message" to you, because I have so much I wish to share with you, and space for doing so in this format is limited, therefore I have decided to make this "2012 message" into two parts, Part I and Part II so that my Japanese translators and distributors will not feel so overwhelmed. They can choose to send my "2012 message" to you as two separate messages spaced a week or so apart, or all at once, if they wish -- and if they feel that you readers will not be overwhelmed by receiving so much reading material all at once.

In view of the limited space for my "message" I will also frequently cite pages in our bilingual [Japanese and English] book where you can read more details on specific topics that I but briefly mention in this message.

Our book is - Overby, Kunihiro, and Momoi, A Call For Peace: The Implications of Japan's War-Renouncing Constitution, You might use any of the two Kodansha [1997 and 2003] editions of our book, or the Tachibana 2005 edition - an edition that also has an index. I will use the following acronym for citing this book - [ACFP].

The 2012 anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear tragedies and disasters helped to rip some of the chains off my "blockage" and enabled me to write a "letter to the editor" that was published August 9th in our two Athens Ohio newspapers.

In this Part I of my 2012 message, I include below, a slightly longer version of my Athens "letter-to-the-editor" -- so that you might better understand my anguish and blockage, and also so as to help prepare you for Part II.

Dear Sadako herself might have also helped to break the chains of my "writing blockage." On August 3rd a summer breeze fatefully blew a photograph of her, off my desk and onto the floor. This was an October 26, 1955 photo of Sadako in her casket - one that I took at the Hiroshima Peace Museum on my last Japan visit in June 2007. Sadako fluttering to the floor caused me to think to myself, my goodness, perhaps Sadako is also urging me to get this "letter" done and off to you.

Part II of my "2012 message" is my hopeful suggestion that you, Japanese Article 9 loving people, try to find ways and means to encourage your country, with Article 9 as its badge of honor -- to become the world's premier pioneering nation in leading the way in establishing "ZERO-POPULATION-GROWTH and ZERO-MATERIAL-CONSUMPTION-GROWTH" [ZPG&ZMCG] human cultures on Planet Earth, cultures that are non-militarist and non-violent -- and that enable the human species to find meaningfully fulfilling and constructive lives without "resource wars" or "global warming,"

The above ideas arise, in part, out of over four decades of professional engineering efforts at what I have come to call "Green Technology by Design" [GTBD]. I ask, in Part II that you consider GTBD for Japan, in addition to your already strong efforts for Article 9's survival.

As I say in my below "letter-to-the-editor" - I define GTBD as technology and systems that are designed, "from the very beginning of the engineering design process," with two new urgently important "design criteria," criteria that require these systems to -- [1] minimize the consumption of Earth's resource base and to [2] not pollute or "globally warm" us to Martian lifelessness. For more on GTBD please see [ACFP], pages 173-191.

GTBD is something that I connect to my ideas and hopes for an "Article 9 Without Borders." See my 2008 Dharma World paper with that title on my unsophisticated web site www.articlew9society.org . While you are at it, please also look at another paper of mine at the very end of my web site, a 1980 GTBD paper titled - "Product Design for a Sustainable Future: A Matter of Ethics?" Unfortunately my web site is "English" only.

The above two new GTBD "design criteria" that I speak about -- are usually absent from contemporary engineering-economic decision making processes the world over - especially in the USA. In reflecting on the lack of these important "design criteria" -- I have been heard to say, "Our dear Mother Earth unfortunately does not have a seat at the Benefit/Cost [B/C] table where engineering-economic decisions are made." We need to give Mother Earth a place at this B/C decision making table - a challenge for which I see Japan as perhaps the most qualified nation on Planet Earth to undertake. I explain this a bit more in Part II.

Please allow me a small interesting historical footnote. Western ideas on Benefit/Cost arose out of the late 18th and early 19th Century efforts of one Jeremy Bentham, a member of the British Parliament and founder of Utilitarianism, a system of thinking and believing based on "utility." Utilitarianism also carries with it an ethical and moral theory which suggested that in making ethical decisions, the morally correct thing to do was that which achieved the "greatest happiness for the greatest number" of people. In order to make this ethical choice, Bentham created what he called his "Calculus of Pleasure and Pain" - Benefit/Cost, as we think of it today. Bentham's "pleasures" were today's "benefits" and his "pains" were today's "costs."

