Earth Day Address
This Earth Day, 50 years after its founding as a day of education about environmental issues, is a good time to reflect on the world and climate security in a time of pandemic.
On the Climate Action front, we must commend youth for their emerging role and activism, starting with Severn Cullis-Suzuki and more recently Greta Thunberg along with many others around the globe who are shining a light on, and demanding real action to resolve climate concerns for the future of the planet.
Physicians, medical students and health care professionals have been concerned for decades about the global health crisis that would be triggered by nuclear war. There is no doubt that the threat of nuclear war is the most pressing environmental risk on the planet today. The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that: “Nuclear weapons constitute the greatest immediate threat to the health and welfare of mankind”.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how global health disruption affects us all. Imagine the immediate and long-term catastrophic medical consequences of nuclear war, which knows no boundaries, and the added global impacts on climate and food supplies brought about by detonation of even a mere fraction of the global stockpile of nuclear weapons.
This year you can still be active as an environmental campaigner from your home during COVID-19 physical distancing and isolation.
The Youth Initiative — Youth Empowerment to Prevent Extinction (YEPE), a project of IPPNW, PEAC Institute and PSR will have their World Conference & Mobilization – Abolish Nuclear Weapons; Resist and Reverse the Climate Crisis; For Social and Economic Justice via video conference April 25, 2020 9am EDT. Join the livestream or watch the video later.
Sign the petition for a global ceasefire as presented by UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres through World Beyond War.
Commission for the Human Future, a civil society initiative which calls for all nations to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), the only current global initiative for nuclear weapons abolition.
Visit ICAN to see what you can do to support the TPNW in your area.
Jonathan Down, MB., BS., MHSc., FRCPC.
President, IPPNW Canada
