UCL / High energy physics
The translation of this testimony was generated automatically by a translation program. Thanks for your understanding.
I work in physics on fundamental interactions. I taught and did research mainly at the Université Catholique de Louvain and before that at Cornell University (Ithaca, NY) and Cinvestav (Mexico). For more than 50 years, I have been campaigning against the threat of nuclear weapons, against war. It is in this perspective that, for the past ten years or so, I have been concerned by the pressing global threat of global warming. The “Bulletin of Atomic Scientists” develops the same approach.
The theme of the Western military industrial complex is almost never addressed in the issue of global warming, while it is an essential part of the problem for the reasons below.
Why is the fight for climate change closely linked to the fight against NATO and the wars waged by the United States and its allies?
(1) Over the past 30 years, the wars waged by the United States and its allies have been directly or indirectly the most aggressive forms of defence and development of fossil fuels (oil and gas)
(2) The military budgets of the United States and its allies are by far the majority in the military budgets of countries around the world. NATO countries’ military budgets amount to more than $900 billion, directed towards the large-scale destruction of human beings and the planet. Its hundreds of billions of dollars should be redirected towards the sustainable development of the planet.
(3) The military industrial complex of NATO countries directs scientific research towards the military applications of (massive) destruction and has an enormous influence on the orientations of civilian scientific research, particularly with regard to the search for alternative energies to fossil fuels. Moreover, it is this military-industrial complex of NATO countries that is by far the first instigator of the arms race.
(4) NATO armies are the visible armed arm that allows the invisible hand of the multinational market to impose its dictatorship, in particular by preventing the sustainable development of the planet.
Originally posted 2019-03-16 13:47:26.