Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: environmental consequences

  • A Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in February 2014

    On February 13 and 14, 2014, the government of Mexico will host a conference on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons. The global peace movement must think carefully about how best to use the opportunities offered by the Mexico conference and by other recent breakthroughs in the struggle to eliminate the danger of a catastrophic thermonuclear war.

    The urgent need for nuclear disarmament:

    Nuclear disarmament has been one of the core aspirations of the international community since the first use of nuclear weapons in 1945. A nuclear war, even a limited one, would have disastrous humanitarian and environmental consequences.

    The total explosive power of today’s weapons is equivalent to roughly half a million Hiroshima bombs. To multiply the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by a factor of half a million changes the danger qualitatively. What is threatened today is the complete breakdown of human society.

    Although the Cold War has ended, the dangers of nuclear weapons have not been appreciably reduced. Indeed, proliferation and the threat of nuclear terrorism have added new dimensions to the dangers. There is no defense against nuclear terrorism.

    There are 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world today, several thousand of them on hair-trigger alert. The phrase “hair trigger alert” means that the person in charge has only 15 minutes to decide whether the warning from the radar system was true of false, and to decide whether or not to launch a counterattack. The danger of accidental nuclear war continues to be high. Technical failures and human failures have many times brought the world close to a catastrophic nuclear war. Those who know the system of “deterrence” best describe it as “an accident waiting to happen”.

    A nuclear war would produce radioactive contamination of the kind that we have already experienced in the areas around Chernobyl and Fukushima and in the Marshall Islands, but on an enormously increased scale.

    Also, recent studies by atmospheric scientists have shown that the smoke from burning cities produced by even a limited nuclear war would have a devastating effect on global agriculture. The studies show that the smoke would rise to the stratosphere, where it would spread globally and remain for a decade, blocking sunlight, blocking the hydrological cycle and destroying the ozone layer. Because of the devastating effect on global agriculture, darkness from even a small nuclear war could result in an estimated billion deaths from famine. This number corresponds to the fact that today, a billion people are chronically undernourished. If global agriculture were sufficiently damaged by a nuclear war, these vulnerable people might not survive.

    A large-scale nuclear war would be an even greater global catastrophe, completely destroying all agriculture for a period of ten years. Such a war would mean that most humans would die from hunger, and many animal and plant species would be threatened with extinction.

    Recent breakthroughs:

    On on 4-5 March 2013 the Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Espen Barth Eide hosted an international Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons. The Conference provided an arena for a fact-based discussion of the humanitarian and developmental consequences of a nuclear weapons detonation. Delegates from 127 countries as well as several UN organisations, the International Red Cross movement, representatives of civil society and other relevant stakeholders participated. Representatives from many nations made strong statements advocating the complete abolition of nuclear weapons. The conference in Mexico in 2014 will be a follow-up to the Oslo Conference.

    Recently UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has introduced a 5-point Program for the abolition of nuclear weapons. In this program he mentioned the possibility of a Nuclear Weapons Convention, and urged the Security Council to convene a summit devoted to the nuclear abolition. He also urged all countries to ratify the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty.

    Three-quarters of all nations support UN Secretary-General Ban’s proposal for a treaty to outlaw and eliminate nuclear weapons. The 146 nations that have declared their willingness to negotiate a new global disarmament pact include four nuclear weapon states: China, India, Pakistan and North Korea.

    On April 2, 2013, a historic victory was won at the United Nations, and the world achieved its first treaty limiting international trade in arms. Work towards the ATT was begun in the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, which requires a consensus for the adoption of any measure. Over the years, the consensus requirement has meant that no real progress in arms control measures has been made in Geneva, since a consensus among 193 nations is impossible to achieve.

    To get around the blockade, British U.N. Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant sent the draft treaty to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and asked him on behalf of Mexico, Australia and a number of others to put the ATT to a swift vote in the General Assembly, and on Tuesday, April 3, it was adopted by a massive majority.

    The method used for the adoption of the Arms Trade Treaty suggests that progress on other seemingly intractable issues could be made by the same method, by putting the relevant legislation to a direct vote on the floor of the UN General Assembly, despite the opposition of militarily powerful states.

    According to ICAN, 151 nations support a ban on nuclear weapons, while only 22 nations oppose it. Details can be found on the following link: http://www.icanw.org/why-a-ban/positions/ Similarly a Nuclear Weapons Convention might be put to a direct vote on the floor of the UN General Assembly. The following link explores this possibility: http://www.cadmusjournal.org/article/issue-6/arms-trade-treaty-opens-new-possibilities-un.

    The key feature of these proposals is that negotiations must not be allowed to be blocked by the nuclear weapons states. Asking them to participate in negotiations would be like asking tobacco companies to participate in laws to ban cigarettes, or like asking narcotics dealers to participate in the drafting of laws to ban narcotics, or, to take a recent example, it would be like inviting big coal companies to participate in a conference aimed at preventing dangerous climate change.

    In 2013, the United Nations has established an Open Ended Working Group on Nuclear Disarmament, which consisted both of nations and of individuals. The OEWG met in the spring of 2013 and again in August, to draft a set of proposals to be sent to the UN General Assembly.

    On 28 September, 2013, a High Level Meeting of the 68th Session of the UN General Assembly took place. It was devoted to nuclear disarmament. Although the nuclear weapon states attempted to label the new negotiations as “counterproductive”, the overwhelming consensus of the meeting was that nuclear abolition must take place within the next few years, and that the humanitarian and environmental impact of nuclear weapons had to be central to all discussions. The detailed proceedings are available on the following link: http://www.un.org/en/ga/68/meetings/nucleardisarmament/ .

    The opportunity presented by the conference in Mexico in February 2014 must not be wasted. We must use it to take concrete steps towards putting legislation for the abolition of nuclear weapons to a direct vote on the floor of the UN General Assembly.

  • For Nuclear Security Beyond Seoul, Eradicate Land-Based ‘Doomsday’ Missiles

    This article was originally published by the Christian Science Monitor.

    David KriegerPresident Obama and other world leaders gathered at the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea, this week to address threats posed by unsecured nuclear material. If Mr. Obama is truly concerned about nuclear safety, he should seriously consider doing away with the 450 inter-continental ballistic missiles deployed and ready to fire at Russia on a moment’s notice.

    Last month we were among 15 protesters who were arrested in the middle of the night at Vandenberg Air Force Base, some 70 miles north of Santa Barbara, Calif. We were protesting the imminent test flight of a Minuteman III inter-continental ballistic missile.

    The Air Force rationale for doing these tests is to ensure the reliability of the US nuclear deterrent force; but launch-ready land-based nuclear-armed ballistic missiles are the opposite of a deterrent to attack. In fact, their very deployment has the potential to launch World War III and precipitate human extinction – as a result of a false alarm.

    We’re not exaggerating. Here’s why: These nuclear missiles are first-strike weapons – most of them would not survive a nuclear attack. In the event of a warning of a Russian nuclear attack, there would be an incentive to launch all 450 of these Minuteman missiles before the incoming enemy warheads could destroy them in their silos.

    If the warning turned out to be false (there have been many false warnings), and the US missiles were launched before the error was detected, World War III would be underway. The Russians have the same incentive to launch their land-based missiles upon warning of a perceived attack.

    Both US and Russian land-based missiles remain constantly on high-alert status, ready to be launched within minutes. Because of the 30-minute flight times of these missiles, the presidents of both the US and Russia would have only approximately 12 minutes to decide whether to launch their missiles when presented by their military leaders with information indicating an imminent attack (after lower-level threat assessment conferences).

    That’s only 12 minutes or less for the president to decide whether to launch global nuclear war.  While this scenario is unlikely, it is definitely possible: Presidents have repeatedly rehearsed it, and it cannot be ruled out due to the graveness of its potential consequences.

    Russia came close to launching its missiles based on a warning that came Jan. 25, 1995. President Yeltsin was awakened in the middle of the night and told a US missile was headed toward Moscow. Fortunately, Yeltsin was sober and took longer than the time allocated for his decision on whether to launch Russian nuclear-armed missiles in response.

    In the extended time, it became clear that the missile was a weather sounding rocket from Norway and not a US missile headed toward Moscow. Disaster was only narrowly averted.

    Here is the really compelling part of the story: If all 450 US land-based Minuteman III missiles with thermonuclear warheads were ever launched at Russia – with many of the targets in or near cities, as now planned – most Americans would die as a result, along with most of humanity.  Our own weapons would contribute as much or more to these deaths in America and the rest of the globe as any Russian warheads launched.

    This is because smoke from the enormous nuclear firestorms created by even a “successful” US nuclear first-strike would cause catastrophic disruption of global climate and massive destruction of the Earth’s protective ozone layer, leading to global famine.

    Recent peer-reviewed studies, done by atmospheric scientists Alan Robock (Rutgers), Brian Toon (University of Colorado-Boulder), Richard Turco (UCLA) and colleagues, predict that such an attack would create immense firestorms that would quickly surround the planet with a dense stratospheric smoke layer.

    The black smoke would be heated by the sun, lofted like a hot air balloon, and would remain in the stratosphere for at least 10 years. There it would block and prevent a large fraction of sunlight from reaching the Earth’s surface. The sharp reduction of warming sunlight would rapidly produce global Ice Age weather conditions. This would eliminate or dramatically reduce growing seasons for a decade and would likely cause the starvation of most or all humans.

    Along with other effects – including prolonged destruction of the ozone layer – most complex life on Earth could be destroyed. Scientists say the process would be similar to when an asteroid hit the Earth some 65 million years ago, raising a global dust cloud that reduced sunlight, lowering temperatures and killing vegetation. That caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and 70 percent of the Earth’s species.

    The cause of extinction in our case would not be an external, celestial event, but rather the launching of thermonuclear weapons we had created by our own cleverness, supposedly for our own security.

    The Minuteman III missile tests from Vandenberg Air Force Base are thus really tests of an American Nuclear Doomsday Machine.

    Nuclear weapons do not make the US or the world more secure. In particular, the Minuteman III missiles – land-based, vulnerable, on high alert, and susceptible to being triggered by a false alarm – make us less secure. Anyone who cares about humankind having a future should protest these tests and call for the elimination of all nuclear-armed inter-continental ballistic missiles as an initial step toward the total abolition of nuclear weapons.

    If the US did away now with its nuclear-armed land-based missile force, it would still have 288 invulnerable submarine-launched ballistic missiles (armed with approximately 1,152 warheads) to act as a retaliatory threat to nuclear attack. But it would no longer have tempting targets for the Russians to strike preemptively in a time of tension or in the event of a false warning of attack.

    It would still be imperative to reduce US (and Russian) total warheads to levels that do not threaten the possibility of causing human extinction.

    And even the smaller existing nuclear arsenals of India and Pakistan threaten global disaster. Professor Robock and his colleagues have estimated that in a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan in which each side used 50 Hiroshima-size bombs (each side now has more than that number), the smoke rising into the stratosphere could cause a global reduction of sunlight and destruction of ozone leading to crop failures and global famine.

    By comparison, the launch-ready thermonuclear forces of the US and Russia contain roughly 500 times the explosive power of the 100 atomic bombs of India and Pakistan.

    Now is the time for the people and nations of the world to stand up against the potential extinction of the human species and demand that political leaders pursue the path to zero nuclear weapons, a path mandated by the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the International Court of Justice. Until then, protest and civil resistance will be necessary.

    We should seek two principal goals: first, a commitment by the existing nuclear weapon states to forego launch-on-warning and first use of nuclear weapons under any circumstances; and second, good faith negotiations for a new treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible, and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.

    It is our hope that by committing nonviolent civil resistance, being arrested, going to federal court, and explaining our actions to the public, we will help to awaken and engage the American people on this issue of utmost importance to our common future.

  • Earth Day In The Shadow Of War: Militarism And Environmental Destruction Go Hand In Hand

    With Kyoto in shambles and environmental laws under assault, Earth Day 2003 hardly possesses the feel-good air that hovered over the celebrations of the 1990s. More than ever, honoring the natural world impels us to resist those in power. With festivities taking place in the shadow of war, this Earth Day must also be a call for peace.

    The environment has long been a silent casualty of war, suffering before, during, and after actual combat takes place. And, from assaults on ecosystems in the Persian Gulf to regulatory exemptions for U.S. military activities here at home, the current war provides fresh lessons about how militarism goes hand in hand with ecological destruction.

    Historically, the environmental impacts of military actions have drawn little attention. Self-proclaimed pragmatists like to shrug off the complaints of tree huggers as irrelevant next to grave matters of state. But while their reasoning may carry some weight in a case of obvious genocide, it is dishonest not to weigh often crushing environmental damage in the same balance with international interests and the human toll of war.

    Even as the shooting in Baghdad dies down, past and future wars continue to claim victims on the environmental front worldwide. For example, the military industry’s development and testing of weaponry produces an endless stream of hazardous waste. Such activity has contaminated over 11,000 “hot spots” on 1,855 military facilities in the United States, according to the Defense Department’s own documents.

    New data on the poisonous herbicides used to kill off Vietnam’s jungles and crops paint a grim portrait of how war devastates ecosystems and poses persistent threats to human health. Just this month, a story broke indicating that Agent Orange was applied far more recklessly than originally estimated — meaning citizens and soldiers alike suffered far graver exposures to dioxin.

    Even after active conflicts end, military waste wages a lingering cold war on the natural world. A 1993 State Department report identifies landmines and other unexploded ordnance as “the most toxic and widespread pollution facing mankind.”

    Operation Desert Storm perpetuated this sad history. The Gulf War of 1991 resulted in some 65 million barrels of spilled oil, which killed tens of thousands of marine birds in the Persian Gulf and seeped through the desert into sensitive water sources. Meanwhile, in Iraq’s cities, bombing devastated sewage and water treatment facilities.

    Most significantly, the 600 oil fires set by the Iraqi army burned for up to nine months, releasing millions of tons of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. This pollution caused dark, greasy rains to fall as far as 1,500 miles away.

    “The first Gulf War was the biggest environmental disaster in recent history,” former Earth Island Journal editor Gar Smith recently told The Washington Post.

    Lacking the massive oil fires and extreme infrastructural damage that marked the first Gulf War, the current clash may not prove as environmentally disastrous as some feared. Nevertheless, with controversial depleted-uranium weaponry in use and with ecosystems still reeling from the last conflict, revelations of environmental damage may emerge, as they have with past wars, for years to come.

    Two years ago the World Health Organization began exploring whether the depleted uranium from munitions used in Desert Storm were causing spikes in cancer, kidney diseases and other congenital disorders among Iraqis. The Pentagon says the weapons are safe — but just this month the Royal Society issued a scathing indictment of these claims and called for the United States and Britain to remove hundreds of tons of the substance to protect Iraqi citizens. If such suspicions prove correct, these civilians must be considered casualties of war and counted along with those who died in air strikes. This would mean, of course, that the true body count from the current war will take years to assess.

    Even relatively minor environmental disruptions in Iraq can have wide-ranging impacts, especially on biodiversity. The Persian Gulf harbors more than half of the marine turtle species in the world, all of which are listed as “endangered” or “threatened.” Sixty species of waterfowl and nine different birds of prey spend their winters in Iraq’s delicate wetlands. “From a biodiversity point of view,” the noted ornithologist Phil Hockey told Grist Magazine, “this is the worst possible time of the year to have a war there.”

    The U.S. occupation of Iraq could itself invite despoliation. Global oil companies are eager to develop virgin oil fields in Iraq, aiming to double the country’s production to around six million barrels a day by 2010. Conservation and renewable energy are unlikely to rank high in the agenda as they undertake this massive new extraction. And progressives, while they push for Iraqi self-determination and support the country’s control of its own profitable resources, should feel ambivalent about Iraq’s stable economy coming at the cost of lowered oil prices and continued U.S. dependence on fossil fuels.

    Putting aside its impacts abroad, the war in Iraq may deal a cruel blow to environmental protections in the United States. Never one to miss a moment of political opportunism, the Bush administration now argues that requiring the Department of Defense to comply with environmental laws will hurt the troops’ “training readiness.” The White House has therefore asked Congress to exempt the armed forces from a wide swath of regulations — a goal generals have pursued for years.

    Given the ease with which the Marines rolled across the Iraqi desert, it’s hard to see how our environmental laws have hampered the military’s ability to face current threats. Nevertheless, the legislation puts the screws into the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act and Superfund, to name a few. In fact, it’s “a rollback of almost every major environmental law on the books,” says Michael Jasney, senior policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

    Of course, many environmentalists already opposed the president’s overseas adventurism. To them, the inevitable human costs seemed as unjustifiable as the conflict’s toll on the natural world. Yet, in the end, bringing an ecological perspective to the military debate may prove necessary. Only by challenging America’s enormous appetite for oil, along with its imperial ambitions, can we preempt a war — both human and ecological — without end.
    * Mark Engler is a writer based in New York City. Research assistance for this article provided by Katie Griffiths.

  • 10 Reasons Environmentalists Oppose an Attack on Iraq

    Environmentalists Against the War

    As organizations and individuals working for the environment and environmental justice, we have watched with increasing concern as the US government moves closer to an all-out attack on Iraq. We raise our voices in opposition to this war and invite others to join us in support of peace. We oppose an attack on Iraq for the following reasons:

    1. An attack on Iraq could kill nearly 500,000 people. Most of the people killed would be innocent civilians.

    In November 2002, Medact, the British health professional organization, warned that as many as 260,000 Iraqis could die immediately from a US attack, while another 200,000 deaths would result from famine and disease. The UN fears that an attack would create a flood of 900,000 refugees.

    2. War destroys human settlements and native habitats. War destroys wildlife and contaminates the land, air and water. The damage can last for generations.

    The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) has documented lasting damage from the 1991 Gulf War. Oil, chemical and radiological pollution still contaminates the region. More than 60 million gallons of crude oil spilled from pipes. Some 1,500 miles of coast were tarnished with oil and cancer-causing chemicals. The deserts were scarred with 246 “lakes” of congealed oil. More than 700 oil wells burned for nine months, producing toxic clouds that blocked the sun and circled the Earth.

    In the aftermath of the Gulf War, more than a dozen countries submitted environmental claims to the United Nations totaling $48 billion.

    3. US clusterbombs, thermobaric explosions, electromagnetic bursts and weapons made with depleted uranium are indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction.

    In the 1991 Gulf War, US forces reportedly fired nearly a million rounds of depleted uranium (DU) bullets and shells, leaving 300 tons of DU scattered across Kuwait and southern Iraq. According to the Army Environmental Policy Institute, ingesting DU “has the potential to generate significant medical consequences.” The World Health Organization (WHO) warns “children could receive greater exposure to DU when playing in or near DU impact sites. Typical hand-to-mouth activity could lead to high DU ingestion from contaminated soil.” In the aftermath of the profound chemical and radiological contamination released during the 1991 war, cancer and leukemia rates in southern Iraq have increased six-fold.

    4. Bombs pollute, poisoning the land with unexploded shells and toxic chemicals. Bombs can’t locate or neatly destroy hidden chemical or biological weapons (CBW), but they can cause the uncontrolled spread of deadly CBW agents.

    According to Saudi Foreign Policy Advisor Adel al-Jubeir, the 1991 US attack on Iraq destroyed “not a single chemical or biological weapon.” That may have been fortunate. On March 10, 1991, after the Gulf War had ended, US troops destroyed several weapons bunkers at Khamisiyah in southern Iraq. Five years later, the Pentagon admitted that the explosion released a cloud of CBW agents, exposing 100,000 US soldiers to mustard gas and sarin nerve gas.

