Interview with Richard Sandbrook

Professor Richard Sandbrook, President of Science for Peace Canada, talks about the future of the organization as it continues to grapple with the twin dangers of climate change and nuclear proliferation.

Watch: https://youtu.be/sL9I0iJDGOM

Unedited transcript.

Jim Allan: We know what we have to do about climate change, we just don't do it. So says Professor Richard Sandbrook, President of Science for Peace Canada. Welcome, Richard.

Richard Sandbrook: Hello.

Jim Allan: Welcome. Have I misquoted you yet?

Richard Sandbrook: No, so far so good.

Jim Allan: So far so good. Is it too late to do anything about climate change? We'll get right to it.

Richard Sandbrook: Well, that's such a difficult question to answer. I guess one way of answering it is that with the current trajectory of emissions, we're likely to blast right past the 1.5 degrees centigrade of livable warming sometime in the 2030s. And according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is a UN body of climate scientists, what happens then when we get closer to 2 degrees centigrade of global warming over the pre-industrial level is highly unpredictable, but very dire. So no, it's not too late. We could certainly cut emissions in half within eight years and achieve net zero by 2050 if we mobilized ourselves to do so. But of course, that would be a major undertaking and require people who benefit from the existing order to acquiesce. That would require people to undergo some period of adjustment in their expectations, require sacrifices would need to be shared throughout society. So it wouldn't be easy, but it could be done.

Jim Allan: Now, I'll give you a personal anecdote. We went out west to Vancouver, the Kelowna-Vernon area in August. And I was really looking forward to it. We did go knowing that there were forest fires, a lot of them. This year, there was more than usual. Now, I literally had trouble breathing. It was hard to go for even short walks. And there was ash literally falling from the sky when we're trying to swim and things. However, that said, people were still buying and selling real estate. So they're putting real estate up for sale. People are buying the real estate. There's multiple offers. I mean, do people care about this subject?

Richard Sandbrook: Well, people do care. Millennials and Gen Z care an enormous amount, because they're the ones who will obviously have their future snatched away from them. And beyond that, people care in the middle classes, many of them. There are some climate deniers left, especially at the upper levels. We now know that the fossil fuel industry has understood climate change for a long time, but kept that knowledge to themselves. People do care, but I think there are two problems that operate. One is that we think in terms of continuity. Human beings think in terms of continuity. If we think about 2030 or 2035, we think of today more or less like today, maybe a few more storms. We don't have a concept of complete lack of continuity, a break. And the problem about climate change is that it's not linear. It isn't a matter of slowly getting worse. It's a matter of a situation where things can change dramatically in a decade or less. We cannot comprehend a world which is drastically different in the mid-2030s, for example. To think of a very different world is very different, that is falling apart. To think of societal collapse is extremely hard to contemplate, of countries collapsing, especially beginning with the fragile states in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, but even ones like the United States, which already have very deep divisions, those collapsing into smaller units. It's very hard to understand. That's one problem. The other, I think, is the kind of notion of progress that we have. We being now a global population, no longer an American dream, now a Chinese dream, according to their president, and a dream of middle-class people or the desire to be middle-class throughout the world. So this dream of material improvement is now worldwide, the kind of consumerist mentality. A view of the world as being made up of commodities, a natural understanding of other people being commodities, yourself being a commodity to sell yourself, nature being a bundle of commodities. That cultural problem is also there. So people do care. Yes, they do. But they think in terms of continuity. Things may be worse in 15 years, but be more or less like today, they're thinking. And second of all, yes, they're concerned, but how much are they willing to see their way of life threatened? Because there will be changes in the way of life. We have to change a lot of things if we're going to survive as a species.

Jim Allan: Science for Peace, we'll talk about that for a sec. Through the years, it's focused on different things. Obviously when it's got a name like Science for Peace, in the early days it was more focused on nuclear disarmament and the peace movement and that sort of thing. Now it's more focused on climate change and that sort of thing. Why the change and focus over the years?

