Connecting Nuclear Weapons with Climate Change: Managing Eisenhower’s “Fearful Atomic Dilemma.”
Dr. Victor H. Reis

November 2, 2017

In a January 2017 New Yorker article, “The Atomic Origins of Climate Science: How arguments about nuclear weapons shaped the debate over nuclear warming,” Harvard Professor Jill Lepore [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/the-atomic-origins-of-climate-science] suggested that models of nuclear winter following an assumed nuclear exchange destroy the concept of nuclear deterrence and undermine environmental science. There is a fundamental connection between nuclear weapons and climate change mitigation, echoing Eisenhower’s 1953 Atoms for Peace Speech to the United Nations. From the perspective of early 1980’s White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Dr. Reis will begin his review of the ongoing nuclear debate and suggest an alternate story involving the nuclear freeze movement and the Catholic Church. The thread runs through nuclear power and nuclear proliferation, with stops at stockpile stewardship, non-proliferation and comprehensive test ban treaties, and the recent Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran. Dr. Reis will work to connect these dots into a coherent story. Vigorous discussion and expression of alternate approaches will be encouraged.

Vic Reis is a former U.S. government official, best known as the architect and original sponsor of the U.S. Nuclear Stockpile Stewardship Program and its associated Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative. Reis was a senior staff member at Lincoln Laboratory, Assistant Director for National Security and Space in the OSTP in the Executive Office of the President, a senior vice president for strategic planning at the SAIC, Director of DARPA; and subsequently Director of Defense Research and Engineering at the U.S. DoD. Reis served as Assistant Secretary for Defense Programs in the U.S. DOE from 1993 to 1999, where he led the development of the DOE's Stockpile Stewardship Program. Since 2005, Reis has served as senior advisor in the Office of the Secretary, DOE. He was also a member of the Strategic Advisory Group of the U.S. Strategic Command, the DCI S&T Advisory Group, the Argonne National Laboratory Board of Governors and other advisory groups. He graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (B.M.E.), Yale University (M.Eng) and Princeton University (PhD), all in mechanical engineering. Among his awards are two DoD Distinguished Public Service Medals, the DOE James Schlesinger Award and an honorary medal from the French CEA.

Connecting Nuclear Weapons with Climate Change | CGSR Seminar

There is a fundamental connection between nuclear weapons and climate change mitigation, echoing Eisenhower’s 1953 Atoms for Peace Speech to the United Nations. Vic Reis

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