Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 21, 1984)
Daily Nebraskan Friday, September 21, 1S34 itoria k 4 '.'.Mr III Bi"'"- f.r-i.nr-i-r. Pago 4 n o fT3 MspeK warn it esiainicyieinip mre: 7 Hi fit f AM M M I i "YThen 19 of the world's most bril m liant people, and about 75 assorted v V envircnmental and arms control experts get together, we should listen to what they have to say. What they say is this: We face extinc tion in a nuclear war or an environmental catastrophe "unless humanity changes it's ways." 1 Nineteen Nobel prize winners and 75 experts are holding a five-day conference called "The Fate of the Earth." According to an Associated Press article in the Lincoln Star, the group issued its first amendment Wednesday. The statement cites the danger of a computer failure that could set off the destruction of the earth in about six minutes. "It's a different ballgame and the rules need to be looked at again," the statement says. The statement' also cites the imminence of a "nuclear winter" that would blot out the sun for a long time after a nuclear war. But nukes aren't the only danger. "What nuclear war could do in 50 to 100 minutes, an exploding population assaulting the Earth's life-support systems could do in 50 to 150 years," it said. The two problems are inseparable, the statement says. As population increases, the struggle for the things we need to live becomes more intense. Disarming would only be a "quick fix" for the root problem overcrowding. The statement calls on the Senate and House to have hearings on nuclear winter. It urges them to see if "the risks of destroying civilization have now rendered nuclear war obsolete." It also urges congress to strengthen the War Powers Act, which requires congres sional approval for keeping U.S. troops in situations like Beirut, to establish a system in which non-aligned nations would have to verify compliance with nuclear arms treaties and to increase U.S. funding for international family planning programs. It encourages all nations to "recognize that a rational national security policy should freeze the arms race, reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles, prepare the. economy for peacetime production and seek, in the long term, the universal abolition of nuclear weapons." Wise words. The human capacity for change and adaptation is incredible. The goals of the members of the conference are not im possible to achieve and they are certainly worthy goals. The recent wave of patriotic feeling across the United States stems from a hard-line,foreign policy and a glitzy media oriented president. America is "strong again." We must ask ourselves, however, whether we are being strong, or stupid. c may dleaale uncles? assise i s it possible that finally, after lo these many years of arms negotiations, we have accidentally come up with a real live bargaining chip? The chip that I am thinking of is a microchip, the brain in the computer that tells a weapon what to do. My hopes were raised last week when t he government announced in rapid succession that (1) Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko was coming for a chat with President Reagan, (2) we were going to sell more wheat to the Russians, and (3) about 15 million microchips sold to the Defense Department and lodged in almost every thing that moves, including the computers on the B-52 nuclear-bomber force, were inadequately tested. What an opportunity! Instead of selling the USSR our Ellen Goodman J FOutoO THfe PRoetfcM ... ITS 0w OPTHOSG fAULTY MICROCHIPS TMS INSTRUMENTS 500) To TH6 pet4l4601 " wheat, we "could sell them our microchips. We could promise Gromyko to add one million of these microchips to our nuclear equipment for every million they add to theirs. Soon Soviet and American arms would be equally screwed up. Instead of investigating Texas Instruments, we could award it the Nobel Peace Prize. My black humor plan for peace in our time was deve loped, I admit, out of indecision. I cant decide whether the latest bulletin about potential flaws in our nuclear defenseware is good news or bad news. Presumably it's good news if it means the nuclear bombs cant get out of the ground, the subs or the planes. It's bad news if the micro brain sends them off on whim. If there's one piece of information that has been pro cessed by human brains after nearly 40 years of living in the Atomic Age, it's that progress in technology is not always progress in real life. Back in 1949, when we were the only country with The Bomb, 59 percent of Ameri cans actually thought that it was good that the atom bomb was developed. By 1983, 65 percent of us thought it was bad. v Reagan is still locked into the role he played for Gen eral Electric in the '50s when progress was "our most important product," but most of us have doubts. The march of progress has, for example, cut down the amount of time it takes for a missile to commute from one continent to another. Let's hear it for the scientists. Occasionally, when I wake up at 3 o'clock in the morn ing I think about the gap between missile time and human time. (No one thinks of anything good at 3 am.) I have a recurring image of a joint chief waking up the president any president, not just this sleepy one because the computer has said that there are missiles a half-hour away. It's time to decide the fate of the Earth. "Wait a minute," the president says, searching for his slippers, "I have to get a cup of coffee." The most up-to-date additions to enhance our national security, the Pershing II missiles placed in Europe, are only about six minutes from Moscow. We have actually outstripped my visions of Presidents and coffee cups. It leaves the decision up to the computers of our paranoid partners in this madness. This brings us back to microchips and bargaining chips. The latest study of our nuclear attitudes by the Public Agenda Foundation shows that, with almost monotonous consistency, Americans now regard nuclear war as "unwinnable, horrible, unsurvivable," We don't believe in building new weapons as bargaining chips. A full 84 percent say that what usually happens is that the Soviets build one to match us. In the business of nuclear arms, we have finally figured out that less is more, slower is better, and technological progress deserves a good leaving alone. If my fantasy doesn't work, if Gromyko refuses to bargain with the computer chips on the table, there's always another plan. Let the White House and the Kremlin negotiate under . the real motto of the arms race: Regress is our most important product. 1S34, The Boston Globe Newspaper Com$axy Washington Post Writers Gros? 1 1 ST Ef ti 1 u If va 1 1 ' Si amptis lould the issue of religion be 'a .part of this year's presidential campaigning?