Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Blog

  • Ten Years After India’s Nuclear Tests: Deeper Into the Morass

    Article originally appeared in The Hindu

    Since Pokharan, we have been witness to an opportunistic shift in the stance of the government, from an outright condemnation of nuclear deterrence to an unabated enthusiasm for the development of a full-fledged arsenal.

    Hand in hand, expenditures on non-nuclear military activities and acquisition of conventional weapons have also increased dramatically…The impact of these expenditures, of course, falls primarily upon the poor and the vulnerable.

    In 1996, the International Court of Justice offered a historic Advisory Opinion where it ruled that “the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of international humanitarian law” and endorsed unanimously a legal obligation on all States “to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” Earlier, as the case was being considered, India submitted a Memorial where it argued that nuclear deterrence should be considered “abhorrent to human sentiment since it implies that a state, if required to defend its own existence, will act with pitiless disregard for the consequences of its own and adversary’s people”. This description is apt. Though just an unproven assumption, nuclear deterrence relies on the accumulation of weapons of mass destruction aimed at killing large numbers of people in the wishful hope that such annihilation would deter another country from attacking because of fear.

    Some years later, in January 2003, the Indian government issued a nuclear doctrine which explicitly stated that the country is pursuing nuclear deterrence, though this was qualified as a minimal one. But the doctrine also warns that “nuclear retaliation to a first strike will be massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage”. Unacceptable damage, in plain English, means that these nuclear weapons would be dropped on cities, each killing lakhs or millions of innocent people. The few years between the clear and forthright condemnation of deterrence and the enthusiastic invocation of deterrence are among the most important in recent Indian history.

    The biggest event occurred 10 years ago, on May 11, 1998, when three nuclear devices exploded in the Pokharan desert. Two days later, two more explosions were conducted and Prime Minister Vajpayee proudly announced that India was now a nuclear weapon State. Pakistan’s leaders, showing that they too subscribed to the twisted logic that drives the acquisition of nuclear weapons, conducted six explosions of their own on May 28 and 30. With those tests, the half-century-old conflict between India and Pakistan acquired a nuclear edge.
    Nuclear threats

    The edge was to be seen soon. Contrary to the claims of nuclear weapons advocates, who promised peace and a cessation of war, India and Pakistan fought over Kargil bitterly within a year of the tests. Though limited geographically, the war is estimated to have cost about 1,700 Indian lives and nearly 800 Pakistani ones. Indian and Pakistani officials delivered indirect and direct nuclear threats to one another at least 13 times. There are also plausible, though not convincing, reports that the two countries did prepare their nuclear arsenals for potential use.

    Kargil was the first major confrontation between two nuclear powers. Indeed, the war may even be the first caused by nuclear weapons. The late Benazir Bhutto stated that in 1996 Pakistani military officers had presented her with plans for a Kargil style operation, which she vetoed. It would therefore seem that the 1998 tests convinced Pakistan’s political and military leaders that the operation might be feasible with nuclear weapons to restrict any possible Indian riposte.

    The pattern of nuclear intimidation seen in Kargil was to be repeated during the major military crises that followed the militant attack on the Parliament in December 2001. Even Prime Minister Vajpayee warned: “no weapon would be spared in self-defence. Whatever weapon was available, it would be used no matter how it wounded the enemy”. On the other side of the border, former chief of the Pakistan Army, General Mirza Aslam Beg, declared: “We can make a first strike, and a second strike or even a third”.

    Although it did not develop into war, a number of factors make the 2002 crisis more dangerous than the Kargil war. Unlike Kargil, where Pakistan is clearly seen to have lost, especially politically, both sides claim the 2002 crisis as a victory. On the one hand General Musharraf’s promise that he would rein in Pakistan-based militant organisations is seen as proof that India’s “coercive diplomacy” worked. Pakistan’s case is simpler. Despite the huge build-up of forces by India, and much talk of attacking so-called terrorist camps within Pakistan, no military attacks actually occurred. That a massive military confrontation with strong nuclear overtones is seen by both sides as a victory increases the likelihood that similar incidents will occur in the future.

    Nuclear costs

    The obvious lesson of these two military crises, that nuclear weapons cause insecurity, has been ignored by nuclear advocates. Instead, they claimed that just testing nuclear weapons is insufficient for deterrence and called for the kinds of steps that India had earlier criticised nuclear weapons States for taking. Following their advice, India has not only adopted use-doctrines and practices similar to those of nuclear weapon States, but has also embarked on developing the paraphernalia needed for the adoption of these doctrines. These include a triad of delivery vehicles, including aircraft capable of dropping nuclear bombs, missiles launched from land and sea, and a nuclear submarine; training the military to use these; a command and control structure to oversee the deployment and use of nuclear weapons; components of an early warning system and an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defence system. No one has been keeping count of the crores of rupees being spent in this process. Hand in hand, expenditures on non-nuclear military activities and acquisition of conventional weapons have also increased dramatically. This is in direct contradiction to the erstwhile claims of nuclear advocates that the acquisition of nuclear weapons would reduce expenditure on conventional weapons. The impact of these expenditures, of course, falls primarily upon the poor and the vulnerable.

    A growing arsenal

    One of the adjectives appended to deterrence in India’s nuclear doctrine is minimal. (The other adjective – credible – is superfluous. A deterrent that is not credible cannot deter.) When asked to delineate what constitutes minimal, policy makers resort to obfuscation. Minimal, they claim, is a dynamic concept and one which cannot be specified in advance. Given the massive destructive power of nuclear weapons, it should be obvious that a dozen or so suffice to obliterate several cities and millions of people in Pakistan or China. But going by current public estimates, the fissile material stockpile just from CIRUS and Dhruva, the two reactors reportedly assigned for making plutonium for weapons, should be sufficient for over a hundred nuclear weapons. Perhaps the meaning of minimal is simply that it is not maximal.

    That the future arsenal size sought by policymakers is much larger was made clear during the negotiations and public debates surrounding the nuclear deal that is being negotiated with the United States. As a report from the International Panel of Fissile Materials, which the author is a part of, shows, the number of reactors that the DAE strenuously kept outside of safeguards can produce several dozen nuclear weapons worth of plutonium every year (available at www.fissilematerials.org).

    New attitudes

    During the 1990s, one oft-heard argument from those espousing nuclear weapons was that while these were evil, they were a necessary evil. To the extent that the pressures of this lobby were resisted, India acquired weapons only reluctantly. That was then. What is on display today is unabated enthusiasm for the ongoing development of a full fledged arsenal. And all the attitudes that go with being a State possessing nuclear weapons.

    Such a shift in attitude was on display during the unexpected vote against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2005. While much attention was focused on US pressure, there was something deeper too. In an earlier era, Indian leaders would have denounced the hypocrisy of the United States, with its immense nuclear arsenal, lecturing Iran about its small uranium enrichment plant. Now, one heard many policy-makers talking about why nuclear proliferation was dangerous and Iran should not be allowed to have nuclear technology. Non-proliferation, which used to be seen as immoral, has come to take the place of disarmament, the truly worthwhile goal.

    The opportunistic switch in stance is somewhat akin to what has been called the third class railway compartment syndrome. Those waiting on a crowded platform clamour in the name of justice and fairness to be let into compartment. But once inside, the opportunist shuts the door and keeps the others outside, with force if necessary.

    In July 1946, following the US attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Mahatma Gandhi observed, “the atom bomb has deadened the finest feelings which have sustained mankind for agesŠIt has resulted for the time being in the soul of Japan being destroyed. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see.”

    Unfortunately in our case, the first decade after Pokharan has already started making the impacts quite clear. It is not too late to reverse these.

    M. V. Ramana is Senior Fellow, Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore, and co-editor of Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream.