    5. Fighting a war for oil is ultimately self-defeating.

    Our fossil-fuel-based economy pollutes our air, fouls our lungs and contributes to global climate change. The world needs to burn less oil, not more. Earth’s remaining recoverable oil reserves are expected to peak soon and decline well before the end of the century. Waging wars to control an energy source that is finite will never achieve long-term national security. Oil-based economies must be replaced by technologies powered by clean, sustainable, renewable fuels.

    6. Pre-emptive attacks are acts of aggression.

    A “pre-emptive attack” would constitute an attack on the rule of international law, the dream of world peace embodied in the United Nations Charter, and the promise of environmental security enshrined in a host of global treaties. Attacking a city of 5 million people with hundreds of cruise missiles would constitute a war crime and a crime against humanity.

    7. Aggression invites retaliation.

    The CIA has concluded that Saddam Hussein would only be provoked to use chemical or biological weapons in self-defense – if the US launched an invasion bent on replacing him. Attacking Iraq would increase the probability of chemical, biological, and radiological attacks directed against US cities.

    8. Increased military spending (to control access to the fuel that powers our oil-based economy) drains funds from critical social, educational, medical and environmental needs.

    The war (and subsequent occupation of Iraq) is projected to cost as much as $200 billion. Meanwhile the economy teeters and unemployment soars while the administration cuts funding for environmental stewardship and basic human needs.

    9. Militarization and the war on terrorism are eroding America’s freedoms at home.

    The US PATRIOT Act has been used to persecute immigrants and fuels an atmosphere of racism and fear. The terrorist threat has been used to justify removal of public information databases that provided communities with critical data on industrial hazards. There has been a clampdown on the Freedom of Information Act, a valuable tool that had been used to hold polluting corporations accountable for their actions. The PATRIOT Act criminalizes legal forms of political opposition to controversial government policies, thereby threatening legitimate political and environmental activism.

    10. The US has threatened to strike Iraq with nuclear weapons – the ultimate weapons of mass destruction.

    In December 2002, a US strategy report claimed that the US “reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force – including through resort to all out options – to the use of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) against the US, our forces abroad, and friends and allies.” Bush administration officials stated that the threat of a nuclear first-strike did not constitute a policy change.

    Bush’s 2002 Nuclear Posture Review called for development of new nuclear weapons including earth-penetrating “bunker busters” and five-kiloton “mini-nukes” (four “mini-nukes” would contain the explosive force of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima).

    If nuclear weapons are used in Iraq, Medact fears that 3.9 million people would die. The radioactive fallout would eventually circle the planet, dooming even more people to an early death.

    Environmentalists Against the War – (650) 223-3306,pdrekmeier@earthlink.net.

    Endorsers (As of February 20, 2003)

    Abalone Alliance Safe Energy Clearinghouse
    Acterra
    Arc Ecology
    Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters
    Bay Area Earth Day
    Bay Area Nuclear (BAN) Waste Coalition
    Bay Area Wilderness Training
    Bluewater Network
    Boreal Footprint Project
    Butte Environmental Council
    California Communities Against Toxics
    California League of Conservation Voters
    Californians for Radioactive Safeguards
    CorpWatch
    Destination Conservation
    Earth First!, Bay Area
    Earth House
    Earth Island Institute
    The Ecology Center
    Environment & Health Committee Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility Environmental Law Foundation Foundation for Global Community Global Exchange Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice Greenpeace INOCHI/Plutonium Free Future International Rivers Network Mid-Peninsula Action for Tomorrow People for Livable and Affordable Neighborhoods People Organizing to Demand Environmental & Economic Rights Project Underground Rainforest Action Network Redwood Action Team at Stanford Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment Ruckus Society Sacramento Area Earth Day Network Sacred Land Film Project Safe Food and Fertilizer San Bruno Mountain Watch San Francisco Green Party SAVE International Save Open Space Gilroy Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition Southern Rockies Watershed Network Stanford Open Space Alliance Sustainable Mill Valley Tri-Valley CAREs West County Toxics Coalition Working Assets World Sustainability Hearing Project WorldWise