In a 1984 article, he wrote about the “neurotic relationship” between the U.S. They both take widespread collaboration across many countries.”īrown’s anti-nuclear crusade began in the 1970s and was a common talking point during the young California governor’s second campaign for president in 1980. “They both are such that they don’t capture the popular imagination right now.

“They both have catastrophic consequences,” he told an audience in Chicago. In recent years, the clock’s measurement of danger has taken into consideration threats from climate change and “disruptive technologies” such as artificial intelligence.Īt an event in 2015 commemorating the clock’s 70th anniversary, Brown noted parallels in the nuclear and climate threats facing the world. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of its symbolic Doomsday Clock this year to two minutes from apocalyptic midnight - citing threats on the Korean peninsula and the rising tension between the United States and China. “Nuclear deterrence only works if there’s arms control.” “He is dedicated to tearing up all the nuclear agreements,” Brown said of Bolton. The governor said such action is only the Republican administration’s first effort toward rekindling a global nuclear arms race. would soon withdraw from a landmark 1987 nuclear weapons treaty with Russia. “We’re in a real predicament.”īrown took sharp aim at President Trump and his national security advisor, John Bolton, over Monday’s announcement that the U.S. “My fellow politicians are totally asleep here,” the governor said. military.īrown cited Oppenheimer’s quote that “the whole world is going to hell” in noting that the dangers of nuclear war haven’t subsided in the years since - if anything, he said, the dangers have increased. Among its early advisors were Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, the UC Berkeley physicist who helped develop the weapon of mass destruction for the U.S. The Bulletin was founded in 1945 by scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project, the wartime effort that led to the United States’ development of an atomic bomb. Jerry Brown be the new face of an anti-nukes campaign? He’s thinking about it » “We will put his intellect and incredible energy to good use,” Perry said in a written statement.Ĭould Gov. The governor declined to say what he and Mattis discussed, but he said the secretary “affirms the dangers” posed by nuclear weapons. His trip, which ended Wednesday, also included an hourlong meeting about nuclear weapons with Defense Secretary James N. He traveled to Washington last week for meetings at the group’s headquarters. Brown last year joined the board of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an organization founded in 2001. The position is the second of its kind for the outgoing Democratic governor. “There’s no doubt we’re at one of the most dangerous, if not the most dangerous point, since the atomic bomb was first dropped,” Brown said in an interview. He will join the group’s leaders at their next meeting in early November.

And as he exits the state’s political stage, California’s governor will expand his role in the global debate over nuclear disarmament.īrown accepted an invitation Thursday to become the executive chairman of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Chicago-based organization best known for its Doomsday Clock that is reset periodically to measure the threat of global annihilation. Few topics produce more fiery rhetoric from Jerry Brown, delivered with equal doses of exhortation and exasperation, than the threat posed by nuclear weapons.

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