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The most consequential election — IPPNW peace and health blog

There has never been an election – or probably any single national event – of greater global moment than the impending US election. This could hardly be more evident than from the perspective of planetary health.  If Trump is returned to the White House for another four years and the Republican Party retains control of the US Senate, the prospects for reducing the growing danger of nuclear war appears bleak; and the decisive turn towards a low carbon future within the narrow time window needed to have any chance of keeping global temperature rise below 2°C will also be very much more difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. Always the most active of the nine nuclear-armed states in seeking to oppose and undermine the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the administration has recently taken the extraordinary step of admonishing governments that have signed and ratified the treaty to withdraw from it. At the same time, the administration has made explicit nuclear threats in violation of the UN Charter; escalated further astronomical military spending, including spending on new nuclear weapons systems, forecast to reach up to US$2 trillion over the next 30 years. Current US spending on new nuclear warheads is at an all-time record level.

The most consequential election — IPPNW peace and health blog

November 1, 2020 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized