Noam Chomksy - Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe

If humans choose to work to minimize the existential threats of our time, perhaps the most improbable aspect of remedy is that we will accept modalities based on collaboration and creative adaptation, rather than perpetual combat and domination. Consensual science on climate change presents another fact: we may only have a few years to make adjustments in the collective carbon load before we are faced with irreversible consequences. As Christian Parenti in Tropic of Chaos perceptively and correctly points out:

[E]ven if all greenhouse gas emissions stopped immediatelythat is, if the world economy collapsed today, and not a single light bulb was switched on nor a single gasoline-powered motor started ever againthere is already enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to cause significant warming and disruptive climate change, and with that considerably more poverty, violence, social dislocation, forced migration, and political upheaval. Thus we must find humane and just means of adaptation, or we face barbaric prospects.

Seen in this light, to live collaboratively and creatively is less a radical proposal than a pragmatic one, if we, future generations, and the biosphere are to survive nuclear war and environmental catastrophe.

ACHRE: Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments

AEC: Atomic Energy Commission

ALEC: American Legislative Exchange Council

API: American Petroleum Institute

ARPA-E: Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy

BIOT: British Indian Ocean Territory

BLEEX: Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton

BP: British Petroleum

CDB: China Development Bank

CIA: Central Intelligence Agency

CND: Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

COP: Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC

CTBT: Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

CW: chemical weapons

DARPA: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

DEFCON: defense readiness condition

DOD: Department of Defense

DOE: Department of Energy

DU: depleted uranium

EPA: Environmental Protection Agency

GE: General Electric

HEU: highly enriched uranium

IAEA: International Atomic Energy Agency

IBM: International Business Machines

ISN: Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies

IT: Information Technology

LEU: low-enriched uranium

MAD: mutually assured destruction

MIT: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

NAM: Non-Aligned Movement

NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NAVSTAR

GPS: navigation system for timing and ranging, Global Positioning System

NEPA: National Environmental Policy Act

NIH: National Institutes of Health

NNI: National Nanotechnology Initiative

NPT: Non-Proliferation Treaty

NSC: National Security Council

NSF: National Science Foundation

NSG: Nuclear Suppliers Group

NWFZ: nuclear-weapon-free zone

OPEC: Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries

OSRD: Office of Scientific Research and Development

PNE: peaceful nuclear explosion

POW: prisoner of war

PTBT: Partial Test Ban Treaty

R&D: research and development

RADAR: radio detection and ranging

SDS: Students for a Democratic Society

START: Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty

TRIPS: Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

UN: United Nations

UNFCCC: UN Framework on Convention on Climate Change

WgU: weapon-grade uranium

WTO: World Trade Organization

Laray Polk: When we began this conversation in 2010, our starting point was a statement you had recently made in the press: There are two problems for our species survivalnuclear war and environmental catastrophe. What is meant by environmental catastrophe?

Noam Chomsky: Actually, quite a lot of things. The major one is anthropogenic global warminghuman contribution to global warming, greenhouse gases, othersbut thats only a part of it. There are other sources of whats called pollutionthe destruction of the environmentthat are quite serious: erosion, the elimination of agricultural land, and turning agricultural land into biofuel, which has had a severe effect on hunger. Its not just an environmental problem; its a human problem. Building dams and cutting down the Amazon forests has ecological consequencesthere are thousands of things and the problems are getting a lot worse.

For one reason, because of the role of the United States. I mean, nobodys got a wonderful role in this, but as long as the United States is dragging down the entire world, which is what its doing now, nothing significant is going to happen on these issues. The US has to at least be seriously taking part and should be well in the lead. Its kind of ironic; if you look at this hemisphere, the country that is well in the lead in trying to do something serious about the environment is the poorest country in South America, Bolivia. They recently passed laws granting rights to nature. It comes out of the indigenous traditions, largelythe indigenous majority, theyve got the government advocating on their behalf. Sophisticated Westerners can laugh at that, but Bolivia is going to have the last laugh.

Anyway, theyre doing something. In the global system, theyre in the lead, along with indigenous communities in Ecuador. Then theres the richest countrynot only in the hemisphere, but in world historythe richest, most powerful country, which is not only doing nothing, but is going backward. Congress is now dismantling some of the legislation and institutions put into operation by our last liberal president, Richard Nixon, which is an indication of where we are. Anywhere you can find anything that you can use to destroy the environment, theyre going after it with great enthusiasm. Its like issuing a death sentence on the species.

And what makes it worse is that a lot of it is being done out of principlethat its not problematic, that its what we ought to be doing. In a sense, the same is true of nuclear weapons. Theyre justified on the grounds that we need them for defensewe dont need them for defensebut the argument for moving forward toward disaster is a conscious, explicit argument that is widely believed. With regard to the environment and the United States, there is also quite a substantial propaganda campaign, funded by the major business organizations, which are quite frank about it. The US Chamber of Commerce and others are trying to convince people that its not our problem, or that its not even real.

If you look at the latest Republican primary campaign, virtually every participant simply denies climate change. One candidate, Jon Huntsman, said he thinks it is real, but he was so far out of the running, it didnt matter. Whatever the world thinks, they cant do much if this is going on in the United States.

In Congress, among the latest cohort of Republican House representatives from 2010, almost all are global-warming deniers and are acting to cut back legislation to block anything meaningful, and to roll back the little that exists. I mean, its surreal. If someone were watching this from Mars, they wouldnt believe what was happening on Earth.

Hugo Chvez gave a speech at the United Nations at one of the major General Assembly meetings, and, of course, the press was full of ridicule and absurdities and so on. They didnt mention the talk he gave. You can find the talk, Im sure, on the Internet, in which he said that producers and consumers are going to have to get together and find ways to reduce reliance on hydrocarbons and fossil fuels. Of course, Venezuela is a major oil producer. In fact, practically the whole economy depends upon it; theyre a lot more reliant on oil than Texas is. So it can be done. We dont have to be lunatics who are willing to sacrifice our grandchildren so that we can have a little more profit.