Mother Earth did not have a seat at Bentham's "Calculus of Pleasure and Pain" table either -- a time when her absence made little difference because there were only one billion people on Earth at that time compared to the seven billion [and exponentially growing] "consumers" -- here today.

Benefit/Cost calculus is flawed in many dimensions in addition to Mother Earth's exclusion from its decision-making table. Let me share but two additional serious flaws. [1] It is easy for those making the B/C, to bias its outcome by leaving out certain "uncomfortable?" "benefits" and/or "costs." and [2] B/C, discounts the future." See my web-site paper, titled -- "Counting The Future Rather Than Discounting It."

Here is my 2012 Hiroshima-Nagasaki Athens "letter-to-the-editor."

To the Editors of the Athens Ohio newspapers -- 6 August 2012

Hiroshima's and Nagasaki's nuclear vaporization on August 6 and 9, 1945 opened a vast Pandora's Box of high technology threats to all life on our dear Mother Earth.*

Frighteningly, this is a "Box" on which it is "next to impossible" to slam the lid shut. Orders of magnitude more lethal killing and destruction systems just lay there asking to be birthed by us engineers and scientists whenever the "boss-man" says "do it" - something that we often "do" with "few" or "no-questions" asked.

To add to this dilemma, most of the problems with which we as a species must cope, have no military solutions what-so-ever. Let me share but two examples -- [1] our 21st Century Malthusian "population--consumption" problem - something that Malthus wrote about in a 1798 essay, when there were but one billion people on earth - and [2] the USA's addiction to drugs for which we stupidly send military helicopter spray and gun ships to destroy drug crops and kill campesinos - little farmers who are but responding to the USA's humongous "free-market" drug demand.

We in the USA arm ourselves to the teeth, spending more than all other nations on Planet Earth combined, and over half of our annual April 15th income taxes so as to circle the globe with our over 800 foreign military base empire. Why?

Could it perhaps in part be so as to assure that we in the USA might continue to get the "oil" and other declining resources needed so as to maintain our unjust and unnecessarily profligate life style - something that results in "resource wars" and a war on Mother Earth herself that we now call "global warming?"

Perhaps we need to change our priorities and ask our engineers and scientists to devote orders of magnitude more of their good healthy talents to what I, over four decades, have come to call "Green Technology by Design [GTBD]. GTBD is technology and systems designed, "from the very beginning of the engineering design process," with two new urgently important "design criteria" -- [1] that it minimize the consumption of Earth's resource base and [2] that it not pollute or "globally warm" us to Martian lifelessness.

With seven billion of us now on Planet Earth, and exponentially growing, we also urgently need to control our human fecundity - a frightening phenomenon, the control of which is fraught with many cultural and religious stumbling blocks.

Back to my opening paragraph -- in reflecting on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I am reminded of that beautiful 73 words of wisdom, Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution. A9 is something that the USA helped Japan put into its constitution in 1947
.
Metaphorically I see Article 9 as rising like a Phoenix out of Hiroshima's and Nagasaki's radioactive ashes - as most all humanity's cry for an end to that dominantly masculine obscenity called war.

Article 9 reads as follows -

"Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes."

"In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized."

As my friend, Doug Lummis reminds us -- no person on Planet Earth has been killed by a Japanese soldier, in war activity, since the end of World War-II.

We must slam Pandora's Box lid shut with an "Article 9 Without Borders," that is - an Article 9 in all national constitutions, including the USA's.

Peace,
Chuck Overby -- Ohio University Emeritus Engineering Professor

Some experiential foundations out of which arise the above ideas and concerns.
I am a veteran of two wars, WW-II and Korea [decorated B-29 combat pilot in Korea].
1950 B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering with "high distinction" [summa cum laude equivalent] --
with a significant Liberal Arts education, in addition to engineering, at the Univ. of Wisconsin 1957-65,
so as to help overcome my "bright engineering ignorance" and as a help in "collecting myself" after Korea.
1981visiting professor, Chubu Univ., Japan, and 1986 Shanghai Institute of Mech. Engr. [SIME] China.
I have been a U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment [OTA] researcher on - USA resource
consumptions and the consequences thereof -- with a focus on some public policy coping measures.
1991 founder of the "Article 9 Society - USA,"
and member of Veterans For Peace.

o Many people in 1945 such as World War-II Army General Dwight Eisenhower, Navy Admiral William Leahy, and significant others questioned the need to use the nuclear bombs. To see a "list" of names with commentary on this matter -- please do a "Google Search" with the words, "Eisenhower and Hiroshima".

Dr. Chuck Overby
7815 Angel Ridge Road
Athens, OH 45701
740-593-5759
www.article9society.org; overbycm@hotmail.com

27August 2012
TO: My dear Japanese Article 9 loving friends,

The Hopeful Part II of my 2012 Message.

As I said in Part I, since I am quite limited for space in this communication with you, I will, at appropriate places, refer to specific pages in our bilingual [Japanese and English] book, Overby, Kunihiro, and Momoi, A Call For Peace: The Implications of Japan's War-Renouncing Constitution, where you will find some elaboration on particular matters for which I have no space in this my "2012 message." I will cite our book as [ACFP]. For example, I sometimes refer to "Green Technology by Design" [GTBD]. To help you understand what I mean by GTBD, please see [ACFP] pages 187-199.

In the first part of this message I suggested that one of the most urgent 21st Century problems on Planet Earth, for which there are no military solutions what-so-ever, was for us as a species to find ways to -- [1] reduce our unnecessarily wasteful consumptions of Earth's rapidly declining high-quality low-entropy resource base, and to improve the "justice" in the distribution of our resource consumptions across the Planet, thus reducing our human species propensity to fight "oil" and other resource-wars - and [2] to find ways to prevent our human species war against Mother Earth herself, something that we now call "global warming."

In relation to these matters I suggested that we need to create new cultural patterns for our human species, so as to protect our lives and all life on our dear Planet. I characterize these new cultures as "ZERO-POPULATION-GROWTH and ZERO-MATERIAL-CONSUMPTION-GROWTH" [ZPG&ZMCG] sustainable cultures that enable us humans to find meaningfully fulfilling and constructive lives without "resource wars" and the "global warming" war against Mother Earth.

I furthermore suggested "Green Technology by Design" [GTBD] as having a significant role to play as part of our movement toward this more sustainable future on Planet Earth. GTBD also often enables the creation of many meaningful and fulfilling "green" jobs.

In this Part II of my "2012 message, I now explain a bit more of my hopeful suggestion that you encourage your nation , Japan, as one of the most significant economically powerful nations on Earth - to become the world's premier pioneering nation in leading the way toward establishing this much needed sustainable -- ZPG&ZMCG cultural model for our Planet.

Importantly, I see Japan as being uniquely able to lead the way, non-violently and non-militarily, toward ZPG&ZMCG cultures while proudly proclaiming its effort to be one of its most significant contributions to world peace and justice with Article 9 as its badge of honor.

Why do I say that I see Japan as "uniquely equipped to lead the way toward creating this ZPG&ZMCG culture?

My answer is simply that you have already demonstrated your culture's ability for ZPG in controlling your Japanese culture's population, that is -- to enjoy the existential pleasures of sex without producing so many new little human beings to gobble up the Planet. Your birth rate is among the lowest on Planet Earth.

Secondly, Japan has also significantly demonstrated, in the 1970s and 80s, its ability to employ its engineering, scientific, and managerial talents so as to almost drive the United States automobile industry, and other high tech USA industry -- into the ground with .Japan's superb "high-quality and highly reliable" automobiles and other technologies etc.. I see this past history of Japanese world-class leadership in high-quality and highly-reliable systems as a demonstration of -- "Quality & Reliable Technology by Design" - [Q&RTBD]. See pages 189-199 [ACFP]

As an engineering professor with professional qualifications in engineering quality and reliability [Q&R], I have explored Japan's superior high quality and highly reliable technology systems, as compared to the low-quality and poor reliability of USA products and systems during the 1970s and 80s. My comparative exploration of Japan and USA Q&R was also enhanced by many visits to Japanese manufacturing plants, including the headquarters Toyota plant near Nagoya -- during my 1981 visiting professorship in the Chubu University - Ohio University exchange program.

As a consequence of this comparative Q&R study, I concluded that one of the significant reasons for Japan's superior quality and reliability as compared to the USA's, in those days, was that Japan invested significantly more engineering, scientific, and managerial resources at the very beginning of the product design and creation process, than did the USA in those years. See [ACFP] pages 51-67 for more details on these matters.

Thus I learned that high quality and reliability finds much of its way into products and systems by being designed into these products and systems - at the very beginning of the engineering design process, much like I see GTBD's desirable characteristics as also arising from having them addressed at the very beginning of the engineering design process.

High quality and reliable systems and green technology and systems -- cannot be achieved by designing low quality and unreliable junk and resource wasteful and globally warming junk - and then hoping to correct things somewhere down the line, for example in manufacturing. These important product and systems characteristics of "quality" "reliability" and "green" must get the majority of their "goodness" by having it designed into them at the very beginning of the engineering design process.

I hope that the above commentary helps you to understand why I see Japan as the most likely nation on Planet Earth to lead the way toward ZPG&ZMCG sustainable cultures - if somehow your government and corporations can be persuaded to see the wisdom and efficacy of moving Japan in these directions.

Unfortunately, I do not see the USA with its humongous expenditures on military killing and destruction systems and the intimately related massive commitment of its engineering, science, and managerial talents to the "war-and-violence-game" -- as being capable of providing this kind of "world-class" leadership for peace, justice, and "sustainability."

How Do We Get There?

Getting there with ZERO-POPULATION-GROWTH [ZPG], as I said earlier represents a huge challenge, what with seven billion of us now on Planet Earth, and exponentially growing. Getting to ZPG, with multitudes of cultural, social, and religious perspectives against population control - will not be easy.

I do not quite know how Japan, with its "zero" or "negative" population growth rates might use that cultural phenomenon so as to help move those nations with "high birth growth rates" so as to get control of theirs. However it surely should be easier for you in Japan to make a significant international contribution to ZPG than can the USA - where, even though USA birthrates are low - it is quite difficult for the USA to play a major role in international population control. This arises, in part out of strong religious and other social-cultural forces in the USA that are fiercely opposed to population control.

Thomas Malthus, who I cited in Part I, had an interesting way of addressing the population dimension in his "population-consumption" essay. He spoke of the "passion between the sexes." Allow me to share with you a small historical footnote on Malthus' two interesting presumptions with which he began his 1798 essay. He wrote -- "I think I may fairly make two postulates. First -- That food (consumption) is necessary to the existence of man. Secondly -- That the passion between the sexes is necessary and will remain nearly in its present state."

Interestingly, I discovered Malthus on my own, in my 1977-78 sabbatical year with the United States Congress, Office of Technology Assessment [OTA], working on some dimensions of the immensity of USA resource consumptions and the consequences thereof -- with a view toward public policy measures so as to enable us to cope with our USA's and the entire world's looming "consumption-disaster." Upon learning some factual details of the USA's consumptions, I made what I came to call my "Half-Life-Of -Planet-Earth" [HLOPE] calculation. I asked myself, how long it would take to consume half the volume and weight of Planet Earth if all the then four billion people on Earth began consuming resources as did we in the USA. The answer is around 450 years. This calculation shook me up and helped me to realize that the USA's "consumption model" was completely impossible for the entire Planet - and yet most people find this "profligate-consumption-model" to be quite attractive. Please see [ACFP] page 175 for specifics on this HLOPE calculation.

I especially learned how attractive this "western profligate consumption model" was to economically very poor Chinese people on my 1986 six month visiting professorship at China's Shanghai Institute of Mechanical Engineering [SIME]. This was when Deng Xiao-ping was pushing for a Chinese economic growth -- "take-off."

These Chinese people, as they looked at their community owned, mostly Japanese TV sets and saw all the "goodies" that they did not have - were quite interested in getting some of that "stuff" for themselves.

