Michele Kearney's Nuclear Wire

Major Energy and Environmental News and Commentary affecting the Nuclear Industry.

Friday, April 8, 2016

Ask President Obama to act to wind down the doomsday clock

Ask President Obama to act to wind down the doomsday clock

President Obama contemplates
Dear Michele T,
On April 2 more than 200 excited guests, many of them students, gathered at MIT led by well known scientists, peace activists and political leaders, including Cambridge Mayor Denise Simmons and former Secretary of Defense William Perry.  Sponsored by Massachusetts Peace Action, the Future of Life foundation, Global Zero, the AFSC, and others, the "Reducing the Dangers of Nuclear War" conference was an encouraging step forward toward the kind of vigorous, informed, determined and unrelenting movement we will need to preserve life on the planet -- in the face of the inevitable nuclear holocaust which will consume it if the nuclear threat is not confronted and eliminated.
Click here to sign a petition asking President Obama to act in the waning days of his presidency to move us back from the nuclear precipice.
Numerous initiatives were unveiled at the conference.  Cambridge, MA, through the unanimous vote of its city council had become the first city to formally join the "Don't Bank on the Bomb" by acting to remove corporations involved in producing nuclear weapons from its pension's portfolio.  Also at the conference, activists circulated a petition to Pres. Obama, urging him to take the actions that he can as Commander-in-Chief to reduce the threat of nuclear war in the last eight months of his presidency.  Specifically, the petition urges the President to:
 
1.   Take U.S. missiles off hair-trigger alert.
2.   Commit the U.S. never to be the first to use nuclear weapons.
3.   Invite the other nuclear states to begin the negotiations committed to in the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty to negotiate with the other nuclear states to bring about the elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide.
4.   Stop the $1 trillion program of modernizing nuclear weapons, which makes us more vulnerable, not less, and shift those funds to education, housing, and infrastructure renewal, the actual things that make America stronger.
 

The sad irony is that this "modernization" program will actually make us less safe. Because:

a)   The Pentagon is seeking a "more usable" nuclear weapon. There are plans for the B61-12, with a more accurate guidance system, which enables the same lethal effects as today's a-bombs  with a smaller nuclear yield and less pollution, hence, "more usable". These modifications tend to blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional arms and make the new version more likely to be used than the old.  Once the threshhold to nuclear device is crossed, however, it is easy to forsee an escalation to the ultimate mutual destruction. 

b)   The 450 planned ICBMs sitting in their known silos on hair-trigger alert would be certain to trigger similar moves by Russia and China. Machine and human error would have a much greater potential to endanger  all of human civilization and initiate the nuclear winter which could threaten humanity and hundreds of other species with extinction.
 
President Obama could reverse this sad turn by acting now to end the scourge of nuclear war .  Sign here to urge our President to act!
For peace and a nuclear-weapons free world,
Jonathan King
Chair, 
Nuclear Disarmament Working Group

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