by Ted Turner
I first became concerned about population in the late 1970s and early 1980s when I met and read books by Paul Ehrlich and Lester Brown. They opened my eyes to the fact that the world’s population is growing rapidly and the rate of increase over the past century has been truly alarming. From the dawn of mankind, it took several million years for the world’s population to grow to one billion people and we passed this milestone around the year 1800. It took only 130 years to double that number, and by the time I was born, in 1938, the world’s population had moved just beyond the 2 billion mark. It then took just thirty years to add the third billion, fourteen years for the fourth (1974), and thirteen more years to reach 5 billion, in 1987. We added the sixth billion in eleven years and trends suggest that we’ll pass 7 billion sometime around 2009. It’s not inconceivable that the world’s human population could quadruple in my lifetime (I’ll turn eighty-three in 2021, the year we’re projected to reach 8 billion).
These are staggering facts and we have to be concerned about the demands that this level of human growth is putting on the planet. The amount of food, medicine, and energy we consume, the volume of waste we produce, and the toxins we put into our air and our water continue to increase as we add more people. At the same time, per capita consumption, especially in developed countries like the United States, is increasing as our population grows. Take automobiles. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, in 1938, the year I was born, there were roughly 230 motor vehicles per 1,000 Americans. That number has more than tripled to about 775 per 1,000 people today. Not only are we driving more cars longer distances, we’re building bigger houses, eating more, and buying more consumer goods. This is all a result of a growth-driven capitalistic society and while a lot of good comes from that (I’ve certainly benefited from the capitalist system), we have to take a hard look at the consequences.
There’s no one easy solution to the population explosion. Human beings are hardwired to procreate. We enjoy sex and we love the offspring we produce. Before I became concerned about population I had five children myself, and I love each one of them dearly. (Fortunately, my kids still laugh when I joke that if I’d known better at the time I would have tried to have fewer kids, but now it’s too late to send any of them back!) Nevertheless, I’m convinced that the world would be better off if we limit the number of children we have to just two per family. A lot of the growth in population has occurred in underdeveloped countries and I’m encouraged by efforts there to educate and empower women to make smarter decisions when it comes to their relationships and their own reproductive rights. I understand that some religions view family planning as a sin but I’m concerned that our world is now in a dire situation where not making efforts to keep family sizes down is increasingly irresponsible.
Another thing that keeps me up at night is the possibility of nuclear war. During the Cold War, we Americans came to view the Soviets as the enemy but my firsthand exposure to their citizens and to a leader like Mikhail Gorbachev helped me realize that they didn’t want a nuclear war any more than we did. I assumed that once the Cold War ended the United States and Russia would scrap their nuclear weapons and the threat of “mutually assured destruction” would go away once and for all. It wasn’t until I saw a 60 Minutes piece in late 2000 that I realized the threat is equally great or greater now as it was during the Cold War. Today, the United States and Russia each still continue to have thousands of nuclear warheads aimed at each other and on hair-trigger alert. We don’t think that one side will launch a strike against the other, but what if there’s an accident or a mistake? It’s not like we haven’t made mistakes in the past. In 1979, a military engineer in Nebraska loaded a simulated attack into our warning system by accident, and in 1983, the Soviets’ detection system showed five nuclear missiles launched against their country by the United States. The incidents were resolved but we might not always be this lucky. It only takes about thirty minutes for U.S.- and Russian-based nuclear missiles to reach their targets across the globe. Once a missile is airborne, the warning time for the other side is incredibly short, and once the country launches a response, the world as we know it would be wiped out in an afternoon’s time. This is to say nothing about other nuclear powers like the U.K., France, China, India, Pakistan, and Israel. Some of these countries have histories of conflict with their neighbors that go back centuries and they are obviously capable of mistakes just as we and the Russians are.
It became clear to me that when it came to the threat of nuclear annihilation the world still had plenty to be concerned about and I wanted to do something about it. By the year 2000 I was encouraged by the success we were having with the U.N. Foundation and decided to fund the creation of another foundation to study and remedy the nuclear threat in an independent way, free from the whims of annual government funding. I had no firsthand experience dealing with these issues and knew we needed an expert. Tim Wirth told me there was only one person for this job—his fellow former senator, Sam Nunn of Georgia.
As a centrist Democrat, Sam has earned respect on both sides of the aisle and around the world. While serving in the Senate he did a superb job as chairman of the Armed Services Committee and became an expert on nuclear issues. In the early 1990s, he worked with Republican senator Richard Lugar on the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, commonly known as the Nunn-Lugar Act. After the Cold War ended, the United States and the rest of the world clearly had an interest in seeing Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal dismantled in a safe, effective way. But this is an expensive proposition and, if done incorrectly, could lead to dangerous materials winding up in the wrong hands. Through Nunn-Lugar, the United States has supplied funding and other assistance to contribute to these efforts, and by 2007, fifteen years after the program’s start, more than seven thousand nuclear warheads have been deactivated along with the destruction of hundreds of missiles, launchers, and bombers.
