Peace & Freedom: 2023 Fall/Winner issue

WILPF Rises to the Challenge
Warheads to Windmills, AI and War, CSW Practicum Changes
By Vicki Elson
Creative Director, NuclearBan.US
WILPF has long advocated for abolishing both
nuclear weapons and fossil fuels – two of the
biggest existential threats to our world. Now,
WILPF is helping to combine the efforts of climate
and anti-nuke groups, aiming to nurture collaboration
and growth that strengthen both campaigns.
WILPF US has joined the new Warheads to Windmills
Coalition, which supports peace, climate, and environmental
organizations by providing effective action tools for their
members. Ellen Thomas, MacGregor Eddy, and Cherrill Spencer
are some of the WILPFers helping to midwife the coalition
into its full fruition.
The coalition is facilitated by WILPF partner NuclearBan.
US. We demand that the nine nuclear-armed nations eliminate
their arsenals, and use the money, brainpower, jobs,
and infrastructure to cut global carbon emissions in half by
2030 and to no more than the Earth can absorb by 2050. The
world’s biggest carbon emitters must stop pointing nuclear
weapons at each other and work together on building a
fossil-free economy.
This is not a politically “realistic” demand. It is not a polite
request. It is what is needed for our survival as a species and
a planet.
The Warheads to Windmills Coalition aims to coordinate
what we already have and build on it. We already have worldwide
climate and anti-nuke movements. We already have
excellent alternatives to fossil fuels. We already have excellent
pathways to safe and fair global disarmament, like the
game-changing Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
(TPNW). A global Fossil Fuels Treaty is in the works. We are all
working to bust myths, misinformation, and propaganda, and
provide useful education. We are all pressuring the profiteers
with divestment, boycotts, shareholder actions, and NVDA
(nonviolent direct action). We already have local, state, and
national legislation in process.
Thanks to WILPF campaigners (hats off to Ellen Thomas!),
there is a pending federal bill to convert “warheads to windmills.”
WILPF has worked with Congresswoman Eleanor
Holmes Norton (D-DC) to develop and promote the Nuclear
Abolition and Conversion Act, H.R. 2775. It calls for the US to
sign the TPNW as a first step to safely, fairly, verifiably eliminating
all nuclear weapons from all countries, and to convert
the resources to climate solutions and other pressing human
needs. It is a stellar example of legislation to “feed two birds
with one scone!”
From left: Timmon Wallis, NuclearBan.US, Beatrice Fihn, ICAN,
Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), and Vicki Elson,
NuclearBan.US/WILPF. Fihn is displaying the Nobel Peace Prize and
Norton is displaying her bill.
To abolish the nukes and implement the most effective
green technologies, it takes a lot of facts, figures, history,
ideas, and examples of what works. We recently published an
updated, downloadable summary of our report, Warheads to
Windmills: Preventing Climate Catastrophe and Nuclear War.
The extensive book version is coming soon. It will be an
accessible, deeply researched, amply illustrated, thoroughly
referenced handbook for legislators, students, campaigners,
organizations, and the general public. Find the summary and
the report at warheadstowindmills.org/report/.
There is hope. Against all odds, we’ve made headway
against these trillion-dollar industries of extinction. Keep up
the great work!
Artificial Intelligence and War
By Eileen Kurkoski and Margo Schulter
Disarm Subcommittee on Drones & Autonomous Weapons
The European Parliament, European Union (EU), and
the United Kingdom (UK) are taking seriously the
threat to international security and innocent civilians
posed by the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in military
applications, and the frightening prospect looming just
over the horizon of killer robots ready to make life or death
decisions without a human in the loop. Possibly Europe and
the UK are more sensitive to these issues because of their
homeland experience of two world wars.
However, in the United States, Senator Chuck Schumer
and other important figures in our government have not yet
adequately focused on the risks of military AI. They emphasize
the “need to beat China,” a significant competitor in developing
AI weapons. We question the wisdom of using these
technical advances when those uses are not accompanied by
20 | PEACE & FREEDOM FALL/WINTER 2023