Brookline denuclearization resolution
http://brookline.wickedlocal.com/news/20180630/brookline-adds-its-voice-to-denuclearization-effort
Brookline adds its voice to denuclearization effort
HIDE CAPTION
Town Meeting members Edward Loechler and Cornelia van der Ziel co-authored and presented a nuclear disarmament resolution in May. Jacqueline Yi Zhou/BU News Service
By Alice Ferre / brookling@wickedlocal.com
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Posted at 6:28 AM
Brookline Town Meeting members recently considered an issue outside of the usual budget and real estate talks: national denuclearization.
Town Meeting members Edward Loechler and Cornelia van der Ziel submitted the warrant article, which calls “for the United States to ‘pull back from the brink’ and prevent nuclear war — an existential threat to the future of humanity and the planet.”
With the resolution, which passed 167 to 2 on May 29, Brookline joined other municipalities such as Newton, Cambridge and Boston in taking a stance on nuclear disarmament.
The resolution, van der Ziel said, aims to “eventually rid the world of nuclear weapons.”
The warrant’s proposed actions include “taking the U.S. nuclear weapons off ‘hair-trigger’ alert” and working “toward the objective of signing the July 7, 2017 U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.”
Van der Ziel, a retired physician, has been working on nuclear disarmament since the 1980s with Physicians for Social Responsibility, a nationwide nonprofit that mobilizes against environmental and public health threats.
“It is an effort to begin/continue a national conversation about the negative aspects of nuclear weapons proliferation and the build bipartisan support across the U.S. for this effort,” van der Ziel said.
Loechler, a biology professor at Boston University who co-authored the resolution, said nuclear threats and climate change are “the two major crises of our time.
“Nuclear weapon, nuclear war, nuclear terrorism, nuclear accidents,” he said. “That has the potential to reshape the world very quickly and very dramatically.”
The threat of human error
Loechler said planned nuclear strikes are not the only concern. Incidents in Hawaii last January and in South Dakota 53 years ago are examples that the threat also resides in human errors or flaws in launching systems.
At an Air Force base near Rapid City, South Dakota, a short circuit led the thermonuclear warhead of a missile to “pop off,” as the Rapid City Journal reported in November 2017. The warhead was sent “on a 75-foot fall to the bottom of the 80-foot-deep silo.”
“It wasn’t clear that the missile wouldn’t accidentally fire on its own because the people who were supposed to be in charge have lost control,” Loechler said.
After an explosion, set aside the fatal or long-term health effects of radioactive contamination, clouds of debris could blanket the earth, Loechler said, creating what is called a “nuclear winter” — significant drops in temperature leading to dramatic decrease in food resources.
A new urgency
The Trump administration’s aggressive stance on nuclear build-up and use accentuated “the urgency for acting on this resolution now,” the advisory committee that reviewed the warrant reported, and was one motive for those who voted in favor.
Michael Burstein, a Town Meeting member since 2001, said he voted in favor of it and was “happy” to do so, as he is “particularly concerned about nuclear weapons during this current presidency.”
This was not the first time Brookline Town Meeting tackled big picture issues.
“Withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan, divesting State pensions funds from fossil fuels to name a few,” van der Ziel said.
Brookline resident Anthony Petro said he thought the resolution was a good idea.
“I will definitely support that,” he said.
Rebecca Arce, who also lives in Brookline, questioned the resolution’s efficiency.
“How much power can Brookline have to impose this on the whole country?” she said. “It is a nice concept, but it is not very plausible.”
Arce suggested to start asking for the denuclearization of some zones of the country instead.
Loechler said he remained realistic about Brookline’s reach on the issue, conceding the town’s resolution “isn’t going to change the world.”
“But the key thing is that the more people who understand and appreciate the gravity of the situation — and speak out and try to oppose the promulgation of these weapons — the more likely it is that we’ll be moving in the right direction,” he said.
The warrant instructs the town clerk to send the resolution to U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy, III, senators Elizabeth Warren and Edward J. Markey, and President Donald Trump.
Van der Ziel said “there are many efforts underway in the country to further the effort to eventually declare nuclear weapons illegal.”
For instance, Mayors for Peace, a non-profit fighting nuclear proliferation founded by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1982, gained allies in 213 cities in the United States, including Cambridge since 2002 and Boston since 2005.
Alice Ferré is a Boston University journalism student writing as part of a collaboration between the Brookline Tab and BU News Service.
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