Three major threats to life on Earth that we must face in 2021

                                                                                    Here's What Will Happen in a Nuclear War

Three major threats to life on Earth that we must face in 2021 

 By Noam Chomsky, Vijay Prashad: Large parts of the world - outside of China and a few other countries - face a rampant virus, which has not been stopped due to criminal incompetence of governments. 

The fact that these governments in wealthy countries hypocritically disregard basic scientific protocols published by the World Health Organization and scientific organizations reveals their malicious practice. Anything other than focusing attention on managing the virus through testing, contact traceability, and isolation — and if that's not enough, imposing temporary confinement — is unwise. Equally disturbing is that these rich countries have pursued a policy of "vaccine nationalism", hoarding vaccine candidates rather than aligning themselves with a policy of creating a "people's vaccine." For the good of humanity, it would be prudent to suspend intellectual property rules and develop a procedure to create universal vaccines for all peoples. 

Although the pandemic is the main topic on our minds, there are other great threats to the longevity of our species and the planet. These include: 

 Nuclear annihilation. In January 2020, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the 2020 Doomsday Clock at 100 seconds to midnight, too close for comfort. The clock, created two years after the first atomic weapons were developed in 1945, is evaluated annually by the Bulletin's Science and Safety Council, in consultation with its Council of Sponsors, who decide whether to move the minute hand or leave it in the same place. . By the time the time is set again, we are likely to be closer to annihilation. The already limited arms control treaties are being destroyed, while the major powers possess about 13,500 nuclear weapons (more than 90% of which are only in the hands of Russia and the United States). The performance of these weapons could easily make this planet even more uninhabitable. The US Navy has already deployed low-performance W76-2 tactical nuclear warheads. Hiroshima Day, commemorated every August 6, must become a more important day of reflection and protest.

 Aline Amaru (Tahiti), La Famille Pomare, 1991. 

  Aline Amaru (Tahiti), La Famille Pomare [The Pomare Family], 1991. 

                                                                                  Climate Catastrophe Facing Earth

 Climate catastrophe. In 2018, a scientific article appeared with a shocking title: "Most atolls will be uninhabitable by the middle of the 21st century as rising sea levels will increase flooding caused by storm surge." The authors concluded that the atolls from the Seychelles to the Marshall Islands are in danger of disappearing. A 2019 UN report estimated that one million animal and plant species are in danger of extinction. To this must be added the catastrophic forest fires and the serious bleaching of coral reefs and it is clear that we no longer need to stay in clichés that one thing or another is the canary in the mine of climate catastrophe: the danger is not in the future, but in the present. It is essential that the great powers - which continue to fail to stop using fossil fuels - commit to the approach of "common but differentiated responsibilities" of the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Declaration on Environment and Development. It is decisive that countries like Jamaica and Mongolia have updated their climate plans in front of the United Nations before the end of 2020, as required by the Paris Agreement, despite the fact that these countries produce a minuscule fraction of global carbon emissions. The funds that were promised to developing countries for their participation in the process have practically evaporated, while the external debt has increased exponentially. This shows a basic lack of seriousness on the part of the “international community”.

                                                                                  Society Against Neoliberal Terrorism

Neoliberal destruction of the social contract. The countries of North America and Europe have gutted their public function as the state has been handed over to speculators and civil society has been commodified via private foundations. This means that the paths of social transformation in these parts of the world have been grotesquely hampered. The terrible social inequality is the result of the relative political weakness of the working class. It is this weakness that allows billionaires to set policies that cause hunger rates to rise. Countries should not be judged by the words written in their constitutions, but by their annual budgets. The United States, for example, spends almost a trillion dollars (if the estimated intelligence budget is added) on its war machine, while it spends only a fraction on public goods and services (such as health care, something evident during the pandemic). Western countries' foreign policy appears to be well lubricated by arms deals: the Arab Emirates and Morocco agreed to recognize Israel on the condition that they can buy $ 23 billion and $ 1 billion worth of US-made weapons, respectively. The rights of the Palestinian, Sahrawi and Yemeni people did not matter for these agreements. The use of illegal sanctions by the United States against thirty countries, including Cuba, Iran and Venezuela, has become part of normal life, even during this global public health crisis triggered by the pandemic. It is a failure of the political system that the populations in the capitalist bloc are unable to compel their governments - which in many cases are democracies only on paper - to adopt a global perspective in the face of this emergency. Rising hunger rates reveal that the struggle to survive is on the horizon for billions of people on the planet (all this while China succeeds in eradicating absolute poverty and largely eliminating hunger).

 Nuclear annihilation and extinction due to climate catastrophe are twin threats to the planet. Meanwhile, for the victims of the neoliberal attack that has plagued the last generation, short-term problems in sustaining their own existence displace fundamental questions about the fate of our children and grandchildren. 

 Global problems on this scale require global cooperation. Pressured by Third World countries in the 1960s, the great powers accepted the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (1968), although they rejected the deeply important Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order (1974). There is no longer the correlation of forces to promote this type of class agenda on the international stage. Certain political dynamics in Western countries, in particular, but also in large states of the developing world (such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, and South Africa), are necessary to change the character of their governments. A robust internationalism is needed to pay adequate and immediate attention to the dangers of extinction: extinction by nuclear war, by climate catastrophe, and by social collapse. The tasks ahead are overwhelming and cannot be put off. 

 Source: https://www.thetricontinental.org/es/newsletterissue/1-noam-chomsky/