Christina Figueres, Exe Sec UN Framework Convention on Climate Change: Link climate change and nuclear weapons talks

This petition calls on world leaders (especially the UN Permanent 5 members which are the world's most industrialised, highest polluting and biggest arms dealers) to integrate nuclear weapons talks and climate change talks.

The COP 21 climate change talks will take place in Paris in December this year. So far, all previous talks have failed to deliver cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. There is absolutely no expectation that the talks this year will deliver the agreements needed to protect the planet from the worst nightmares of runaway climate change.

The organisers of the COP conference say the world needs more ambition. This petition says that ambition is irrelevant without security and the biggest security threat is the nuclear weapon races that are accelerating around the planet. The result of these is to intensify international competition at a time when co-operation on climate change is vital.

Nuclear weapons force massive high carbon military industrial complexes to be locked in competitive engagement. In turn economies must keep expanding to raise the taxes to fund these. This is the antithesis of what is needed to tackle climate change and it exacerbates the risk of major war. As such, nuclear weapons make the cuts in CO2 emissions impossible to achieve and will ensure that if carbon budgets are agreed, what energy is available will have to be devoted to the arms industry in preference to all other needs.

This petition also recognises that the current level of atmospheric CO2 makes this is our last chance. As climate change intensifies, the competition between nations will increase, making future nuclear disarmament and climate change agreements much more difficult to achieve. Also, as climate change intensifies and causes major economies to collapse, it will be increasingly impossible to ensure that nuclear weapons remain safe from accident or premature launch and this needs to be considered in climate change talks. Finally no nuclear weapon state has given consideration to the liability that their nuclear weapons will pose to those that survive climate change making further nuclear weapon deployments immoral.