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Proposed Resolution for Colorado Springs City Council
September 21 International Day for Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
Whereas, the United Nations General Assembly has on the table for signature a Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty crafted by the International Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons (ICAN, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient for its efforts) showing that the majority of countries worldwide are ready to end the danger posed by nuclear weapons.
But whereas the United States Government has been the primary instigator of resistance to this treaty, instead reaffirming in 2016, via the Warsaw Declaration on Transatlantic Security its NATO commitment to nuclear weapons, and in the Communiqué included a return to cold war style language on nuclear sharing,
And whereas the United States Congress has approved a $1.7 Trillion dollar nuclear weapons “modernization” program, including capacity for cold war levels of new plutonium pit production, when studies show no deterioration in its current stockpile of pits, thus demonstrating continuing bad faith with regard to its commitment in the Non-Proliferation Treaty to timely elimination of its own nuclear weapons arsenal (Article 6),
And whereas the United States is the only nation to have actually used nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not out of necessity to win a Japanese surrender but as a means to show the USSR that the US would dominate events in Post War Europe, (See Gar Alperowitz, “The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb”),
And whereas the United States has already spent well over $6 trillion dollars in the past 74 years on a nuclear arsenal and yet also spends more than all its so called enemies on other military systems per year,
And whereas the United States used the Non-Proliferation Treaty as justification for a phony war against Iraq, creating huge death and refugee problems including the death of thousands of US service personnel,
And whereas, the US has withdrawn from the Joint Treaty with regard to Iran’s nuclear program, resulting in huge damage to their economic system and a possible preemptive war – again based on questionable facts – in support of Israel’s determination to keep its nuclear weapons superiority in the Middle East,
But, whereas the greatest threat to National and Human security is the Climate Crisis, requiring all levels of government, including the City of Colorado Springs, to immediately commit major resources to carbon emission reduction and emergency expenses to repair damage and defend against destructive Climate Change Intensified disasters,
And whereas the International Court of Justice has said that the possession, threat of use, and use of nuclear weapons is a crime against humanity,
And whereas the City of Colorado Springs supports our military residents –who should not be deployed in ill- conceived wars emanating from a foreign policy based on dominance in “defense” of “US interests”– rather than US commitment to the 1945 United Nations Charter, to work for a world without the “scourge of war” where justice and peace and human rights prevail through a rule of law.
And whereas International cooperative effort to address the Climate Crisis has the potential of uniting humanity and nations in a common cause providing real trust building towards a common peaceful and creative future,
Be it resolved that the Colorado Springs City Council Supports the UN Nuclear Ban Treaty, that our city opposes the renewed spending on the nuclear weapons complex, calls for that money budgeted to be redirected to support local programs that address the Climate Crisis, and calls for our nation to rejoin the international community in efforts to reverse Global Warming.
BASKGROUND
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency within the federal Department of Energy, plans to quadruple the production of plutonium pits, the radioactive cores of nuclear weapons. NNSA plans to produce at least 30 plutonium pits per year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico and 50 plutonium pits per year at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
Expanded plutonium pit production is a crucial part of the United States’ $1.7 trillion “modernization” plan to completely rebuild the nuclear weapons stockpile, its supporting research and production complex, and the missiles, subs and bombers to deliver nuclear weapons. This is fueling a new global nuclear arms race that is more dangerous than any time since the height of the Cold War.
Expanded plutonium pit production, costing an estimated $43 billion over thirty years, is not needed. More than 15,000 existing pits are already stored at NNSA’s Pantex Pant near Amarillo, TX, while independent experts have found that pits last more than a century.
No pit production is scheduled to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing nuclear weapons stockpile. Instead, NNSA plans to produce heavily modified pits for speculative new-design nuclear weapons. This could degrade confidence in stockpile reliability since new plutonium pits can’t be full-scale tested because of an international testing moratorium. In the extreme, it could even prompt the U.S. to resume nuclear weapons testing, which would have severe international proliferation consequences.
To meet public review requirements under the federal National Environmental Policy Act, NNSA completed a “Supplement Analysis” to determine whether existing nation-wide programmatic public review of plutonium pit production should be supplemented or not. NNSA has already decided no! Tell the National Nuclear Security Administration that a new Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement is required!
Public Comment Opportunity:
Please send your comments by email to NEPA-SRS@srs.gov by August 12, 2019, or as soon thereafter as possible. See suggested comments at
https://nukewatch.org/newsite/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/CT-PEIS-Supp.-Analysis-sample-comments.docx
Please customize them as you see fit before sending, as that is more effective.
For background:
Please see NNSA’s Notice of Availability for public comment on it Supplement Analysis athttps://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/06/28/2019-13842/notice-of-availability-of-the-draft-supplement-analysis-of-the-complex-transformation-supplemental
NNSA’s Supplement Analysis itself is available at
Click to access draft-supplement-analysis-eis-0236-s4-sa-02-complex-transformation-06-2019.pdf
Nuclear Watch New Mexico’s fact sheet on plutonium pit production is available at
Click to access PitProductionFactSheet.pdf
PRESENTATION:
Good Afternoon and Thank you — My name is Robert Kinsey, I live in Stetson Hills and I am a member of Veterans for Peace, the Pikes Peak Peace and Justice Commission, The Colorado Coalition for Prevention of Nuclear War, the national Alliance for Nuclear Accountability and the twelve people who have been holding similar signs in memory of the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the hundreds of people driving by dsus who honk, give a thumbs up or a wave or even yell thank you from a rolled down window to our signs.
Please attend to the proposed Resolution and supporting background discussion. It addresses the two existential threats to human survival to which all governments must respond, and the current mis-allocation of national resources to that end. The pressure of special interests in short term profits is in full flourish to convince us there is no problem and national defense is about military competition between competing sovereignties. Your job is to provide leadership locally to change this and focus on solutions to the real threats.
Briefly, this proposed resolution concludes, …..BE it resolved by the Colorado Springs City Council…
The whereases are important but my three minutes are up…
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