WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #123, APRIL 26, 2023
John Bellamy Foster.
The Pentagon, Abrupt Climate Change, and Ecological Emergency.
Abolishing Nuclear Weapons
Ground Zero
Nukewatch Quarterly
InThese Times
The Ecological Emergency,
the Pentagon, and US National Security
John Bellamy Foster. The
Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet. MR, 2009.
Foster is one of
the most brilliant of living scholars with over a dozen books while editing a
major journal. What he conveys in Chapter 5, “The Pentagon and Climate Change,”
possesses critical importance still today.
Foster discusses global warming,
then assesses abrupt climate change and its inherent social dangers, and
finally he explains how the present economic system is a barrier to solution. The fearsome possibility exists, as the IPCC
had reported and some Pentagon scientists understood, for climate change of a
barely imaginable scale and suddenness, resulting not from gradual change but from
“disruption of the thermohaline circulation” of the Atlantic Ocean (110). The Pentagon engaged Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall to prepare a study, which became
the momentous Oct. 2003 report, An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its
Implications for United States National Security. It called into question the
conventional belief that cc would be gradual, and it seriously engaged with and
dramatized the science of abrupt change. It “elevated,” it gave authority to the threat
throughout the government. And the 2003 report recognizes the added
danger of convergence of war and warming:
“as the world’s carrying capacity declines under harsh climatic condition,
warfare becomes widespread—producing increased dangers of thermonuclear war”
(114).
We must abolish the weapons.
ABOLISH NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Clear Voices from Print Magazines
Ground
Zero (April 2023). Offers 7 significant
articles; for example.
Leonard Eiger, “Celebrate Earth Day & Mother’s Day with Ground
Zero,” connects the dots. “While climate change and the threat of
nuclear war are the two major threats to the future of humankind and life on
our planet, their solutions are similar”—international cooperation. GZ keeps its eye on the prize by celebrating
ED for world peace and Julia Ward Howe’s original intention of Mother’s Day for
Peace (OMNI celebrated Howe’s Day for several years; will you take it on? We must cooperate at every opportunity for
peace, and not be distracted.) Another:
A review of Jeanne Clark’s memoir, All
the Way In: A Story of Activism, Incarceration, and Organic Farming, which
includes her protests against those horrific ballistic missile Trident
submarines near Seattle. (Ground Zero, like OMNI, is a permanent
center for peace; become a member of both.)
Nukewatch Quarterly (Spring
2023). Outstandingly
valuable magazine, this number contains
14 articles (plus a page of “Shorts”).
Examples: by Lindsay Potter, a brief, perfectly clear appraisal of the
present condition of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START),
concluding that nuclear arsenals still able to cause a human and environmental
apocalypse “begs the usefulness of any treaty that does not require elimination
of all nuclear weapons”; by Benjamin and Davies, “What Can the United States
Bring to the Peace Table for Ukraine?”
(support Ukrainian neutrality, lift sanctions against Russia, reduce troops in
Europe, remove its missiles, and more; we know how to stop the war, and the US
can do it).
Frida Berrigan. “The End of the
World Is Back: Why We Need a New Generation of Nuclear Abolitionists.” In
These Times (Jan.-Feb. 2023). US Ohio class
submarines are in the Arabian Sea and the Atlantic “within range of Russia.” President Putin said Russia would use “all
the means” at its disposal to “defend” itself against NATO’s encirclement. The Russians and the US have over 4,000
nuclear warheads each. A nuclear war
could dump 150 million tons of soot into the atmosphere of “nuclear winter,” drastically
curtailing food production. We urgently
need nuclear disarmament. Our leaders
have failed to accomplish it. It’s up to
the people. Will you spend the next
decade as part of the problem, or will you join the necessary mass movement?
Frida Berrigan, “Living with World's End in
Plain Sight.” Ground Zero.
https://www.gzcenter.org ›
frida-berrigan-living-with-w... Frida lives in the shadow of General
Dynamics Electric Boat, which built the first generation of Trident submarines,
and is building the next generation.
“How to Survive Our Apocalyptic Future.” The
Nation.
https://www.thenation.com ›
Article Nov 8, 2022 — Frida Berrigan, a TomDispatch regular,
writes the Little Insurrections blog for WagingNonviolence.org,
is the author of It Runs in the
Family.
[These organizations and their
magazines and social protests together could save our civilization, if a
majority of our populace listened to and acted on their hope. –Dick]
