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physicians for social responsibility
Rehearsal for 'Armageddon' Underway as NATO and Russia Hold Nuclear Exercises
"All nuclear exercises imply willingness to mass murder civilians, wipe out entire cities, and risk all-out nuclear war," the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) warned ahead of the NATO drill. "They also risk accidents and escalation, and will legitimize Russia's dangerous nuclear rhetoric."
NATO said the exercise--operation name Steadfast Noon--involves up to 60 warplanes from 14 members of the alliance, and is being carried out from Kleine Brogel air base in northeastern Belgium.
The U.S. military stockpiles dozens of B61-12 tactical nuclear warheads at Kleine Brogel, each up to 30 times as powerful as the atomic bomb that the United States dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945, killing over 100,000 people.
According to Belgium's VRT News, Belgian F-16 pilots will train how to drop the bombs, while ground crews will practice transporting the weapons from underground bunkers and loading them on warplanes.
U.S. B-52 bombers based at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota will also fly to Europe to participate in the drill, which will take place over Belgium, the North Sea, and the United Kingdom, according to NATO.
Russia has been informed of the exercise, which is scheduled to last until October 30.
While NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu explained that Steadfast Noon "helps ensure that the alliance's nuclear deterrent remains safe, secure and effective," Ludo Debrabander of the Belgian peace group Vrede vzw told VRT News that "in a nuclear escalation military bases equipped with nuclear weapons like Kleine Brogel form the first potential targets. They don't make us safer."
Earlier this month, U.S. President Joe Biden responded to repeated threats by Russian President Vladimir Putin to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine by warning that even the use of tactical nukes was likely to "end up with Armageddon."
More recently, Biden called Putin "a rational actor who has miscalculated significantly" by launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said during a press conference last week that "Russia knows that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought."
Russian forces are expected to carry out their own annual large-scale nuclear exercise--called Grom, or "Thunder"--along Russia's northwestern coast in the coming days or weeks, its second of the year.
While drills like Steadfast Noon and Grom don't involve live nuclear warheads, they do have the potential for catastrophic escalation.
In November 1983, an extremely tense period of the Cold War, Soviet military officials initially mistook NATO's Able Archer 83 war game for a possible preemptive strike and prepared their own nuclear missiles for launch.
"It was a vicious circle," wrote Francine Uenuma for Smithsonian Magazine. "The Soviets refused to believe the Americans were bluffing; the Americans, meanwhile, suspected the Soviets were bluffing about not thinking the Americans were bluffing."
Hans M. Kristensen, a nuclear weapons expert with the Federation of American Scientists, warned that NATO and Russia holding nuclear exercises during what many observers call a proxy war between them is inherently perilous.
"It's a textbook example of what happens in a tense crisis where both sides escalate to demonstrate that they are serious about deterring each other, but therefore can't de-escalate because it would make them look weak," he wrote.
ICAN tweeted Friday that "we're closer to nuclear war than we have been since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and no one can afford further escalation. All governments must condemn all nuclear threats and cease military preparations which simulate the use of nuclear weapons."
In a Common Dreams opinion piece marking the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis--during which the world came as close as it ever has to a major nuclear war--Robert Dodge of Physicians for Social Responsibility wrote that "nuclear weapons remain the greatest real and present danger to our future."
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"Every day that these weapons exist our future and that of all subsequent generations is threatened," Dodge continued. "We are here this moment not due to the strength of our militaries, nuclear weapons, or the genius of our leaders. We are here though the graces of sheer luck. Sooner or later, our luck will run out."
"It is time that Americans and citizens around the world take to the streets and voting booths demanding there be no nuclear response in Ukraine, a negotiated settlement now, and the abolition of all nuclear weapons," he added.
New Report Details Fracking's 'Widespread and Severe Harm' to Health and Climate
Physicians for Social Responsibility and Concerned Health Professionals of New York (CHPNY) released the eighth edition of their Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking, a comprehensive examination of the state of the hydraulic fracturing industry and its impacts.
"The scientific evidence reveals conclusively that fracking causes widespread and severe harm to people and the climate," Sandra Steingraber, CHPNY co-founder and compendium co-author, said in a statement.
"For over 10 years, individual studies have demonstrated impacts in multiple areas, including toxic air pollution, water contamination, radioactive releases, earthquakes, methane emissions, and much more," she added. "The compendium takes stock of all the science together, which shows that continuing and expanding fracking brings with it a grave cost."
The report reveals that:
- Global expansion of fracking and liquefied natural gas (LNG) is fueling the climate crisis, driving the current surge in global levels of methane, a greenhouse gas that is up to 87 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period and which has contributed 40% of all global warming to date;
- LNG is even worse for the climate, as the process of liquefying the gas requires tremendous amounts of energy;
- Carbon capture and storage (CCS) fails to mitigate the dangers of fracking, as it does not actually capture methane emissions but instead makes local air pollution from fracking infrastructure worse;
- Drilling, fracking, storing, transporting, and disposing of oil and gas cause serious harm to human health, including respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular disease, and impairments to infant and maternal health; and
- Fracking is an injustice, as toxic air pollution, water contamination, and other impacts disproportionately affect communities of color and low-income communities.
According to the publication:
In sum, the vast body of scientific studies now published on hydraulic fracturing in the peer-reviewed scientific literature confirms that the climate and public health risks from fracking are real and the range of environmental harms wide. Our examination uncovered no evidence that fracking can be practiced in a manner that does not threaten human health directly or without imperiling climate stability upon which human health depends.
"People, nurses, and doctors across the United States have been pointing to harms from drilling and fracking for well over a decade," said Barbara Gottlieb, environment and health program director at Physicians for Social Responsibility. "Now there is clear and overwhelming scientific evidence showing that fracking makes people sick, degrades the environment, and imperils the climate."
"From a public health perspective and a climate perspective, stopping fracking is imperative," she stressed.
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Dr. Kathleen Nolan of Physicians for Social Responsibility and Concerned Health Professionals of New York, said, "States and countries that have banned fracking are leading the way to a stable and healthy climate future, preventing poisonous fracking chemicals from causing birth defects, cancer, heart disease, asthma and pneumonia, diseases of other organs and tissues, and early death."
"Banning fracking also prevents induced earthquakes and greatly reduces emissions of methane, carbon dioxide, toxic gases, and particulate matter into our atmosphere," she added. "We know what must be done: Now we must do it--and do it quickly."
'EPA Must Stop This Experiment': Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes Set for Release
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) granted Oxitec an experimental use permit that could ultimately lead to the release of genetically engineered (GE) mosquitoes in four California counties and extend a widely criticized program in Florida's Monroe County.
The release is intended to investigate whether the GE mosquito can reduce the population of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which can carry various viruses. While the species has recently spread in California, there are no reported cases of the targeted diseases in the state.
"This experiment is unnecessary and even dangerous, as there are no locally acquired cases of dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya, or Zika in California," declared Jaydee Hanson, policy director for the International Center for Technology Assessment and Center for Food Safety.
Oxitec's altered male mosquitoes are supposed to pass on a gene that causes their offspring to die before reaching maturity. However, critics such as Hanson raised concerns about the risk of creating "hybrid mosquitoes that are more virulent and aggressive," and said that "other public health strategies, including the use of Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes, could better control the Aedes aegypti in California and Florida."
Dana Perls, food and technology program manager at Friends of the Earth, also suggested that "GE mosquitoes could result in far more health and environmental problems than they would solve."
"EPA needs to do a real review of potential risks and stop ignoring widespread opposition in the communities where releases will happen," asserted Perls, a California resident.
Fellow California resident Dr. Robert Gould, president of San Francisco Bay Physicians for Social Responsibility, emphasized that "once released into the environment, genetically engineered mosquitoes cannot be recalled."
"Rather than forge ahead with an unregulated open-air genetic experiment, we need precautionary action, transparent data, and appropriate risk assessments," he said.
As a joint statement from Gould, Perls, and Hanson's groups highlighted:
The EPA did not publicly release any data from Oxitec field trials in Florida or Brazil and key information about health effects, including allergenicity and toxicity, was redacted from the company's application for a permit. EPA did not require key scientific assessments, including an endangered species assessment, public health impact analysis, or caged trials ahead of any environmental release. The EPA declined to convene a scientific advisory panel as it does for other new pesticides.
The groups and other local organizations were outraged last spring when Oxitec introduced GE mosquitoes in Florida, the first release of its kind in the United States. Shortly before the launch, Friends of the Earth had called on the EPA to "halt this nightmare immediately."
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The permit covers the release of two billion GE mosquitoes in Florida and California's Fresno, San Bernadino, Stanislaus, and Tulare counties.
However, Meredith Fensom, head of global public affairs at Oxitec, told USA Today that the launch is planned to only cover the Florida Keys and Visalia in Tulare County, in order to study the mosquitoes in two different environments. She also said peer-reviewed data is expected to be released.
An Oxitec representative also contested activists' comments about safety and necessity in an email, saying that "this experiment has been found by the U.S. EPA to have no risk of adverse effects to humans or the environment," noting that the GE mosquitoes "will not persist" long after the release, citing scientific research on the company's technology, and pointing to the risk for disease transmission in places like California if mosquitoes bite infected people.
This post has been updated with comment from Oxitec representatives and information about the species in California, and to remove a study in Brazil.
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