Sixty years after philosopher Bertrand Russell and physicist Albert Einstein convened a group of leading intellectuals in London to draft and sign a manifesto in which they
highlighted the perils posed by nuclear weapons, this generation’s forward-looking thinkers have released an updated version of the document—one that puts the looming climate crisis on par with the threat of nukes and calls for ”
the creation of a new sustainable civilization on a global scale.”
The Declaration on the 60th Anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, published Thursday, reads in full:
In view of the growing risk that in future wars weapons, nuclear and otherwise, will be employed that threaten the continued existence of humanity, we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.
We also propose that all governments of the world begin to convert those resources previously allocated to preparations for destructive conflict to a new constructive purpose: the mitigation of climate change and the creation of a new sustainable civilization on a global scale.
The declaration has been published in the form of a petition that anyone can sign. The effort is being coordinated by Foreign Policy in Focus, the Asia Institute, and World Beyond War.
Among the first to sign onto the document are: political theorist Noam Chomsky; environmentalist and anti-capitalist Naomi Klein; CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou; former NSA technical director William Binney; and anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott, who said in a statement: “It was the Russell-Einstein manifesto on the threat of nuclear war 60 years ago that started me upon my journey to try to abolish nuclear weapons.”
Justifying his reason for signing onto the updated manifesto, Chomsky wrote: