Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe

"Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe" is a focused discussion on the existential threats of our time, and their points of intersection since World War II. Both nuclear war and environmental catastrophe have the potential for similar outcomes: a... Read more

"Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe" is a focused discussion on the existential threats of our time, and their points of intersection since World War II. Both nuclear war and environmental catastrophe have the potential for similar outcomes: a world made uninhabitable by the scarcity of water, food and livable land.
While a nuclear strike would require action, environmental catastrophe is partially defined by willful inaction in response to human-induced climate change. This short book, a series of interviews with Noam Chomsky by Laray Polk, exposes the economic matrix of dominant countries and the failure of the US to act in the face of exhaustive evidence. Denial of the facts is only half the equation, other factors contributing to degradation of the environment include extreme techniques for the extraction of remaining carbon deposits, the elimination of agricultural land for biofuel and the construction of dams, and the destruction of forests that are crucial carbon sequestration.
On the subject of current nuclear tensions, Chomsky revisits the long-established option of a
nuclear-weapon-free zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East, a proposal set in motion through a joint
Egyptian-Iranian General Assembly resolution in 1974.
This book serves as a warning that further postponement of nuclear disarmament and the productive search for sustainable energy will condemn the human species to catastrophic conditions in the very near future. Less