Richard Sandbrook: Yes, it began in 1981, Science for Peace, and the focus was wholly on nuclear disarmament and militarism more generally. And it was very effective for a long period of time, especially during the time of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who really regarded himself as an intellectual and was pleased to call upon the expertise of Science for Peace and other organizations in what he developed finally as his final campaign for nuclear disarmament before he retired as Prime Minister. That was the early period. What is different today, of course, is that then we had a view of really there just being one menace, which was a nuclear catastrophe, which would either end humanity or have enormous costs, very widespread costs for human beings. Today we realize, many of us do, that we face two twin threats to our survival. And of course we always talk in terms of human survival. We have such an anthropocentric view of the world that we really only think of ourselves as being important. Yes, it's nice to see animals, polar bears, too bad they're in trouble, but it's our view of humanity and we need to have a much broader view of the species of the world. They have as much right to exist as we do and human beings. But in any event, we see today that the twin dangers of global warming passed at a certain point leading to societal collapse and that within the lifetimes of those who are 40 years old today, let's say. And we see the nuclear threat, which is now the trouble with the nuclear threat is that people don't see it as a threat anymore. I mean, they did back in the 1980s and 1950s, the Cold War period when the Russians were increasing their armaments and the Chinese and there was the nuclear arms race at that point. Then there was the end of the Cold War and the nuclear weapons are still there in large numbers and even in more hands than ever before owing to proliferation.

Jim Allan: But we don't seem to, many people don't regard it any longer as a problem.

Richard Sandbrook: Actually, we're lucky to have lived this long with nuclear weapons. There have been a number of cases in which there was a very close call in terms of nuclear retaliation based on misreading of radar reports on both sides. So we've managed, luckily, to avoid a nuclear accident or intentional exchange. However, what is happening now is that there's a modernization program underway in all the major nuclear powers. Russia beginning, I suppose, China trying to get up to the same speed as the United States on nuclear weapons and the US alone forecasting the expenditure of over $2 trillion over 10 years on the upgrading of all their entire nuclear weapons and also creating tactical nuclear weapons, much smaller weapons, which unfortunately are much more likely to be used. You know, if they're losing on the ground, the temptation will be to use tactical nuclear weapons, which may lead to an escalation. Science for Peace is working stalwartly on that issue. We have some of our original members still there from 1981. They're still with us. They're peace warriors who dedicated their lives to it, including now they're in their 90s. They don't give up. They're widely known and vastly knowledgeable about nuclear weapons. So we're still doing that. But there is the other issue, which is not altogether unrelated. In fact, it's interconnected, which is global warming. We've already talked about global warming being a threat, so there's no need to suggest that. So with these dual threats, Science for Peace has extended its range of interest. But these are not disparate interests. It is not on one side this, on the other that. It's an understanding of the interconnection between militarism and climate change. One obvious interconnection is that we can spend $2 trillion, we being, let's say, North America, on modernizing nuclear weapons over 10, 15 years. And where will we be in 10 or 15 years, having spent that much money? We'll be no more secure than we are now. We'll be less secure. If you think about what the word security means, we'll understand that the major threat to our life, if it's not accidental nuclear conflagration, it will be global warming. And that $2 trillion, if it was redirected into dealing with the problems of climate change, as well as poverty, which is linked to that on a global basis, allowing a just transition, we can, in fact, develop a real human security in which people develop political security, economic, social, environmental security. This is where we should be aiming, at the individual level. We need to get beyond the mentality of national security. And as though nations building themselves up provides a secure world for people, it doesn't. And we need to get beyond that. It's a difficult mindset to break through. So in Science for Peace, in a way, we're trying to break through two mindsets, one on the nuclear side, the security, the other on the global warming side with a view of continuity and kind of a complacency that we can't do anything about it or things will work out all right. We're trying to deal with those kinds of mindsets and understand the interconnections between militarization or demilitarization and decarbonization. Those are the two things we have to work on together to create a world which is secure.

Jim Allan: I heard an interview that you did and you said you have some trouble getting the message out. Is that so?

Richard Sandbrook: This, I mean, let me be very honest with you. I mean, I'm a former professor emeritus of political science. And we are, to a large extent, a group of university people, not all, not all. There's at least one third who are not. So my own expertise lies in the realm of ideas, of conceiving of them, expressing them in a way that's comprehensible for other people, I hope, in any event. My expertise is not in public relations. It's not on social media. It's not in running really powerful webinars that have wide appeal. I find out that what I'm trying to do has not worked and I have to learn everything as president. I mean, I'm okay on the idea part. I think, I feel I am. But it's getting the issue of how do you persuade people? How do you influence policy? That's very, very difficult and very complex.

Jim Allan: And you said you target people more in their 20s and 30s. Is that fair to say? The people that you're targeting to, you want new members. You want to recruit some new members, right? Is that, that's really what you want to do.

