Nuclear instability

As well, the world is on the verge of uncontrolled nuclear weapons proliferation. Press reports last week indicated that Myanmar could possibly be a nuclear weapons state in the near future assisted by North Korea, North Korea seems determined to build more bombs and missile delivery systems, while Iran is proceeding apace enriching uranium for nuclear power and possibly for weapons.

Uranium enrichment facilities abound in many countries including China, Japan, Germany, Brazil, Britain, France, India, Pakistan and Israel. Under the strict conditions of the Nuclear Non proliferation Treaty, all nations have an inalienable right to create nuclear electricity but they must abstain from nuclear weapons production apart from the eight nuclear weapons states.

This does not sit well with non-nuclear nations, for to enter the portals of the nuclear club is power indeed.

At this time the US and Russia own 97 per cent of the global nuclear arsenal of 27,000 weapons, and thousands stand on hair trigger alert ready to be launched with a three-minute decision time by Obama or Medvedev. Hackers have recently entered the Pentagon system, computer errors abound, Russian early warning systems have decayed to almost non functional status, and humans make mistakes. A nuclear war between these superpowers would be over in about one hour.

Severe anxiety and uncertainty creates international instability. During the 9-11attack the Bush administration raised the country’s nuclear alert codes from defcon 6 to defcon 2, the highest state of alert before launching. A similar scenario could well be triggered by similar tensions engendered if a small country exploded a nuclear device on another.

The stark truth is that bomb fuel can be made by any country from enriched uranium or plutonium manufactured in reactors (250 kilos yearly, 5 kilos makes a bomb). Uranium and plutonium last virtually for ever, therefore a country that is deemed “stable” by the international community may become unstable or fascistic some years later. Global warming should be added to this global nuclear instability as millions starve, millions more become ecological refuges, droughts deplete water supplies and nations fight for survival.

Recent studies predict that a nuclear war fought with US and Russian arsenals would induce catastrophic changes in the global climate. Smoke would block 70 per cent of sunlight in the Northern Hemisphere and 35 per cent in the Southern Hemisphere and the resulting nuclear darkness would induce a global ice age. Temperatures would be colder than 18,000 years ago at the height of the last ice age. Most humans and large animals would starve and freeze to death in the dark.

Clearly, Australia has a huge responsibility at this pivotal time in history. Will we have the moral courage to rise up to ban uranium mining and become an energy superpower, internally self sufficient in sustainable energy while exporting wind, solar, geothermal technology to millions of people to our near north?