The biggest threats from manmade sudden climate destruction, atmospheric nuclear winter and total human loss are the nuclear weapons proliferation, nuclear war exchanges and nuclear electric power ”business as usual accidents.”
Few people understand this as well as our friend, old Gorby who had participated in the START negotiation as head of state and is still a private participant. He is a friend of the Atmosphere, Climate and the Environment with a lifelong commitment to help.
The succesful Nuclear Weapons limitations and reductions START treaty that was recently passed and ratified by the Russian Duma [Parliament] and the US House and Senate is hollow without the test ban treaty.
Cybernetics professor and intelligent wise elder Mikhail Gorbachev understands this well. He, who also presided over the voluntary folding of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the culling of it’s nuclear weapons spread all over the vast empire, has called on Russia, the US and all other nations, to ratify a further accord to ban all nuclear test blasts, saying it would strengthen US led efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons.
“We have seen that dialogue with even the most recalcitrant governments is possible,” Gorbachev wrote in a New York Times op-ed column, apparently referring to North Korea and Iran.
“Yet dialogue can work only if the United States abandons the hypocritical position of telling others what they must do while keeping its own options open” Gorbachev said.
”Gorbi” who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, is a leading advocate of nuclear disarmament. His call for US ratification of the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, foreshadows the next major battle over arms control policy following Obama’s victory on Dec. 22, when the Senate ratified a new US Russia nuclear arms reduction treaty.
Republican senators who tried to kill Obama’s New START treaty are expected to mount a vigorous effort to block the treaty, bolstered by the addition of five new GOP members.
Obama pledged to “immediately and aggressively pursue U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty” in an April 2009 speech unveiling his ambitious goal of eliminating nuclear weapons.
Senate approval requires a two-thirds vote, or 67 of the 100 members, meaning that the test-ban treaty will require the support of 14 conservatives, just one more than those who supported the recently agreed upon New START nuclear weapons limitation treaty. START is the most legitimate and the longest ongoing set of agreements of global existential significance. And as such START can be the just model for a comprehensive Climate Treaty in the future. When things get really HOT…
Still the Senate opponents of a test ban treaty led by the Republican, Jon Kyl of Arizona, argue that the U.S. can’t risk relinquishing its ability to test new nuclear weapons. This is a silly Cold War relic thought process and an antiquated notion the Obama administration rejects. Kyl, who led the bid to kill New START, also halted the Senate’s first attempt to ratify the test-ban treaty in 1999.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass, who, as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has jurisdiction over international accords, predicted after the New START vote that the test-ban treaty would have a difficult path to ratification. “I said months ago to the president that the test ban treaty in the current atmosphere is a very, very difficult process. A whole lot of educating has to go on,” Kerry said. Obama administration officials are less pessimistic.
Myself am far more optimistic, given the state of the debate in light of Pyongyang’s and Teheran’s insistence on new nuclear pursuits. A comprehensive global nuclear test ban treaty will stop all of these from ruffling the Peace and Security of the human race.
“There’s always been a block of opponents historically to nuclear arms reduction and control in the Senate,” Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller, the top U.S. arms negotiator, said on Dec. 23. “That’s part of a healthy debate; it’s part of a healthy process. I don’t see that as a major, major issue.”
The treaty would effectively add underground nuclear tests to a 1963 ban imposed on blasts in the atmosphere, oceans and space. It would be enforced by a United Nations-run global network of more than 330 seismographs and other sensors. It’s been ratified by 153 countries, but can’t go into effect until it is ratified by the US and other nations with nuclear programs, including China, Iran, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.
The U.S. hasn’t conducted an underground test since 1992, yet it had conducted more than 1,000 before then, and maintains a voluntary moratorium on testing, as do the other major nuclear powers.
Gorbachev argued that the moratorium should be made legally binding, saying not to do so “would render futile any attempts to influence the behavior of countries that have been causing so many headaches for the United States and other nations” This he said as another apparent yet veiled reference to Iran and North Korea and few others of similar aspirations like Pakistan, Israel, India and a few recalcitrant Arab islamic nationalists.
Opponents argue that ratifying the treaty will undermine national security, saying the U.S. must retain the ability to test new or modified warheads to ensure the safety and reliability of a U.S. nuclear arsenal that is shrinking and aging.
Treaty proponents respond that that the US has no plans to develop new nuclear weapons and that in any case, nuclear physics modelling with high-speed computers, advanced experiments and warhead overhauls have eliminated the need for testing.
The directors of the U.S. nuclear arms laboratories this month expressed confidence in their ability to ensure a safe and reliable arsenal following Obama’s commitment to spend $85 billion over the next decade to modernize U.S. nuclear weapons facilities.
But Republicans – usually technology Luddites - and test treaty ban opponents mistakenly argue that there’s no reliable way to detect secret low level nuclear tests. That is a dangerous fallacy in a world carefully observed, measured, and ”listened” to. That is why all experts agree, saying that even low-yield nuclear blasts can be detected by the global sensor network maintained by the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, as well as by US and other’s terrestrial as well as space based observation systems.
“One of the big advantages we have now is that there are monitoring stations across Asia in some of the countries that were formally part of the Soviet Union,” said Lynn Sykes, a professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. “That has allowed us to monitor China, Russia and North Korea a lot better. North Korea actually is quite easy.”
Yours,
Pano
PS:
President Obama, we wish you a Happy New Year.
Well done on the START Mr President.
Now it’s time to cry and try for the permanent legally binding nuclear test ban treaty.
It’s another one of those existential axiomatic priorities…
Clearly relevant to Climate Health, Security and prosperity for all.
Dialogue, Agreement, Observation, Measurement, Verification and comprehensive forward friendly economic engagement is still the best option.
