A recent Zogby Analytics poll found that more than 80% of Ohio residents believe it is critical that the candidates state their positions on this issue.
They are right to want to hear the candidates’ views. Ohioans understand that the risk of nuclear war remains one of the greatest threats to civilization, and security experts warn that the potential for a nuclear war is greater than it has been in decades.
The good news is that the next president could make America safer by changing U.S. nuclear policy.
Under current policies, the United States could start a nuclear war by mistake. How? Let me explain the chain of events.
The Pentagon keeps its 400 land-based missiles on hair-trigger alert so they can be launched quickly upon warning of a Russian missile attack before they could be destroyed by incoming Russian missiles. If the military received such a warning, the president would have less than 10 minutes to decide whether to launch U.S. missiles. But that warning is generated by computers based on radar and satellite data, all of which are fallible. Indeed, there have been false alarms over the years due to a range of technical and human errors. This tight time span in which to make a decision increases the risk of starting a nuclear war based on a false warning. U.S. missiles cannot be recalled or destroyed in flight, even if the Pentagon belatedly realized that the warning had been false.
Keeping missiles on hair-trigger alert is not only dangerous, it is also unnecessary. Most U.S. nuclear weapons are hidden at sea on submarines where they are safe from attack, so the United States can wait to see if a nuclear attack is actually happening before it retaliates. Debate moderators should ask the candidates if they would remove U.S. missiles from hair-trigger alert and eliminate the possibility of starting a nuclear war by mistake.
The next president also could reduce the chance that the United States would deliberately start a nuclear war. Current policy permits the United States to use nuclear weapons first in a non-nuclear conflict with Russia, China or North Korea — all of which are nuclear-armed. Doing so would almost certainly provoke a devastating nuclear response against the United States.
Moderators should tackle that topic as well. They should ask the candidates whether, if elected, they would clearly state that the only purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack and establish a policy that the United States will never use nuclear weapons first. Such a policy also would make America safer by making it less likely that our adversaries would attack us with nuclear weapons first out of fear that a U.S. nuclear strike was imminent.
The Zogby survey polled Ohioans about this “first use” issue, too. When asked if there were any acceptable circumstances for the United States to use nuclear weapons first, nearly two-thirds said no.
Finally, the United States has long relied on verifiable international agreements to constrain its adversaries’ nuclear forces. Today the United States and Russia still possess 92% of all nuclear weapons, yet the United States recently pulled out of a longstanding nuclear arms treaty with Russia and has threatened to walk away from the landmark treaty that limits long-range nuclear weapons. Debate moderators should ask the candidates if they are committed to maintaining such agreements, how they would reinvigorate U.S.-Russian negotiations and how they would address North Korea and Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Voters want to know, but they will only if debate moderators ask the right questions. The presidential candidates must clarify what they would do, if elected, to reduce the nuclear threat and guarantee national — and international — security.
David Wright, co-director and senior scientist in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, grew up in Lima and attended Miami University and Ohio State University.
Harvey Wassermann, 21 Sept 19,Senator Cory Booker has become a Pro-Nuke Holocaust Denier and must not be president or vice.
As desperate mostly-young millions march worldwide for the survival of our Earth, Booker embraces explosive atomic 500-F climate killing machines that are roasting Her.
Any of our 96 badly run, rarely inspected US nukes could explode into a nuclear holocaust at any time.
In Booker’s New Jersey, three dying public-subsidized nukes spew heat, radiation and carbon. Their safety is “guaranteed” by Trump’s fake Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They’re dangerously decrepit, but what’s he done to to guarantee their safety? (Hint: they can’t get private insurance).
Now he’s Trump-style slandering the global grassroots safe energy movement for demanding nuke accountability.
Nuke reactors spew gargantuan quantities of waste heat and deadly radiation. That includes Carbon 14, a global warming agent.
Carbon-emitting reactor fuel production demands carbon-emitting mining, milling, transport and enrichment. So does fuel to run pools for spent rods that will explode if not forever cooled (see WIPP, New Mexico).
40 years ago this month 90,000 eco-fans heard the Musicians United for Safe Energy Concerts over 5 nights in Madison Square Garden. Some 200,000 rocked our rally at Battery Park City.
Three Mile Island had earlier poured radiation into central Pennsylvania. TMI’s owner denied the melt-down, the emissions, the health impacts.
But after the concerts I visited local farms, met the families, consulted their doctors.…and veterinarians… The feds had long since predicted a reactor accident could wipe out an area the size of Pennsylvania and kill thousands.
At kitchen tables I heard awful tales of death and disease, of stillborn infants, dying children, Down’s Syndrome, dead animals and orchards. I held a dog born with no eyes, saw a cat that couldn’t stand, horses that couldn’t breed, a pile of dead wild birds. The Baltimore News-American confirmed the stories, as did Dell/Delta’s Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation (now free on line), and others.
