Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

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  • Nuclear Weapons and Future Justice

    Nuclear Weapons and Future Justice

    Future justice requires that the inhabitants of the future be treated justly and equitably. This implies that our current social, economic and political relations, both nationally and internationally, become more just and equitable. It also adds an explicit focus on the longer term consequences of these relations. The decisions taken in the present must be made with a view to their effect upon future generations.

    Many indigenous peoples lived with an ethic of considering present impacts on the “seventh generation.” Modern societies have been far less respectful of those who will follow us on the planet, as the expanding population of the planet combined with our greed for natural resources and the power of our technologies has exponentially increased the human impact upon the Earth and upon future generations.

    We need an ethic that expands our concept of justice to generations yet unborn. We need to recognize and appreciate the extent to which our decisions and acts in the present have serious, potentially irreversible, consequences for the future. In the 1990s, The Cousteau Society, led by respected ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, developed and promoted a Bill of Rights for Future Generations. Its five articles are:

    Article 1. Future generations have a right to an uncontaminated and undamaged Earth and to its enjoyment as the ground of human history, of culture, and of the social bonds that make each generation and individual a member of one human family.
    Article 2. Each generation, sharing in the estate and heritage of the Earth, has a duty as trustee for future generations to prevent irreversible and irreparable harm to life on Earth and to human freedom and dignity.
    Article 3. It is, therefore, the paramount responsibility of each generation to maintain a constantly vigilant and prudential assessment of technological disturbances and modifications adversely affecting life on Earth, the balance of nature, and the evolution of mankind in order to protect the rights of future generations.
    Article 4. All appropriate measures, including education, research, and legislation, shall be taken to guarantee these rights and to ensure that they not be sacrificed for present expediencies and conveniences.
    Article 5. Governments, non-governmental organizations, and individuals are urged, therefore, imaginatively to implement these principles, as if in the very presence of those future generations whose rights we seek to establish and perpetuate.

    To enforce such a set of rights for future generations, we need to create a criminal conceptualization that designates the worst offenses against these rights as crimes against future generations, the worst crimes being those that would foreclose the future altogether or that would make life on the planet untenable. Two areas of human activity that would clearly fit into this category of foreclosing the future are nuclear war and climate change. Both have the potential to destroy human life on our planet, along with much other life.

    Responsibilities towards Future Generations

    Rights cannot exist in a vacuum. Along with rights, there must be concomitant responsibilities, including responsibilities to assure the rights of future generations. On November 12, 1997, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) solemnly proclaimed the UNESCO Declaration on the Responsibilities of Current Generations towards Future Generations. The Declaration was composed of 12 Articles covering a full range of responsibilities towards future generations. The two Articles most closely related to preserving a human future and a future for life on the planet are Articles 3 and 4.

    Article 3 – Maintenance and perpetuation of humankind – The present generations should strive to ensure the maintenance and perpetuation of humankind with due respect for the dignity of the human person. Consequently, the nature and form of human life must not be undermined in any way whatsoever.

    Article 4 – Preservation of life on Earth – The present generations have the responsibility to bequeath to future generations an Earth which will not one day be irreversibly damaged by human activity. Each generation inheriting the Earth temporarily should take care to use natural resources reasonably and ensure that life is not prejudiced by harmful modifications of the ecosystems and that scientific and technological progress in all fields does not harm life on Earth.

    The Declaration calls for “intergenerational solidarity.” Such solidarity with future generations requires that current generations take responsibility for assuring that the policies of those in power today will not lead to foreclosing the future for generations yet to be born. Thus, the importance of conceptualizing crimes against future generations cannot be evaded by the people of the present. A strong example of such crimes can be found in the example of policies promoting the possession, threat or use of nuclear weapons. Such policies constitute assaults upon future generations, as well as upon present life on the planet.

    Nuclear Weapons and International Law

    In the record of human history, survival chances have been enhanced by affiliation with the tribe and later with the nation-state. Such affiliations have provided a defense against the aggression of other groups. Violent conflicts between tribes and later nations have given rise to the pattern of warfare that has characterized human behavior from its earliest history. Technological innovations in warfare, such as the stirrup, crossbow, machinegun, airplane and submarine have given advantage to one side or another.