  • The Great Turning: Germany Takes the Lead for a Transformation of the Energy Paradigm

    Joanna Macy, eco-philosopher, scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. is a respected and revered voice in movements for peace and justice. She’s led numerous workshops on the nuclear dilemma, developing and promoting the Guardian Project, to brainstorm and imagine what kind of markers we will need to lay down to warn our world of the toxic lethality of plutonium, hundreds of thousands of years after we’re all gone. Macy has written that “future generations will look back on these closing years of the twentieth century and call it the time of the Great Turning. It is the epochal shift from an industrial growth society, dependent on accelerating consumption of resources, to a life-sustaining society”. Good news has come from Germany, heralding that perhaps, as we enter this new millennium, we have indeed begun the Great Turning, and not a moment to soon, ready to make the shift into a new paradigm of sustainability.
    The German government announced that 60 governments met in Berlin in mid-April to plan for a launch of an International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) this September which would empower developing countries with the ability to access the free and abundant energy of the sun, wind, marine, and geothermal sources; would train, educate, and disseminate information about implementing sustainable energy programs; organize and enable the transfer of science and know-how of renewable energy technologies; and generally be responsible for helping the world make the critical transition to a sustainable energy future. Since IRENE is the Greek word for peace, this new initiative is especially well named because we’ll never have peace with nuclear power plants metastasizing around the planet, and with old, 20th century hierarchical attempts to control and dominate the fuel cycle in yet another discriminatory regime of “haves” and “have nots”, with preemptive wars threatened against those countries which “the powers that be” don’t trust to have “peaceful” nuclear technology.
    Two other harbingers of the Great Turning, were announcements by the government of Ireland and the province of British Columbia of bans on uranium mining on their territories. Ireland’s Natural Resources Minister Eamon Ryan said, “The most likely end use of any uranium extracted in Ireland would be for nuclear electricity generation. It would be hypocritical to permit the extraction of uranium for use in nuclear reactors in other countries, while the nuclear generation of electricity is not allowed in Ireland.” More than 500 people demonstrated in sparsely settled British Columbia, to protest the opening of a uranium mine and the Minister for State Mining, Kevin Kruger, announced, “There will never be a uranium mine in B.C.” Three years ago, the Navajo tribe in Arizona banned uranium mining on their land because of the catastrophic radiation poisoning members of their tribe have suffered from the piles of mining wastes that accumulated over the years, contaminating their soil, water, and air.

    It’s noteworthy that the Berlin meeting happened quietly, with very little notice or NGO participation. It seemed like the governments were forming their own power block to make an end run around the polluting energy corporations, in the nuclear, fossil and biofuels industries, mega-transnational corporations which are touting their sickening wares to the world, corrupting our democratic processes with huge campaign gifts and sucking up government subsidies and tax breaks to the tune of $250 billion per year for their poisonous energy corporations, even burning food for fuel as more than 25 countries contend with food riots caused by scarcity, while the wealthiest of us put food in our fuel tanks at the expense of 2 billion people living in poverty. Help make the Great Turning real! Find out if your government was one of the 60 who met so quietly in Berlin this April. Make sure they’re on board to support IRENA, see http://www.irena.org/index.htm , to help humanity make the Great Turning to a more peaceful and sustainable 21st century.

    Alice Slater is the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s New York City representative.

  • Sustainable Energy Will Bring Peace on Earth

    We are at a critical moment in history. Accelerating weather catastrophes—tsunamis, hurricanes, drought, the melting of the polar ice caps—underline the urgency to heed the scientific consensus that we are endangering our very survival on the planet with the continued use of carbon based fuels. Dependency on fossil fuels creates political and economic instability across the globe. Depleting resources and price volatility place growing strains on energy security concerns. Just this month, we heard disturbing reports of food riots in more than 25 poor countries around the planet, caused by food shortages, due to drastic changing weather conditions and tragic efforts to grow food crops for fuel, pitting car owners of the world against the two billion poor on our planet who struggle to get enough to eat, without even offering any benefits to the environment, since growing corn and making ethanol uses lots of fuel, fertilizer, pesticides and water, and degrades the soil. The push for biofuels is driven by massive industrial agricultural corporations, seeking ever larger profits, as they misrepresent the actual costs, in league with the fossil and nuclear fuel industries, with their huge public relations operations, grinding out false facts to undermine the possibilities for harnessing abundant free energy from the sun, wind, tides, and geothermal from deep within mother earth, because corporations are unable to control its production and make profits from its sale. Who can sell the sun, wind, tides?

    Every 30 minutes, enough of the sun’s energy reaches the earth’s surface to meet global energy demand for an entire year. Wind can satisfy the world’s electricity needs 40 times over, and meet all global energy demands five times over. The geothermal energy stored in the top six miles of the earth’s crust contains 50,000 times the energy of the world’s known oil and gas resources. Tidal, wave and small hydropower, can also provide vast stores of energy everywhere on earth, abundant and free for every person on our planet, rich and poor alike. We can store hydrogen fuel in cells, made from safe, clean energy sources, to be used when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. When hydrogen fuel is burned, it produces water vapor, pure enough to drink, with no contamination added to the planet. Iceland plans to be completely sustainable by 2050, using hydrogen in its vehicles, trains, busses and ships, made from geothermal and marine energy.

    The failure of the world to achieve nuclear disarmament and prevent nuclear proliferation should serve as a wake up call that we cannot continue “business as usual” while increasing numbers of nations assert their right under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to pursue so-called “peaceful” nuclear technology. “Peaceful” nuclear programs in Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea enabled those countries to covertly develop nuclear weapons. Vast schemes for reprocessing nuclear fuel, like Rokkasho, and the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, which Japan has joined with the US and other industrial countries, will result in a failed attempt to exercise control and domination over the nuclear fuel cycle, while further contaminating our planet, creating yet another discriminatory class of “haves” and “have nots”, and fueling future strife.

    We have seen one war start over Iraq’s supposed possession of nuclear weapons, and war fever is heating up to attack Iran now for its pursuit of so-called “peaceful” nuclear technology. If Article 9 is to have any meaning in this new century, we will have to promote it, not only as a disarmament measure for the whole world, but as a way of redistributing the world’s treasure, now wasted at the rate of over one trillion dollars per year to feed the murderous war machine, and use those funds to restore the health of the planet and end poverty on earth. Although devastating, cruel wars, motivated by fear, greed and the desire for power, have been common throughout human history, there has been nothing like the enormous speed up of destructive war, fueled by science and technology, as we saw in this last century, starting with 20 million deaths after World War I and ending with well over 100 million deaths by the end of the 20th Century, with the horrors of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, the Holocaust, or the slaughter of a quarter of the population of Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge, as only a few awful examples of what the instruments of war have wrought.

    Yet it was only in 1969, less than 40 years ago, that humanity landed on the moon and, for the first time saw the image of our fragile, beautiful blue planet, floating in space, giving us a new perspective of a unified world, sharing this small spaceship earth, with a profound influence on our consciousness that is bound to help us shift from the paradigm of war and technological domination and control to a more balanced nurturing interdependent vision for the health of earth’s inhabitants in an expanded understanding of Article 9. The US Constitution, was imperfect at its drafting, failing to consider slaves as people or to recognize women’s right to vote. Evolving consciousness led to the abolition of slavery and the enfranchisement of women. Similarly, a transformed earth consciousness will help us perfect the original limited vision of the “Renunciation of War” as we use this occasion to launch a global effort to stop all violence on the planet, not only for Japan, but for the whole earth—not only the violence of wars in the traditional meaning but in an expanded definition of destruction against all living things and the very ecology of our planetary home itself. . To live on a peaceful earth, we will have to phase out not only war, but nuclear power as well. Nuclear reactors generate toxic radioactive waste that threatens both human life and the environment. Japan has produced more than 45 tonnes of plutonium, almost 1/5 of the 230 tonne global civil stock and the equivalent of 5,000 Nagasaka type warheads. At this rate it would surpass the US arsenal by 2020. Opening Rokkasho would generate another 30 tonnes of weapons usable plutonium by 2012. This waste will remain lethal to human health and the environment for more than 250,000 years, and its continued production poses an unacceptable burden on present and future generations. Plutonium is being shipped across vast stretches of the ocean for reprocessing in England and France, exposing the world to unacceptable risks from accidents or terrorism.

    In every situation where nuclear technology is employed—whether military or civilian, countless studies report higher incidences of birth defects, cancer, and genetic mutations.” A US National Research Council 2005 study reported that exposure to X-rays and gamma rays, even at low-dose levels, can cause cancer. The committee defined “low-dose” as a range from near zero up to about… 10 times that from a CT scan. “There appears to be no threshold below which exposure can be viewed as harmless,” said one NRC panelist. Tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste accumulate at civilian reactors with no solution for its storage, releasing toxic doses of radioactive waste into our air, water and soil and contaminating our planet and its inhabitants for eons. A study, this month by the German government found that children living near nuclear power stations are more likely to suffer leukemia than those living farther away.

    Despite the obvious health and security disadvantages of nuclear power, it is being promoted by industry for its potential to help avert climate catastrophes. But nuclear power is not pollution or emissions free. Every step of the nuclear fuel cycle – mining, development, production, transportation and disposal of waste – relies on fossil fuels and produces greenhouse gas emissions. A complete life-cycle analysis shows that generating electricity from nuclear power emits 20-40% of the carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour of a gas-fired system when the whole system is taken into account.

    Equally important, nuclear power is the slowest and costliest way to reduce CO2 emissions, as financing nuclear power diverts scarce resources from investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency. The enormous costs of nuclear power per unit of carbon emissions reduced would actually worsen our ability to abate climate change as we would be buying less carbon-free energy per dollar spent on nuclear power compared to the emissions we would save by investing those dollars in solar, wind or energy efficiency. In addition, nuclear power is limited only to the production of electricity. Despite the tens of billions of dollars that the nuclear industry has received since its inception in 1948, it is still unable to operate without massive subsidies, tax breaks and incentives The U.S. nuclear industry is estimated to have received more than $115 billion in direct subsidies from 1947 through 1999. Government subsidies for wind and solar energy for the same period totaled only $5.49 billion.

    Nuclear storage facilities and power plants themselves are vulnerable to accidents or attacks, and there are similar hazards in transporting nuclear waste by truck, train or ship. Reports estimate that the Chernobyl disaster may ultimately cause 270,000 cases of cancer, of which 93,000 could be fatal. A terrorist or military attack resulting in a core meltdown would carry a disastrous human toll, with estimates of upwards of 15,000 acute radiation deaths and up to one million deaths from cancer. And in a much less hypothetical example, the Indian Point nuclear reactors, located some 30 miles from New York City were listed as suggested targets in documents found from Al-Quaeda after the World Trade Center attacks.

    When compounded with its limited ability to reduce greenhouse gasses compared to the reductions that could be achieved by using the same dollars for sustainable energy, the enormous proliferation and waste-related issues make nuclear energy an untenable and irrational energy choice. Renewable energy and energy efficiency are the only paths to true energy security assuring stable and reliable energy supplies and expanding energy access across the planet. The technology to harness the enormous potential of the sun, wind, tides and geothermal energy exists today. We can build a self-sustaining, earth-friendly energy infrastructure to harvest the earth’s benign and abundant free resources. Abolition 2000, a network of over 2000 organizations in 95 countries, working for the elimination of nuclear weapons, has recognized the “inextricable link” between nuclear weapons and nuclear power and proposed the adoption of its Model Statute for an International Sustainable Energy Agency, asking that the effort be funded by reallocating the $250 billion dollars in annual subsidies to fossil and nuclear fuels to clean energy resources.

    Only this month, the government of Germany took up a similar proposal, calling a meeting of 60 nations to launch an International Renewal Energy Agency, IRENA, this September which would empower developing countries with the ability to access the free energy of the sun, wind, marine, and geothermal sources, would train, educate, and disseminate information about implementing sustainable energy programs, organize and enable the transfer of science and know-how of renewable energy technologies, and generally be responsible for helping the world make the critical transition to a sustainable energy future. Since IRENE is the Greek word for peace, this new initiative is especially well named, and a commitment from this Article 9 conference to ask our governments to support IRENA (see www.irena.org) would be a positive, transforming step for giving new meaning to Article 9 in a more peaceful 21st century.

    Alice Slater is the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s New York City representative.

  • Preventing an Arms Race in Outer Space

    Article originally appeared in the Boston Globe

    As World War I broke out, Henry James identified an inexorable current that had been running below international events, leading to the “monstrous scene” of August “as its grand Niagara.” Below the glassy upriver surface, the swift tide had been driven by habits of mind, arms merchant greed, imperial hubris, and a politics that was wholly inadequate. At the deadly cascade, nations tumbled into the most violent century in history. Writer Jonathan Schell cites the Niagara metaphor to define the still running momentum of war.

    But as James wrote, humans stood on another threshold. Wars had always been fought on land and sea, but then new technologies of flight carried combat into the realm above. Airborne weapons transformed killing. Indeed, air force was the invention that made 20th century warfare catastrophic. In looking back on that development, is it only naïve to ask if governments could have agreed to ban weapons in the air? What if the dropping of bombs from the newfangled aeroplane had been outlawed? The mind reels to think of it.

    A century later, the human race stands at an equivalent threshold, and a version of that exact question is indeed being asked. Can weapons be banned from outer space? Or will the Niagara current of defense contractor greed, imperial hubris, and inadequate politics carry the destructiveness of war into the “fourth battlefield” of the very cosmos? That is the question that has been asked at the United Nations Conference on Disarmament in Geneva for the last six years. But not by Washington. How many Americans know that the nation refusing to discuss a treaty aimed at preventing an arms race in outer space is their own? Indeed, the United States, in various Pentagon documents published during the Bush administration, is explicit in aiming to put weapons in space – lasers, directed energy weapons, kinetic kill vehicles. The US Space Command, in its “Vision for 2020,” plans for “counterspace operations.” The already deployed missile defense system is a first step toward an anti-satellite capability, giving the Pentagon control of the “high frontier.”

    The American Academy of Arts and Sciences recently published “Russian and Chinese Responses to US Military Plans in Space,” a stark look at where the American project is taking the world. The academy was instrumental half a century ago in creating the arms control regime that enabled the Cold War to end nonviolently. Now it warns that “US space weaponization plans would have potentially disastrous effects on international security and the peaceful uses of space.” Russia and China have insisted in Geneva that a treaty banning such weapons is urgently needed. Failing that, neither nation sees a choice but to respond – Russia by extending its aging ballistic missile forces, and China by readying a space weapons program of its own. Last week, for the first time since the Soviet era, missiles were paraded through Red Square. Last year, China fired the warning shot of a first anti-satellite missile test.

    And how is the crucial question of weapons in outer space being considered in America? As the quadrennial political conversation of the presidential primaries was moving into gear last February, the Pentagon announced its intention to send a missile into space to shoot down a “wayward satellite,” supposedly to protect Earth from its unspent fuel. Many observers – certainly including Chinese and Russians – questioned whether this was not, in fact, a step toward anti-satellite weaponry? If Henry James were alive, wouldn’t he have recognized an upshift in the current toward Niagara? Yet neither the presidential candidates, nor the pundits and moderators who yap at them, saw in this event anything to discuss. The missile was fired, the satellite destroyed. No big issue. The world-historic decision about carrying warfare across the last threshold into outer space is being left to defense contractors, military commanders, and their wholly owned subsidiary on Capitol Hill. Not since August 1914 has politics seemed so irrelevant.

    Humans who did not think to ban weapons from the air a century ago know better when it comes to outer space. Yet what are we doing? And if the deadly current is still hidden, what is that low rumble that can be heard, rolling toward us from down the river?

    James Carroll’s column appears regularly in the Boston Globe.

  • Leadership and Social Change: Making a Difference in the World

    Leadership and Social Change: Making a Difference in the World

    Leadership is a concept that can be confusing because it has both institutional and individual dimensions. Institutional leadership is generally based upon role and rank. Think of organizations like government, corporations and the military. The higher you rise in the organizational structure, the more authority that vests in the leadership role. There is a hierarchical structure, and power vests in the upper ranks. At its worst, organizational leadership is authoritarian and dictatorial. At its best, it has open channels of communication for a broad range of ideas to influence decisions and policies.

    A good question to consider in thinking about institutional leadership is: To whom is the leader responsible? If the answer is no one, you may have a serious problem. Think of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin. Think of Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator. Even in a government with checks and balances, like our own, institutional restraints can be repressed and diminished by leaders bent on concentrating power, bending rules and seeking to stand above the law.

    Now, let’s shift from the institutional stage, and look at the qualities of leadership in an individual. The three most important qualities in achieving success for an individual leader are vision, commitment and persistence. A leader must have a vision – a goal or set of goals to be obtained. A leader must be committed to achieving this vision. And a leader must be prepared, if necessary, for a long-term struggle. Think of the Dalai Lama, who repeatedly advises, “Never give up!” That is the spirit of every strong leader.

    Vision often will exceed one’s life span, and the commitment to a cause may put one’s life in jeopardy. Think of Martin Luther King, Jr., of Gandhi, or of Cesar Chavez. But think as well of Hitler and Mussolini, who also had visions that exceeded their own life spans, and were committed and persistent.

    These qualities, then, by themselves, may be necessary for strong leadership, but not sufficient for decent leadership. To these qualities must be added integrity and honesty, as well as compassion and courage in seeking a greater good for humanity. As Horace Mann, a noted educator, said, “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”

    Great leaders who seek victories for humanity are usually not individuals who only fill institutional roles. They are individuals who have a great vision that will benefit humanity, are committed to achieving it with integrity and honesty, and persist in their efforts with compassion and courage despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles. How many US presidents can you think of who have been great leaders? How many even come close in the quality of their leadership to Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr.?

