The overwhelming sums of money being wasted on nuclear weapons every year should be spent on conserving our planet instead, argues a new report from my organization, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). We should take the money wasted on these bombs and missiles every single year and instead of setting ourselves up to cause more, possibly irrevocable and irreconcilable damage, clean up the legacy of harm already done and invest in restoring ecosystems and halting biodiversity loss. Nuclear weapons have already caused so much damage to our environment and they are the only devices ever created that have the capacity to destroy all complex life forms on Earth. Nuclear war would mean climate disruption with devastating consequences. The world would fall under a nuclear winter, be subject to a deadly global famine and exacerbated effects of global warming. But contrary to what some would like you to believe, their devastating impact is not just limited to a hypothetical post-apocalyptic hell, many of them are already being felt today. Nuclear missile test at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, 2017. Image via Nuclear Threat Initiative. Throughout their entire cycle, nuclear weapons have left a devastating environmental legacy around the world: from uranium mining through fuel production at nuclear processing plants to the impacts of the thousands of nuclear tests over the decades. Nuclear weapons facilities have contaminated land and water with radioactive waste that can last many thousands of years. Efforts to clean up the sites have been…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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