    What characterizes the Nuclear Age is the innovation of a form of weaponry that makes possible the destruction of the species. Nuclear weapons, which are weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction, have the capacity to foreclose the future of human life on the planet. The philosopher John Somerville coined a new term for the potential of nuclear weapons – omnicide, meaning the death of all. He reasoned that humans had moved from suicide, to genocide, to the potential of omnicide. The threat or use of nuclear weapons constitutes the ultimate crime against the future, the crime of omnicide, including the destruction of the human species.

    In 1996, the International Court of Justice issued an Advisory Opinion on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons. The Court found, “The destructive power of nuclear weapons cannot be contained in either space or time. They have the potential to destroy all civilization and the entire ecosystem of the planet.” It further found that “the use of nuclear weapons would be a serious danger to future generations.” Even setting aside the blast effects of nuclear weapons, the Court found, “Ionizing radiation has the potential to damage the future environment, food and marine ecosystem, and to cause genetic defects and illness in future generations.”

    The Court unanimously concluded that any threat or use of nuclear weapons that violated international humanitarian law would be illegal. This meant that there could be no legal threat or use of nuclear weapons that was indiscriminate as between civilians and combatants, that caused unnecessary suffering, or that was disproportionate to a prior attack. Despite the fact that there could be virtually no threat or use of nuclear weapons that did not violate international humanitarian law, the Court also found on a split vote that “in view of the current state of international law, and of the elements of fact at its disposal, the Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defense, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.”

    In light of the above conclusions, the Court found unanimously, “There exists an obligation 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.” Thus, the Court was clear in reaffirming the obligation to nuclear disarmament in Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Although this aspect of the Court’s opinion does not specifically refer to the rights of future generations, adherence by the nuclear weapons states to “nuclear disarmament in all its aspects” would eliminate the possibility of nuclear weapons foreclosing the future by eliminating the weapons. Unfortunately, the political leaders of the nuclear weapons states have not fulfilled their obligations under international law.

    Nuclear Weapons Possession as Criminal Behavior

    Today there are nine states in the world that possess nuclear weapons: the US, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. If we know that nuclear war could foreclose the future and would be a crime against future generations, does that make the possession of nuclear weapons by these states a crime against the future? Arguably, possession alone, without use or threat of use, is not a crime. But to take the inquiry one step deeper, is it possible that there can be possession without at least the implicit threat of use? In order to eliminate the possibility of threat or use of nuclear weapons, a state at a minimum would need to have a policy of “No First Use,” and would have to separate its warheads from delivery vehicles so that there could not be an inadvertent use of the weapons. While this would be better nuclear policy than one that left open the possibility of first use, it would not eliminate the possibility of a second use of the weapons, which would escalate a nuclear war, kill great numbers of innocent civilians, impact the health of children of the victims and even place the future of humanity at risk. Thus, the conclusion seems inescapable that the possessionof nuclear weapons by a state undermines future justice and constitutes a continuing crime against future generations.

    Individual Accountability for Criminal Acts

    The possession of nuclear weapons can be viewed as a crime of state, and this crime would apply to the nine states in possession of nuclear weapons. But beyond state criminal activity, there should also be culpability for the crime against the future by the leading state and military officials that support and promote nuclear weapons possession, as well as policies that make nuclear war more likely and total nuclear disarmament less likely. In addition, corporations, corporate executives and scientists who contribute to the maintenance and improvement of nuclear weapons should also be considered culpable for committing a crime against future generations.

    It is fundamental to criminal law that individuals have culpability for crimes, and that individual accountability not be covered over by state or corporate culpability. At the Nuremburg Tribunals following World War II, the principle was upheld that all individuals who commit crimes under international law are responsible for such acts, and this is true even if they are high government officials and domestic law does not hold such acts to be crimes. Along with responsibility goes individual accountability for crimes against future generations.

