Former Cuban president Fidel Castro warned last week that nuclear war and climate change are critical dangers for humanity, which keeps standing far away from getting any closer to a solution.
In an article published on Cubadebate website, titled “The Walk to the Abyss,” Fidel said that never before in history has humanity faced the dangers it is facing at present.
In previous occasions, Fidel Castro has extensively written about these issues, two of his articles written in August and September 2010 respectively deal with the catastrophe of a nuclear war: Nuclear Winter and Nuclear Winter and Peace.
The military technologies that may affect the whole planet, such as the atomic bomb, are increasingly spoken of today, he said and noted that thousands of such weapons are now ready to be used in an incomparably stronger manner than those launched over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
The weapons of this kind, which are kept in depots, as they add to those already deployed, amount to over 20,000 nuclear warheads, said Fidel Castro, who noted that just a hundred of those weapons could be enough to trigger a nuclear winter that would kill the population of the planet in a brief time, as US scientist Alan Robock has explained.
Those who usually read the news and reliable international analyses know that the risk of a nuclear war outbreak increases as tensions grow in the Near East, said Fidel and pointed out that the Israeli government has stockpiled hundreds of nuclear weapons, which are ready to be used, while tension also grows about Russia, a country with unquestionable response capacity, which is now being threatened with a alleged European nuclear shield.
The Cuban leader said that the United States not only promotes wars, but also is the bigger producer and exporter of weapons in the world. This powerful country – Fidel pointed out — has signed accords to supply 60 billion dollars to Saudi Arabia over the next years, where US transnational companies and their allies extract 10 million barrels of light oil every single day.
In his article, Fidel Castro maintained his view that humanity has no guarantee at all, since outer space is full of US satellites designed to spy on everything that takes place in the world, even over the roofs of the buildings in any nation of the planet.
However, the war is a tragedy that may take place while it is quite probable to occur; but if humanity were able to delay it for indefinite time, another similarly dramatic event is already taking place at a speedy way: climate change, he noted.
He recalled that the US administration opposed the Kyoto Protocol on the environment, a behaviour that not even coincided with that of its closest allies, whose territories would be tremendously affected, some of which, like Holland, would almost disappear completely.
Fidel Castro insisted that the planet is now fully lacking policies about this serious problem, while the sea level continues to increase and the huge ice layers covering the Antarctic and Greenland, which accumulate over 90 percent of the world´s fresh water, are melting at growing pace.