I had met Sam before but didn’t know him well when I invited him to have breakfast. When I explained my idea he grasped it immediately and joined in. We agreed that Sam and I would be co-chairmen of the effort and that he would be CEO. With someone with Sam’s experience at the helm, I committed $250 million toward the creation of the Nuclear Threat Initiative. Since taking over, Sam has engaged NTI in a multipronged effort to try to make the world a safer place. He’s worked to convince the U.S. and Russian governments that gradual bilateral disarmament would be in each country’s best interests. Effectively, we’re asking nothing more than for those nations to live up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that we all signed in 1968. I carry a copy of this treaty’s Article Six in my wallet. Its language is clear and unambiguous: “Each of the parties to this treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”
NTI has also concentrated on trying to minimize the threat of nuclear terrorism. With the proper materials, in particular weapons-grade uranium, it’s not very hard to create a nuclear weapon, and in the hands of a terrorist, the damage that just one of these could create would be devastating. But enriching uranium to a weapons-grade level is not easy, and it’s more likely that a terrorist organization would try to buy or steal these materials from a country that has already produced them for their own military.
A real danger we face today is that there is a great deal of enriched radioactive material around the world that is simply not accounted for, especially in the eastern states of the former Soviet Union. To call attention to this problem, NTI funded the production of a film called The Last Best Chance. We put a lot of effort into making this film both dramatic and realistic (incidentally, this movie gave Senator Fred Thompson a chance to play the president of the United States years before he ran for the actual office), showing how terrorists could get their hands on these nuclear materials and how dangerous that would be. Th
e show premiered on HBO and we now offer it for free on NTI’s Web site, in hopes that more people will see it and begin to understand the importance of collecting and safeguarding these materials.
To help prevent a disaster, a superpower like the United States needs to play a leading role, but not a dictatorial one, and I’m increasingly concerned about the way we project ourselves to the rest of the world. I don’t believe that other countries are predisposed to dislike the United States simply because of our wealth. Whether you’re talking about a person or a country, it’s okay to be rich and it’s okay to be powerful, just as long as you’re humble and cooperative. But if you combine being rich and powerful with being arrogant and uncooperative, people won’t cut you much slack, and I’m afraid that that’s the kind of international stance we’ve taken in recent years.
I tried to make this point a couple of years ago during a Q&A session following a speech. I was critical of the time when our president said to the rest of the world, “You’re either with us or against us.” I followed that comment by asking, rhetorically, “Well, what if you haven’t made up your mind yet?” I took a lot of heat for saying that. “Ted Turner can’t decide if he’s for the terrorists or against them,” was the sarcastic line some of my critics took, but that missed my point.
Of course I’m against terrorism, but I’m also against war if it’s in any way avoidable. What I meant by my comments was that an individual or country could support the abolition of terrorism but also disagree with the ways a country chooses to fight it. I really don’t see the wisdom of spending billions of dollars to bomb a country like Iraq, then spending billions of dollars repairing the damage we’ve done, all to remove one crazy dictator from power. There’s no denying Saddam Hussein was a brutally cruel leader but he never posed a credible threat to the United States. Had we been more patient I believe he could have been removed from power through different means and without the loss of so many American and Iraqi lives, and without leaving so many U.S. troops there in such difficult circumstances.
We also need to realize that the old models of warfare simply don’t apply anymore. In the old days, when two countries went to war, they lined up their armies on the battlefield and whichever side inflicted more casualties on the other was the victor. But in recent times we’ve seen from Vietnam and now Iraq that we’re fighting very different wars against a very different kind of enemy. Nearly sixty thousand American servicemen and women lost their lives fighting in Vietnam, but more than 3 million North Vietnamese were killed, and they were the victors. It’s nearly impossible to wage a military battle against an enemy that’s willing to make that kind of sacrifice. Taking on Islamic fundamentalists we face a similar challenge. Not only are they willing to tolerate casualties, they believe that dying for their cause will send them directly to a heaven where they’ll be surrounded by beautiful women! The truth is, it’s easy to start wars, but very hard to stop them, and I worry that our militant posture around the world weakens our position of leadership and hurts our efforts at diplomacy. I believe that if you go around looking for enemies, you’ll find them, but if you go out looking for friends, you’ll find them, too. The United States has so much to offer other countries besides our military might. Instead of sending bombs and missiles to Iraq we’d have been better served sending doctors, nurses, and teachers.
Since the United States government is still far from friendly with countries like Iran and North Korea, when they say they are pursuing uranium enrichment programs to produce nuclear energy, not weapons, it creates a dilemma for everyone involved. If a country sincerely wants to pursue nuclear power and therefore needs a steady supply of enriched uranium, they need to create their own enrichment capabilities. Of course, once these are in place, outsiders will become suspicious and tensions will arise. At NTI, we’re working on a creative but practical solution to this problem.
