A Nuclear war between India and Pakistan to affect world food: Report

A Nuclear war between India and Pakistan to affect world food: Report

More than a billion people around the world would face starvation if India and Pakistan were to unleash their nuclear weapons – even if that war remains limited to the region, a study released Tuesday warned.

That’s because the deadly and polluting weapons would cause major worldwide climate disruption that would dramatically drive down food production in China, the United States and other countries. China and the US are two of the world’s biggest producers of
food.

Combined, Pakistan and India are believed to have close to 150 nuclear warheads.

“The grim prospect of nuclear famine requires a fundamental change in our thinking about nuclear weapons,” said study author Dr Ira Helfand of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

“The new evidence that even the relatively small nuclear arsenals of countries such as India and Pakistan could cause long lasting, global damage to the Earth’s ecosystems and threaten hundreds of millions of already malnourished people demands that action
be taken,” Helfand said in a statement.

“The needless and preventable deaths of one billion people over a decade would be a disaster unprecedented in human history. It would not cause the extinction of the human race, but it would bring an end to modern civilization as we know it.”

The study, set to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Climate Change, was released at the World Summit of Nobel Laureates in Chicago.

It found that corn production in the United States would decline by an average of 10 per cent for an entire decade and soybean production would drop by about 10 per cent, with the most severe decline occurring five years after the nuclear war.

It also determined that rice production in China would drop by an average of 21 per cent for the first four years and 10 per cent for the next six years.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=20190

Posted by Ammar Ahmad on Apr 25 2012. Filed under Latest News, Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry