By World BEYOND War, April 28, 2024
Please join our allies at ICAN for this global week of action “No Money for Nuclear Weapons” from June 17-23. Details below!
There are 80 billion other things money could buy
Nuclear weapons programmes divert public funds from health care, education, disaster relief and other vital services. The nuclear-armed countries spend more than $150,000 per minute on their nuclear bombs, over $80 billion each year. This week of action is a clarion call to stop wasting money on nuclear weapons.
One year of nuclear weapons spending could…
- Convert more than 16.5 million homes to solar power
- Secure a year of clean water & sanitation for 1.2 billion people
- Hire 1.5 million high school science teachers
- Vaccinate 2 billion people against coronavirus
- Pay for ⅓ of the costs for climate change adaptation in developing countries
Everyone is talking about nuclear weapons right now- from Oppenheimer to Fallout- and we want to make sure that we talk about all the things nuclear weapons are keeping us from doing-
What would you do with 80 billion?
Join us (sign up here) for this week of action 17- 23 June, 2024 – No Money for Nuclear Weapons!
For more information, contact Susi Snyder susi@icanw.org
Background:
Nuclear weapons programmes divert public funds from health care, education, disaster relief and other vital services. Nuclear weapons are the only devices ever created that have the capacity to destroy all complex life forms on Earth. It would take less than 0.1% of the explosive yield of the current global nuclear arsenal to bring about devastating agricultural collapse and widespread famine. Nuclear-armed states’ decision to divert public resources from health care to weapons of mass destruction is unconscionable. Nuclear weapons produce health consequences that span generations. No meaningful disaster relief is possible even to those who survive the immediate nuclear blast.
ICAN is the only organisation that puts out the true costs of nuclear weapons. Our figure was cited by Brazil’s President Lula at his UN General Assembly speech in September when he said “Expenditure on nuclear weapons reached 83 billion dollars, a value twenty times higher than the regular UN budget.”