Instead of building enrichment capabilities, what if a country could buy uranium that has been enriched to a level suitable for nuclear power, but beneath that which is required for making weapons? In 2006, through Sam Nunn’s leadership and with the generous financial support of Warren Buffett, NTI announced that it would contribute $50 million to the creation of a nuclear fuel bank. The gift would be made to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which would then be responsible for establishing and maintaining this operation. We made our pledge with the stipulation that one or more of the IAEA’s 144 member states would contribute an additional $100 million in funding or an equivalent value of low enriched uranium to begin the bank’s creation. We believe that responsibility for creating a bank like this ultimately resides with world governments but we made this pledge hoping to generate some activity. To date, no one has taken us up on this challenge but we’ve stimulated a lot of conversations on this subject and we hope to see some action very soon.
A TED STORY
“Ted Is Unabashed”
—Senator Sam Nunn
One of the great things about Ted is that he’s transparent. He doesn’t have a hidden agenda or hidden policies. I’ve heard him say several times if it weren’t for the First Amendment he’d be in jail or worse! He can be outrageous and he can be absolutely brilliant. Ted is unabashed, unafraid, and certainly persistent and spontaneous, with a lot of wisdom and with the ability to get to the core issues. He’s displayed all of those during the course of our deliberations.
We had a meeting once at Harvard’s Kennedy School with a bunch of experts from Harvard—not just the Kennedy School but from around the campus—to talk with us about the nuclear challenges. I think we started about 10:00 and Ted flew up that morning. I had given him a background paper on the meeting and some of the subjects we were going to talk about.
Ted didn’t say anything for about the first hour and then we got on a particular subject and he interrupted and said something to the effect of, “Damn. I’m supposed to know all about this—Sam gave me a memo on this but I spent the whole weekend with my former wife Jane Fonda and we had a wonderful time—and by the way, I got permission from all of my girlfriends.” He said, “I was leaving her this morning and I was going to read that paper on the airplane but Jane told me, ‘Here’s a book you’ve got to read by this psychiatrist because it will address some of your problems.’”
Ted is saying this to a group of intellectuals sitting around the table who don’t know him at all. “Jane, as you probably know, thinks I’m crazy,” he said, “but reading this book on the way up here when I should have been reading that paper, I came to the conclusion that this psychiatrist is the one who’s crazy!”
And then he stopped and we got back on the subject. By making these comments, Ted relaxed everybody and there were no more stiff necks around the table after that and we got down to the real issues after that in a much more meaningful way. Ted joined in the discussion and grasped the issues very well.
When Senator Nunn speaks about the nuclear threat, he often includes this story, which he describes as a “parable of hope.” In 1993, after the Soviet Union had collapsed, our two countries signed the U.S.-Russian Highly Enriched Uranium (or HEU) Agreement. Through this deal, five hundred tons of enriched uranium taken directly from former Soviet nuclear weapons is being blended down to low enriched uranium, for use in American nuclear power plants. Shipments of this material began in 1995 and are expected to continue to 2013. Now, here’s something remarkable to consider: In the United States, 20 percent of all our electricity comes from nuclear power plants, and 50 percent of the nuclear fuel used in the United States comes here via Russia as a result of this HEU agreement. That means that roughly one in every ten lightbulbs in the United States is powered by material taken from Soviet missiles that not long ago were pointed directly at us. These kinds of innovative, peaceful, and cooperative efforts continue to fill me with hope about the future.
In addition to the nuclear threat, our team at NTI is also concerned about biological outbreaks. Whether these occur naturally or are caused by the
intentional use of harmful agents, they pose a significant global health and security risk. In an effort to help governments and nongovernment agencies around the world prevent, detect, and respond to these threats we established the Global Health and Security Initiative (GHSI). We were very pleased in January 2008 when Google.org chose to give one of its earliest grants to GHSI. It’s great to see successful companies like Google being so aggressive and creative in their philanthropic efforts and I was gratified to see them recognize and reward our work at NTI.
I’m also pleased to see people turning their attention to global climate change. I’ve been speaking out on this subject for years and it hasn’t been easy. I’ve known Al Gore since the 1970s when he was a junior congressman and I was in Washington trying to get the SuperStation off the ground. These many years later it’s been gratifying for me to see the success he’s had with An Inconvenient Truth and watching folks from across the political spectrum take an interest in what has become one of the most serious challenges that our planet has ever faced. Solving these problems will require the effort and cooperation of individuals, corporations, and governments around the world.
The potential impact of climate change is varied and complex, but some of the solutions are fairly straightforward. First of all, we need to change our own personal habits. Energy consumption and CO2 emissions in countries like China and India are increasing at rapid rates but before the United States can lecture others on being more efficient, we need to set a better example ourselves. Americans have become spoiled by luxuries like air-conditioning, SUVs, and big homes, and it’s time we reconsidered the wisdom of driving a four-thousand-pound vehicle to take a two-hundred-pound person to buy a quarter-pound hamburger.