    The Need for a Taboo against Nuclear Arms

    In the present global environment, the possession of nuclear weapons is not viewed as a crime against future generations or even broadly as a crime against the present, but rather as a normative behavior of powerful states. There is a strong need to change this general orientation toward nuclear weapons through education about their dangers and their capacity to foreclose the future. One of the best reasons to eliminate nuclear weapons is that they have the potential to eliminate the human species, now or in the future. So long as nuclear weapons exist and are held in the arsenals of some countries, the danger of the use of these weapons under some conditions, by accident or design, cannot be entirely excluded. In addition, the existence of these weapons in the arsenals of some states creates pressures for other states to acquire such weaponry.

    It is essential to establish a norm that the possession of nuclear weapons is a crime against future generations, a crime that can only be prevented by the total elimination of these weapons. A taboo must be established that puts nuclear weapons in the same category of unacceptable behaviors as cannibalism, incest, slavery and torture, a taboo that ostracizes those who contribute to maintaining these weapons and who set up obstacles to their elimination.

    Signs of Hope

    1. The vast majority of states in the world support a world free of nuclear weapons.
    2. The vast majority of US and Russian citizens support a world free of nuclear weapons.
    3. More than 2100 mayors in some 125 countries throughout the world support the Mayors for Peace 2020 Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons by the year 2020.
    4. More than half the world, virtually the entire southern hemisphere, is covered by nuclear weapons-free zones.
    5. Former high-level US policy makers, including former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former Secretary of Defense William Perry and former chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee Sam Nunn, have spoken out in favor a world free of nuclear weapons.
    6. Norway’s government pension fund has set a powerful example by divesting from companies providing components for nuclear weapons.
    7. Legal measures to return to the International Court of Justice are being taken to challenge the lack of progress on nuclear disarmament obligations.
    8. University students are showing increased concern for university involvement in nuclear weapons research and development.
    9. Leading scientists, including the late Nobel Laureates Hans Bethe and Joseph Rotblat, are calling upon scientists in all countries to cease working on nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.
    10. UK Minister of Defense Des Browne has proposed a conference of the five principal nuclear weapons states to address the technical challenges of verifying nuclear disarmament.

    Providing Hope with Teeth

    While these signs of hope hold promise, far more needs to be done to establish a taboo against the possession, threat and use of nuclear weapons that will result in a world free of nuclear weapons. Organizations such as the World Future Council need to take a leadership role in promoting the concept of future justice and crimes against future generations, identifying those particular crimes, such as nuclear war and the antecedent possession, threat or use of nuclear weapons, which are capable of foreclosing the future.

    Those of us alive on the planet now are the trustees for future generations. We have the responsibility to assist in passing the world on intact to the next generation. We must act in intergenerational solidarity with those who are not yet present. In the words of the Cousteau Society’s Bill of Right for Future Generations, we must act “as if in the very presence of those future generations whose rights we seek to establish and perpetuate.”

    Among the tools needed to succeed in passing the world on intact to future generations is the identification of crimes against future generations to underpin the establishment of taboos against such crimes. Also needed is a system of accountability to ostracize and otherwise punish individuals, regardless of their office, who are engaged in the preparation or commission of such crimes. The possession, threat or use of nuclear weapons is unquestionably among the most serious of these crimes. Future justice is not a possibility in a world without a future.

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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 Non-Proliferation Treaty and Human Survival

    The Non-Proliferation Treaty and Human Survival

    In the vastness of the universe there is only one place we know of where life exists. That place, of course, is our planet, our Earth. Our planet has been hospitable to the evolution of life, resulting in the development of complex life forms, including homo sapiens, the “knowing” ones. We are “knowing” because we have the capacity to perceive and reflect upon our surroundings, our vision reaching to the far ends of the universe itself.

    We humans are nature’s mirror. We were created by the conditions of the universe, but in a sense it is also true that, by our perceptions and reflections, we create the universe. A well-known philosophical riddle asks whether a tree falling in the forest would make a sound if there were no one there to hear it. In the same way, but on a larger scale, we might ask if the universe itself would exist if there were no creatures like ourselves capable of perceiving and reflecting upon it.

