[ Although the pandemic is the principal issue on all of our
minds, other major issues threaten the longevity of our species and of
our planet. ] [[link removed]]

THREE MAJOR THREATS TO LIFE ON EARTH THAT WE MUST ADDRESS IN 2021  
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Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad
January 6, 2021
Counterpunch
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_ Although the pandemic is the principal issue on all of our minds,
other major issues threaten the longevity of our species and of our
planet. _

, Credit: kwest/Shutterstock.com

 

Large parts of the world—outside of China and a few other
countries—face a runaway virus, which has not been stopped because
of criminal incompetence by governments. That these governments in
wealthy countries cynically set aside the basic scientific
protocols released
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the World Health Organization and by scientific organizations reveals
their malicious practice. Anything less than focused attention to
managing the virus by testing, contact tracing, and isolation—and if
this does not suffice, then imposing a temporary lockdown—is
foolhardy. It is equally distressing that these richer countries have
pursued a policy of “vaccine nationalism
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by stockpiling vaccine candidates rather than a policy for the
creation of a “people’s vaccine
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For the sake of humanity, it would be prudent to suspend intellectual
property rules and develop a procedure to create universal vaccines
for all people.

Although the pandemic is the principal issue on all of our minds,
other major issues threaten the longevity of our species and of our
planet. These include:

NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION

In January 2020, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set
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Doomsday Clock to 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
Security Board, who decide whether to move the minute hand or keep it
in place. By the time they set the clock again, it may well be closer
to annihilation. Already limited arms control treaties are being
shredded as the major powers sit
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close to 13,500 nuclear weapons (more than 90 percent of which are
held by Russia and the United States alone). The yield of these
weapons could easily make this planet even more uninhabitable. The
United States Navy has already deployed
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tactical W76-2 nuclear warheads. Immediate moves toward nuclear
disarmament must be forced onto the world’s agenda. Hiroshima Day,
commemorated each year on August 6, must become a more robust day of
contemplation and protest.

CLIMATE CATASTROPHE

A scientific paper
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in 2018 came with a startling headline: “Most atolls will be
uninhabitable by the mid-21st century because of sea-level rise
exacerbating wave-driven flooding.” The authors found that atolls
from the Seychelles to the Marshall Islands are liable to vanish. A
2019 United Nations (UN) report
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that 1 million animal and plant species are threatened with
extinction. Add to this the catastrophic wildfires and the severe
bleaching of the coral reefs
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it is clear that we no longer need to linger over clichés about one
thing or another being a canary in the coal mine of climate
catastrophe; the danger is not in the future, but in the present. It
is essential for major powers—who utterly fail to shift from fossil
fuels—to commit to the “common but differentiated
responsibilities” approach established at the 1992 UN Conference on
Environment and Development
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Rio de Janeiro. It is telling that countries such as Jamaica and
Mongolia updated
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climate plans to the UN before the end of 2020—as mandated by the
Paris Agreement—even though these countries produce a tiny fraction
of global carbon emissions. The funds that were committed to
developing countries for their participation in the process have
virtually dried up while external debt has ballooned. This shows a
lack of basic seriousness from the “international community.”

NEOLIBERAL DESTRUCTION OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

Countries in North America and Europe have eviscerated their public
function as the state has been turned over to the profiteers and civil
society has been commodified by private foundations. This means that
the avenues for social transformation in these parts of the world have
been grotesquely hampered. Terrible social inequality is the result of
the relative political weakness of the working class. It is this
weakness that enables the 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 U.S.,
for example, spends almost $1 trillion
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you add the estimated intelligence budget) on its war machine, while
it spends a fraction of this on the public good (such as on health
care, something evident during the pandemic). The foreign policies of
Western countries seem to be well lubricated by arms deals: the United
Arab Emirates and Morocco agreed
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recognize Israel on the condition that they could purchase $23 billion
and $1 billion worth of U.S.-made weapons, respectively. The rights of
the Palestinians, the Sahrawi, and the Yemeni people did not factor
into these deals. The use of illegal sanctions by the United States
against 30 countries including Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela has become a
normal part of life, even during the COVID-19 public health crisis. It
is a failure of the political system when the populations in the
capitalist bloc are unable to force their governments—which are in
many ways democratic in name only—to take a global perspective
regarding this emergency. Rising rates of hunger reveal that the
struggle for survival is the horizon for billions of people on the
planet (all this while China is able to eradicate
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poverty and largely eliminate
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Nuclear annihilation and extinction by climate catastrophe are twin
threats to the planet. Meanwhile, for victims of the neoliberal
assault that has plagued the past generation, the short-term problems
of sustaining their mere existence displace fundamental questions
about the fate of our children and grandchildren.

Global problems of this scale require global cooperation. Pressured by
the Third World states in the 1960s, the major powers agreed to
the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
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1968, although they rejected the deeply important Declaration on the
Establishment of a New International Economic Order of 1974
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The balance of forces available to drive such a class agenda on the
international stage is no longer there; political dynamics in the
countries of the West, in particular, but also in the larger states of
the developing world (such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, and South
Africa) are necessary to change the character of the governments. A
robust internationalism is necessary to pay adequate and immediate
attention to the perils of extinction: extinction by nuclear war, by
climate catastrophe, and by social collapse. The tasks ahead are
daunting, and they cannot be deferred.

_This article was produced by __Globetrotter_
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_Noam Chomsky is a legendary linguist, philosopher, and political
activist. He is the laureate professor of linguistics at the
University of Arizona. His most recent book is Climate Crisis and the
Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet
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Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a
writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is the
chief editor of LeftWord Books
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the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
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He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for
Financial Studies
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Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books,
including The Darker Nations
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Poorer Nations
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His latest book is Washington Bullets
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with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma._  

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