Noam Chomsky - Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe

Copyright 2013 by Noam Chomsky and Laray Polk

A Seven Stories Press First Edition

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Book design by Elizabeth DeLong

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chomsky, Noam.

Nuclear war and environmental catastrophe / Noam Chomsky and Laray Polk. -- 1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-60980-454-1 (pbk.)

1. Nuclear warfare--Environmental aspects. 2. Environmental disasters. I. Polk, Laray. II. Title.

QH545.N83C56 2013

363.3255--dc23

2012046137

Printed in the United States

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Preface

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.

Laray Polk

Dallas, Texas

September 2012

Footnotes:

Abbreviations

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

Environmental Catastrophe

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.