Climate Action and Nuclear Disarmament United (CANDU)

All Issues

Climate Action and Nuclear Disarmament United (CANDU) is a priority campaign of Massachusetts Peace Action.

Our Mission

The Climate Action and Nuclear Disarmament United (CANDU) Campaign, one of MAPA’s priority campaigns, is dedicated to linking the climate and nuclear abolitionist movements in an effort to launch a novel mass movement devoted to addressing what are ever-increasing and intimately linked existential threats — nuclear weapons and climate change — in tandem. Our strategies include conducting public outreach with educational purposes, passing relevant legislation at the state and national levels, and promoting divestment from nuclear weapons and the reallocation of these funds to the implementation of clean energy and other climate solutions. It is our firm belief that these threats will continue to compete for our attention until we can begin addressing them together with equal urgency.

Issues Background

We refer to nuclear weapons and climate change as the “twin existential threats” for a reason. Both issues are in a way “competing” for the extinction of humankind — they both have the ability to destroy life as we know it by causing extensive loss of human life as well as the annihilation of environments essential to survival. Primarily because of these two threats, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved their iconic Doomsday Clock from 100 seconds to midnight to only 90 seconds — the closest to the global apocalypse we have ever been. These two threats, with their anthropogenic origins, are also deeply interlinked as causal variables of each other; the persistence of one threat fuels the potential catastrophe of the other. Ultimately, these threats are intimately connected in their mutually destructive influence, ability to incite total climate meltdown, and funding. As such, we contend that climate change and nuclear weapons must be addressed hand-in-hand before either one can be effectively addressed.

Mutually Destructive Influence: Each threat contributes to the causes of the other. Climate change increases the risk and magnitude of conflicts across the globe. Any increase in or intensification of conflict inherently increases the risk of nuclear war. In the same vein, the production of nuclear weapons (their extraction, construction, and testing) and its associated militarism contribute to climate change via excessive greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, and other military activities that harm the environment.

Conflict to Climate Meltdown: A prominent fear is that climate change and its trail of destruction will incite nuclear warfare. The consequences of the deployment of today’s nuclear weapons would go far beyond those witnessed in 1945. Even a limited exchange of these weapons would result in a massive firestorm that would obstruct sunlight. Global warming would then revert to a nuclear winter that would cause the planet’s vegetation as well as crops and harvests to fail, instigating mass famine and loss of human life.

Linked Funding & Focus: The financiers of one threat are often also financiers of the other. Some of the biggest financial institutions investing in the fossil fuel industry are also helping fund the production of nuclear weapons.These include JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Black Rock, among others. They will continue to profit from causing immense environmental and humanitarian destruction until they are stopped.

Get Involved

WE NEED YOUR HELP! If you would like to become part of the support group of the campaign please sign up at https://masspeace.us/CANDU or scan this QR code:

Other Ways to Contribute:

Massachusetts Residents, support local bills aimed at addressing nuclear weapons and climate change in the Commonwealth and at the national level with this online action: Urge your State Legislators to support the Citizens Commission and Back from the Brink Bills

Not a Massachusetts Resident? Support federal legislation targeting nuclear weapons and climate change with this online action: Tell Congress: US Must Fight Climate Change and Nuclear Weapons