Humanity faces two existential threats: Nuclear Annihilation and Climate Change.  Even if worst case scenarios do not play out, the death, destruction, and suffering caused by war and climate change is likely to be significant if we don’t get off our current trajectories.  Some of the predicted effects of climate change are already happening, and scientists warn us that we’re getting close to several negative tipping points which would set off chain reactions and feedback loops.  The good news is that there are positive tipping points identified which have the potential of changing the course of climate change.¹  Now is high time to step up the global effort and funding to implement these solutions at scale.  

Meanwhile, military spending is currently in a feedback loop of its own.  The last couple of years have each broken records in global military spending.  In 2023, the world spent $2.44 trillion on military.²  At the pinnacle of the world’s destructive forces are more than 12,100 nuclear weapons.³  Each so called strategic nuclear warhead is capable of destroying an entire city, instantly killing millions of civilians, and causing immense suffering for those who survive the initial blast.  The widespread long-term effects of a nuclear explosion include radiation poisoning, cancer, and genetic damage.  In addition, “the use of less than one percent of the nuclear weapons in the world could disrupt the global climate and threaten as many as two billion people with starvation”.⁴  We all seem to agree about the horror and catastrophe that nuclear weapons have the potential to unleash.  The question we should be asking is: are nuclear weapons useful and necessary for peace and security, or are they actually detrimental to those goals?

References:

1. Global Tipping Points – Introduction

2. SIPRI – Global Military Spending

3. Arms Control Association – Who Has What

4. ICAN – Impact of Nuclear Weapons