As a fellow Sierra Club member, I urge you to watch the award-winning film, A House of Dynamite. It depicts an all too real scenario, in which U.S. leaders realize that the country is being attacked with a nuclear weapon that could escalate to full scale nuclear war. It is an engaging film that shows the confusion and chaos that goes with a situation where the world is moving toward the brink of a nuclear war.  Most importantly, the film offers a real opportunity to talk about nuclear weapons and what can and needs to be done to reduce the risk of nuclear war. 

 

 

Here is a link to a clip from Back from the Brink about the film — A House of Dynamite | Nuclear Disarmament Campaigner Reacts (Spoiler Alert). The film can be accessed through Netflix. 

 

Sierra Club has endorsed the Back from the Brink congressional resolution that calls for taking us away from the very  dangerous situation the world is facing with nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert around the world. It is urgent that we rebuild the movement we had in the 1980s , where one million people marched in New York City in response to the planet threatening nuclear weapon build up at the time.  Stopping nuclear winter (which would result in global famine and the collapse of civilization) goes hand in hand with stopping accelerated climate change. (If you are not aware of what nuclear winter is, please take the time to educate yourself about it.)

 

You can find out more about how you can help to build a movement to move the world away from the brink and eliminate nuclear weapons by going to Back from the Brink. Please call our  two U.S. senators in support of S. Res. 323, bringing the world back from the brink of nuclear war and halting the nuclear arms race. You can reach their offices through the capital switchboard at 202-224-3121.

 

A Summary of the Resolution

S. Res. 323 and H. Res. 317- Urging the United States to lead the world back from the brink of

nuclear war and halt and reverse the nuclear arms race.

 

These companion resolutions call for:

 

• Actively pursue a world free of nuclear weapons as a national security imperative

• Engaging in good faith negotiations with the other nuclear armed states to halt any further buildup of nuclear arsenals and to aggressively pursue a verifiable and irreversible agreement or agreements to verifiably reduce and eliminate their nuclear arsenals

• Leading the effort to have all nuclear-armed states renounce the option of using nuclear weapons first

• Implementing effective checks and balances on the Commander in Chief’s sole authority to order the use of United States nuclear weapons

• Ending the Cold War-era “hair-trigger alert” posture, which increases the risk of catastrophic miscalculation in a crisis

• Ending plans to produce and deploy new nuclear warheads and delivery systems, which  would reduce the burden on United States taxpayers

• Maintaining the de facto global moratorium on nuclear explosive testing

• Protecting communities and workers affected by nuclear weapons by fully remediating the deadly legacy of environmental contamination from past and current nuclear weapons testing, development, production, storage, and maintenance activities, and by providing health monitoring, compensation, and medical care to those who have and will be harmed by nuclear weapons research, testing, and production.

• Actively planning a just economic transition for the civilian and military workforce involved in the development, testing, production, management, and dismantlement of nuclear weapons and for the communities that are economically dependent on nuclear weapons laboratories, production facilities, and military bases.

 

Joe Wasserman is a Sierra Club member.