    In our society, leadership is too often dedicated to accumulating wealth and power. Wealth and power are not “a victory for humanity.” They are means to an end. The end may be something decent, such as combating poverty and hunger, but it may also be something selfish, such as personal aggrandizement, or something criminal, such as aggressive war. We must judge leaders not only by what they say, but by what they do, and we must hold them accountable for their actions.

    There is much that needs changing in our world. A large percentage of the world’s population lives in dire poverty, without safe drinking water or adequate nutrition. A billion people live on less than one dollar a day. Another billion live on less than two dollars a day. Some 25,000 children under the age of five die daily of starvation and preventable diseases. At the same time, the world spends over a trillion dollars annually on military forces, with the United States alone spending well over half the global total.

    We are not living sustainably on the planet. Climate change may result in submerging large portions of the earth under water, causing enormous dislocations, destruction and death. The survival of the human species is endangered due to global warming. It is also endangered, even more urgently, by nuclear weapons – weapons capable of omnicide, the death of all.

    And what do we do as a species? The answer is very little. We are mostly ignorant and apathetic. Is this not a situation crying out for leadership? We cannot just continue with business as usual. We are on a collision course with disaster. For many inhabitants of Earth, disaster has already arrived. The world cannot continue to tolerate the myopic visions and cowardly and testosterone-driven actions of some of our most prominent leaders. We need change. We need new vision and hope. We need leadership that points our country and the world in a new direction.

    We need to rethink what it means to be number one. We are all perishable, and we live on a perishable planet. The minimum responsibility of each generation is to pass the planet on, if not better than it was inherited, at least intact to the next generation. The power of our technologies, when combined with our capacity for complacency and our penchant for militarism, casts doubt on our ability as a species to continue to fulfill this responsibility.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is a civil society organization that educates and advocates for a world free of nuclear weapons and for strengthening international law. It also seeks to empower a new generation of peace leaders.

    The Foundation educates people about the continuing danger of nuclear weapons, and the tragedies that await us if we do not come together to abolish these devices of indiscriminate mass murder. It seeks to awaken people to a real and present danger, a danger that did not go away with the end of the Cold War nearly two decades ago. To end the nuclear weapons threat to humanity will require US leadership, so we must work to awaken Americans to act to abolish these weapons.

    The Foundation currently has an Appeal to the Next President for US Leadership for a Nuclear Weapons-Free World. We are gathering one million signatures. The Appeal asks the next president to take seven steps that will make the world safer on the way to achieving the total global elimination of nuclear weapons. This is not a call for unilateral disarmament. It is a call for the phased, irreversible, verifiable and transparent global elimination of nuclear weapons. To succeed will require a far stronger commitment to international law. It will also require that people throughout this country snap out of their apathy and lethargy and get involved. It is an awesome challenge and it is a necessary one. It is also achievable.

    How does the Foundation empower youth? Actually, we don’t. We encourage young people to empower themselves. We have held a series of Think Outside the Bomb conferences for university students. These conferences teach leadership skills to make a difference, as well as provide information on the enormous nuclear dangers that threaten all of us living on the planet as well as future generations.

    We also have a campaign called UC Nuclear Free. It is about awakening students to the fact that the University of California provides management and oversight to the two major nuclear weapons laboratories in the country. Every nuclear weapon in the US arsenal has been designed and developed under the auspices of the University of California. If these weapons are ever used, the death and destruction that ensues will be a foreseeable consequence of the University of California’s involvement. The fact that a great university would lend its name and prestige to the creation, development and improvement of the most deadly weapons ever invented shows how deeply embedded militarism and nuclearism are in our society. The Foundation also has internships and volunteer opportunities for young people. You can find out about these and much more at our www.wagingpeace.org website.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is now 25 years old. We have accomplished a lot in that period, and we still have much more to do. We are gaining in strength, and our work is becoming much more widely embraced. We will not give up and we will attain our goal of a world free of nuclear weapons. When we do, we will have taken a large step for humankind.

    We must all live as though the future matters. Since we have technologies capable of foreclosing the future, we must act today to assure that there is a future. An Indian proverb states, “All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today.” Shall we plant the seeds for a future of peace and decency in which we live sustainably on the planet and respect the human rights and dignity of all people and other forms of life? Or, shall we continue to plant the seeds of unsustainability, injustice and war? The latter may be the weeds that overtake the garden due to indifference and apathy.

    It is up to each of us. I ask you to commit today to taking three steps. First, envision a better future for humanity. Second, commit yourself to being a leader to create that better future. Third, never give up.

    David Krieger is a founder of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and has served as its president since 1982. This article is based upon remarks made to the Phi Theta Kappa Honors Society at Santa Barbara City College on May 5, 2008.

  • A Treaty to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

    Article first appeared on the History News Network

    Although few people are aware of it, there has been considerable progress over the past decade toward a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons.

    For many years, there had been a substantial gap between the pledges to eliminate nuclear weapons made by the signatories to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968 and the reality of their behavior. To remedy this situation, in 1996 the New York-based Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy—the U.S. affiliate of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms—began to coordinate the drafting of a Model Nuclear Weapons Convention. Formulated along the lines of the Chemical Weapons Convention, which entered into force in 1997, this model nuclear convention was designed to serve as an international treaty that prohibits and eliminates nuclear weapons.

    Although the late 1990s proved a difficult time for nuclear arms control and disarmament measures, the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, joined by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and the International Network of Engineers Against Proliferation, continued its efforts. Consequently, in 2007, these organizations released a new model treaty, revised to reflect changes in world conditions, as well as an explanatory book, Securing Our Survival.

    In 1997, like its predecessor, this updated convention for nuclear abolition was circulated within the United Nations, this time at the request of Costa Rica and Malaysia. In addition, it was presented at a number of international conclaves, including a March 2008 meeting of non-nuclear governments in Dublin, sponsored by the Middle Powers Initiative and by the government of Ireland.

    Although the Western nuclear weapons states and Russia have opposed a nuclear abolition treaty, the idea has begun to gain traction. The Wall Street Journal op-eds by George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn have once again placed nuclear abolition on the political agenda. Speaking in February 2008, the U.N. High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Sergio Duarte, condemned the great powers’ “refusal to negotiate or discuss even the outlines of a nuclear-weapons convention” as “contrary to the cause of disarmament.” Opinion surveys have reported widespread popular support for nuclear abolition in numerous nations—including the United States, where about 70 percent of respondents back the signing of an international treaty to reduce and eliminate all nuclear weapons.

    Of course, it’s only fair to ask if there really exists the political will to bring such a treaty to fruition. Although Barack Obama has endorsed the goal of nuclear abolition, neither of his current opponents for the U.S. presidency has followed his example or seems likely to do so. John McCain is a thoroughgoing hawk, while Hillary Clinton—though publicly supporting some degree of nuclear weapons reduction—has recently issued the kind of “massive retaliation” threats unheard of since the days of John Foster Dulles.

    Furthermore, the American public is remarkably ignorant of nuclear realities. Writing in the Foreword to a recent book, Nuclear Disorder or Cooperative Security, published by the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, the Western States Legal Foundation, and the Reaching Critical Will project of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (www.wmdreport.org), Zia Mian, a Princeton physicist, points to a number of disturbing facts about contemporary U.S. public opinion. For example, more Americans (55%) mistakenly believe that Iran has nuclear weapons than know that Britain (52%), India (51%), Israel (48%), and France (38%) actually have these weapons.

    Although the United States possesses over 5,700 operationally deployed nuclear warheads, more than half of U.S. respondents to an opinion survey thought that the number was 200 weapons or fewer. Thus, even though most Americans have displayed a healthy distaste for nuclear weapons and nuclear war, their ability to separate fact from fiction might well be questioned when it comes to nuclear issues.

    Fortunately, there are many organizations working to better educate the public on nuclear dangers. In addition to the groups already mentioned, these include Peace Action, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Federation of American Scientists, Faithful Security, and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. And important knowledge can also be gleaned from that venerable source of nuclear expertise, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

    But there remains a considerable distance to go before a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons becomes international law.

    Dr. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book, co-edited with Glen H. Stassen, is Peace Action: Past, Present, and Future (Paradigm Publishers).

  • Opening Remarks for the Washington, DC Think Outside the Bomb Conference

    Welcome to the Second annual Washington, DC Think Outside the Bomb, conference. Before going forward, I would like to thank American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute and Americans for Informed Democracy. Without their help, this event would not be possible.

