By LEONARDO BOFF*
Vladimir Putin's warning that he could use nuclear weapons does not appear to be a bluff, but a decision taken by the entire defense corps of the Russian Confederation
In recent statements, Vladimir Putin, referring to the war he is waging against Ukraine, which is defending itself with increasingly powerful weapons from the US and NATO, declared: “if there is an existential danger to my country, I will use nuclear weapons.”
They certainly won't be strategic weapons with devastating destructive power. This would provoke retaliation from the US with the same type of weapons. This would probably wipe out a large part of human life and the biosphere.
But Vladimir Putin would use more limited tactics, but with highly destructive effects. The threat does not appear to be a bluff, but a decision taken by the entire defense corps of the Russian Confederation. UN Secretary General António Guterrez rightly said when opening the proceedings in September: “We are approaching the unimaginable – a powder keg that risks engulfing the world.” If this were to happen, there would be a serious risk of an escalation that would be extremely dangerous for our future.
In the extreme, a nuclear winter could occur in which the sky will turn white (in Elizabeth Kolbert's expression in the book The White Sky: The Nature of Our Future) because of radioactive particles. Trees would barely be able to photosynthesize, providing us with enough oxygen, and food production would be greatly affected. Such a catastrophe would put human life and the biosphere at risk.
The issue is too threatening to ignore. Toby Ord, an Australian philosopher teaching at Oxford, has written a detailed book on the risks involved: Precipice: existential risk and the future of humanity. This is not alarmism or catastrophism. But we must be realistic, hopeful and ethically responsible. We already have the experience of what has been the greatest terrorist act in history, when the United States under Harry Truman dropped two simple nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which decimated two hundred thousand people in minutes.
Then we created much more devastating weapons and even the “principle of self-destruction” as the late and eminent cosmologist Carl Sagan called it. Pope Francis, in his speech at the UN on September 25, 2020, warned twice about the eventuality of the disappearance of human life as a consequence of our irresponsible treatment of Mother Earth and overexploited nature. In the encyclical Fratelli tutti (2020) sternly states: “we are all in the same boat, either we all save ourselves or no one is saved” (n. 32).
Nobel laureate Christian de Duve in his well-known vital dust states that “in a certain way, our time resembles one of those important ruptures in evolution, marked by mass extinctions” (p. 355). In the past, it was the low-flying meteors that threatened the Earth; today the low-flying meteor is called a human being, giving rise to a new geological era, the Anthropocene and, in its most acute phase, the current Pyrocene (the great fires).
Théodore Monod, perhaps the last great modern naturalist, left as his testament a reflective text with this title: And if the human adventure were to fail? He asserts: “we are capable of senseless and insane behavior; from now on we can fear everything, absolutely everything, including the annihilation of the human race” (p. 246). And he adds: “it would be the just price for our madness and our cruelty” (p. 248).
If we take seriously the global health and social drama and the increasing global warming, under the Pyrocene era, this horror scenario is not unthinkable.
Edward Wilson, a great biologist, attests in his thought-provoking book the future of life: “Man has until now played the role of planetary killer… the ethics of conservation, in the form of taboo, totemism or science, has almost always arrived too late” (p. 121).
It is also worth mentioning a name of great respect, James Lovelock, the formulator of the hypothesis/theory of the Earth as a living super-organism, Gaia, with a title that says it all: Gaia's revenge. During his visit to Brazil, he told the magazine Veja: “by the end of the century 80% of the human population will disappear. The remaining 20% will live in the Arctic and in a few oases on other continents, where temperatures are lower and there is some rain… almost the entire Brazilian territory will be too hot and dry to be inhabited” (Yellow Pages, October 25, 2006).
The greatest thinker of the 15th century, Martin Heidegger, rightly pondered in a text published XNUMX years after his death, aware of the planetary risk: “Only a God can save us” (Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten).
It is not enough to wait on God, because he is not a stopgap in the face of human irresponsibility, but rather, he cares for the maddened human being, setting limits to a reason that has become irrational to the point of forging means of self-destruction. We trust that in the face of this catastrophe, there will be a minimum of wisdom and restraint in decision-makers.
After we killed the Son of God who became man, nothing is impossible. But God, not the wielders of weapons of mass destruction, is the master of history and human destiny. He can create from the ruins a new heaven and a new Earth, inhabited by transfigured human beings, caretakers and friends of all life. This is our faith and hope.
*Leonardo Boff is an ecologist, philosopher and writer. Author, among other books, of Caring for our Common Home: clues to delay the end of the world (Vozes).
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