{"id":82077,"date":"2016-10-31T12:00:30","date_gmt":"2016-10-31T12:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=82077"},"modified":"2018-10-13T11:21:23","modified_gmt":"2018-10-13T10:21:23","slug":"gorbachev-appeals-for-sanity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/10\/gorbachev-appeals-for-sanity\/","title":{"rendered":"[Nobel Peace Laureate] Gorbachev Appeals for Sanity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"John<\/a>Gorbachev’s Call for Sanity and Dialogue<\/em><\/p>\n

28 Oct 2016 – <\/em>President Mikhail Gorbachev, former leader of the Soviet Union and recipient of the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize, has appealed to world leaders to reduce the dangerous the tensions which today threaten to plunge human civilization and the biosphere into an all-destroying nuclear war.<\/p>\n

In an October 10 interview with RIA Novosti, Gorbachev said: \u201cI think the world has reached a dangerous point, I don’t want to give any concrete prescriptions, but I do want to say that this needs to stop. We need to renew dialogue. Stopping it was the biggest mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is necessary to return to the main priorities. These are nuclear disarmament, the fight against terrorism, the prevention of an environmental disaster,\u201d he continued. \u201cCompared to these challenges, all the rest slips into the background.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later the same day, in Iceland, President Gorbachev said : \u201cThe worst thing that has happened in recent years is the collapse of trust in relations between major powers, The window to a nuclear weapon-free world…is being shut and sealed right before our eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs long as nuclear weapons exist, there is a danger that someday they will be used as a result either of accident or technical failure or of evil intent of man, an insane person or terrorist,\u201d Gorbachev said.<\/p>\n

Alyn Ware Agrees<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alyn Ware, the International Coordinator of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, commented:<\/p>\n

\u201cI would concur with the assessment of Gorbachev.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been at the UN General Assembly October sessions (Disarmament and International Security) every year since 1988. This year was the most acrimonious I have ever seen. The tensions between Russia and NATO\/Ukraine\/US spilled over into the deliberations with accusations and counter accusations flying in many of the sessions. And these were not the only tensions.. Syria\/Yemen\/Middle East, India\/Pakistan and North Korea v South Korea\/Japan\/USA were also vitriolic towards each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"gorbachev\"<\/a>

President Mikhail Gorbachev<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cTension reduction, confidence building and diplomacy are vital at this time\u201d, Alyn Ware continued,\u00a0 \u201cWithout this, disarmament is unlikely to occur and further armed conflict is very likely.\u201d<\/p>\n

The New UN Secretary General<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hope that the current extremely dangerous tensions can be reduced comes from the appointment of former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres as the new UN Secretary General. The Security Council was united in making this appointment, thus giving us hope for better cooperation in the future.<\/p>\n

In an interview with the BBC, Mr. Guterres said that ending the conflict in Syria would be one of his greatest challenges. \u201cI believe it is the international community’s first priority is to be able to end this conflict and use this momentum created by it to try to address all the other conflicts that are interlinked,\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope people will understand that it’s better to put aside different opinions, different interests and to understand that there is a common, vital interest to put an end to these conflicts, because that is absolutely central if you want to live in a world where a minimum of securities are established, where people can live a normal life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Nuclear War Would Be a Catastrophe<\/strong><\/p>\n

The danger of a catastrophic nuclear war casts a dark shadow over the future of our species. It also casts a very black shadow over the future of the global environment.<\/p>\n

The environmental consequences of a massive exchange of nuclear weapons have been treated in a number of studies by meteorologists and other experts from both East and West. They predict that a large-scale use of nuclear weapons would result in fire storms with very high winds and high temperatures, which would burn a large proportion of the wild land fuels in the affected nations. The resulting smoke and dust would block out sunlight for a period of many months, at first only in the northern hemisphere but later also in the southern hemisphere.<\/p>\n

Temperatures in many places would fall far below freezing, and much of the earths plant life would be killed. Animals and humans would then die of starvation.<\/p>\n

Professor Bernard Lowen of the Harvard School of Public Health, one of the founders of IPPNW, said in a recent speech: \u201c…No public health hazard ever faced by humankind equals the threat of nuclear war. Never before has man possessed the destructive resources to make this planet uninhabitable… Modern medicine has nothing to offer, not even a token benefit, in the event of nuclear war…\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are but transient passengers on this planet Earth. It does not belong to us. We are not free to doom generations yet unborn. We are not at liberty to erase humanity\u2019s past or dim its future. Social systems do not endure for eternity. Only life can lay claim to uninterrupted continuity. This continuity is sacred.\u201d<\/p>\n

________________________________________<\/p>\n

John Scales Avery, Ph.D., <\/em>who was part of a group that shared the 1995<\/em><\/strong> Nobel Peace Prize<\/em><\/strong> for their work in organizing the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network<\/a> and Associate Professor Emeritus at the H.C. \u00d8rsted Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is chairman of both the Danish National Pugwash Group and the Danish Peace Academy and<\/em> received his training in theoretical physics and theoretical chemistry at M.I.T., the University of Chicago and the University of London. He is the author of numerous books and articles both on scientific topics and on broader social questions. His most recent book is\u00a0<\/em>Civilization’s Crisis in the 21st Century<\/a> (pdf).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

28 Oct 2016 – President Mikhail Gorbachev, former leader of the Soviet Union and recipient of the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize, has appealed to world leaders to reduce the dangerous the tensions which today threaten to plunge human civilization and the biosphere into an all-destroying nuclear war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nobel-laureates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82077\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}