    All of this is to say that human beings are special. In the long span of universe time, the appearance of humans is just a few short ticks on the cosmic clock. Yet, in that short span of time we have achieved remarkable intellectual, spiritual and artistic heights. We have also created tools capable of destroying much of life, including ourselves. By our cleverness in creating nuclear weapons, we have placed our own future on the planet in danger.

    With the existence of the future of our species in jeopardy, we are faced with a choice. We can confront this existential threat with ignorance, apathy and denial, or we can join together to end this threat of our own making. Choosing the latter route would mean accepting responsibility for our common future and acting to assure it.

    The diplomats from many nations of the world who negotiated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) had a solution to the nuclear weapons threat to humanity. They sought to stop the spread of nuclear weapons to other states, and they also sought to eliminate the nuclear weapons already in the arsenals of those states that possessed them. Their efforts resulted in Article VI of the Treaty, in which the nuclear weapons states were required to engage in “good faith” negotiations for nuclear disarmament.

    The NPT was opened for signatures in 1968, and we are still waiting for those “good faith” negotiations for complete nuclear disarmament. In 1995, an NPT Review and Extension Conference was held on the 25th anniversary of the Treaty entering into force. Many civil society organizations argued at this conference that the NPT should not be extended indefinitely, since it would give the equivalent of a blank check to the nuclear weapons states who had so badly failed in fulfilling their Treaty obligations for its first quarter century.

    But the United States, along with the UK and France, argued for an indefinite extension. They twisted arms and, in the end, prevailed. And the warnings that they would approach their obligations for “good faith” negotiations with the same disdain or indifference with which they had approached them in the past have proven true.

    At the five-year NPT Review Conferences and the Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) meetings in between, the United States and its allies have fought against recognition of their obligations under Article VI of the Treaty. They distribute slick public relations brochures that gloss over the lack of progress in complying with Article VI. They resist accepting even the responsibility to engage in the good faith negotiations to which they have committed themselves. Their goal seems to be to deflect criticism, while actually doing virtually nothing to promote a world free of nuclear weapons.

    At the NPT Review Conferences and PrepComs, civil society organizations come to plead on behalf of humanity. They are given a few hours on the program to make their impassioned pleas, but often find that the official delegates to the conference are unwilling even to come to hear what they have to say. Over the years, the expectations that the delegates to the NPT will achieve any substantial progress have continued to diminish.

    I am no longer interested in the charades that are played by the delegates to the NPT representing the governments of the nuclear weapons states. I want to see some meaningful action on their part. We have a right to expect and demand such action.

    At stake is the future of our species. It is time for countries to stop playing cynical games that seek to avoid existing NPT obligations to eliminate nuclear weapons. Mutually Assured Destruction is unacceptable, whether it be between the US and Russia or India and Pakistan. Mutually Assured Delusions are also unacceptable. It is time for the UK and France to stop relying upon nuclear weapons because these weapons make them feel like they are still important world powers. Israel needs to end its nuclear weapons program before other Middle East countries follow its example. Other countries, for example those in NATO, need to step out from under the US nuclear umbrella and stop being enablers of the nuclear addiction of a small number of states.

    The only way out of our nuclear dilemma is for the countries of the world to demand that the Article VI obligation for “good faith” negotiations for nuclear disarmament be fulfilled. The US will have to provide leadership or it is unlikely that substantial progress will be possible. If the US doesn’t act, it is unlikely that Russia will do so, and without Russian participation, it is unlikely that significant progress will be possible with the UK, France and China.

    The NPT, with its membership of nearly all the world’s countries, provides an appropriate forum for the countries of the world to negotiate a new treaty, a Nuclear Weapons Convention, for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons. Once negotiations are planned, the non-NPT states (Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea) should be invited to join. Alternatively, the United States, as the world’s most militarily powerful country, could under new leadership use its convening capacity to initiate negotiations among the nine nuclear weapons states, leading to a Nuclear Weapons Convention with universal participation.

    Civil society has already prepared a draft Nuclear Weapons Convention. It has been introduced to the United Nations by the Republic of Costa Rica and Malaysia. The draft treaty is feasible. It is desirable. It could be accomplished relatively quickly. All that is required is the political will of the nuclear weapons states. Without this political will, the human future remains in peril. It is the 21st century equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns, but with far graver potential consequences for our common future.

