Month: August 2019

Media Release

2^nd August 2019

Nuclear weapons pose the single biggest threat to the Earth’s environment.  Even a small-scale war would quickly devastate the world’s climate and ecosystems, causing damage that would last for more than a decade.

Detonating between 50 and 100 bombs – just 0.03% of the world’s arsenal -would throw enough soot into the atmosphere to create climactic anomalies unprecedented in human history.

The effects would be much greater than global warming and anything that has happened in history with regards to volcanic eruptions.

Tens of millions of people would die; global temperatures would crash and most of the world would be unable to grow crops for more than five years after the conflict.

In addition, the ozone layer, which protects the surface of the Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation, would be depleted by 40% over many inhabited areas and up to 70% at the poles.

“We can’t risk nuclear war as nothing ruins the environment like war.  Hiroshima and Nagasaki were reduced to rubble instantly by nuclear weapons,”  Denis Doherty from the Hiroshima Day Committee said.

“It is a tragedy that the world still needs to understand the possibility of doomsday.

“We cannot sit by and do nothing with the United States building new nuclear weapons, threatening to use them in pre-emptive strikes and planning to put them into space.

“We will be speaking out tomorrow at the Hiroshima Day remembrance to play our part in saving the future.”  Mr. Doherty said.

For more information contact:

Denis Doherty, Hiroshima Day Committee on 0418 290 663

Saturday 3 August

Archibald Fountain, Hyde Park

12 – rally followed by march to PM’s office

Speakers: Dr Keith Suter, Hector Ramage, David Shoebridge MLC

Media Release

Aug 2, 2019

Hiroshima Day no 2

Nuclear weapons cost too much

Over the next 10 years, governments will spend a staggering US$1 trillion on nuclear weapons globally – that is US $100 billion annually.

Against the backdrop of increasing budgetary austerity and widespread cuts in health and social spending, such allocations for weapons systems appear not only exorbitant, but also counter to the economic and social needs of the nuclear armed States.

In order to spend such large budgets on nuclear weapons, they are forced to reduce the budgets in other areas such as health, education, environmental protection and welfare.

Zulifkar Ali Bhutto, architect of Pakistan’s atomic program acknowledged this ‘opportunity cost’ of nuclear weapons programs, asserting that “if India builds the bomb, we will eat grass, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own.”

Overseas development aid from the nuclear armed States to the developing countries remains way under the agreed target of 0.7% of GDP, a target which could easily be reached if the funding for nuclear weapons was re-directed towards development aid.

Most of the nuclear weapons money goes to private companies which are awarded contracts to manufacture, modernize and maintain nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles.

For these companies, the bloated budgets are in their interests.  Indeed, the companies actively lobby their own parliaments and governments to continue allocating the funds to nuclear weapons.  And they support think tanks and other public initiatives to promote the ‘need’ for nuclear weapons maintenance, modernisation or expansion.

On Saturday we will be calling for the Australian Government to help reverse this doomsday scenario by signing the United Nations treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, signed by 123 countries.

 

Saturday 3 August

Archibald Fountain, Hyde Park

12 – rally followed by march to PM’s office

Speakers: Dr Keith Suter, Hector Ramage, David Shoebridge MLC

 

Nuclear danger from forgetting the past

 

August 6 and August 8 1945 were the days when the first nuclear weapons were used by the USA on two cities in Japan, killing 200,000 people. These days are marked all over the world with “Never Again” rallies, public meetings, concerts and other events. In Sydney our major event will begin at 12 noon on Saturday 3 August.

In 2019, just 74 years after the devastating first use of these nuclear bombs, most of Australia has forgotten that to use or threaten to use these atomic bombs is a crime against humanity.

Most of Australia has forgotten that the human and environmental devastation caused by these weapons is so grossly out of proportion to a civilised nation’s values and so threatening to our entire planet that they should be immediately eliminated for all time.

This collective amnesia opens the way for the current debate about the possibility of Australia adopting nuclear power and even nuclear weapons.

This would be a terrifying step backwards for the more nuclear weapons, the more likely thy will end up in the hands of terrorists and the more likely it is that they will be used by accident or design.

The lesson of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is just as true now as it ever was. A nuclear conflict must never happen, and no country can legitimately hold nuclear weapons ready for war.  The only answer to the nuclear threat is to abolish all weapons.

Saturday 3 August

Archibald Fountain, Hyde Park

12 – rally followed by march to PM’s office

Speakers: Dr Keith Suter, Hector Ramage, David Shoebridge MLC