Richard Sandbrook: The first thing you want to do is to cement our existing community and extend it. When I say our existing community, I mean both. Now we have two interlocking communities on nuclear weapons and militarization and on the other side on climate change. Those two groups have become closer together over time, seeing the interconnections between these two. So those are people in our webinars who are often very astute. They know a lot about the issues, but they have still things they don't know because things are moving very fast. We can provide concise updates on what's going on, latest thinking on various aspects of these problems. And we can, if we're lucky, if we do it right, we can make it interesting. So develop a sense of community among what are really mainly activists on a Canada wide and North American wide basis. We also aspire through webinars and through bringing in young interns to be able to speak to our natural constituency among the Millennials and the Gen Z people. Because they are the ones who are very concerned or most concerned about climate change. But they aren't concerned, as far as I can say, it's a gross generalization, really about nuclear weapons. University students, we are developing a group for a meeting which is called Students Against Nuclear Weapons. And that doesn't seem like an issue for many universities.

Jim Allan: That wasn't well attended when you...

Richard Sandbrook: No, we're developing. We're trying to get students. We're trying to get students throughout Canada, French as well as English. But with limited resources and without, you know, being experts in this field of bringing people together, it's a difficult thing to do. It's a very important project to bring home to university students that we are faced with the danger of a nuclear catastrophe.

Jim Allan: So I'll quote you back to yourself again. You said that part of the goal for Science for Peace is to interpret some of what you're talking about, like arcane academic articles or discussions in a popular way. So you want you want to create digestible content. I mean, if you showed up in an agency and said this to someone like me, I would immediately go, have you ever heard of Instagram or TikTok and that sort of thing? And you could definitely get some motivated 19 and 20 and 21 year olds, I think, to go out to a rally or a lecture or a guest speaker. And they don't need to create big documentaries. They can produce one like several one minute videos.

Richard Sandbrook: Right.

Jim Allan: Just a live event. And and and you're telling the story of that event, the beginning, the middle of the end, but also maybe get an interview with a guest speaker such as yourself or whatever. And it's just and then they they they send it out. That's what almost everyone would tell you. And but what I also think, too, is the 20 and 30 year olds aren't the people in power, the 40 and 50 year olds. So do we have time to wait until these 20 and 30 year olds that you say are interested and engaged? Do we have time to wait until they become the 40 and 50 year old people in power?

Richard Sandbrook: No, definitely not. Because if you look at the 10 years leading up to the pandemic in 2020, when it started, those were the increasing periods of protest throughout the world, not just in North America with Black Lives Matter, for example. With all the development of climate action since 2018 with Fridays for Future is the forefront of that and of racial justice groups in general in North America and in Europe. But throughout the world against authoritarian regimes, there is a steady increase in the whole range of protests involving largely young people by millennials under 35 years of age. And that is the hope for the future. You're not the power structure is very, very powerful. I mean, you know, it's in a financial area with great inequality, especially the United States and China. Let's not forget China is a highly inegalitarian society now as well. And Russia, of course, as well. So in highly inegalitarian societies, a small minority have a great deal of political power. That is the reality. And they may be climate deniers, but at the same time, they may be liberal, socially liberal. But the power structure is strong and it's very hard to disrupt. The only way that can be disrupted is really by below, by through mobilization on a very widespread basis, through demonstrations and protests. I might also add one important thing that's often not mentioned. And I'm not mentioning this fact in order to promote the idea. I'm mentioning it as a fact or as a trend. And that is the development of underground environmental groups. The next stage, especially with the partial failure of COP26, is a spreading of a view that, you know, peaceful protest doesn't really make difference. Reformism doesn't really move it. We're going to have societal collapse and with widespread deaths and therefore a more underground, sabotage oriented approach is warranted.

Jim Allan: So you need boots on the ground. I mean, you really need you want you need a grassroots operation, as you say, but you need new people now, right?

Richard Sandbrook: Yeah, they're already there. There are many different movements. There's the racial justice movement, the climate justice movement. There's the indigenous people's movements. There's feminist movements. There's left wing organizations. There are human rights organizations. The thing to do is to get them out of their silos. Each tends to be a one issue silo, you know, and the more you can get people from these various groups to recognize the commonality of interest they serve, they can serve in the longer term, the more united is the voice on a national but also on a global basis. The thing to do is how to get people to understand the commonality of interest they have in creating a just and sustainable society. I know it sounds very tried and very idealistic, but if you don't have justice and sustainability, if you don't have one, you don't have the other. You're not going to have sustainability without justice or justice without sustainability. So it does work together as a platform. So basically, what I hope will happen is a nonviolent, mobilized groups which disrupt enough activities to bring about the changes required. We know what to do. If anyone doubts that we don't know what to do about climate change, they should have a look at Drawdown, which is a book brought together by Paul Hawken on the basis of hundreds of climate scientists. There's a hundred solutions beginning with the most important and working all the way down. They're all given existing technologies. When you've read that book, you know, there's no reason why we can't solve climate change if we had the will. But we don't have the will and it requires some disruption. Sometimes as Canadians, we can only do so much or it feels that way where the tail on the elephant that is the United States, for instance.