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

  • New Leaders and Policies are a Cause for Hope

    Article originally appeared in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel on March 8, 2008

    We are in a period of dramatic political transition. The U.S. presidential election is just one part of an unusual simultaneous change in global leadership. Combined with two other political developments, they could lead to sweeping change in policies governing the 26,000 nuclear weapons in the world today.

    By early 2009, four of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council (France, Britain, the United States and Russia) will have new leaders. Other key states, including Iran and Israel, may also. Several already have made the switch – South Korea, Japan, Australia, Germany, France, Britain and Italy.

    The rise of so many new leaders less wed to past policies brings the possibility that some, perhaps many, could adopt new policies to dramatically reduce many of the nuclear dangers that have tormented governments for decades. They would not need new policies if the old ones were working. But they are not.

    The second big development is the collapse of current U.S. nuclear policy. Bush administration officials were openly contemptuous of their predecessors who had negotiated security arrangements that treated all nations equally. In their view, there were good proliferators, like India, and bad proliferators, like Iraq. The former got trade deals, the latter would be eliminated. The Iraq War was the first implementation of this radical regime change strategy. It proved fatally flawed. The Iraq threat was inflated. Saddam Hussein did not have nuclear weapons, and Iran and North Korea, the two other states targeted as the “axis of evil,” accelerated their nuclear programs after the invasion. Efforts to coerce them into surrender or collapse failed.

    Globally, terrorist threats grew while programs to secure loose nuclear weapons languished. The rejection and neglect of international treaties weakened U.S. security and legitimacy. Today, most of the proliferation problems the administration inherited have grown worse.

    The emergence of new policies is the third critical development, and they come from an unlikely source: veteran cold warriors who helped build the vast U.S. nuclear weapons complex. With two prominent op-eds in The Wall Street Journal in the past 14 months, former Democratic defense secretary William Perry, former Democratic senator Sam Nunn, and former Republican secretaries of state George Schulz and Henry Kissinger have laid out a plan for “a world free of nuclear weapons.”

    It is not just words. They have started a policy movement including seminars, in-depth studies and, just this month, an international conference in Oslo, Norway. Their efforts have garnered the backing of 70% of the living former national security advisors and secretaries of state and defense, including James Baker, Colin Powell, Melvin Laird and Frank Carlucci.

    The political world is responding. The new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged last month, “We will be at the forefront of the international campaign to accelerate disarmament amongst possessor states, to prevent proliferation . . . and to ultimately achieve a world that is free from nuclear weapons.”

    While Sen. John McCain has not addressed this issue in any detail, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says “we need to change our nuclear policy and our posture.” He embraces the vision of a nuclear weapon-free world and marries it to practical proposals to negotiate deep reductions in arsenals and ban long-range missiles like those Iran and others want to build. He pledges to virtually eliminate nuclear terrorism by leading “a global effort to secure all nuclear weapons and material at vulnerable sites within four years,” something the Bush or Clinton administrations did not.

    Together, these developments indicate that a rare policy window is opening. Nothing is guaranteed, and much work will be required of many. But with new leaders, a new vision and a new activism, this might be a moment when changes seem not just possible but probable.

    Joseph Cirincione is president of the Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation focused on nuclear weapons policy. He is the author of “Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons.”

  • The New Nuclear Risk

    Article appeared in the Guardian’s Comment is Free site on March 31, 2008.

    Humans love to suppress abstract dangers. They react only after they get their fingers burned. In handling nuclear risks, however, we can hardly get away with such childlike behaviour.

    To begin with, the old system of nuclear deterrence, which has survived particularly in the US and Russia since the cold war’s end, still involves lots of risks and dangers. While the international public largely ignores this fact, the risks remain.

    To be sure, in the 1990’s the US and Russia reduced their nuclear arsenals from 65,000 to approximately 26,000 weapons. But this number is still almost unimaginable and beyond any rational level needed for deterrence. Moreover, there are another 1,000 nuclear weapons in the hands of other nuclear states.

