The Environmental Imperative of Nuclear Disarmament

Abstract

The world is threatened as never before by an insane buildup of nuclear weapons some five hundred times as strong in their explosive capacity as the latest estimate of all the chemical explosives that have ever been used throughout history. Leaders in major countries probably know the awful consequences of a nuclear war too well to start one, but the world has still to reckon with possible acts of aggression by other nations or flaring-up through technological failure, mechanical or other accident, malfunctioning or faulty feeding of computers, misinformation, neglect of machines or of constructional faults, terrorist or lunatic action, organized banditry, or the outcome of mere ‘acts of God’!

Does Mankind Really Bear a Responsibility to the Environment?

“…The size of the human population might, conceivably, be reduced to prehistoric levels or below, and the extinction of the human species itself cannot be excluded (Ehrlich et ai, 1983;Myers, 1983*). This is what Tolba et al (1983) mean when they refer to 'an insane build-up of nuclear weapons-equivalent in detonati ve power to nearly three tonnes of TNT for each of the ca 4,600 million people now living on Earth'. Such a state of affairs is unlikely to appeal to many people, other than a few fanatics.…”

Environmental issues

“…But what of the survivors? Even before the detailed articulation of the nuclear winter theory, many environ-' mental scientists -such as Tolba, Westing and Polunin (1983) argued that the longer-term ecological consequences of nuclear warfare indicated disarmament as the only rational course of action. They, like others, were principally concerned with radioactive fallout exposure and the increased surface flux of near-ultraviolet solar radiation (UV-B) due the the depletion of the ozonosphere by fireball generated NOX.…”