The current state of our world has repeatedly been described as one of the most challenging moments since the end of World War II and certainly since the end of the Cold War. We are bombarded daily by the devastating and terrifying news of wars raging in the Middle East and Ukraine; global warming inducing unprecedented heatwaves, wildfires, glacial collapse, and floods; and more recently reports and debates surrounding the existential risk that artificial intelligence may present to humanity. How we address this seeming state of permanent crisis may not just be a matter of humanity’s ability to thrive into the future, but actually survive.

Two of the current threats that have seemingly disparate time scales and geographical footprints, and even differences as to whether they would make the world unlivable by way of decreased or increased temperatures, are nuclear war and global warming. And yet, in both cases, we are dealing with human-made problems that humans can resolve, with some work, yes, but certainly nothing insurmountable. The answer to the nuclear threat is the elimination of nuclear weapons, and the answer to the global warming threat is the remaking of how we produce and use energy to move away from burning fossil fuels. Arguably, the biggest impediment to the solutions to both crises are the false narratives that are advanced for the sake of power, profit, and dominance. We simply cannot agree on the solutions, let alone implement them, if we do not understand what is at stake when it comes to nuclear war and global warming.

The nuclear war threat has been with us since the dawn of the nuclear age. In 1946, when just one country, the United States, had a handful of atomic bombs, Albert Einstein wrote that the “unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift to unparalleled catastrophe.” Einstein understood right away that: (1) the nuclear weapon threat was not going to reach its culmination with the destruction of individual cities the way that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed but something far greater and more catastrophic—he called it unparalleled catastrophe; and (2) what was needed was to change our modes of thinking—meaning that peace, cooperation, and a genuine fraternity among nations were needed in the nuclear age to ensure that the unparalleled catastrophe would not come to pass.

Alongside of the ever-present nuclear “sword of Damocles,” we have a planet that is warming and doing so very quickly, with the increase in temperatures creating numerous other climatic and environmental changes,

Eighty years after Einstein’s prophetic words, nine countries possess more than 12,000 atomic bombs and much more powerful hydrogen bombs, most of which make the explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki seem like child’s play. Even if the world were relatively peaceful, which it is not, these weapons would continue to hold us hostage to the threat of ultimate destruction, even just from accidents or misunderstandings or miscalculations. This is at least in part due to some of the current policies of nuclear-armed states, like hair-trigger alert, or readiness to launch nuclear weapons in a matter of a few minutes, and launch-on-warning, or readiness to launch nuclear weapons in response to a warning of a strike, not an actual strike, not to mention the advances in delivery vehicles of these weapons of mass destruction. In fact, the history of the nuclear age is full of incidents in which nuclear weapons could have been launched, with all indications pointing to nuclear war as the outcome of even an accidental nuclear explosion. Today, a time of widespread conflicts, the danger is not just a blunder into nuclear war, but even a deliberate use of nuclear weapons.

What is at stake in a nuclear war?

Millions of people if not hundreds of millions dying in cities and nations that are attacked depending on who exactly is involved. Many of those deaths would occur instantly at the moment of the explosion.

Radiation spreading across the globe within hours, days, weeks, and months in ways that will threaten the health and survival far outside the countries that are attacked.

Quick onset of nuclear winter, with large drops in temperature that result in widespread failure of food........

© Common Dreams