In 1996, in Kiev and Russia, I heard far more/worse stories from Chernobyl survivors. I will not return to Japan, where I’d joined giant marches demanding Fukushima not be built on seismic faults washed by tsunamis.
Over nearly a half-century of activism I’ve never met a No Nuker who denies climate change. Saving our eco-balance remains everywhere a major motivation to shut all nuke reactors before the next one blows up.
But now the come-lately genius Corey Booker tells us we’re all Climate Deniers.
He might’ve joined the debate with dignity and respect. But since any of the three falling-down Trump-run nukes in his own state (where I have children and grandchldren) could at any time render the entire east coast a radioactive ruin, filled with human agony and ecological horror, let’s just call him what he is: a Holocaust Denier.
Harvey Wasserman coined the phrase “Solartopia” and helped with “No Nukes.” His The People’s Spiral of US History will soon be at www.solartopia.org. He hosts California Solartopia at KPFK-FM in Los Angeles and Green Power & Wellness at www.prn.fm.
Huffington Post, 20 Sep 19 “…….The remark ― one of the most pointed critiques of the anti-nuclear position in the Democratic primary so far ― grazes a particularly sensitive nerve in the climate policy debate.The United States hasn’t licensed a new reactor in a quarter century. Yet nuclear power is deeply unpopular. In 2016, Gallup found a majority of Americans opposed nuclear energy for the first time since the pollster began surveying the question in 1994. If the 2011 meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, stoked fear in a generation too young to recall 1979’s Three Mile Island accident, HBO’s new hit miniseries “Chernobyl” exposed viewers to the horrors of radioactive contamination. ……
In a presidential election, Nevada, where voters who cast ballots in a decisive early primary staunchly oppose storing nuclear waste in the desert, raises the stakes. ……..
Now consider the climate platforms top Democratic presidential candidates proposed…. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) pledged to start “weaning ourselves off nuclear energy” with the goal of shutting down existing plants by 2035.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) took an even firmer stance against nuclear power. He led the charge to shut down the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station, which closed in late 2014, and proposed a bill last year to start decommissioning plants across the country. …….
a heating planet raises some of nuclear power’s biggest risks. Nuclear reactors require 720 gallons of cooling water per megawatt-hour of electricity they produce ― a concern as water resources grow scarcer on a hotter planet, as HuffPost previously reported. The threat of violence increases in a heated world with depleted resources and unprecedented numbers of refugees, raising concerns of nuclear sabotage in terrorist attacks or war.
“From transportation, to storage, to waste that remains lethal for more than 100,000 years, nuclear plants pose numerous threats to our families and our communities,” said John Coequyt, the Sierra Club’s global climate policy director. “Meanwhile, clean energy from solar and wind is outcompeting dirty fuels and only getting cheaper, while new nuclear plants are outrageously expensive, over budget by billions, and economically failing.”
Former Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko warned that even mini-reactors will mean more accidents.
“Every day almost you see a new story, talking about how we’re not going to solve the problem of climate change without nuclear reactors,” Jaczko told WBUR this week. “And when I see those things I scratch my head and wonder if they’re talking about the same industry I’ve been familiar with, because I don’t see how nuclear power plants are going to solve that problem.”
Building new plants will be costly, and it’s not clear such an investment is a better deal than renewables that continue to grow cheaper. And Democratic presidential candidates, despite stark differences on new nuclear plants, are less clear on more pressing, wonky questions, said Jesse Jenkins, an energy systems engineer and professor at Princeton University. Those likely include whether candidates support state or federal subsidies to keep financially distressed nuclear plants open, or if they’d extend licenses up to 60 years on stations deemed safe. ….. https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/cory-booker-nuclear_n_5d8299bae4b0957256b0ad04
Warren Unveils “Most Sweeping Set of Anti-Corruption Reforms Since Watergate”, TruthOut Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams September 17, 2019 Democratic presidential primary candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Monday unveiled a wide-ranging plan to combat corruption in U.S. politics with “big, structural change to fundamentally transform our government.”
The End Washington Corruption plan builds on legislation that the Massachusetts Democrat introduced last August, months before she announced her presidential campaign. Warren released the plan ahead of her Monday night speech in New York City, near the site of the tragic 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.
“Today, I’m announcing a comprehensive set of far-reaching and aggressive proposals to root out corruption in Washington,” Warren wrote on Medium Monday. “It’s the most sweeping set of anti-corruption reforms since Watergate. The goal of these measures is straightforward: to take power away from the wealthy and the well-connected in Washington and put it back where it belongs — in the hands of the people.”
Warren directly targeted President Donald Trump with her Medium post. “Make no mistake about it: The Trump administration is the most corrupt administration of our lifetimes,” she wrote, highlighting tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans and corporations, Supreme Court justices “hand-picked by right-wing extremist groups,” and key cabinet and ambassador posts the president has filled with former lobbyists and major donors.
“But these problems did not start with Donald Trump. They are much bigger than him,” Warren noted, emphasizing the need for broad, transformative change. “My plan lays out nearly a hundred ways that we can change our government to fix this problem — from improving public integrity rules for federal officials in every branch of government to ending lobbying as we know it, fixing the criminal laws to hold corrupt politicians to account, and ensuring our federal agencies and courts are free from corrupting influences.”
The plan has six broad goals under which Warren organized her proposals. The first goal is restoring public integrity — which, she argued, requires “rooting out financial conflicts of interest in Washington.” To achieve this, Warren would:
End self-dealing in the White House by applying conflict of interest laws to the president and vice president;
Disclose tax returns of federal candidates and officeholders to the public automatically;
Force senior government officials to divest from privately-owned assets that could present conflicts of interest;
Completely ban the practice of government officials trading individual stocks while in office;
Shut down a raft of additional shady practices that provide opportunities for government officials to serve their own financial interests; and
Immediately end the possibility of trading on access to insider political information.
As part of Warren’s effort to address the public’s lack of confidence in federal officials and institutions, she wants to “close and padlock the revolving door between government and industry.” Her proposals to achieve this are:
Ban “golden parachutes” that provide corporate bonuses to executives for serving in the federal government;
Restrict the ability of lobbyists to enter government jobs;
Make it illegal for elected officials and top government appointees to become lobbyists — ever; and
Restrict the ability of companies to buy up former federal officials to rig the game for themselves.
The White House hopeful would also work to curb the influence of corporations and powerful special interests on the U.S. justice system. Specifically, Warren calls for strengthening ethics requirements for federal judges and ensuring that Supreme Court justices are held to the same standard as judges in lower courts. She would also mandate the public dissemination of all federal judges’ financial reports, recusal decisions, and speeches and “close the loophole that allows federal judges to escape investigations for misconduct by stepping down from their post.”………. https://truthout.org/articles/warren-unveils-most-sweeping-set-of-anti-corruption-reforms-since-watergate/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=cea503c8-3faa-4731-ad8b-b83e698521c9
Sen. Elizabeth Warren pledges not to invest in nuclear energy and focus on renewables instead, MassLive, By Douglas Hook | dhook@masslive.com, 8 Sept 19, Sen. Elizabeth Warren made clear in a Sept. 4 climate town hall meeting that if she is successful in taking office as president, she will not invest in nuclear energy.
The Democratic presidential hopeful pledged to not only prevent the building of new power plants, but also said she would phase out all nuclear power by 2035 and replace it with renewables. After 52 years of producing energy, Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station closed its doors on May 31.
Warren was asked what her opinion on nuclear energy replacing fossil fuels are during the Climate Town Hall.
“[Nuclear energy] is not carbon based, but it has a lot of risks associated with it,” said Warren. “Particularly the risks associated with spent fuel rods.”
Elizabeth Warren Says ‘No’ to Nuclear Power: Campaign Update, Yahoo Finance, Ari Natter September 5, 2019 (Bloomberg)— Elizabeth Warren is vowing to wean the country off nuclear power if elected president, joining a number of candidates who say the risks outweigh the benefit of the carbon free electricity source.
“The problem is it’s got a lot of risks associated with it, particularly the risks associated with the spent fuel rods,” Warren said during a presidential forum on climate change hosted by CNN. “In my administration we are not going to build any new nuclear power plants.”
Warren’s remarks come as Democratic candidates split over their support for the power source, which has drawn opposition from progressives and some environmental groups who have qualms over nuclear waste storage and mining uranium for fuel. Other candidates who either want to phase out the use of the fuel or stop the construction of new plants include Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Buttigieg, and Julian Castro.
Joe Biden, the Democratic race’s front-runner, has called for funding new nuclear technologies.
Sanders says U.S. Shouldn’t Fund Coastal Rebuilds (10:14 p.m.)
Democrats split over nuclear energy amid climate fight, The Hill, BY MIRANDA GREEN – 09/04/19The use of nuclear power is splitting Democratic presidential candidates, with Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and businessman Andrew Yang among those calling for new plants and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) arguing vehemently against any expansions.
Somewhere in the middle stand former Vice President Joe Biden and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who oppose building new reactors but support maintaining those already in operation.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who is vying with Sanders for the progressive mantle in the nomination fight and has been in the top three in polls alongside Sanders and Biden, hasn’t spelled out her position. Neither has Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), one of the Democratic hopefuls who released their stand-alone climate plan in the final hours leading up the forum.
Nuclear power is one of the only environmental and energy issues that splits the Democratic candidates, who generally agree on the big-picture need to take action to address climate change and to strengthen regulations to protect the environment. But there is no clear consensus when it comes to the role of nuclear energy.