With today's Chinese population at more than 1.3 billion, with India's at more that 1.2 billion and growing, and Africa's at over one billion, and growing - and with most of these billions hungering for the "goodies" they see on their TV sets - it is not difficult to understand that "consumption" as modeled by the USA and Japan - is not possible without killing our dear Mother Earth."

Getting there with Zero-Material-Consumption-Growth [ZMCG] will also be a complex, challenging, and difficult process.

I am also not quite sure as to how you Japanese people might begin to get your government and industry to "grab-hold" of the important and efficacious possibilities and potential that I have suggested above for Japan to become the world's premier nation for ZMCG.

Interestingly, it seems to me that the recent Fukushima nuclear power-plant disaster, that gift from the USA's General Electric company, has created in Japan a significantly large and highly motivated citizenry who very much wish to have Japan do some very important GTBD in replacing its nuclear power systems with non-nuclear alternative power systems such as the multitudes of solar related possibilities.

Perhaps you might work with these Fukushima activists in helping them push Japan toward a GTBD leadership role in "alternative energy systems" and "no-nuclear-power" for Japan. Please see our book [ACFP], pages 191 - 199 to help you understand some of my interests in alternative energy systems and "no-nuclear-power" for Japan -- long before the Fukushima disaster.

I wish you much success in getting your government and corporate power structure to creatively see the huge potential for Japan in providing "world-class" leadership in both "ZERO-POPULATION-GROWTH and ZERO-MATERIAL-CONSUMPTION-GROWTH" [ZPG&ZMCG] - matters in which Japan has demonstrated a significantly healthy record of accomplishment. We as a species, and all life on our dear Mother Earth, need this kind of leadership. Of course all of this is much complicated by the unjust distribution of these "consumption goodies" across the Planet - something that must also be addressed.

It has been quite lonely to have come, several decades ago, to many of these concerns and insights on GTBD, ZPG, and ZMCG and related matters. In fact I have sometimes felt like a "pariah." However I am no longer quite so lonely.

Please allow me to end this long-two-part "2012 message" to you with a short bibliography of mostly current publications that very much relate to the content of my message. Unfortunately, except for our book, [ACFP], these are English language publications. However, those who translate my message will translate the titles into Japanese, and the titles are generally quite explanatory. So please note, as my "list" indicates, there is a growing awareness as to what we as a species must do so as to enable life to continue on Planet Earth - an awareness that much relates to ZPG, ZMCG, and GTBD.

Peace,
Chuck Overby

Some books, mostly new ones, on themes related to topics in my "2012 message".

Daly, Herman E, Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development, Beacon Press, 1996.

Eisler, Riane, The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economy, Berrett Koehler Pub., 2007.

Georgescu-Rogen, Nicholas, The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, Harvard Univ. Press, 1971.

Gilding, Paul, The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World, Bloomsbury 2011.

Hansen, James, Storms of my Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity, Bloomsbury, USA 2009.

Jackson, Tim, Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet, Earthscan, 2011

Johnson, Chalmers, Dismantling The Empire: America's Last Best Hope, Henry Holt, 2010.
.
Keen, Steve, Debunking Economics - Revised and Expanded Edition: The Naked Emperor Dethroned?, Zed Books, 2011.

Klare, Michael T., The Race For What's Left: The Global Scramble For The World's Last Resources, Henry Holt 2012.

Korten, David C., Agenda For A New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth, Berrett Koehler Pub., 2009.

Heinberg, Richard, The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Realty, The New Society, 2011.

O'Connor, Martin, editor, Is Capitalism Sustainable?: Political Economy and the Politics of Ecology, The Guilford Press, 1994.

Overby, Kunihiro, and Momoi, A Call For Peace: The Implications of Japan's War-Renouncing Constitution, Kodansha [1997 and 2003] or Tachibana 2005.

Overby, one of several authors, Materials and Energy From Municipal Waste, Congress of the United States, Office of Technology Assessment [OTA], Washington, DC, 1979.

Overby, one of several authors, ECASTAR -- Energy Conservation: An Assessment of Systems, Technologies, and Requirements, Final Report of the NASA/ASEE Auburn University Summer Program at the Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama, 1975.

Victor, Peter, A., Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008.

Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2012, Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity, Island Press, 2011.