    A second cause for worry is that the world is poised to enter a new nuclear age that threatens to be even more dangerous and expensive than the cold war era of mutually assured destruction. Indeed, the outlines of this new nuclear age are already visible: the connection between terrorism and nuclear weapons; a nuclear-armed North Korea; the risk of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East triggered by Iran’s nuclear program; a new definition of state sovereignty as “nuclear sovereignty”, accompanied by a massive increase in the number of small and medium-sized nuclear states; possible collapse of public order in nuclear Pakistan; the illegal proliferation of military nuclear technology; the legal proliferation of civilian nuclear technology and an increase in the number of “civilian” nuclear states; the nuclearisation of space, triggering an arms race among large nuclear powers.

    Important political leaders, especially in the two biggest nuclear powers, the US and Russia, know today’s existing risks and tomorrow’s emerging ones all too well. Yet nothing is being done to control, contain, or eliminate them. On the contrary, the situation is worsening.

    Vital pillars of the old arms-control and anti-proliferation regime have either been destroyed – as was the case with the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty – or substantially weakened, as with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT). Responsibility for this lies largely with the Bush administration, which, by terminating the ABM treaty, not only weakened the international control systems for nuclear weapons, but also sat on its hands when confronted with the NPT’s imminent collapse.

    At the beginning of the 21st century, proliferation of military nuclear technology is one of the major threats to humanity, particularly if this technology falls into terrorists’ hands. The use of nuclear weapons by terrorists would not only result in a major humanitarian tragedy, but also would most likely move the world beyond the threshold for actually waging a nuclear war. The consequences would be horrific.

    Nearly equally worrisome is the nuclear redefinition of state sovereignty because it will not only lead to a large number of small, politically unstable nuclear powers, but will also increase the risk of proliferation at the hands of terrorists. Pakistan would, most likely, no longer be an isolated case.

    An international initiative for the renewal and improvement of the international control regime, led by both big nuclear powers, is urgently needed to meet these and all other risks of the new nuclear age. For, if disarmament is to become effective, the signal must come from the top – the US and Russia. Here the commitment to disarmament, as agreed in the NPT, is of prime importance.

    The NPT – a bedrock of peace for more than three decades – is based on a political agreement between nuclear and non-nuclear states: the latter abstain from obtaining nuclear weapons while the former destroy their arsenals. Unfortunately, only the first part of this agreement was realised (though not completely), while the second part still awaits fulfilment.

    The NPT remains indispensable and needs urgent revision. However, this central pillar of international proliferation control is on the brink of collapse. The most recent review conference in New York, in May 2005, ended virtually without any result.

    The essential defect of the NPT is now visible in the nuclear dispute between Iran and the United Nations Security Council: the treaty permits the development of all nuclear components indispensable for military use – particularly uranium enrichment – so long as there is no outright nuclear weapons program. This means that in emerging nuclear countries only one single political decision is required to “weaponise” a nuclear program. This kind of “security” is not sufficient.

    Another controversial issue also has also come to the fore in connection with the current nuclear conflict with Iran: discrimination-free access to nuclear technology. Solving this problem will require the internationalisation of access to civilian nuclear technology, along with filling the security gap under the existing NPT and substantially more far-reaching monitoring of all states that want to be part of such a system.

    Leaders around the world know the dangers of a new nuclear age; they also know how to minimise them. But the political will to act decisively is not there, because the public does not regard nuclear disarmament and arms control as a political priority.

    This must change. Nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation are not questions of the past. They need to be addressed today if they are not to become the most dangerous threats tomorrow.

    Joschka Fischer, a leader of the Green Party for nearly 20 years, was Germany’s foreign minister and vice chancellor from 1998 to 2005. A leader in the Green Party for nearly 20 years, he is now a visiting professor at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.

  • StratCom Rules! The Next War Will Start in Nebraska

    Stories about the transformation U.S. Strategic Command has undergone since 9/11 have been dribbling out for years. But just recently have we gotten a clearer picture of what these changes portend.

    In October 2002, when the U.S. Space Command was shifted to StratCom, nobody could have imagined that in six months the “shock and awe”bombing campaign on Iraq would originate from Omaha. But with 70 per cent of the missiles and smart bombs used in that pre-emptive attack guided from space, StratCom directed what Air Force Secretary James Roche termed the “the first true space war.”

    Then, in August 2003, the “Stockpile Stewardship Committee” overseeing StratCom’s nuclear arsenal held a classified meeting at StratCom to plot the development of a new generation of crossover nuclear weapons — so-called “bunker busters” — that could be used in conventional military conflicts. The “firewall” between nuclear and conventional war-fighting was being smashed down, and StratCom was swinging the hammer.

    And who could have guessed in December 2005, when revelations about the warrantless wiretapping program became public, that this National Security Agency operation had StratCom fingerprints? But the NSA, under StratCom’s new mission of “Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance,” had been made a StratCom “component command,” and the NSA director, Gen. Michael Hayden (who now heads the CIA), was carrying out this constitutionally suspect activity.

    It’s been nearly three years since the story broke that Vice President Dick Cheney ordered StratCom to draw up plans for an air- and sea-based attack on Iran. Under its “Prompt Global Strike” and “Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction” missions, the Omaha headquarters is now charged with attacking any place on earth — within one hour — on the mere perception of a threat to America’s national security. The war on terror is being waged from StratCom, and the next war the White House gets us into (whether with Iran or a geopolitical rival like China) will start in Nebraska.

    With all the missions it’s now got in its quiver, you can hardly open a newspaper anymore without reading about a StratCom scheme.

    The current flap with Russia over the proposed missile defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic — that’s StratCom’s handiwork. The command picked up its “Integrated Missile Defense” mission in 2003 after the Bush/Cheney administration pulled out of the ABM Treaty. And those Eastern European installations — which the Russians warn are reigniting the Cold War — will be added to the network of international bases already under StratCom’s command.

    But from reading the news accounts, you’d never know the command was involved. StratCom’s name is never mentioned.

    Or who realized that, when a U.S. Predator drone fired a missile killing al-Qaida commander Abu Laith al-Libi in Pakistan this past January, StratCom did everything from supplying the intelligence to helping fly the unpiloted vehicle? That incident dramatized how easily StratCom — with its new war-fighting authority — can skirt the law. According to an Associated Press story, the missile attack infringed on Pakistan’s national sovereignty, meaning international law may have been breached. But with the free hand it’s been granted, 60 minutes from now, StratCom could have started a war and Congress wouldn’t even have had a clue.

    This is not our fathers’ StratCom.

    Gone are the days when Strategic Command simply controlled America’s nuclear deterrent, and its doomsday weapons were only to be used as a last resort. Since 9/11, StratCom has gone from “never supposed to be used” to “being used for everything.” Likening the changes that have occurred at the command to a tsunami, former astronaut and current StratCom Commander Kevin Chilton brags that StratCom today is “the most responsive combatant command in the U.S. arsenal.”

    It’s now also the most dangerous place on the face of the earth.

    And hardly anybody knows it.

    StratCom’s well-publicized shootdown of the spy satellite, however, may have finally shown the world just how menacing the command has become. Barely a week after the United States repudiated a treaty proposal to ban space weapons at a U.N. Conference on Disarmament, StratCom shot down the satellite — using its “missile defense” system. And the message this shootdown sent to the world struck with all the force of an anti-satellite missile. Despite the innocuous name, missile defense is now understood to be an offensive weapon by which the United States (in the language of the administration’s national space policy) means to “dominate” space …

    And whoever controls space controls the earth.

    Operating like some executive-branch vigilante, StratCom has just launched a new arms race — because you can bet Russia and China will never surrender the heavens without a fight.

    What’s equally worrisome, though, is that StratCom is now hourly making a mockery of our system of congressional checks and balances. And if Congress can’t rein in StratCom, can anyone?

    Tim Rinne is the state coordinator of Nebraskans for Peace, the nation’s oldest statewide peace and justice organization. Nebraskans for Peace will co-sponsor an international conference April 11-13, 2008 in Omaha about the threat StratCom poses.