Letters to the Editor: Weaponising nuclear plants is putting us on the precipice

Now, 78 years later, we can hear the nuclear sabres rattling once more.

Unfortunately, nuclear proliferation is an ever-increasing threat to humanity, which for example we are now seeing unfold in Ukraine… except now nuclear power stations are being added to the nuclear mix as they are being weaponised.

The takeover at Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plants has put the world on a precipice, indicating that the nature of modern warfare has changed forever. These cavalier acts weaponise and militarise nuclear power and is akin to making a deadly nuclear threat without making a nuclear threat. The world is essentially being held to ransom.

This is a first in the history of modern warfare and the atomic age, which could have catastrophic consequences for the entire world.

We need to call on our politicians to invoke the Hague Convention declaring these actions at Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia as ‘war crimes’ and to further demand and negotiate a ‘no-war zone’ around all nuclear facilities now and in the future.

I am urging people to fully inform themselves of the wider picture of Robert Oppenheimer, who became a vocal and passionate opponent to the creation and use of nuclear weapons. He, along with Albert Einstein and others, were horrified by the nuclear bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Lest we forget, the current situation in Zaporizhzhia has a cataclysmic potential beyond anything of the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

We need to act on peace now, before it’s too late.

Adi Roche

Voluntary CEO

Chernobyl Children International

Time to stop and think

Ireland’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) will be holding its annual commemoration and remembrance of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Marrion Square, Dublin tomorrow at 1pm.

Christopher Nolan’s staggering film about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man known as “the father of the atomic bomb” is indeed worth watching but a real-life war between two nuclear powers Russia and NATO in Ukraine continues to escalate.

This year also marks the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) that ended the war in Ireland through negotiations.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, the Peace and Neutrality Alliance (PANA) inspired by the GFA has advocated a ceasefire and negotiations in a conflict that could escalate into a nuclear war that would destroy the entire world. In May 2023, PANA commissioned an Ipsos Omnipoll to show 87% of people in Ireland also supported a ceasefire to facilitate negotiations in the Ukraine war.

If there ever was a time to remember the consequences of a nuclear war, now is that time.

Roger Cole

Chair

Peace & Neutrality Alliance

Dalkey

Global well-being

There is an untapped potential to move humanity from its narrow national boundaries and self-interests to an enlightened future in which reality and empathy will help prevent the extinction of civilisation from the destructive impact of global warming, war mongering, and the exploitation of peoples and limited resources.

We need to urgently rethink how we use our planet’s resources and must dramatically reduce or stop the use of fossil fuels, intensive livestock farming, and the mass use of fertilisers that create the harmful greenhouse gas effects and halt the shameful deforestation of the earth’s trees which is nature’s ways of absorbing the damage from global warming.

If we wait for our power-grabbing politicians to act on our behalf then our shared fate is surely sealed and we will follow the path of the dinosaurs and perish from the earth. Instead of promoting peace and unity in the world the global elites are creating conflict and escalating the number of desperate people escaping their destroyed countries and failed states. In Ireland we are running out of hotels for Ukrainian refugees while the homeless natives and escaping refugees from non-European nations run out of space on our pavements.

In the United States they solve gun crime by arming everyone with guns and use the same philosophy with the war in Ukraine by pumping greater amounts and more destructive weapons into the conflict they have only succeeded in escalating the levels of death and suffering while they risk a nuclear war with Russia. We need to stop all wars and work together as a global family and not as warring tribes. We need to think beyond the labels of religion, race or politics and collaborate as one human race by pooling our energies and resources to fix our broken world and make it better and equal.

Humanity’s salvation can only be found if we face up to these realities together by changing our destructive habits and acknowledge that they impact us all collectively. While other countries face the horrors of climate change and division now with fires, floods, famine, and fighting our own inaction guarantees we will be next.

We can save each other by committing to the sovereignty of humanity within the United Nations over the self-centered nationalism of states and commit to the global well-being of the entire world.

Michael Hagan

Dunmurry, Co Antrim

Environmentalists need to don wellies

John Gibbons describes himself as an environmental journalist and commentator. His articles in your newspaper increasingly resemble those of George Monbiot, a British writer known for his environmental and political activism and who pens a regular column for The Guardian.

I doubt if either of them have read How to Win Friends and Influence People with respect to one of their petite bete noires, farmers and the agricultural industry.

Mr Gibbons’ latest column attempts to sow a dichotomy between science and politics as if it was something new or novel. Even the latest blockbuster movie Oppenheimer dispels the notion that science should be trusted when politics are thrown into the mix. Angels and devils can exist in all of us.

Your columnist, I’m led to believe, grew up on a farm, which makes it all the more intriguing his agrarian views on the custodians of the countryside. Perhaps I’m naive but if Mr Gibbons wants to be an authentic voice on the agricultural sector with regards to climate and biodiversity, he first needs to invest in a good pair of wellingtons. Only then will he be able to compare agriculture with the “motor trade or construction industry” while keeping a straight face.

Farmers are not stupid. Stop treating them as if they were.

Tom McElligott

Listowel, Co Kerry

Dr Browne brought down by the ‘entitled’

An interesting and enlightening documentary on the life of Dr Noel Browne was recently shown on RTÉ: The Seven Ages of Noel Browne.

He could be said to be a “a man ahead of his time”, working in the interests of the “less fortunate” of our society.

It is disturbing how the “privileged and entitled” classes combined to “bring him down”.

More disturbing, the fact he failed to find work in this country in the medical field after his “forced” resignation as Minister for Health and the “failure” of elected representatives to assist him.

Many would argue those “privileged and entitled” classes are still influential in our society to-day.

Shame on those who conspired to bring down a good man working in the interests of the working class.

Michael A. Moriarty.

Rochestown, Cork.

Church controllers

The Seven Ages of Noel Browne portrayed a shameful chapter in our history and in a period of time when the Government of our country took the form of a theocrasy in all but name. In hindsight the standpoint concerning its moral validity as expressed by the then Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave ought to serve as a warning to future generations about what to refrain from falling foul of, i.e. that which can sometimes masquerade in a form of disguise entirely at variance with that which its purports to represent.

What chance did mothers and their babies have of being treated with respect and common decency as Dr Browne wished? Obviously, none whatsoever thanks to a version of Christianity that sought to impose its tyranny and peculiar version of theology upon not just matters pertaining to religious affairs but also to issues relevant and appropriate to the affairs of state.

Without the aid of censorship none of this absurdity and abuse of power may have been possible, but why allow the authors of enlightenment elsewhere have their say when to do so might upset what the church that stood to benefit from keeping us in an unenlightened state of decadence and virtual extinction.

Pat Daly

Midleton, Cork

TV licence revenue

With TV licence revenue dropping substantially in recent weeks, why is no Oireachtas committee calling An Post to account for the ineffectiveness of its army of licence inspectors? Can it be that TDs who grilled Tubridy et al with great gusto, do not want to be seen demanding proper enforcement of this unpopular fee?

Neal O’Carroll

Glebemount

Wicklow Town

County Wicklow