By Wendy Greenberg
In the 46 years that the Princeton-based Coalition for Peace Action (CFPA) has gathered concerned citizens to commemorate the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the summer of 1945, the CFPA has advocated for nuclear disarmament through a variety of expert speakers and educational programs.
This year the Rev. Robert Moore, CFPA’s executive director, is particularly enthused because the speaker, Rutgers Professor Alan Robock, is the author of the recently published Earth in Flames: How an Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs and How We Can Avoid a Similar Fate From Nuclear Winter. The book, co-written with earth scientist Owen Brian Toon, addresses the environmental consequences of nuclear explosions where smoke would obliterate the sunlight and cause famine and climate cooling to the point where human beings could become extinct.
The program, “Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” will be held on Wednesday, August 5, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Princeton Public Library, which is partnering in the event. Registration is at princetonlibrary.libnet.info/event/16873679.
The CFPA website, peacecoalition.org, has a link to pre-purchase Robock’s book and have it signed at the event.
During the event, a moment of silence will be observed at 7:15 p.m. to coincide with the 8:15 a.m. dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, followed by a brief candlelight vigil with song, in memory of those who perished in the nuclear attacks.
The U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (on August 9, 1945) have been the only uses of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed, with horrific long-term aftereffects. The Japanese surrendered on August 15, 1945 to end World War II.
A leading expert on the climatic consequences of nuclear conflict, Robock is a distinguished professor of climate science in Rutgers University’s Department of Environmental Sciences School of Environment and Biological Sciences,
specializing in nuclear winter, geoengineering, and volcanic eruptions. A former Peace Corps volunteer, he has published over 500 articles; was a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, contributing to its 2007 Nobel Peace Prize; and winner of the 2022 Future of Life Award.
The book, according to a write-up by publisher Oxford University Press, tells how an asteroid hit the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago and debris from the impact “blew into space, re-entered the atmosphere as a swarm of shooting stars that burned the global forests and grasslands, leaving behind a thin global layer containing rock from the asteroid and from Mexico, and smoke from the fires.”
The result was the extinction of dinosaurs, and other species, due to loss of sunlight from absorption by the smoke and cold temperatures. A nuclear war “with just a few hundred of the world’s 12,000 nuclear weapons targeted on densely populated cities could plunge Earth into the same types of conditions that the dinosaurs experienced.”
Nuclear winter is the term for the climatic effects of nuclear war. The resulting cool, dark, dry conditions at Earth’s surface would prevent crop growth, resulting in mass starvation and massive ozone depletion, allowing enhanced ultraviolet radiation.
Moore, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and executive director of the CPFA since 1981, said he is excited about the book and its research.
“One of the top reasons he deserves to be heard is he was commissioned by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, an organization representing physicians worldwide advocating for nuclear disarmament, to study small nuclear weapons,” said Moore.
Moore added that Robock’s climate modeling reveals that even a limited regional nuclear war (using only a tiny fraction of the world’s arsenals) would block out the sun, destroy agriculture, and cause mass starvation for hundreds of millions to billions of people.
Moore called Robock’s pioneering work on nuclear winter and smaller weapons, “an underappreciated, or unappreciated aspect of nuclear danger. People are thinking about nuclear weapons on a larger scale, but damage can come from smaller weapons.
“The underappreciated, or unappreciated aspect is what happens when a huge amount of soot and pollution creates nuclear winter, blocks the sun, and kills crop production. It’s a very real danger. It’s sobering and threatens all of humanity.
“It’s one important reason people should come, to learn about the extinction level danger.”
In a May interview with Robock and his coauthor in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Robock said they wrote the book because they want “people to know that nuclear winter is a possibility after nuclear war. And we want to lower the probability of ever having a nuclear war. “
Also during the library program, The Solidarity Singers of The New Jersey State Industrial Union Council will present songs of peace — music associated with Hiroshima and Nagasaki “that will resonate with the audience,” said Moore. The Singers’ website explains the group tries “to lift the spirits of people engaged in struggle and help them to carry on.”
Moore has pointed out in the past that the commemorations are not to decide whether the bombings were justified, but to remember the horror of nuclear attacks and to be reminded that the risk remains today.
The nuclear arms race is escalating again, he said. “We are in a much more dire situation. More people need to be activists. I’m proud we can do it year after year, to sound the alarm.”
For more information, visit peacecoalition.org.