Dear Paul,
It was fascinating listening to your talk at the WMDAwareness debate on Wednesday. There is much that I can agree on. You are right
to say that China and North Korea are embarking on nuclear blackmail. You are
right to question the emphasis on getting young people to solve a problem that
will kill us all and which the old people have caused. You are equally right to
advise that we should relieve ourselves
of the dangerously folly of thinking if we should do good, then those around
who are incentivised to do harm will also do good.
However, as I reflect on the experience that you brought to
the debate, especially your first hand experience of arms control negotiations
and working with the MOD, I cannot help but think that the intensity of thought
that you have had to pursue down these avenues has blinded you from exploring
other options and even recognising the
inherent dilemmas and contradictions that exist with the current
government policy of pursuing a Trident replacement.
The most serious of these is the dilemma of climate change.
I pointed out to you that we are on track to exceed 450 ppm sometime between
2020 and 2030. Atmospheric CO2 has continuously increased since accurate
measurements were first started in 1957 and the recent investments in
renewables have had no impact on this. When we get to 450ppm it is game over.
At this level the worst nightmares of runaway climate change become impossible
to avoid. Even today, if no further CO2 emissions are made, the situation is
critical with key tipping points such as the Arctic Ice cap collapse and the
subsequent methane releases upon us. When I
pointed this out, you responded with a shrug of your shoulders as if it
was someone else's problem.
It is extraordinary that you can take this position. At a
minimum, the resulting sea levels rises mean that Faslane will be under water
along with the US submarine bases in Georgia and Washington. More seriously,
many of the cities of the US, the UK and rest of world will be similarly
submerged. Climate change also means that the global economy will collapse
within the operating lifetimes of the next generation of submarines that you
are supporting. When this was pointed out, you again shrugged your shoulders.
To have any chance of avoiding the worse case apocalyptical
nightmares of climate change we have to transform our political systems, find
ways to safely de-industrialise and eliminate as best as we can those pieces of
today's infrastructure such as nuclear weapons that will become an eternal liability
for the survivors. This needs policies such as carbon taxation or carbon
rationing that are the antithesis of the growth based policies of today. To do
this, we must co-operate with our economic and military competitors. It will be impossible to do
this when we are locked in nuclear weapon standoffs. The flip side of this,
like it or not, is that Trident is dependent on the taxation that can only be
delivered from a growing economy dependent on fossil fuel. Our decision to
pursue Trident forces our competitors to replicate our growth based policies.
The result is that all sides must force growth against strict ecological limits
and in so doing create a race to the bottom.
You suggested in your talk that a transformative event such
as a limited nuclear war or accidental detonation would perhaps bring nations
to the negotiating table prepared for a different discourse. Historical
evidence would suggest this is optimistic nonsense. The nuclear attacks on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not drive the world in fear to negotiated positions
on nuclear weapons; instead within a year the US forced the Marshal Islanders
from their topical paradise at Bikini Atoll and then destroyed it with atomic
bomb tests and Russia upped their efforts to get the bomb. Since then, the
world has become littered with the detritus of nuclear weapons. Mayak blew up in 1957; Chernobyl, whose
safety was compromised by having to produce plutonium, irradiated the Ukraine and Belarus; depleted
uranium has left an eternal legacy in Iraq and nuclear weapons tests have left
millions of victims suffering from cancer and birth defects. Not one of these
events caused any reflection by the world's leaders on the rationality of
holding nuclear weapons and threatening nuclear war. Likewise destructive
climate change events such as Hurricane Sandy have not resolved the world's
leaders to create a zero carbon economy.
Instead of the rational response to these issues, the
irrational response takes hold which is to increase competitive strength in the
face of adversity, irrespective of the impossibility of all sides being able to
do this. It forces a situation where the sides that will weaken first, must
strike prematurely before they become too weak.
This is exactly what we did in the 2nd Gulf War
where we had to strike Iraq before our economy had become too weakened by
rising oil prices. The same dynamic drove Germany's entrance into the First
World War with their pre-emptive attack on France and execution of the Schlifen
plan because its economy was being weakened in relation to Russia by the race
it found itself in with Britain to build the Dreadnaughts. If we follow your prescription of maintaining the status quo of increasing our
military competitive advantage in a time of weakening economic circumstances,
then either we or our competitors will be forced into a set of circumstances
conducive to a first nuclear strike.
The nuclear trap that we are in makes the legally binding
agreement the UK made to an 80% cut in CO2 emissions pious nonsense.
To be clear, nuclear submarines do not just materialise at the end of slip ways. They are the apex of a country's
military industrial complex that encompasses everything from the manufacture of
steel to satellites. Once we decide to build Trident we must keep this
infrastructure in place and create an environment that keeps it growing. The
subsequent carbon footprint is so big that DECC did not even know where to
start when we asked that they quantify it in accordance the low carbon
transition plan agreed in the last parliament. We also asked that they extend
this analysis to cover the economic activity necessary to raise the taxes. Your
response to the morality of the carbon foot print of Trident when I raised it,
was again to shrug your shoulders and dismiss it.
The brutal reality is that once we sign the purchase order
for Trident, we will be forced to violate international agreements on climate
change and become another pariah state in the eyes of the world. The history of
climate change has already demonstrated this. The US would not sign the first
Kyoto agreement because the carbon cut backs would have constrained its
military too much. The same conclusion was evident to the other nuclear weapon
states who were as proactive as the US in their own ways to mendaciously
undermine this agreement. The same
dynamic pertains today.
The alternative that we are left with is to link climate
change agreements with nuclear non proliferation agreements. The argument now becomes that nations must
collectively create the security environment necessary to cut back greenhouse
gases or else face destruction through climate change. As the weakest member of
the P-5 with all our nuclear eggs in a single Trident basket while being
simultaneously exposed to the greenhouse emissions of other larger economic
blocks, it is in our advantage to advocate this position. In fact, the
circumstances dictate, that it is the only rational position that we can take.
If we do not do this, we will continue the pursuit of
nuclear weapons against all logic and reason. This requires a level of
dictatorial arrogance and cognitive dissonance that can only come about through
the possession of great power. This is were we are today. The electorate of
this country have never had any say in the decision to pursue nuclear weapons
as all the main political parties have
supported its replacement in the past and continue to do so today. Instead of a
clear choice being given to the people and subjected to a thorough public
debate, the nuclear decision is made by a small group of appointed experts
such as yourself who must myopically distort the reality around them to justify
the need to maintain the ability to destroy the planet through nuclear weapons
even though the industrial races that we are trapped in means we will destroy
it first through climate change.
Yours,
Kevin Lister
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