In a World of Nukes and Climate Emergency, Knowledge Is Survival

The current state of our world has repeatedly been described as one of the most challenging moments since the end of World War II and certainly since the end of the Cold War. We are bombarded daily by the devastating and terrifying news of wars raging in the Middle East and Ukraine; global warming inducing unprecedented heatwaves, wildfires, glacial collapse, and floods; and more recently reports and debates surrounding the existential risk that artificial intelligence may present to humanity. How we address this seeming state of permanent crisis may not just be a matter of humanity’s ability to thrive into the future, but actually survive.

Two of the current threats that have seemingly disparate time scales and geographical footprints, and even differences as to whether they would make the world unlivable by way of decreased or increased temperatures, are nuclear war and global warming. And yet, in both cases, we are dealing with human-made problems that humans can resolve, with some work, yes, but certainly nothing insurmountable. The answer to the nuclear threat is the elimination of nuclear weapons, and the answer to the global warming threat is the remaking of how we produce and use energy to move away from burning fossil fuels. Arguably, the biggest impediment to the solutions to both crises are the false narratives that are advanced for the sake of power, profit, and dominance. We simply cannot agree on the solutions, let alone implement them, if we do not understand what is at stake when it comes to nuclear war and global warming.

The nuclear war threat has been with us since the dawn of the nuclear age. In 1946, when just one country, the United States, had a handful of atomic bombs, Albert Einstein wrote that the “unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift to unparalleled catastrophe.” Einstein understood right away that: (1) the nuclear weapon threat was not going to reach its culmination with the destruction of individual cities the way that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed but something far greater and more catastrophic—he called it unparalleled catastrophe; and (2) what was needed was to change our modes of thinking—meaning that peace, cooperation, and a genuine fraternity among nations were needed in the nuclear age to ensure that the unparalleled catastrophe would not come to pass.

Alongside of the ever-present nuclear “sword of Damocles,” we have a planet that is warming and doing so very quickly, with the increase in temperatures creating numerous other climatic and environmental changes,

Eighty years after Einstein’s prophetic words, nine countries possess more than 12,000 atomic bombs and much more powerful hydrogen bombs, most of which make the explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki seem like child’s play. Even if the world were relatively peaceful, which it is not, these weapons would continue to hold us hostage to the threat of ultimate destruction, even just from accidents or misunderstandings or miscalculations. This is at least in part due to some of the current policies of nuclear-armed states, like hair-trigger alert, or readiness to launch nuclear weapons in a matter of a few minutes, and launch-on-warning, or readiness to launch nuclear weapons in response to a warning of a strike, not an actual strike, not to mention the advances in delivery vehicles of these weapons of mass destruction. In fact, the history of the nuclear age is full of incidents in which nuclear weapons could have been launched, with all indications pointing to nuclear war as the outcome of even an accidental nuclear explosion. Today, a time of widespread conflicts, the danger is not just a blunder into nuclear war, but even a deliberate use of nuclear weapons.

What is at stake in a nuclear war?

• Millions of people if not hundreds of millions dying in cities and nations that are attacked depending on who exactly is involved. Many of those deaths would occur instantly at the moment of the explosion.
• Radiation spreading across the globe within hours, days, weeks, and months in ways that will threaten the health and survival far outside the countries that are attacked.
• Quick onset of nuclear winter, with large drops in temperature that result in widespread failure of food production and subsequent famine that threatens the life of billions of people.
• Ozone layer destruction that will further reduce our ability to produce food and make even the farthest reaches of the planet potentially uninhabitable due to the high levels of UV radiation.

What we are facing is the unparalleled catastrophe that Einstein warned about. And for a variety of reasons, it remains largely out of the public’s consciousness, invisible, and yet all too real, especially today when there are, according to the Geneva Academy, over 100 armed conflicts around the world, including 24 international armed conflicts involving two or more nation states. Two play a prominent role—the war in Ukraine, which has been described as a proxy war between NATO and Russia, and the US and Israel war on Iran. In both wars, nuclear weapons have featured prominently, not just as the underlying justification for conflict, as the US and Israel have claimed about Iran’s potential to build a nuclear weapon, but also via direct and indirect threats, including by President Donald Trump on April 7 of this year, that “a whole civilization will die tonight.” Although the history of the nuclear age is full of examples of US presidents contemplating or outright threatening to use nuclear weapons in previous conflicts, we seem to have reached a novel stage of danger, risk, and complexity.

Alongside of the ever-present nuclear “sword of Damocles,” we have a planet that is warming and doing so very quickly, with the increase in temperatures creating numerous other climatic and environmental changes, including sea-level rise, wildfires, droughts, and more. We have watched and experienced some of these impacts in horror even just this summer, including the heatwave and wildfires in Europe and the glacier collapse and floods in Nepal and China. A commenter to a Geopolitical Economist Hour podcast episode where I spoke about the climate threat with the host, Radhika Desai, wrote, “In British Columbia, we no longer have summer season, we just have fire season,” which sums up the situation rather succinctly.

Why is the globe warming? The globe is warming because we humans are burning fossil fuels, which release additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which acts as a greenhouse gas, trapping heat in the atmosphere and raising the temperature across the planet, albeit in uneven ways. For example, Europe has been warming at twice the rate of global temperature increases, and the Arctic is warming at nearly three times the rate of global temperature rise. Combined with the complexity of climate, streams, weather patterns, and more, this will continue to lead to widespread negative consequences across the globe, in fits and starts with devastating local and regional implications. Wildfire smoke spreading far and wide, for example, will ensure that even the regions least prone to impact will not be safe. No corner of the Earth will be unaffected.

Genuine solutions exist. In 1986, the world had more than 70,000 nuclear warheads and over the next 30 years, managed to eliminate more than 80% of them. Energy transformation solutions exist, and China, for one, has been employing them rapidly and effectively over the last few years. But we cannot pursue solutions amid confusion, myths, half-truths, and lack of even a basic understanding of facts.

Neither of these issues will be properly addressed with blind faith in a narrative. They will be resolved when ordinary people and elected leaders alike take up the hard task of understanding the issues and then discussing the solutions that are right for their communities, nation states, and the world as a whole. Knowledge is often considered to mean power. In this case, it may just mean survival.

A modified portion of these remarks was delivered during a webinar entitled Permanent Crisis? Permanent War? Who wants it? Who benefits? Who cares? with professors Radhika Desai, Ivana Nikolic Hughes, Fadhel Kaboub, Steve Keen, Jeffrey Sachs, and Genevieve Vaughan; chaired by Rajani Kanth, for the Global Political Economy channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHarGYBto9A