A better world?

As more and more issues increasingly demand global solutions, the extent to which any state can independently determine its future diminishes. We therefore need to strengthen institutions for global decision-making and make them more responsible to the people they affect. This line of thought leads in the direction of a world community with its own directly elected legislature, perhaps slowly evolving along the lines of the European Union. There is little political support for such ideas at present. Apart from the threat that the idea poses to the self-interest of the citizens of the rich nations, many would say it puts too much at risk for gains that are too uncertain.

Peter Singer in One World - The ethics of Globalization