TLDR: a snappy online event about how nuclear disarmament connects to the climate and care crises. It’s taking an action-oriented approach and offers participants tools to organise. All levels of knowledge and skills welcome!
Register here: https://climate-care-nukes.eventbrite.co.uk
World military spending has more than doubled (Sipri, 2020) since the end of the Cold War. But does it really make us safer? With Covid already killing more people in Britain than WW2 air strikes (Rogers, 2020), our understanding of security has changed dramatically. While in the 70s and 80s, the threat of nuclear warfare was in everyone’s mind, the ever-growing awareness of climate change and the immediate reality of our current care crisis now take an overwhelming precedent.
Yet, in the middle of this global pandemic, despite the absolute urgency to fund the NHS, education and tackle homelessness; the government engaged £205 billion to replace Trident, Britain’s nuclear weapons system. To give you an idea, that’s the expected cost of the first year of the Covid 19 pandemic in Britain (BBC, 2020).
This short online event will explore how we got here, will connect the climate and care crisis to nuclear disarmament and expose the ongoing relevance of this struggle today:
BECAUSE climate change will keep exacerbating the deterioration of relationships between states.
BECAUSE when we have the tools to annihilate millions, we are never far from catastrophe.
BECAUSE we already live in times of crisis, and the spending of public money needs to be urgently altered.
BECAUSE while we continue to amass deadly arsenals ostensibly to protect life, the combined power of these weapons threatens us both directly and by sapping resources to tackle other dangers.
This event will be produced in collaboration with Stop The War Coalition, Extinction Rebellion UK and De-Militarise Education. After a 25 min dynamic exploration of these issues, the session will take an action-oriented approach, triggering our imagination for campaigning together in times of pandemic to reclaim Security from militarism.
We promise we’ll keep it short, Zoom fatigue is real…
In the meantime here are some accessible resources on nuclear disarmament:
> Nobel Peace Prize winner ICAN’s “Let’s Be Realist - Eleven answers to common questions and comments about nuclear weapons” booklet: https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/.../ICAN_Lets_Be...
> Scrap Trident: The Facts, CND briefing paper https://cnduk.org/wp.../uploads/2018/04/Scrap-Trident-1.pdf
> Nuclear weapons and climate change: two existential threats, CND briefing paper https://cnduk.org/.../upl.../2020/06/Climate-not-Trident.pdf
> Today’s Security: Real Threats, CND https://cnduk.org/resources/security-not-trident/
Citations:
BBC (2020). Coronavirus: How much will it cost the UK? Available online at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52663523 [accessed 19/10/20].
Rogers, P. (2020). CND Conference: Real Security opening roundtable discussion [online conference]. Available online at: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=778462069369143 [accessed 19/10/20].
SIPRI (2019). SIPRI Military Expenditure Database. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Available online at:
https://www.sipri.org/databases/milex [accessed 19/10/20].