POLICY AND ACTION STATEMENT

FOR

THE SECOND BIENNIAL CONFERENCE ON THE FATE OF THE EARTH
                  

PREAMBLE

   In 1955, ten years after the first nuclear bombs killed a
quarter of a million people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Albert
Einstein and Bertrand Russell, along with seven other Nobel
laureates, urged the people of the world to recognize that
nuclear weapons threatened the continued existence of humankind
and to renounce these weapons forever: 'We appeal, as human
beings, to human beings:  Remember your humanity and forget the
rest.  If you can do so, the way lies open to a new paradise; if
you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death."

   Today, nearly thirty years and 50,000 warheads later, the
world continues speeding toward nuclear apocalypse, which we now
know would be worse than anything Einstein and Russell ever
imagined.  Recent studies by leading American, European, and
Soviet scientists have concluded that even a limited nuclear war
involving less than one percent of existing arsenals could
produce enough smoke and soot to block out more than 99 percent
of the Northern Hemisphere's sunlight, plunging the planet for
many months into a dark, lethal nuclear winter.  These findings
have made it clear that nuclear wars, perhaps even all wars, now
imperil the continued existence of both human life and a living
planet.

   What nuclear war could do in 50 to 150 minutes, an exploding
population assaulting the Earth's life-support systems could do
in 50 to 150 years.  Today, aquifers are being exhausted, farms
turned into dustbowls, tropical rainforests destroyed, and
limited fossil energy and mineral resources depleted. This
environmental assault is particularly devastating to the more
than one billion people faced with chronic hunger, deteriorating
land, increasinq shortages of firewood and other fuels,
inadequate housing, and unsanitary drinking water. In the years
ahead, unless humanity changes its ways, these people will be
joined by billions more competing for dwindling or degraded
resources.  If these expanding multitudes continue pursuing
economic growth without seeking environmental sustainability, we
may all soon be forced to cope with catastrophic food shortages,
pollution disasters, and severe climate perturbations.

   These ominous problems are solvable, but only if we
recognize their interconnections. On his death bed, Aurelio
Peccei, founder of the Club of Rome, wrote that peace must be
understood not only as the prevention of violent conflict between
nations "but also in the relationship between human society and
nature."-  A recent 31 nations conference issued a similar
communique that "the preservation of the environment and the

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maintenance of peace are important to one another."

   The connections between nuclear war and environmental
destruction are manifold.  In a world where increasing
competition over resources such as oil, fisheries, or fertile
land could spark conflicts capable of escalating from
conventional to nuclear weapons , peace will require us to adopt
more sustainable patterns of resource use. In a world where
nations squander six hundred billion dollars each year on weapons
and armies, sustainability will require us to divert these
military-directed funds into ambitious global plans for family
planning, environmental restoration, rural development, and
pollution control.  And resolution of these problems will require
that national attempts to conquer the environment and vanquish
security threats must be supplanted by new approaches aimed at
international stewardship and cooperation.

   For the sake of peace, of the Earth, and of its children, we
call upon the world's people -- in all branches of their
governments, in business, in academia, in churches, and in the
press -- to awaken to and to redress these urgent problems.  The
prospects of nuclear winter and environmental catastrophe have
brought humankind to the most critical crossroads of its
existence.  We can no longer afford to go about business as
usual.  Nothing less than new, bold policies for restoring
rationality to national security and promoting a sustainable
global economy will ensure our survival.

I.  RESTORING RATIONALITY TO NATIONAL SECURITY

Even if complete disarmament may lie decades away, we urge that
it become an explicit goal to guide short-term policy.   In the
same way that people in the past have rejected inhumane
activities like slavery, human sacrifice, and child labor, we
must have the moral courage to reject nuclear deterrence, a
policy by which nations stand ready to slaughter the human race
in the name of national security. As the American Catholic
Bishops have stressed, we must make a moral about-face and accept
deterrence only as a step on the way toward progressive
disarmament.  But to make deterrence even conditionally
acceptable, we must make dramatic changes in strategic doctrine
and in policies regarding conversion, nonproliferation,
intervention,  and international law.

  First, we recommend the elimination of all strategies for
fighting, surviving, and winning so-called limited nuclear wars.
Accordingly, we urge all nuclear nations to adopt a "no first
use" posture accompanied by a strengthening of nonnuclear
deterrents to war.  Because almost any nuclear exchange can

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escalate into a nuclear winter, there is no conceivable gain that
could outweigh the likely costs of nuclear war.