As candidates are looking to distinguish themselves in a crowded field, and with two climate forums this month, some environmentalists say candidates’ stances on nuclear power will be the most telling. That belief is especially true for climate activists who oppose nuclear altogether.
“Given that we don’t have a way to deal with the waste from our existing nuclear reactors, let alone any additional ones, that’s a cause for concern,” said Mitch Jones, climate and energy program director at Food and Water Action.
“If you’re trying to extend the life of existing nuclear power, then you do not have the most environmentally friendly approach to the problem.”……..
the industry is struggling financially. So far this year, two reactors are expected to be retired despite various government subsidies helping the industry. Only one new nuclear power plant has come online since 2010.
The energy source also has a tainted past, rife with references to Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. And nuclear waste remains an issue to this day.
Attacks on the Sanders’ climate plan appear to have less to do with the ongoing viability of nuclear power as a legitimate climate solution and more to do with an ongoing effort to convince the public to subsidize another unsuccessful sector of the energy industry.
Bernie Sanders’ Plan to Phase out Nuclear Power Draws Attacks — Here’s Why They’re Wrong https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/08/30/bernie-sanders-climate-plan-nuclear-phase-out-attacks, By Justin Mikulka • Friday, August 30, 2019 Senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has released an ambitious climate proposal, one which champions of the status quo were quick to criticize. One line of attack, coming from many different sources, focuses on Sanders’ plan to phase out nuclear power, but the arguments, and who is behind them, deserve a closer look.Sanders’ proposal refers to nuclear power as one of several “false solutions” to the climate crisis:
“To get to our goal of 100 percent sustainable energy, we will not rely on any false solutions like nuclear, geoengineering, carbon capture and sequestration, or trash incinerators.”
The Washington Post editorial board quickly blasted Sanders’ plan to eliminate nuclear power: “Mr. Sanders also promises to make his plan unnecessarily expensive by ruling out a long-established source of carbon-free electricity: nuclear power.”
The New York Times quoted Joshua Freed, vice president for clean energy at Third Way, a think tank that describes itself as promoting “modern center-left ideas.”
“The Sanders plan appears to be big, but it’s not serious,” Freed said. “We need to have every option on the table.” Freed’s biography on the Third Way website makes clear that “advanced nuclear” is a top priority for the organization.
In an op-ed at Forbes attacking Sanders’ plan, Ellen R. Wald, an energy historian and senior fellow at The Atlantic Council, went so far as to say that the outcome of the plan would be that “we would live in darkness” and “many of us would starve.”
Former Top Regulator Says ‘Nuclear is Dying’
However, if you ask a former top nuclear regulator about the future of nuclear power, the prospects are much dimmer. Gregory Jaczko was the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 2009 to 2012 and is the author of the book Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator. In an op-ed for the Washington Post in May, Jaczko asserted that “[n]uclear is dying” and argued that nuclear power is not a solution to the climate crisis.
He spells out multiple reasons not to pursue nuclear power, with the obvious safety risks topping his concerns. And rightly so. Jaczko served on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission during the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.
In addition to nuclear’s well-publicized safety risks, Jaczko also highlighted a less well-known one. He said that the nuclear industry wields such influence over regulatory agencies — something he saw firsthand — that safety is being sacrificed for profit.
Another downside is that building nuclear power plants is an incredibly expensive undertaking. Recent attempts to revive nuclear energy in the U.S. have been financial disasters, with $9 billion spent on one failed project in South Carolina alone.
Jaczko cites the low cost and low risk of renewables as another factor that makes nuclear obsolete. “I’ve now made alternative energy development my new career, leaving nuclear power behind. The current and potential costs — in lives and dollars — are just too high,” wrote Jaczko, who has founded the company Wind Future LLC.
Last year, William Von Hoene, senior vice president at Exelon, which operates nuclear plants, predicted that there would be no new nuclear power plants built in America for the same reason. “They are too expensive to construct, relative to the world in which we now live,” said Hoene.
Bailing Out Another Failing Industry
Like the coal industry, the U.S.nuclear industry has been on the decline, but in this case, the drop is primarily due to aging nuclear plants closing and not being replaced. Still, this trend doesn’t mean U.S. taxpayers won’t pay the price as both industries continue to lobby hard for bailouts.
n Ohio, nuclear industry lobbyists recently secured a $1.1 billion bailout of two economically failing nuclear power plants (and struggling coal plants) while incentives for renewables were cut. Not all Ohio citizens were happy with this handout, and one group is currently collecting signatures to put the bailout before voters in a referendum next year.
“I don’t see nuclear as a solution to climate change,” Jaczko told The Intercept. “It’s too expensive, and would take too long if it could even be deployed. There are cheaper, better alternatives. And even better alternatives that are getting cheaper, faster.”
The International Energy Agency (IEA) released a report in May urging the use of more nuclear power but also admitted that this move would require the government picking up the tab. As Oilprice.com reported at the time, the “IEA pleaded with governments to rescue the industry” while admitting that without government intervention the prospect of new nuclear power projects in the U.S. and Europe was “inconceivable.”