    My introduction to nuclear weapons issues came from American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute. As an undergraduate student, I was fortunate enough to travel to Japan to see the effects of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even after 60 years the physical and emotional scars on the people of Japan have not dissipated. It was a life-changing experience for me and ultimately has led me here today. I hope many of you have the opportunity to travel to Japan.

    Before going ahead with the conference, I’d like to talk for a moment about what this conference is and why now more than ever there is a need for a new generation of peace leaders.

    I am an American born after 1978. According to pop culture and statistical studies, we are known as Millennials or Generation Y. We are considered socially progressive and politically active. However, my generation does not consider global nuclear disarmament a priority. I believe the reason for this is that we are the first generation to come of age in a post-Cold War society. We are the first post-Cold War Americans.

    At the end of the Cold War there was a common belief that the nuclear threat would subside. Rather than work towards the elimination of nuclear weapons, the Clinton Administration missed an opportunity to make sweeping changes and instead, to a large extent, reaffirmed antiquated Cold War policy already in place. The existence of nuclear weapons continued, but the public’s attention towards them waned.

    Unlike those who came before, my “post-Cold War Generation” was not exposed to a strong public outcry for the abolition of nuclear weapons. We also did not experience the nuclear arms race first hand. We did not live with the fear of duck and cover drills, nuclear testing, the Cuban missile crisis, and an unprecedented nuclear arms build up.

    The current generation of young people is a “post-Cold War Generation” that has been incorrectly taught that nuclear weapons are acceptable if possessed by responsible people. Instead of disarmament, they have embraced nonproliferation.

    There is a small window of opportunity before this generation takes seats of power in federal government and decide nuclear policy. Now more than ever, it is critical that young people learn about the dangers of nuclear weapons and the need for US leadership toward nuclear disarmament.

    In 2005 the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation responded to this growing need by bringing together 50 young leaders in the nuclear field to Santa Barbara, California for the first national Think Outside the Bomb Conference. That August, the Think Outside the Bomb Participants created a Statement of Principles that guides the work of the young people in the network.

    Those principles are as follows:

    • Inspired by the need for a new generation of leaders working toward a nuclear-free world, Think Outside the Bomb is a group of young people;
    • Aware of the historical context and the current urgency to address the devastating effects of the nuclear complex;
    • Recognizing the need to develop connections between the nuclear complex and global, environmental, racial, economic and social justice;
    • Emphasizing the importance of the right to self-determination of all indigenous peoples, who have been among the most affected by the nuclear complex;
    • Drawing attention to the need to redefine security in terms of human and environmental needs;
    • Underlining the need to move beyond military force as the principal means of solving conflict and instead resolve conflict by nonviolent means;
    • Understanding the devastation caused by nuclear weapons and memorializing the many victims of bomb production at every step – from uranium mining to design, to production, to testing, to use and threat of use; and
    • Reaffirming our humanity through mutual respect, nonviolence and consensus-building.

    Nickolas Roth is Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Washington, DC office.

  • Judge Christopher Weeramantry Recieves NAPF Lifetime Achievement Award

    Judge Christopher Weeramantry Recieves NAPF Lifetime Achievement Award

    On April 12, 2008, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation presented a Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Peace Leadership to Judge Christopher Weeramantry of Sri Lanka. Judge Weeramantry is a former Supreme Court Justice of Sri Lanka and former Vice President of the International Court of Justice in The Hague. He was also a professor of law at Monash University in Australia.

    Judge Weeramantry currently heads the Weeramantry International Centre for Peace Education and Research. He views justice as the prerequisite to peace, and peace education as a prerequisite to justice. He is an active educator, lecturing throughout the world and writing prolifically. He is the author of more than 20 books and 200 articles related to peace, cross-cultural understanding and international law. He is an expert on the moral influences of religions on international law, and is currently completing a book on the influences of five major religions on peace and international law.

    Judge Weeramantry has received many honors for his tireless work for peace and justice. In 2006, he was awarded the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education for his “indefatigable campaign for peace education, promotion of human rights, intercultural faith and understanding.” In 2007, he received the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, “for his lifetime of groundbreaking work to strengthen and expand the rule of international law.” In 2007, Judge Weeramantry also received Sri Lanka’s highest civil honor, “conferred for exceptionally outstanding and most distinguished service to the nation.”

    As a judge on the International Court of Justice, Judge Weeramantry wrote a lengthy dissent to the Court’s Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons. The Court found that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be generally illegal, but held open the possibility of legality in an extreme circumstance in which the very survival of a state was at stake. In his dissent, Judge Weeramantry concluded that there was no instance in which the threat or use of nuclear weapons could be considered legal under international law. Judge Weeramantry’s dissent in this case remains the most comprehensive and important legal opinion written on this critical issue.

    In his acceptance speech upon receiving the Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award, Judge Weeramantry spoke on “Peace, International Law and the Rights of Future Generations.” He pointed out that the 20th century had begun with high hopes for peace on the heels of the 1899 Hague Peace Conference. The Conference, convened by Czar Nicholas of Russia, sought to avert the resort to war in the 20th century. But, the judge pointed out, as we all know, the 20th century was witness to two devastating world wars. Judge Weeramantry described the 20th century as the century of lost opportunity. He characterized the 21st century as the century of last opportunity.

    The judge expressed the concern that unless the international community is able to resolve conflicts peacefully and abolish its most destructive weapons, we may foreclose the human future. Thus, each of us alive on the planet today has special responsibilities to assure that the decisions made today will not destroy the planet for ourselves or future generations.

    The Lifetime Achievement Award of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is presented to “outstanding individuals who have made significant long-term contributions to building a more peaceful world.” Its purpose, like other Foundation awards, is to honor distinguished individuals and to shine a light on peace leadership as a model to inspire a larger societal commitment to peace and to help empower a new generation of peace leaders.

    Previous recipients of the Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award are former Canadian Senator Douglas Roche (2005); psychiatrist and author Dr. Robert Jay Lifton (2005); scientist of conscience Sir Joseph Rotblat (1997); civil society leader for the law of the sea Elisabeth Mann Borgese (1995); and two-time Nobel Laureate Dr. Linus Pauling (1991). The Foundation is proud to add Judge Christopher Weeramantry to this list of distinguished previous honorees.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a councilor of the World Future Council.

  • The World Tipping Points

    Speech delivered to the Channel City Club of Santa Barbara on April 14, 2008

    We are at an unprecedented moment in human history. We stand on the precipice of not one or two global crises, but many.

    The world stands at the tipping point of human security, nuclear disaster as well as climate chaos. We are living at a dangerous period in world politics. We are witnessing unprecedented assaults on the rule of law, human rights and civil liberties, and our politicians are no longer being held accountable for their deceptions and failures.

    What happens next will be determined by our actions. These issues have a pressing urgency, an urgency that demands radical and complete reform of the way we see the world and the way we live our lives.

    The Iraq war

    In 2003, we were told that Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction represented an immediate and serious danger to world security. But now we know there were no weapons of mass destruction.

    In 2003, we were told that Saddam Hussein was collaborating with al-Qaeda. We now know that this was a deception. Al-Qaeda was never in Iraq under Saddam Hussein – but it is now.

    In 2003, we were told that world security depended on the removal of the Iraqi government. But the world has now become a far more dangerous place, thanks to the invasion of Iraq. Its consequences can be seen in every corner of the globe: international terrorism has flourished in defiance of George W. Bush.

    Historian Marilyn Young noted in early April 2003, with the invasion of Iraq barely underway: “In less than two weeks, a 30 year old vocabulary is back: credibility gap, seek and destroy, hard to tell friend from foe, civilian interference in military affairs, the dominance of domestic politics, winning, or more often, losing hearts and minds.”

    I would like to briefly speak about the legacy of the Iraq War. Let us look at the balance sheet:

    • Based on the figures of the Lancet study, approximately a million Iraqi civilians have died – a figure that eclipses even the genocide in Rwanda.
    • Over 4,000 US soldiers have died.
    • Approximately 30,000 US soldiers have been seriously wounded.
    • Over four million refugees have been created: two million of them have fled the country, and approximately 2.5 million have been internally displaced
    • Based on estimates from the congressional budget office, the cost of the war to the U.S. is in the trillions
    • In 2008, U.S. Monthly Spending in Iraq is estimated at $12 billion
    • In February 2007, Congressional hearings placed the amount of money mismanaged and wasted in Iraq at $10 billion
    • The Pentagon have classified $1.4 billion of Halliburton’s charges as “unreasonable and unsupported”
    • Human rights abuses have been permitted and even perpetrated by the occupying nations. These include the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib.
    • The price of oil has quadrupled since 2002. Today it is $110 a barrel.

    What is so astonishing about these stories and statistics is that the politicians responsible for them have not been held accountable. Despite the fact that the war has been an unqualified disaster, they have not been called to account. If George W. Bush and Tony Blair had presided as CEOs over comparable deceptive and fraudulent practices in the city, they would have been immediately and unceremoniously sacked.

    We have entered a dangerous period in world politics – one where our politicians are no longer being held accountable for their mistakes, or for their deceptions. We have become complicit in a series of secret, underhand “dirty tactics” in the war on terror. This must stop.

    Iraq was, from the outset, an It was an illegal, immoral and unwinnable war.

    We have failed to provide security. We have failed to provide good governance. We have failed in our efforts at reconstruction.

    Iraq today is less secure and less stable than it was under Saddam Hussein – but although Saddam was a vile and brutal dictator, even under him, Iraq did not have 2 million people flee the country and 2.5 million people internally displaced.

    So where does this leave us? With a world that is uncertain and more dangerous.

    But Iraq is not the only thing making the world unsafe. We live in a world in which the deadly menace of nuclear weapons is rearing its ugly head as a very real threat to the continued existence of the human race.

    The nuclear threat

    In January 2007, an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal called “World Free of Nuclear Weapons” said: “Nuclear weapons today present tremendous dangers, but also an historic opportunity. U.S. leadership will be required to take the world to the next stage – to a solid consensus for reversing reliance on nuclear weapons globally as a vital contribution to preventing their proliferation into potentially dangerous hands, and ultimately ending them as a threat to the world.”
    Now who would have thought that I would be quoting Henry Kissinger, George P. Schultz, William J. Perry and Sam Nunn?
    But perhaps you should not be surprised. The nuclear issue is not a partisan political issue. It is reassuring to see some of the most conservative figures in both the UK and the USA supporting complete nuclear disarmament.
    Some of you may know that Ronald Reagan was strongly opposed to nuclear weapons. Reagan called for the abolition of “all nuclear weapons,” which he considered “totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilisation.”
    The strategy of defending the manufacture and stockpiling of nuclear weapons, as an effective deterrent to others, is now recognised as a flawed argument. If they were once justified, as a means of American-Soviet deterrence, they are no longer. Nuclear weapons were considered essential to maintaining international security during the cold war, but that is no longer the case.
    Mohammed El-Baradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was quoted as saying, “We need to treat nuclear weapons the way we treat slavery or genocide. There needs to be a taboo over possessing them.”
    But it is not only that our governments are violating international agreements that they themselves signed. They are also acting with arrogance and carelessness when it comes to handling the weapons they have already. Even the supposedly most advanced nations can be alarmingly lax when it comes to the security precautions in place for nuclear weapons.
    Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the unbelievable US Army security failure last August, in which six nuclear warheads were inadvertently removed from their bunkers and flown from North Dakota to Louisiana, “unprecedented”. Owing to “a lack of attention to detail and lack of adherence to well-established Air Force guidelines, technical orders and procedures”, for thirty-six hours, no-one knew where the warheads were, or even that they were missing.
    Each of the warheads contained ten times the yield of that dropped on Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War. No breach of nuclear procedures of this magnitude had ever occurred before. Surely it is only a matter of time before an error like this becomes a disaster. Commentators have blamed this failure on the US Army’s reduced nuclear focus in recent years. Why, I would argue, not go the whole way? Why not do away with nuclear weapons altogether?
    The tolerance for error when it comes to nuclear weapons is very low – in fact, it is zero. But zero tolerance cannot realistically be achieved, which is another reason why immediate and worldwide disarmament is such an important, and a pressing, priority. Governor Schwarzenegger said, “Mistakes are made in every other human endeavour. Why should nuclear weapons be exempt?”
    My good friend David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, noted in an article earlier this year that “even Edward Teller, father of the H-Bomb, recognized, ‘Sooner or later a fool will prove greater than the proof, even in a foolproof system.’”
    We have come to the point where something has to give. South Africa is to be heartily applauded for its total disarmament, which was officially declared in 1994, following an inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. In order to affect real change globally, we now need one of the major powers to follow suit.
    The question has now become: “Who’s going to give them up first?” When they consider their responses to our pleas, politicians would do well to keep in mind the words of two men.
    The first is Dwight D. Eisenhower, who pledged America’s determination “to devote its entire heart and mind to find the way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.”
    The second is a man who knows as much about nuclear weapons as anyone, Mikhail Gorbachev. He said that “that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason.”
    But nuclear weapons are not the only thing making the world unsafe.

    Climate chaos

    Now, I would like to address the problem of climate change – or, as is more accurate, climate chaos. The problem of climate chaos touches every area of our lives: peace, security, human rights, poverty, hunger, health, mass migration, and economics. Climate change is not an isolated environmental issue any more.

    At the United Nations Framework Conference on Climate Change in Bali last December, I spoke of climate chaos in terms of global justice. That is how I see the issue: we need to fight climate change along with global inequality if we want to find lasting and sustainable solutions. To attempt to address the causes of climate change, we must not overlook the developing countries of the world.

    “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth is revolutionary,” George Orwell once said.

    Despite the clear and urgent alarms sounded by our most respected scientists, the developed world continues to feed its out-of-control oil addiction. We are locked into an inefficient, pollution-based economy, which is undermining public health and the environment, aggravating inequality and turning us into oil predators.

    Rather than face the pressing challenges of the 21st century, some world leaders continue to systematically eliminate vital environmental protection laws and regulations. In the U.S., for example, the Environmental Protection Agency has been gutted. And, as you know, the Bush administration refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, whilst focusing on oil and natural gas production. Representatives of the military-petroleum complex have been defining Washington’s economic policies. Their undeniable aim is to dominate the world’s energy resources; oil and natural gas.

    As consumers of oil, we must realise that oil consumption is effectively destroying the environment and communities, especially in places inhabited by indigenous populations and marginalised groups who have little or no economic and political power to defend themselves.

    I would like to quote a passage from “View of Dusk at the end of the Century, from Eduardo Galeano, 1998.

    Poisoned is the earth that inters or deters us. There is no air, only despair; no breeze, only sleaze. No rain, except acid rain. No parks, just parking lots. No partners only partnerships. Companies instead of nations. Consumers instead of citizens. Conglomerations instead of cities. No people only audiences. No relations, except public relations. No vision, just television. To praise a flower, say “It looks plastic…”

    There is no denying it: the rich world is causing climate change and the poor world is suffering. The industrial countries that have pioneered fossil fuel technology are primarily in the cold north, while the warmer countries of the south still use far less oil, gas and coal. As climate change kicks in, the tropical and subtropical countries of Africa, South Asia and Latin America will heat up more and more, with temperatures becoming increasingly intolerable. Droughts will affect large parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Melting glaciers will flood river valleys and then, when they have disappeared, unprecedented droughts will occur. Poor, low-lying countries such as Bangladesh will find it much harder to cope with sea level rise than Holland or Florida.

    If current trends are allowed to continue, hundreds of millions of people in the poorer countries will lose their homes as well as the land on which they grow their crops. And then there is the threat of diseases: By the end of the century 182 million people in sub-Saharan Africa alone could die of diseases directly attributable to climate change, according to Christian Aid.

    We must therefore insist on a dramatic change in direction that goes way beyond the actions currently taken by governments.

    The rich countries need to dramatically reduce their use of fossil fuels. At the present time, we are burning a million years worth of fossil fuel deposits every year. This makes the unprecedented standards of living of a large portion of people in the rich countries possible. Meanwhile rapid economic growth is also disproportionately increasing the living standards of minorities in developing countries. But all this is possible only because we are running down the earth’s capital assets, and particularly its fossil fuel resources, at an unprecedented rate whilst damaging the earth’s atmosphere in the process.

    It is becoming clear that the rich countries need to take vigorous measures to rapidly reduce their dependence on fossil fuels, and to accelerate the development of renewable energy as the basis of a whole new energy system for the planet. “Climate justice” means giving the poorer countries privileged access to renewable energy technologies to help them with truly sustainable development. The Kyoto treaty’s ‘clean development mechanism’ is a useful start, but much more needs to be done. Only if we can show the plausibility of development without fossil fuels, can we encourage third world countries to initiate their own emissions reductions.

