Climate Protection and Nuclear Abolition: Exploring the Connections
Melting glaciers in Iceland. Image credit: United Nations
Climate change and the continued existence of nuclear weapons present two of the most pressing existential threats to humanity and the planet. Beyond the similarity in the gravity of the threat they pose, these two challenges are also interlinked.
Climate change produces political instability, which increases the risk of war and, by extension, the use of nuclear weapons. A war involving nuclear detonations in dozens of cities, using only a small fraction of the global stockpile of nuclear weapons, would cause global cooling. Protecting the climate and abolishing nuclear weapons both require treaty-based, global processes. The Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy is committed to exploring the connections between these twin challenges as a way to better understand them and build support for adequate, international responses to them.
“Climate Protection and Nuclear Abolition: Developments in Humanitarian Disarmament and Human Rights Since the Release of The Climate-Nuclear Nexus,” Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, Sponsored by The Simons Foundation Canada, November 2022
The Climate-Nuclear Nexus, Jürgen Scheffran and others, World Future Council, April 2016 (see below)
LCNP and PSR letter to President Obama, urging executive action on de-alerting and climate consequences of nuclear explosions, June 10, 2015
"Climate change and nuclear weapons," Guy Quinlan for Disarmament Times, Fall/Winter 2014.
"The Marshall Islands' Two-Front Fight to Survive and Thrive: Climate Protection and Nuclear Disarmament," John Burroughs for Disarmament Times, Fall/Winter 2014.
Deadly Connections: Challenging Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Power, and Climate Change, a Climate Convergence Workshop, September 20, 2014
Tony deBrum, Foreign Minister, Marshall Islands (video)
John Burroughs, LCNP Executive Director (video; text)
Nuclear Abolition, Climate Protection, and Our Cities' Future, conference organized by Mayors for Peace, Drake University, City of Des Moines, LCNP, Western States Legal Foundation, Global Action to Prevent War, and Progressive Coalition of Central Iowa. October 23, 2008, Des Moines.
Jürgen Scheffran and others, World Future Council, April 2016
World Future Council’s report examines the two main threats to humanity’s future, climate change and nuclear weapons; their interaction, including that climate change-caused or exacerbated conflict would increase the chance of use of nuclear weapons; and efforts to address each threat through international agreements and processes. The principal author, Jürgen Scheffran, a professor at the University of Hamburg and a longtime LCNP colleague, is an expert in both the scientific aspects of nuclear disarmament and the science of climate change. John Burroughs, LCNP Executive Director, and Alyn Ware, LCNP consultant, are among the contributors.
Intersectional Nuclear Policy
Climate Change and Nuclear Power and Iran and the Nuclear Fuel-cycle, Michael Spies, Nuclear Disorder or Cooperative Security (2007) (Sections 3.1 and 3.2)