   SecOnd, we call for negotiations or independent initiatives
aimed at the universal elimination of all nuclear weapons that
give the false perception that nuclear wars are fightable,
survivable, or winnable, including weapons with very high
accuracy, short flight times, multiple warheads, or explicit war-
fighting purposes.  In addition, the development of all
nonnuclear technologies such as space-based particle beam weapons
and anti-satellite weapons should be abandoned and outlawed.

  Third, we recommend substantial reductions in the total
number of nuclear and conventional weapons deployed.   To effect
such reductions, we call upon our leaders to seek, first, through
independent initiatives designed to set the stage for fruitful
negotiations, a bilateral freeze on the development, testing,
product ion, and deployment of all nuclear weapons.
  Fourth, to ensure we can afford an outbreak of peace, we

urge the development of sound conversion programs by both
government and private industry to help retrain defense workers
and retool plants involved in military production. The resultant
redirection of human and material resources to sustenance rather
than to destruction is essential to a sound global economy based
on conservation.

   Fifth, we urge stronger national and international policies
to halt the spread of nuclear weapons to nonnuclear nations by
tightening controls on the export of all nuclear materials and
technology, increasing the inspection and enforcement powers of
the International Atomic Energy Agency, and implementing
wherever cost-effective renewable, nonproliferative energy-
supplies, including efficiency improvements.  Furthermore, member
nations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty should prepare to
use the 1985 review conference to bring holdout nations like
China, France, and India within the treaty.

  Sixth, to reduce the chance that nuclear weapons will be
used in conventional conflicts, we call upon all nations,
especially those possessing nuclear weapons, to strengthen
international treaties and institutions aimed at respecting one
another's territorial sovereignty. We particularly encourage
nations to influence one another, not through military
intervention, but through nonmilitary avenues of cultural
exchange, trade, and persuasion.  Accordingly, we urge the
superpowers to work with their allies in replacing their nuclear
umbrellas with regionally based, nonnuclear defense arrangements.
We finally urge the endorsement of the McCloy-Zorin principles
for secure, phased disarmament, agreed to by American and Soviet
negotiators in 1961, and to seek what the United Nations Charter
has always envisioned but never implemented: an effective
international collective security system as a reliable,
legitimate hedge against all global aggression.

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  m, to help make disarmament conceivable in the decades
ahead, we seek the long-term transfer of some national power and
legitimacy to democratic global organizations to promulgate
international laws and adjudicate international conflicts in a
binding, nonviolent manner.  As first steps , we support efforts
to encourage leaders increasingly to abide by and to strengthen
the fragile international laws and institutions already in place,
particularly the Law of the Sea Treaty, the International Court
of Justice,  and the United Nations.

II.  PROMOTING A SUSTAINABLE GLOBAL ECONOMY

increasingly possible as the world redirects resources to what we
really need and away from weapons we no longer can afford.

  First, we urge our governments to offer more assistance to
the world's poor people. Savings from disarmament should be
reinvested in programs promoting employment and economic progress
in developing nations , particularly in rural areas.  We further
endorse the recommendations of the distinguished Brandt
Commission that developed nations open their markets to
developing countries' producers and create mechanisms for
stabilizing fluctuations in the prices of global commodities.

  Second, we urge all governments to adopt a policy of living
within the carrying capacities of nations' ecosystems, with
reasonable allowance for trade with other regions having surplus
resources.  Renewable resources should be used instead of
nonrenewable ones and  conserved so that they are consumed at a
rate no greater than they ?Tan be replenished. We strongly endorse
the development of resilient, diversified, and decentralized
energy supply technologies capable of tapping the renewable
energy sources, including efficiency improvements, to reduce our
current reliance on brittle, overcentralized, and nonrenewable
sources such as uranium, coal, oil, and gas.  Where nonrenewable
resources must be used, we urge their careful conservation
through more vigorous programs promoting efficiency and, where
possible, recycling.
  Third, because pollution fails to respect national borders,

we recommend that global development be accompanied by vigorous
programs of international pollution control. Acid rain, ozone
depletion, climate shifts,
pollution,           radioactivity contamination, and water
      all of which have been caused by unwise global

development, are among the areas most in need of special

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international attention. Moreover, nations should regulate the
export of potentially hazardous substances or technologies as
rigorously as they regulate them at home.

   Eourth, we urge a halt to the tragic destruction
of our irreplaceable genetic resources.  Today, we are losing
uncounted species, sacrificing agricultural sustainability,
destroying potential sources of human foods, medicines, and
industrial products, and irreparably tearing the entire fabric of
our ecosystems.  To reverse this trend, we call upon our leaders
to undertake innovative efforts to conserve Earth's biological
diversity.  Particular attention should be placed on preventing
further losses of tropical rainforests, which harbor an enormous
share of the planet's biological wealth and the disappearance of
which could well lead to cataclysmic changes in global climate.

  Fifth, we urge a reversal of the growth rate of the
global human population, which is now expanding by more than
200,000 people per day.  If unchecked, population growth could
overburden the earth with more than ten billion people by the
year 2050, more than canceling any economic advancement in poor
nations, spurring more disruptive global migrations, and placing
unmanageable stresses on the global environment.  While the
consequences of population pressures will at first be most keenly
felt among the world's poor, the west will inevitably suffer the
reverberations.  To avoid these consequences, we call upon
developed nations to help other nations assess their resources
and carrying capacities, and give international population
measures the highest priority.

   Finallv, we urge that governments, educational institutions,
labor, and management develop comprehensive plans to accommodate
the rechannelling of resources from military production to
these development and environmental protection programs.

BAKING A NEW COMMITMENT

   To those who consider these proposals unrealistic, Richard
Barnet's reminder is apt:  "we now march to annihilation under
the banner of realism."  The world has fundamentally changed, and
the "realistic" approaches of the past no longer work.   Our task
must be to expand the boundaries of what is realistic.
"unrealistic"                               Many
        approaches of yesterday -- energy conservation

efforts, international environmental treaties, and small-scale
rural development programs --  have become the success stories of
today.  As the accompanying legislative agenda reflects, there is
much we can do, providing we have the will.  The most unrealistic
policy imaginable is to believe complacently that continued
nuclear arms races can avert a nuclear winter.

   We call for new, enlightened leadership within all nations,
but especially within the United States, which controls one-

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fourth of the world's wealth, an even greater amount of its
scientific and technical knowledge, and half of the planet's
nuclear weapons.  With a proven track record in influencing
global security and environmental policies, the United States can
help lead the world toward disarmament and a sustainable society,
especially if it devotes more intellectual, financial, and
institutional resources to these problems.

   Above all,
of'us.      survival rests in the hands of each and every one
    We must educate and organize our families, our friends,
our neighbors,  and our local leaders. From millions of
individuals and groups committing themselves to finding an answer
to the human predicament, new national and international
institutions and policies can be shaped and implemented.
Citizens can also influence international affairs by working
directly with citizens in other nations, as American and Soviet
citizens have done through regular visits to one another's lands.
As the tools of global transportation and communication become
more accessible, people everywhere should use them to link-up and
combat the world's most pressing problems through existing and
new transnational networks of nongovernmental organizations,
churches, labor unions, and political parties.

  We are now entering the fifth decade of the nuclear age and
are approaching the decisive moment in human history.  If we act
decisively, we still have a chance to avert nuclear war and
environmental catastrophe. But we each must make survival an
uncompromised priority, for if we let life slip away, we shall
never have another chance.

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UNITED STATES LEGISLATIVE ACTION AGENDA

In a democracy, one of the most powerful tools for implementing
new policies is through legislation.  Consequently, to implement
the goals of the Policy and Action Statement, we urge our duly
elected representatives in Washington, D.C. to undertake the
legislative actions described below.

In making these recommendations, we do not mean to suggest that
only Congress has a burden to act.  Indeed, little legislation is
possible without public pressure (through letters, phone calls,
and voting) or presidential leadership and support.  We instead
view this agenda as a call for action to people throughout
America to educate, organize, and persuade other people to make
these small legislative steps possible.

I.   RESTORING RATIONALITY TO NATIONAL SECURITY

(1) REEXAMINATION OF U.S. NUCLEAR STRATEGY IN THE FACE OF NUCLEAR
WINTER:  We urge the House and Senate Armed Services Committees
to hold hearings on the strategic implications of the recent
evidence on nuclear winter.  These hearings should
critically examine the Pentagon's report on the subject, which
both houses have directed it to issue by March 1, 1985. They
should especially examine whether the risks of human extinction
posed by a nuclear winter have now rendered nuclear war obsolete.

(2) LEGISLATE MORATORIA ON DESTABILIZING WEAPONS -- We endorse
Congressional attempts to restrict production and recall
deployment of the MX, Trident D-5, and Pershing II missiles, all
of which are designed to encourage nuclear war-fighting and
therefore threaten American national security at least as much as
they threaten Soviet security.  We further endorse Congressional
attempts to cut off the development, production, and deployment
of .Star Wars" weapons and. anti-satellite weapons.

(3) LEGISLATE A NUCLEAR FREEZE -- We endorse recent Congressional
initiatives that urge the President to enter negotiations with
the Soviet Union for a bilateral, verifiable freeze on the
development, testing, production, and deployment of nuclear
weapons.  We also endorse the National Freeze Campaign's
proposals to make defense appropriations conditional on the
President faithfully pursuing a freeze.

(4) RATIFY OUTSTANDING ARES CONTROL TREATIES -- We endorse
Congressional resolutions (SJR 29, HJR 3) urging the President to
enter negotiations for a comprehensive test ban and to submit to
the Senate for ratification of the Threshold Test Ban Treaty and
the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty. We further urge the
Senate to ratify SALT II.

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(5) CONDUCT HEARINGS ON DEEP CUTS -- To meet the challenges posed     w
by substantial reductions in nuclear arsenals -- including
verification, the disposal of fissionable materials, and dangers
posed by medium-sized nuclear powers, proliferation, and
technological breakout -- we urge the Congress to undertake
extensive hearings on these issues.

(6) LEGISLATE A CONVERSION ASSISTANCE PROGRAM -- We support
efforts to create national programs aimed at easing the economic
impact of defense spending cuts through adjustment assistance and
retraining.

(7) STRENGTHEN THE NONPROLIFERATION ACT -- To bolster the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Act, we urge Congress to prohibit domestic use
of recycled plutonium and highly enriched uranium in U.S. nuclear
power plants, to ban foreign reprocessing of U.S.-supplied
nuclear fuel, and to halt all exports of reprocessing and uranium
enrichment technology as well as separated plutonium and highly
enriched uranium.

(8) CREATE A SUNBEAMS FOR PEACE PROGRAM -- To phase out nuclear
power exports, we recommend that Congress discontinue subsidizing
nuclear exports through the Export-Import Bank and instead begin
promoting the export of nonnuclear energy sources (including
conservation measures) to undercut the world's nuclear reactor
vendors.

(9) STRENGTHEN THE WAR POWERS ACT -- To restore the constraints
on military intervention originally conceived in the
Constitution, we endorse Congressional efforts (HR 6078) to
strengthen  the War Powers Act by requiring the President to
obtain prior Congressional approval before committing U.S. troops
abroad, except to rescue U.S. citizens, to repel an attack on
U.S. armed forces, or to respond to an invasion of U.S.
territory.

(10) PASS THE COMMON SECURITY RESOLUTION -- In an effort to pave
the way for deep cuts in all nuclear arsenals, we support the
"Common Security Resolution"  (SR 125, HR 123) that urges the
President to reopen negotiations with the Soviet Union to
implement the McCloy-Zorin principles for general and complete
disarmament.

(11) RATIFY OUTSTANDING INTERNATIONAL LAW TREATIES -- To secure
the fragile instruments of international law already in place, we
urge the President to submit to the Senate for immediate
ratification the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
the Crime of Genocide, the International Convention on Human
Rights, and the Law of the Sea Treaty.

(12) FUNDING FOR A UNITED NATIONS VERIFICATION SYSTEM -- To help
verify global weapons control arrangements, we urge Congress to
undertake hearings on the possibility of the United States
offering funding and technical assistance to establish a non-
partisan United Nations verification system, especially a UN

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satellite system  -- an initiative which has already received
overwhelming international support despite opposition by both
superpowers.

(13) CONDUCT HEARINGS ON UNITED NATIONS REFORM -- To strengthen
the only continuous forum for international discussion and
cooperation the world has, we urge Congress to consider proposals
for reforming the United Nations, including those aimed at giving
more General Assembly votes to nations with large populations or
making large contributions,
representatives,        directly electing General Assembly

blocs,       ensuring more procedural fairness for minority
   abolishing the Security Council veto, and establishing a

permanent peacekeeping force.

II.  MOVING TOWARD SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

(1) INCREASE SUPPORT FOR SOME U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL
DEVELOPMENT; REEVALUATION OF OTHERS -- To be added.

(2) INCREASE SUPPORT FOR MULTILATERAL DEVELOPMENT BANKS -- We urge
funds disbursed to multilateral development banks (including the
World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Asian
Development Bank) be more carefully tied to concrete assurances
that these development programs are undertaken with careful
attention to the goals of the World Conservation Strategy of the
International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural
Resources (IUCN).

(3) INCREASE SUPPORT FOR THE UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT PROGRAM
-- The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) is one of the
most important international organizations working to promote
global environmental protection by facilitating treaty
negotiations on water pollution, hazardous pesticides, and ozone-
protection.  Despite an authorization for ten million dollars,
the Administration has requested -- and the Senate has approved
-- an appropriation of only.three million dollars. We urge a
restoration of the prior love1 of funding and the gradual
expansion of American contributions.

(4) STRENGTHEN DOMESTIC ANTI-POLLUTION PROGRAMS -- To be added.

(5) STRENGTHEN NATIONAL PROGRAMS AIMED AT PROTECTING SPECIES IN
THE UNITED STATES -- One way for the United States to protect
global biological diversity is to set a good example by
reauthorizing and strengthening the Endangered Species Act,
inaugurating a national ecosystems protection study, and setting
up a new U.S. biological survey analogous to the U.S. Geological
Survey to monitor and inventory species.

(6) INCREASE SUPPORT FOR NATIONAL PROGRAMS AIMED AT PROTECTING
SPECIES ABROAD --  We recommend that the United.States offer more
financial support to the international affairs offices of both

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the National Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park
Service, both of which are working with their counterparts in
developing countries to protect endangered species like migratory
birds and to set up biological preserves.  Similarly, we
support increased federal funding for the Man and the Biosphere
Program, which sponsors national research on biological
management techniques.

(7) INCREASE U.S. SUPPORT FOR EXISTING INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS
AIMED AT PROTECTING SPECIES --  The United States can also help
biological protection by contributing more money to ongoing
international programs like UNEP, the United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Heritage convention.
UNEP is especially important since it provides a quarter of the
budget of the IUCN, which itself carries out projects to conserve
endangered species, protect national parks, and designate natural
areas for inclusion .in ehe Wotld Heritage Convention.
major funding should be provided to the World Heritage Finally,

Convention, which promotes the recognition and protection of key
natural and cultural areas in the world.

(8) CONCLUDE SPECIES PROTECTION TREATIES -- We recommend that
the United-States sign and ratify the already completed Ramsar
Wetlands Convention and the United Nations Charter for Nature.
Congress should also urge the President to sponsor a treaty to
protect Third World biological resources.

(9) RETAIN AND EXPAND SUPPORT FOR EXISTING POPULATION PROGRAMS --
We urge Congress to oppose the Administration's attempts to
cutoff $100 million to international population control programs
that practice or advocate abortion. To reduce the incidence of
abortion, we instead encourage increased support for programs
promoting family planning methods and higher literacy among
women.

III.  MAKING A NEW COMMITMENT

(1) CONDUCT HEARINGS ON ESTABLISHING FORESIGHT CAPABILITY -- To
improve the nation's ability to evaluate population,
and environmental trends effectively,              resource,
                        we recommend that Congress

enact current proposals (HR 31, SR 33) to create an executive
level Global Foresight Agency.

(2) HOLD HEARINGS ON MEANS OF EXPANDING PUBLIC PARTICIPATION --
Congress should explore means of expanding public participation
in strategic planning, perhaps by opening the Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency's statements on the arms control impact of
each new weapons system to a more rigorous system of public
scrutiny analogous to the public scrutiny that now occurs under
the National Environmental Policy Act.

(3) INCREASE SUPPORT FOR GLOBAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS -- We endorse

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legislation to increase federal funding for programs aimed at
increasing students' appreciation for and comprehension of
foreign languages, culture, and politics.

(4) INCREASE SUPPORT FOR THE PEACE CORPS -- We recommend
increased funding for the Peace Corps, which since 1962, has sent
more than 100,000 volunteers to assist in development and
environmental protection projects around the world.

(5) INCREASE SUPPORT FOR EXCHANGE PROGRAMS -- We urge greater
federal support for programs like the Fulbright Fellowships that
enable tens of thousands of scientists, teachers, artists and
ordinary citizens to participate in international exchanges each
year.

(6) CREATE AN AMERICAN PEACE ACADEMY -- We endorse legislation
(Amendment to HR 5167 under title IV, and SR 564, HR 1294)
establishing a United States Peace Academy to research peace
issues and train government leaders, military officals and
civilians from all over the world in peacemaking and conflict
resolution techniques.

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