Barry Commoner and Arms Control
By Jason Sibert
It’s been nearly seven years since scientist and environmental activist Barry Commoner ended his journey on this earth.
Commoner passed away in New York City on September 30 of 2012. He lived in Clayton, Mo, a St. Louis suburb, several years and taught plant physiology at Washington University. Most associate his name with the cause of environmental protection due to his constant activism on behalf of the cause, the books he penned on the subject, and his 1980 presidential campaign on the Citizen’s Party ticket. However, Commoner’s work also contributed to the cause of arms control.
His scientific work on nuclear fallout helped to protect the ecology we depend on for life and also provided a still existing control to nuclear weapons. In the 1950’s, scientists became concerned about the fallout from nuclear weapons testing and Commoner combined science with activism on the issue. At the time, the Atomic Energy Commission claimed the danger of nuclear fallout was limited to the test site. However, Commoner and his associates challenged these claims and conducted a test. They appealed to local children to donate their baby-teeth to science. Their teeth were examined for strontium-90, a byproduct of nuclear testing. Commoner’s research concluded that children had enough strontium-90 in their bones to develop cancer later in their lives.
At the same time, Commoner spoke in St. Louis churches about the danger of nuclear fallout, and he helped form the St. Louis Committee for Nuclear Information. The CNI circulated a petition for an international agreement to stop nuclear testing and over 11,000 scientists signed it. Commoner’s work served as a scientific foundation for the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, signed by Soviet Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom in 1963 during the administration of John F. Kennedy. Democratic Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson supported the idea of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1952 and 1956.
The treaty banned the testing of nuclear weapons above ground. From an arms control perspective, the more weapons that are tested, the more they might be developed, and then probability of their use becomes more likely. The agreement still stands today, even though Soviet Russia is gone and we have the Russian Federation.
Commoner was famous for his four laws of ecology. One of those laws is everything is connected to everything else. It’s a law that makes sense in both ecology and arms control. The decisions about what we put into the environment has consequences, sometimes awful consequences. Weapons – particularly very destructive weapons like nuclear weapons – have an impact from the psychology of the nations wrapped up in them to the massive destruction they would create if they are used.
In a world of the unilateral foreign policy of the administration of President Donald Trump, as he has withdrawn from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Paris Climate Accords, Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and has said our country might not renew the New START Treaty, remembering Commoner’s accomplishments is more important than ever. The scientist used the lessons of nature and applied them to activism. Will some person, or organization, step forward with a nuclear arms control agenda and back up those ideas with activism?
Jason Sibert is the executive director of the Peace Economy Project in St. Louis.
