Policy implications of nuclear winter: Sagan to visit Ottawa

Metta Spencer — June 1984

Dr. Carl Sagan will visit Ottawa on June 3 and 4 as part of a campaign to alert government leaders and the public to the urgent significance of recent research on nuclear winter. Much of this research has been carried out by Sagan and his colleagues. (See May issue of TPC for details.)

Sagan’s appearances in Ottawa have been organized by Physicians for Social Responsibility in cooperation with Lawyers for Social Responsibility, Science for Peace, and Nurses for World Peace.

According to Dr. Gerd Schneider of Physicians for Social Responsibility, Sagan’s itinerary will begin with a dinner for 250 on Sunday, June 3. The next day he will meet with senior bureaucrats and have lunch with Mr. Trudeau. In the afternoon, all Senators and MPs have been invited to hear Dr. Sagan discuss the policy implications of this new knowledge. All of these events will serve to publicize the real possibility that all humanity could be destroyed in the dark and frozen environment produced by even a limited use of nuclear weapons.

In the United States governmental attention is also being directed to research into nuclear winter. For example a subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee has decided to commission another scientific study and has allocated funds for it in ~he next year’s budget.

The Peace Calendar

Canadian Disarmament Information Service, 1983-1984

Policy implications of nuclear winter: Sagan to visit Ottawa