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NUCLEAR FAMINE REPORT: LIMITED NUCLEAR EXCHANGE IN ONE OF WORLD’S REGIONS WOULD
TRIGGER MASS GLOBAL STARVATION AFTER SLASHING CHINESE, U.S. FOOD PRODUCTION
Amidst Growing Tensions in Asia, India-Pakistan Confrontation Used to Show Dire
Consequences Around the Globe; More Than A Billion People Would be at Risk Under
“Nuclear Famine” Scenario.
CHICAGO, IL.///April 25, 2012///More than a billion people around the world would
face starvation following a limited regional nuclear weapons exchange (such as a
clash between India and Pakistan) that would cause major worldwide climate
disruption driving down food production in China, the U.S. and other nations,
according to a major new report released today by International Physicians for the
Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and its US affiliate, Physicians for Social
Responsibility (PSR).
Dr. Ira Helfand, the author of “Nuclear Famine: A Billion People at Risk—Global
Impacts of Limited Nuclear War on Agriculture, Food Supplies, and Human Nutrition,”
said: “The grim prospect of nuclear famine requires a fundamental change in our
thinking about nuclear weapons. The new evidence that even the relatively small
nuclear arsenals of countries such as India and Pakistan could cause long lasting,
global damage to the Earth’s ecosystems and threaten hundreds of millions of already
malnourished people demands that action be taken. The needless and preventable
deaths of one billion people over a decade would be a disaster unprecedented in
human history. It would not cause the extinction of the human race, but it would
bring an end to modern civilization as we know it.”
The findings and the methodology on which the study is based will be published in a
forthcoming issue of the peer-reviewed journal Climatic Change. Released during the
World Summit of Nobel Laureates in Chicago April 23-25, 2012, the Helfand report was
made possible with the financial support of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign
Affairs.
Among the specific findings outlined in the report:
* Corn production in the US would decline by an average of 10 percent for an entire
decade, with the most severe decline (20 percent) in Year 5. Soybean production
would decline by about 7 percent, with the most severe loss, more than 20 percent,
in Year 5.
* There would be a significant decline in middle-season rice production in China.
During the first four years, rice production would decline by an average of 21
percent; over the next six years the decline would average 10 percent.
* Resulting increases in food prices would make food inaccessible to hundreds of
millions of the world’s poorest. Even if agricultural markets continued to function
normally, 215 million people would be added to the rolls of the malnourished over
the course of a decade. The 925 million people in the world who are already
chronically malnourished (with a baseline consumption of 1,750 calories or less per
day), would be put at risk by a further 10 percent decline in their food
consumption.
* Significant agricultural shortfalls over an extended period would almost certainly
lead to panic and hoarding on an international scale, further reducing accessible
food.
The IPPNW/PSR report concludes: “There is an urgent need to reduce the reliance on
nuclear weapons by all nuclear weapons states and to move with all possible speed to
the negotiation of a nuclear weapons convention that will ban these weapons
completely.”
Commenting on the report, Ambassador Jayantha Dhanapala, president of the Pugwash
Conferences on Science and World Affairs, a member of the governing board of The
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and the former UN Under Secretary General of
Disarmament Affairs, said: “Scientific evidence continues to confirm empirically
what we already know - that nuclear weapons are the most destructive weapon of mass
destruction ever invented with unrivaled genetic and ecological effects. And yet,
unlike biological and chemical weapons, they have not been outlawed because of
vested interests. Nine countries have 20,530 nuclear warheads among them 95 percent
with the US and Russia. As long as these weapons exist others, including terrorists,
will want them. As long as we have nuclear weapons their use by intention or
accident; by states or by non-state actors is inevitable. Their total elimination
through a Nuclear Weapons Convention is therefore the only solution."
Former Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the founding chairman, Green Cross
International, said: "I am convinced that nuclear weapons must be abolished. Their
use in a military conflict is unthinkable; using them to achieve political
objectives is immoral. Over twenty-five years ago, President Ronald Reagan and I
ended our summit meeting in Geneva with a joint statement that 'nuclear war cannot
be won and must never be fought,' and this new study underscores in stunning and
disturbing detail why this is the case and why we must discard Cold War-style plans
for the possible use of these weapons and move rapidly to eliminating them from the
world's arsenals."
Dr. Helfand is the North American vice president of the International Physicians for
the Prevention of Nuclear War and a past president of Physicians for Social
Responsibility.
Working with data produced by scientists who have studied the climate effects of a
hypothetical nuclear war between India and Pakistan, Dr. Helfand and a team of
experts in agriculture and nutrition determined that plunging temperatures and
reduced precipitation in critical farming regions, caused by soot and smoke lofted
into the atmosphere by multiple nuclear explosions, would interfere with crop
production and affect food availability and prices worldwide.
ABOUT THE GROUPS
Physicians for Social Responsibility is the largest physician-led organization in
the U.S. working to prevent nuclear war and proliferation and to slow, stop and
reverse global warming without using expensive, unsafe nuclear power and toxic
degradation of the environment. PSR’s 50,000 health professionals and concerned
citizen members and e-activists, 30 PSR chapters, and 41 student PSR chapters at
medical and public health schools, along with national and chapter staff, form a
unique nationwide network committed to a safer and healthy world. For more
information, go to http://www.psr.org on the Web.
The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War is a non-partisan
federation of national medical organizations in 63 countries, representing tens of
thousands of doctors, medical students, other health workers, and concerned citizens
who share the common goal of creating a more peaceful and secure world freed from
the threat of nuclear annihilation. See http://www.ippnw.org on the Web.
CONTACT: Will Harwood, for PSR, +1 (703) 276-3255 or wharwood@hastingsgroup.com
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