The Climate-Nuclear Nexus

Abstract

While humanity faces a range of interconnected transnational threats and crises in the 21st Century—including extreme poverty, hunger, pandemic disease and demographic change—climate change and the continued existence of nuclear weapons stand out as the two principal threats to the survival of humanity. On the long arc of human existence, both threats are relatively new to the scene, having only appeared over the last century. Both threaten the survival of life on earth as we know it and both are of our making.

The original report was released in November 2015, in time for the Paris Climate Change Conference. It was updated in April 2016 to reflect the outcomes of that conference as well as include updates on climate change litigation.