Jim Allan: So what happens if, you know, Trump and or another Trump returns to power in 2024?

Richard Sandbrook: Things are going to get a lot worse from what I would think because they were trying to strip a lot of things, regulations, et cetera, away.

Jim Allan: So what can we do about 2024 from our perch here in Canada or can we do anything?

Richard Sandbrook: Well, I mean, the prospect of Trump and the Republicans returning to power in the United States is nothing less than tragic for the history of the world. Basically, it's that we don't have years and years to backpedal when it comes to global warming, nor do we have years to backpedal when there's this whole program of nuclear modernization and the use of tactical nuclear weapons and the offing with an aggressive American government. So what will happen? This is a prediction and not something I'm proposing. What is likely to happen if Trump gets to power is the groups will go underground in the United States and there will be increasing sabotage of pipelines and other installations like the rebuilding of the weathermen of the 1960s and that group that was unsuccessful to fail miserably in the end, but nonetheless did attempt an underground movement at that point. Now there's so much more knowledge to draw on. There's such a larger group of potential recruits among younger people that it's likely to be more effective. So I'm afraid that what will happen in that context is an even greater, deeper polarization in the United States. And with groups becoming violent on both sides. Because the progressive side of the coin will see that this is a recipe for disaster with the Republicans. And also the denialism of Trump when it comes to climate change is quite remarkable and of his administration. So that's bad. And what's going on in China is also unfortunate because the Chinese government is backtracking on its pledges on getting rid of coal and moving towards a green economy. It's supposed to be on this trajectory, but it's had a setback in terms of its power blackouts and falling back on coal again and building more coal plants, fired electricity plants. So we're not all moving, unfortunately, in the right direction. As you say, the Trump return, the Republican return would be a disaster for not only the United States, but the world. And it will lead to greater divisions and possibility of a violent movement undergoing.

Jim Allan: When you mention all these silos back in Canada, the silos that should all get together, it almost sounds like the Democratic Party in the United States too. There's different factions within the Democratic Party and they end up shooting each other in the foot. And then they start losing elections, which is what's happened in midterms and things like that. How can you get these silos in Canada to work together to, I don't know, somehow find common ground?

Richard Sandbrook: I guess that's what you've been working on for years. Not years, but the last couple of years, months. It's already happening. I mean, for example, just to give you one, the voice of women, Canadian voice of women is a very powerful organization. The Canadian voice of women for peace has adopted the idea of the twin threats. Before they were to do with militarism and peace issues. Now they've also joined on the side of global warming as an issue that's brought together. That's just one example of there are many environmental groups that will now turn out for peace ventures. Peace will turn out for environmental issues and global justice groups. I mean, sorry, racial justice groups, especially indigenous, are very much in the forefront of the environmental movement. In other words, you are seeing this development of links among what I guess would be called progressive movements. I mean, environmental movements are not necessarily progressive in the sense of left. I mean, there are many environmentalists who are believers in market solutions to the environmental issues. I'm not suggesting, if I use the word progressive, it's a very wide group going from left liberal to socialist. But there is, in that very wide group, an increasing commonality. It's not something we're trying to create. It's already ongoing.

Jim Allan: What's the one thing you'd like to leave with people watching this? What do they have to do or how would you hope they think after watching something like this today?

Richard Sandbrook: If they want just to think about one thing, think about the word security. What is security? We talk about national security, which means a nation state organizing to defend the power and economic economy of our country. That notion of national security is leading to our eventual demise and societal collapse because of either a nuclear catastrophe or the societal collapse from global warming. We need to think of security. What does it mean for you to be secure in 10 or 15 years? It's an individual thing. We have to focus on the individual, not the nation state. It's not national security. It is a kind of human security we're talking about. We want to develop a world of human security where nation states are dedicated to the notion of individuals and the human rights that people need to avoid violence, that kind of security. This is what I think we need to really focus on as one major thought.

Jim Allan: If someone watching this really wants to get involved, where do they go, what do they do? Do you have a website?

Richard Sandbrook: They would go to our website, scienceforpeace.ca, and then there's a membership button. You fill in an application, send it to sfp at physics.utoronto.ca. That's our address. We still have a University of Toronto email, and we have an office in the University of Toronto at University College. We're trying to be a nationwide organization again.

Jim Allan: Well, Richard, Professor Sandbrook, thank you for stopping by.

Richard Sandbrook: Well, thank you very much for this opportunity.