Industry Not Giving Up
As evidenced by the nuclear bailouts, there is still money to be made in the utility business, and while the chances of building new nuclear power plants in the U.S. are remote, the industry is pushing back hard against Bernie Sanders’ plan.
Nuclear industry executives are perhaps inspired by the executives of failed coal, oil, and gas firms who get rich while bankrupting their companies.
Industry-backed think tanks and academic groups echo their funders’ talking points and continue to champion nuclear power as a climate solution.
And this think tank isn’t alone. According to the right-leaning Washington Examiner, Dr. Noah Kaufman, a research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP), also disagreed with Sanders’ approach to nuclear power.
“I see ruling out any valuable low-carbon technologies and policies as fighting the [climate] battle with one arm tied behind our backs,” said Kaufman.
However, CGEP itself is known for supporting climate-killing policies, such as its successful effort to help lift the crude oil export ban. Additionally, last year CGEP hired former Trump energy advisor and fossil fuel defender George “David” Banks as an expert on “international climate policy.”
Attacks on the Sanders’ climate plan appear to have less to do with the ongoing viability of nuclear power as a legitimate climate solution and more to do with an ongoing effort to convince the public to subsidize another unsuccessful sector of the energy industry.
The Green New Deal, The climate crisis is not only the single greatest challenge facing our country; it is also our single greatest opportunity to build a more just and equitable future, but we must act immediately. Bernie Fraser, Climate change is a global emergency. The Amazon rainforest is burning, Greenland’s ice shelf is melting, and the Arctic is on fire. People across the country and the world are already experiencing the deadly consequences of our climate crisis, as extreme weather events like heat waves, wildfires, droughts, floods, and hurricanes upend entire communities, ecosystems, economies, and ways of life, as well as endanger millions of lives. Communities of color, working class people, and the global poor have borne and will bear this burden disproportionately.
The scientific community is telling us in no uncertain terms that we have less than 11 years left to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy, if we are going to leave this planet healthy and habitable for ourselves, our children, grandchildren, and future generations. As rising temperatures and extreme weather create health emergencies, drive land loss and displacement, destroy jobs, and threaten livelihoods, we must guarantee health care, housing, and a good-paying job to every American, especially to those who have been historically excluded from economic prosperity.
As President, Bernie Sanders Will Avert Climate Catastrophe and Create 20 Million Jobs
As president, Bernie Sanders will launch the decade of the Green New Deal, a ten-year, nationwide mobilization centered around justice and equity during which climate change will be factored into virtually every area of policy, from immigration to trade to foreign policy and beyond. This plan outlines some of the most significant goals we have set and steps we will take during this mobilization, including:
Reaching 100 percent renewable energy for electricity and transportation by no later than 2030 and complete decarbonization by 2050 at latest – consistent with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change goals – by expanding the existing federal Power Marketing Administrations to build new solar, wind, and geothermal energy sources.
Ending unemployment by creating 20 million jobs needed to solve the climate crisis. ……..
Declaring climate change a national emergency. We must take action to ensure a habitable planet for ourselves, for our children, and for our grandchildren. We will do whatever it takes to defeat the threat of climate change……..
Phase out the use of non-sustainablesources. This plan will stop the building of new nuclear power plants and find a real solution to our existing nuclear waste problem. It will also enact a moratorium on nuclear power plant license renewals in the United States to protect surrounding communities. We know that the toxic waste byproducts of nuclear plants are not worth the risks of the technology’s benefit, especially in light of lessons learned from the Fukushima meltdown and the Chernobyl disaster. To get to our goal of 100 percent sustainable energy, we will not rely on any false solutions like nuclear, geoengineering, carbon capture and sequestration, or trash incinerators.
Climate change isn’t our only existential threat, https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/06/opinions/nuclear-war-climate-change-2020-opinion-helfand/index.html, By Ira Helfand, July 6, 2019 (CNN)America confronts a long list of critical problems and they all require urgent attention. But among them, two issues stand out: catastrophic climate change and nuclear war are unique in the threat they pose to the very survival of human civilization. The enormity and imminence of these twin existential threats cannot be overstated and how to confront them must be the central issue of any presidential campaign.
Climate change and the danger of nuclear war are closely related. As climate change progresses over the coming decades, large areas of the planet will be unable to support their human population. As a result, there will likely be forced migrations on a scale unknown in human history, and an enormously increased risk of conflict, including nuclear conflict. Nuclear war, should it come, would cause further catastrophic climate disruption and widespread global famine.
Fortunately, there is a much greater focus on climate change in this election cycle than in 2016 when it received scant attention in the campaign despite the enormous differences in the policies espoused by the major candidates. This time around, the growing demand for action, especially by young people, and the daily reminders of the escalating damage to the planet, are forcing this issue to the fore where it rightly belongs.
Progressives in Congress have put forward a comprehensive plan to deal with this crisis in the form of the Green New Deal, and there is the real possibility that a post-Trump administration will embrace this plan or some variant on it. Unfortunately, there is much less attention at this point in the campaign to the growing danger of nuclear war. That must change.
Former Secretary of Defense William Perry has said that the danger of nuclear war is greater than it was during the Cold War, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set its iconic Doomsday Clock to 2 minutes to midnight, the closest it has been to a nuclear apocalypse since 1953, after the US tested the hydrogen bomb. Relations between the US and Russia are the worst they have been in three decades and the current tension is replete with nuclear saber-rattling from both sides. War between the nuclear superpowers is an ever-present threat.
Furthermore, research done over the last 15 years has shown that even a very “limited” nuclear war, involving less than 0.5% of the world’s nuclear weapons, would be enough to cause catastrophic global climate disruption and a worldwide famine, putting up to 2 billion people at risk. Such a war would not necessarily involve the great powers. A war between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan could easily produce this level of global climate disruption.
Even if none of the nine nuclear-armed states makes a deliberate decision to launch nuclear weapons, the possibility of an accidental war remains. There have been at least six episodes during the nuclear weapons era when either Moscow or Washington began the process of launching its nuclear weapons in the mistaken belief that it was already under attack. As Robert McNamara, President Kennedy’s defense secretary, famously stated, “We lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war.” As long as they continue to maintain nuclear arsenals, the security “policy” of the nuclear-armed states is essentially a hope for continued good luck.
The last time the world was this close to nuclear annihilation, in the 1980s, the need to prevent nuclear war was front and center in the nation’s political discourse. A vast popular movement formed that demanded and won a freeze in the nuclear arms race.
The danger today demands a similar response, and this time the effort must focus on the complete elimination of nuclear weapons.
A campaign to focus national attention on this issue has begun to take shape around the Back from the Brink platform, a Green New Deal for the nuclear threat. Supported by more than 200 professional associations, faith communities, peace and environmental groups, it has been endorsed unanimously by the US Conference of Mayors, and by the municipalities of Baltimore, Los Angeles and DC, as well as being approved overwhelmingly by the California and Oregon legislatures and the New Jersey General Assembly.
In 2017, 122 nations voted to establish the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The US boycotted those negotiations and has not yet signed the treaty. The Back from the Brink campaign calls on the United States to embrace the treaty and lead an international effort to prevent nuclear war. It specifically urges the US to enter now into negotiations with the other nuclear-armed states for a verifiable, enforceable, timebound plan to eliminate their nuclear arsenals as the only way to guarantee that they are never used. We cannot know for sure that we will be able to eliminate nuclear weapons; we do know what is likely to happen if we don’t.
The United States cannot afford to elect a good president in 2020. It must elect a great president, and at this moment in time, greatness means the ability to deal successfully with the danger posed by climate change and nuclear weapons.
SEAN MEYER, | JULY 3, 2019 The 2020 presidential campaign kicked off in earnest with last week’s Miami debates, and many of the “high profile” topics were covered: climate change, immigration, gun control. One topic was a little more unexpected: nuclear weapons. On the first night, three of the ten candidates on stage said nuclear weapons or the threat of nuclear war is the biggest geopolitical threat facing the United States.
This should not be surprising: recent polling shows that in key primary states, including New Hampshire and Iowa, over 80% of respondents want to know what candidates think about nuclear weapons. We also know from recent national polling that more than 80% of people support arms control treaties with Russia.
Unfortunately, current US policies put the public at danger from nuclear use. Today, the United States retains the right to use nuclear weapons first in a crisis and maintains hundreds of land-based missiles on hair trigger alert. New, more usable nuclear weapons are being developed as part of a trillion-dollar plan to re-build and maintain the entire nuclear arsenal (a proposal mind you that dates to the Obama administration). For its part, the Trump administration has pulled out of crucial nuclear agreements that have kept us safe, including the Iran nuclear deal and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and seems poised to walk away from the New START Treaty as well.
These kinds of policies should be a major topic of discussion among candidates in the 2020 election, and candidates are already being asked about their positions on the campaign trail. Their responses and comments show a range of thought and understanding on the topic. You can see videos of the conversations with the presidential candidates about nuclear weapons on our YouTube channel.We’ll keep adding videos to this channel as members of the public and activists around the country continue to have these conversations with the candidates in the months ahead.
Indeed, voters have a critical role to play by raising the profile of these discussions and helping to elevate this important conversation and debate—both within our communities and online.
Nuclear weapons and climate change are the two existential threats facing humanity. They are serious. They are growing. They are urgent. And our country and leaders must act—before it’s too late.