    Humanity needs to make every effort to protect the world’s ecosystems, such as forests and coral reefs, and to initiate large-scale projects to reforest denuded areas of land, above all else for the benefit of local populations. Economic and urban development in the last 200 years has largely been at the expense of the world’s ecosystems. Forest cover across the world has been reduced by about 50 per cent and the indigenous people, particularly in the tropics, have suffered terribly in the process. Ways have to be found to pay developing countries for the global ‘ecosystem services’ provided by their forest cover – and their capacity to absorb carbon dioxide and to release moisture to distance places. Under the auspices of climate justice this is a historic responsibility, and it needs to benefit the poorer tropical and subtropical countries of the world and their people above all else.

    Affirming the principle of Ecological Debt, we need to acknowledge the entitlement of the victims of climate change to have their ecosystems restored, and to address the loss of land and livelihood they have suffered, and to establish legal precedents to that effect.

    Global Justice requires that we make personal and collective choices to use the Earth’s resources prudently, and particularly to minimise our use of fossil fuel energy. We are challenged to rebalance our lifestyles to assure that unborn generations have adequate natural resources, a stable climate and a healthy planet.

    I would like now to quote Al Gore, speaking after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans:

    Winston Churchill sounded warnings of what was at stake when the storm was gathering on Europe: “The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.”

    Given the scale of this impending disaster, we have no choice but to embark upon a global renewable energy revolution, by replacing our carbon-driven economy with a renewable energy economy. The challenge we are facing now is how to switch to a more secure, lower-carbon energy system that does not undermine economic and social development, and addresses the threats of climate change and global inequality.

    Renewable energy technologies are the only viable solution to the coming energy crisis, it is now a matter of how, not of why or when.

    Never before has humanity been so overwhelmed by such massive and urgent concerns. We are experiencing explosive population growth: the world’s population is forecast to reach 9.2 billion by 2050. Since 1992, there has been a 50% increase in world energy consumption. Another 50% rise is expected in the next fifteen years. We now know that if we remain locked into an inefficient, polluting, fossil-fuel based global economy, we will exhaust the Earth’s natural resources and we will accelerate climate change.

    So we have reached both an environmental and an economic tipping point. Which direction we choose to take will decide the fate of our planet. What is certain is that we must bring about fundamental change in our energy systems, with a renewed focus on energy security and lower, if not zero, carbon emissions.

    Whilst conventional fossil and atomic energies continue to endanger our health, the health of the planet, risk sparking conflict over declining resources, and require high water consumption and ever-increasing costs, renewable energy sources do not bring with them these negative effects. They are the only solution to the three key global energy challenges: energy security, cost efficiency and environmental protection. The task now is to create policies that make investment in renewable energies an attractive proposition at national and international levels.

    The arguments that renewable energy does not provide sufficient or affordable alternatives to traditional energy sources have been exposed as flawed and false. Furthermore, the cost of finite conventional energies will continue to rise as the sources dry up. Renewable energy costs will generally go down, as they consist almost exclusively of technology costs. Mass production and technological innovation will bring dramatic decreases in cost. So we should not see the promotion of renewables as a burden: we should see it as a unique economic opportunity – one that will reward those who get on board early.

    I recently spoke in Berlin at the German Government’s Preparatory Conference for the Establishment of an International Renewable Energy Agency, called IRENA. It is my belief that if we are to embark on a global renewable energy revolution, we cannot do it without IRENA. IRENA is both necessary and urgent if we are to avoid disaster.

    Before now, I was sceptical that the international community had the resolve to do what is necessary to prevent global climate disaster. However, the establishment of IRENA is more than the establishment of just another agency. Its visionary goals offer real hope that we can avoid catastrophe by prompting the rapid and worldwide uptake of renewable energy in place of fossil fuel energy sources.

    Conclusion

    But IRENA is just one aspect of the change in outlook we must effect.

    If we want to live in a world that is healthy, harmonious and content, we require a Copernican revolution in our outlook. Each and every one of us must be prepared to make fundamental, lasting and immediate change in the way we live. This cannot be about egos or agendas; it must be about a holistic change in the way we see the world and the way we see ourselves.

    Although some more pessimistic scientists warn that we have already passed the tipping point of climate chaos, and that human intervention is now futile, I like to think that is not yet the case. I am convinced that if we act now we can save our world and ourselves.

    But we are not just aiming for a set of goals. This is not a checklist by which our success can be measured. It’s no good to have four out of five, or even nine out of ten.

    We have to aim for a virtuous circle of morally sound principles and practices. We are reaching a threshold from which there will be no return. If we do not hold our politicians accountable for their decisions; if we do not fight for the abolition of the death penalty and for universal respect for human rights and dignity; if we do not disarm and destroy our nuclear weapons – if we are not prepared to do these things, we may not have a world left protecting before very long.

    There is no time for further excuses, postponement, or procrastination. This is a time for courage and leadership, and for positive and immediate action. I have always believed that every individual can make a difference. I urge each of you, in your personal and professional lives, to make serious and lasting choices that will address the challenges we are facing in the world today.

    Bianca Jagger is Chair of the World Future Council (www.worldfuturecouncil.org).

  • The International Renewable Energy Agency

    Speech delivered at the Conference for the Establishment of IRENA in Berlin on April 10, 2008

    Thank you, Hermann, for your kind words. As many of you will know, Hermann Scheer has been the driving force behind the creation of IRENA. Please join me in recognising that without his vision and unwavering commitment to the establishment of IRENA, we would not be here today.

    I should like to say how honoured and delighted I am to be delivering this speech. Many of you will have heard about the recent chaos at Heathrow Airport in London. But this conference was so important that I braved the potential horrors of Terminal 5 to be here today. To my great surprise, everything went smoothly, so I take that as a good omen for the success of this conference.

    The threat of global climate disaster Today we stand at a crossroads in history. Most climate scientists have sounded urgent alarms, warning us about the imminent threat of climate change, and the impending tipping point. David Wasdell, Director of the Meridian programme, in a book he co-authored called Planet Earth, We Have A Problem, describes the tipping point like this:

    “If we go beyond the point where human intervention can no longer stabilise the system, then we precipitate unstoppable runaway climate change. That will set in motion a major extinction event comparable to the five other extinction crises that the earth has previously experienced.”

    As climate change kicks in, the tropical and subtropical countries of Africa, South Asia and Latin America will heat up more and more, with temperatures becoming increasingly intolerable. Droughts will affect large parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Melting glaciers will flood river valleys and then, when they have disappeared, unprecedented droughts will occur. Poor, low-lying countries such as Bangladesh will find it much harder to cope with sea level rise than Holland or Florida.

    If current trends are allowed to continue, hundreds of millions of people in the poorer countries will lose their homes, as well as the land on which they grow their crops. And then there is the threat of diseases: By the end of the century 182 million people in sub-Saharan Africa alone could die of diseases directly attributable to climate change, according to Christian Aid.

    Given the scale of this impending disaster, we have no choice but to embark upon a global renewable energy revolution, by replacing our carbon-driven economy with a renewable energy economy. The challenge we are facing now is how to switch to a more secure, lower-carbon energy system that does not undermine economic and social development, and addresses the threats of climate change and global inequality.

    Climate change is no longer just an environmental issue: it touches every part of our lives: peace, security, human rights, poverty, hunger, health, mass migration and economics. IRENA is a necessary condition for preventing climate disaster and ensuring global energy security and stability.

    I will be frank with you. Before now, I was sceptical whether the international community had the resolve to do what is necessary to prevent global climate disaster. However, the establishment of IRENA is more than the establishment of just another agency. In addition to its visionary goals, it will benefit from Hermann Scheer’s thirty years of expertise and dedication to the creation of this organisation.

    There have been indications that various governments have taken notice of the threat posed by climate change: the World Summit for Sustainable Development in 2002, the International Renewable Energy Conference in Bonn in 2004, and the Beijing International Renewable Energy Conference in 2005 are three examples. By taking the initiative in hosting this conference, the German government have proposed concrete steps where previously there was mostly talk. I hope you will join me in applauding their courage and foresight.

    Milton Friedman said, “In a crisis, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That… is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”

    Never before has humanity been so overwhelmed by such massive and urgent concerns. We are experiencing explosive population growth: the world’s population is forecast to reach 9.2 billion by 2050. Since 1992, there has been a 50% rise in world energy consumption. Another 50% rise is expected in the next fifteen years. We now know that if we remain locked into an inefficient, polluting, fossil-fuel based global economy, we will exhaust the Earth’s natural resources and we will accelerate climate change.

