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DR. ROBERT M. GOULD has been president of the San Francisco-Bay Area Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) since 1989 and will serve as president of the National PSR in 2003. He has written extensively on foreign policy issues and on the environmental effects of militarism. PATRICE SUTTON, MPH, has worked for peace and against nuclear weapons and related technologies for over 20 years. She is a Research Scientist for the Public Health Institute, has conducted research on the prevention of pesticide poisoning among workers, and is a board member of the Western States Legal Foundation.
The most profound danger to world peace in the coming years will stem not from the irrational acts of states or individuals but from the legitimate demands of the world's dispossessed.... The only hope for the future lies in cooperative international action, legitimized by democracy. It is time to turn our backs on the unilateral search for security, in which we seek shelter behind walls. Instead we must persist in the quest for unified action to counter both global warming and a weaponized world.... To survive in the world we have transformed we must learn to think in a new way. As never before, the future of each depends on the good of all. -- The Next 100 Years, a statement by 110 Nobel Laureates (December 11, 2001).
THE CONTRIBUTIONS TO "GLOBAL THREATS TO SECURITY" EXPLORE A RANGE OF issues that collectively constitute a challenge to the survival of a world community threatened by what one observer has noted to be an "Age of Extinction." As reflected against the prehistoric record of profound breaks in evolutionary progress, we are now in the midst of an epoch characterized by a significant assault on all forms of life from an interplay of toxic chemicals, ozone depletion, climate change, and habitat destruction (Lerner, 1998). In the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, the global outlook for harnessing the necessary resources and political will to combat such dread threats to public and environmental health has gone from bad to worse.
Obviating the need for a planetary survival plan, war without limits in time and space is the future held out to all. The "War on Terrorism" has...