So that’s where “we the people” come in. Let’s educate others. Let’s raise our voices. Let’s insist that those who wish to lead our country do just that—lead us on a path that reduces the risks these horrible weapons pose.
The Union of Concerned Scientists aims to increase public discussion about the use of nuclear weapons; we are posting these videos to highlight such discussion by candidates for president. As a 501c3 nonpartisan organization, UCS does not support or oppose any candidate for election.
Was Tulsi Gabbard’s nuclear war warning during Democratic debate hyperbole, or all too real? In a rapid-fire question-and-answer portion of the first Democratic presidential debate Wednesday evening, each candidate was asked about the greatest geopolitical threat to the U.S. abc news, By LEE FERRAN Jun 27, 2019
Multiple candidates mentioned nuclear weapons or nuclear proliferation, but Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii — a combat veteran who served on the armed services and foreign affairs committees — went further, claiming that “we’re in a greater risk of nuclear war today than ever before in history.”
Gabbard’s language might seem hyperbolic, especially to Americans who as children may have participated in “duck and cover” drills amid fears of a Soviet nuclear volley during the Cold War. But experts are split on whether she’s actually that far off — with one saying the nuclear war threat is as dire as ever, and another calling Gabbard’s assessment “nuts.”………,
Wolfsthal noted that the unnerving “Doomsday Clock” created by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which has tracked the threat of nuclear disaster since the late 1940s, is currently set at two minutes to midnight, where it’s been since January 2018. The Bulletin says that’s “as close to the symbolic point of annihilation that the iconic Clock has been since 1953 at the height of the Cold War” due to the dual threats of nuclear weapons and climate change.
“This suggests that things are as bad as they ever have been, but not worse,” said Wolfsthal, who sits on the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board.
In April, a United Nations expert on nuclear disarmament, Izumi Nakamitsu, warned the international body that the threat of nuclear weapons being used, “by accident or through miscalculation, is higher than it has been in decades.”……
Wolfsthal pointed, in part, to the “tone and approach” taken by President Donald Trump with regard to “North Korea, Iran and elsewhere” as contributing to the crisis, as well as tensions with fellow nuclear power Russia over arms control treaties…….
In a speech earlier this month, Gabbard reasoned that “regime change” wars had “exacerbated” the problem of nuclear proliferation, specifically how the value of nuclear weapons was reinforced to North Korean leaders after the international intervention in Libya, and said the U.S. was in a “new arms race” among the major powers, contributing to an almost unprecedentedly unstable nuclear world. ……… https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/tulsi-gabbards-nuclear-war-warning-democratic-debate-hyperbole/story?id=63991471
The formal debates for the 2020 Democratic nomination for President have begun this week. While there are many substantive topics that need to be covered, there are two existential threats that demand to be addressed. The threat of climate change has been discussed nominally though hardly with the urgency that it requires to stop our steady drift to ever greater catastrophic climate events. The other threat is that of nuclear war which increases as environmental degradation, resource depletion and its associated conflict follows. Yet the threat of nuclear weapons and the concept of nuclear deterrence has not and is not likely to be discussed. Despite growing scientific evidence of the increasing vulnerability and threat posed by these weapons, we seem incapable of having a national dialogue on why they should even exist. Ultimately, they threaten every single thing we care about every moment of every day.
At a time when the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists calculates that we are closer to nuclear war either by intent, cyberattack or accident than at any time since the height of the cold war, we would be well advised to take note so as to take appropriate action and educate our citizenry to eliminate these risks. In keeping their 2019 Doomsday Clock at 2 Minutes to Midnight, the Bulletin’s advisory board noted the close interplay of climate crises with growing international conflict, and the risk of nuclear war.
Our nation and the world need a virtual IQ test to understand the risk we face from these weapons. Each of us and every presidential candidate should be required to take this test and respond to these questions so we can have a greater understanding of the devastating risks we face.
Such an IQ assessment might go as follows:…….
The risk of nuclear war remains with us as long as these weapons exist. The only way to eliminate this risk is by the complete abolition of these weapons. The non-nuclear nations of the world, refusing to be held hostage by the nuclear states, are moving forward in the process of making these weapons illegal by international law and norms in the same way every other weapon of mass destruction has been dealt with before.
Since early 2019 we’ve been hearing about the Green New Deal, a program that did not initially include nuclear power. Then suddenly, after an extensive lobbying effort by the atomic power industry, we heard: Ocasio-Cortez: Green New Deal ‘Leaves the Door Open’ on Nuclear.
How Green are the atomic power reactors proposed by the nuclear power industry? Fairewinds has produced a two minute animation showing that carbon reduction via atomic power reactors is a nuclear industry marketing ploy.
Let’s look at the history of atomic power and the way governments and the atomic weapons and power industries have worked together to promote nuclear power. Nuclear physicists discovered the nuclear chain reaction in 1938, and power has been produced using the atom since the 1940’s beginning with the Manhattan Project for the creation of the atomic bomb. Splitting the atom and creating nuclear weapons and power are old technologies that began more than 80 years ago! During that 80-year timespan, Americans and ratepayers in other capitalist countries were told that using nuclear power as a source of electricity would be “too cheap to meter” if taxpayers would only subsidize more research.
Now we see impending financial collapse of almost all of the US nuclear power plants due to green energy! Solar, wind, wave, battery storage, and even newer technologies have proved that electricity can be created anywhere in the world in a manner that creates jobs, saves billions of dollars, and makes the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink much safer for all of us.
Instead of admitting nukes cannot compete with renewable energy, the atomic industrial complex is now proposing dozens of new designs that it claims on paper will compete in timeliness to successfully impact the growing climate crisis, including atomic reactors utilizing thorium and molten salt and new designs like Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), Micro-reactors, Traveling Wave, etc. Once again, the atomic power industry, which is the handmaiden to the nuclear weapons manufacturers, is sending lobbyists to convince your Congressional representatives that the atomic future will be different than the past. Lobbyists now claim that society will be so much better off when taxpayer funds bail out the aged, dangerous, and non-performing nukes and if the atomic power and weapons lobbies are given even more research subsidies.
Since the early 1960s there have been 250 applications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and its precursor the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to generate electricity for profit using atomic power reactors. None of these 250 proposed atomic reactors have been built on time or within budget. You did not misread; truly, every single proposed nuke went millions and then billions of dollars over budget and have started generating electricity years later if at all.
If a baseball player was at bat 250 times and struck out 250 times, would he still be playing baseball? Yet, the atomic lobbyists marketing nuclear power want us to pay them for more chances to use our money and strike out one more time.
Renewables, storage and conservation already have a well-proven track-record of lower costs, more jobs, and environmental compatibility than any of these newly imagined nukes will ever have – I say newly imagined because I have spent my career life as a nuclear engineer. When I first began my career, I drank the Kool-Aid and believed that nuclear power reactors were the solution to the world’s energy shortages and that atomic power created from the same technology as the atomic bomb was as safe as the nuke power industry claimed. As the 5 commercial meltdowns during the last 40-years have proved, especially the 3 major meltdowns that included explosions at Fukushima, nuclear power is simply not a safe method of generating electricity. The impact of the devastation from three simultaneous meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi to the social culture, environmental legacy, personal health, and financial welfare of Japan in 2011 is not a legacy that should be passed onto future generations.
Why then is the US Congress, including AOC – one of the brightest members of this new Congress and the creator of the Green New Deal (#GND) – “leaving the door open” for the same old atomic power marketing ploys? For more than 80-years, we have witnessed the economic failure, ratepayer bailouts, subsidized atomic meltdown insurance, and actual catastrophic meltdowns.
The Democratic takeover of the House refocused the climate conversation in Washington. Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) along with Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) introduced a nonbinding resolution calling for a Green New Deal, which aims to achieve a “fair and just transition” to net-zero emissions and ties climate action to other progressive goals such as universal health care and a jobs guarantee. The resolution, which became the subject of GOP mockery, has drawn criticism from labor leaders and some Democratic presidential hopefuls.
Climate change has emerged as a key issue in the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Candidates frequently discuss climate change on the campaign trail and often face questions from the audience on how they will address the issue.
Where the candidates stand
Here’s where 2020 candidates stand on issues related to climate change, based on candidate statements, voting records and answers to a questionnaire we sent every campaign.
Highlight a candidate
BACKGROUNDPresident Trump intends to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, under which the United States had pledged by 2025 to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 26 percent of its 2005 levels. This will leave the United States the only country to reject the agreement. As the second-largest global emitter of greenhouse gases, the United States would need to do considerably more than President Obama promised in order to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, experts say……..
Do you support building more nuclear power plants?
YES, EXPAND NUCLEAR POWER – these answered:
Bennet. Booker. Delaney, Hickenlooper, Moulton, Ryan. Yang
NO NEW PLANTS AT THIS TIME – these answered:
Bullock, Buttigieg, Castro, de Blasio, Inslee. Swalwell
NO AND LET’SPHASE OUT NUCLEAR POWER – these answered:
Prosecutors recently expanded a criminal case against Julian Assange to include accusations that he violated the Espionage Act by soliciting, obtaining, and publishing classified documents leaked in 2010 by Chelsea Manning, which could establish a precedent that such common journalistic activities (a separate question from whether Assange counts as a “journalist”) can be treated as a crime in America.
The Question
Are these charges constitutional? Would your administration continue the Espionage Act part of the case against Assange?……..
Whatever one’s opinions of Julian Assange, these charges under the Espionage Act set a precedent that could be used to target journalists. We should not be using this case as a pretext to wage war on the First Amendment and go after the free press who hold the powerful accountable everyday. morehttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/us/politics/press-freedoms-executive-power.html