    So we have reached both an environmental and an economic tipping point. Which direction we choose to take will decide the fate of our planet. What is certain is that we must bring about fundamental change in our energy systems, with a renewed focus on energy security and lower, if not zero, carbon emissions.

    But we should be wary of using phrases like “the carbon-free economy”. So far, this expression has been used in relation to two technologies that fail to provide acceptable solutions to the energy crisis. The first is “carbon capture and storage”, or CCS technology. Not only is this technology still speculative, though it is projected for 2020, it is already clear that insufficient space exists to capture all the CO2 released. We can also say that implementing CCS will be much more expensive than providing energy from renewable sources.

    The second technology is nuclear power. The nuclear industry has attempted to “green-wash” itself by trumpeting its carbon neutrality, yet the deployment of nuclear power comes with tremendous – and, to my mind, unacceptable – risks, including large-scale nuclear accidents, the problem of waste, uranium storage, nuclear proliferation in general, and last but not least the high water consumption of nuclear power plants. As some of you may know, France was forced to shut down some of its nuclear reactors a few years ago, thanks to a shortage in cooling water. As we continue to experience worldwide water shortages, and as we look to a future in which these shortages are set to worsen, this is a significant risk factor in relying on nuclear power.

    Nuclear power is not a panacea to cure us of our energy worries. Quite apart from the safety concerns it poses, the substantial costs involved and the irresponsibility of burdening future generations with the problems of waste management, it is estimated that our usable uranium reserves will run out within five decades – and that is only if no new power plants are built. Attempts to “stretch” current reserves with various technologies carry incalculable cost. Similarly, proposals that have been made to extend the life of the fossil fuel energy system not only risk the ecosphere but also represent a mammoth financial burden to future generations.

    Renewable energies, on the other hand, avoid many of these problems, and even create a plethora of opportunities – economic, environmental and social. Renewable solutions are affordable, available and a moral imperative. With the benefits to poorer countries of decentralized, indigenous energy sources, and the affordability of implementation that has been demonstrated by the latest research, we will be working toward solving the two great threats to our continued survival: environmental degradation and global inequality. Renewable energies provide a realistic solution to both. And, as the example of Germany shows, the employment benefits are staggering: Germany has created some 250,000 new jobs by its accelerated introduction of renewable energy in less than ten years.

    The advantages of renewable energy

    Traditional sources of energy, which account for 60% of the current commercial energy supply,are becoming scarce. But renewable energy provides sustainable, safe, affordable power that does not run out and does not pose a risk to ourselves or to the environment. For these reasons, the creation of IRENA is necessary and urgent.

    The arguments that renewable energy does not provide sufficient or affordable alternatives to traditional energy sources have been exposed as flawed and false. Furthermore, the cost of finite conventional energies will continue to rise as the sources dry up. But, as we will all have read in Herman Scheer’s books, The Solar Economy and The Solar Manifesto, renewable energy costs will generally go down, as they consist almost exclusively of technology costs. Mass production and technological innovation will bring dramatic decreases in cost. So we should not see the promotion of renewables as a burden: we should see it as a unique economic opportunity – one that will reward those who get on board early. IRENA will be instrumental in encouraging research and development to facilitate its affordability and implementation, and for this reason, the creation of IRENA is necessary and urgent.

    As we have heard today, countries in the Global South enjoy little or no energy security. But a renewable energy revolution will have crucial economic and social benefits for the poorest countries in the world. Home-grown renewable sources provide developing countries with the means by which to insulate themselves against rising energy prices elsewhere in the world. And with a decentralised renewable network there would be no need for expensive grid solutions.

    In promoting these decentralised energy systems, we will be helping to prevent political and military conflicts sparked by scarcity of resources. We will be giving the developing world true and lasting energy security. For this reason, the creation of IRENA is necessary and urgent.

    Renewable energy stimulates economic growth and local job creation. In 2007, more than $100bn was invested worldwide in renewable energy technology. By 2006, 2.4 million jobs were created. Since renewable energy installations are less complex to operate than conventional facilities, plants can be managed by local workforces as part of a decentralised system.

    Only renewable energy offers the possibility of true energy efficiency. Whilst in the global supply chains of conventional energies, from mines and wells to customers, there are large energy losses, the short supply chains that are possible in the renewable model will lead to a drastic reduction in wastage. To make short energy chains feasible will require investment in research and development of storage technologies, and this is an area in which IRENA will be of vital importance. So for this reason, too, the creation of IRENA is necessary and urgent.

    In addition to reducing the burden on the Earth’s natural resources, renewable energies reduce pollution, because renewables mostly result in only very small greenhouse gas emissions.

    So whilst conventional fossil and atomic energies continue to endanger the health of the planet, risk sparking conflict over declining resources, and require high water consumption and ever-increasing costs, renewable energy sources do not bring with them these negative effects. The representative from Senegal today spoke of “ridding ourselves of the tyranny of oil”.

    Renewables are the only solution to the three key global energy challenges: energy security, cost efficiency and environmental protection. The task now is to create policies that make investment in renewable energies an attractive proposition at national and international levels. For this, the creation of IRENA, as you may have guessed by now, is necessary and urgent.

    Moving forward with renewable energy

    Notwithstanding all these advantages, there is still unjustifiable political prejudice against renewable energy. While conventional energies enjoy political privilege, including large amounts of public money for research and development, military protection of the supply chain and $300billion in global annual subsidies, renewable energies are discriminated against. Though intergovernmental institutions exist to promote atomic energy – for example the IAEA and EURATOM – not one exists for the promotion of renewables. Renewables need an institutional base at international level to provide a reference point – an intergovernmental agency to advise governments in drawing up policies and strategies – to address the current imbalance between traditional and renewable sources.

    To date, the International Energy Agency, the IEA, despite its significant expertise, is seen by the developing countries as a “club for the rich”, and their influence and activity is limited to the OECD countries. The IEA only recently showed interest in renewable energy sources. Other existing networks have no mandate to advise governments on the accelerated introduction of renewable energy.

    It is not as if this is a sudden or unexpected crisis. We have known the limitations and damaging consequences of conventional energies for over thirty years. As Hermann Scheer puts it, the result so far has been “talking globally, postponing nationally”, with the effect that the introduction of renewable energies has not been nearly fast enough. Despite clear indications that renewable energy was the inevitable way forward, we have not met the challenges set at Rio in 1992.

    Paying lip service to renewable energy is no longer sufficient. We now require concrete action. The delays in investment and adoption of renewable energies have been environmentally and economically inexcusable. We have the tools to expose the fossil fuel industry’s claims that renewables are expensive and inadequate as false. Promoting renewables must now become a global and universal priority, and IRENA is a necessary condition for that goal. If we intend to embark on the renewable energy revolution, we cannot do it without IRENA.

    IRENA will work toward improved regulatory frameworks for renewable energy through enhanced policy advice, improvements in the transfer of renewable energy technology; progress on skills and know-how for renewable energy; it will be able to offer a scientifically sound information basis through applied policy research; and better financing of renewable energy.

    Germany has shown great leadership and vision in spearheading the renewable energy revolution. We must grasp firmly the hand that is being offered to us and embark upon this revolution to prevent global climate disaster. I thank the German government for this opportunity, and Hermann Scheer for his outstanding work. Also on behalf of the World Future Council, of which I am the Chair, I urge each of you support the establishment of IRENA as heralding a new world order, in which we can look forward to safe, affordable, secure and stable energy sources for all.

    I was delighted today to see the discussions quickly focus on substantive and practical issues. It seems as though many countries are keen to begin working.

    I would like to finish by quoting Dr. Scheer:

    To be able to discuss energy as a separate matter is an intellectual illusion. The CO2 emissions are not the only problem of fossil energy. The radioactive contamination is not the only problem of atomic power. Many other dangers are caused by using atomic and fossil energies: From the polluted cities to the erosion of rural areas; from water pollution to desertification; from mass migration to overcrowded settlements and the declining security of individuals and states. Because the present energy system lies at the root of these problems, renewables are the solution to these problems. That means: Nothing is macro-economically better and cheaper than the total substitution of conventional energies by renewables. We need a hard-line strategy for soft energies.

    Hermann’s words show that this is the over-riding moral imperative of the century: the time has come for decision-makers in politics and economics to embrace this opportunity.

    There is no time for further excuses, postponement, or procrastination. This is a time for courage and leadership, and for positive and immediate action.

    We have an obligation to future generations upon which we must not renege. For their sake, I urge you to take full advantage of the current political momentum and give your full support to the creation of IRENA.

    Bianca Jagger is Chair of the World Future Council (www.worldfuturecouncil.org).