Peace - the solutions

For 60 years the world's nuclear arsenal has threatened peace, stability and equality.

More nuclear weapons will not bring greater security. There is no foreseeable military threat to the UK and they will not stop a suicide bomber with a backpack. Instead, by building new nuclear weapons the UK will help to fuel a new arms race and undermine international cooperation at a time when we all need to work together to tackle climate change.

Global disarmament

Two international treaties are at the heart of decades of work to control and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CBTB). These international negotiations are part of a process which has already successfully reduced the world's nuclear weapons stockpiles by half and ensured the majority of the world today is nuclear-free.

Together these two treaties:

• commit nuclear states to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear stockpiles
  
• in exchange, non-nuclear states agree not to pursue the development of nuclear weapons and
  
• bans all nuclear explosions in all environments to prevent the development and testing of new nuclear weapons.

The UK faces a key choice - not only whether to build more nuclear weapons, but what kind of relationship it wants to have with the rest of the world.

We can either continue to be a part of the solution in a jointly managed system of treaties for disarmament, arms control and building international security, or we can follow the US down a unilateral path that undermines international cooperation. By rushing through a House of Commons vote on Trident renewal in March (despite having to rely on Tory support following the largest rebellion among Labour MPs since the Iraq war), Tony Blair committed us to the latter path. By following Blair's lead, new PM Gordon Brown is effectively putting two fingers up to international arms reduction, and telling the world's non-nuclear states to "do as I say, not as I do." The result? Almost certainly a dramatic increase in proliferation, as more countries seek nuclear weapons to protect themselves from political domination by members of the 'nuclear club'.

But it doesn't have to be like this - there is another way. The first step is for all nuclear weapons states to commit that they will not develop any new nuclear weapons. Then they must prove that they are committed to a peaceful solution by taking all nuclear weapons poised and pointed at targets off alert and bring Trident submarines back to their bases. Only then will all nations be able to work together to reinvigorate the international disarmament negotiations working towards a secure and stable peace.

Greenpeace is working for a world free of nuclear weapons, with each region of the world a nuclear free zone. Region by region these zones will rid entire parts of the world of nuclear weapons and shrink the geographical and political space in which they can play a role. These zones of safety and security also build cooperation and trust amongst peoples and nations. More than 50 per cent of the world is already in nuclear weapons free zones; we need to support those we have and build more.

Tackling climate change together

The world is warming up. Already 150,000 people are dying every year because of climate change and, within 50 years, one-third of all land-based species could face extinction. If we carry on the way we are now, by 2100 the planet will likely be hotter than it's been at any point in the past two million years.

Catastrophic climate change isn't inevitable, but tackling this threat will require unprecedented global action. The first and worst impacts of climate change are felt by the poor in the developing world. The responsibility for the problem, however, lies primarily with the rich industrialised nations, and increasingly the rapidly industrialising nations.

Since all countries are potentially affected by and contribute to climate change, we must all work together for a solution. The tens of billions of pounds that would be wasted on a new nuclear bomb could instead put us on the low carbon pathway needed to tackle climate change and position the UK as a world leader in developing low carbon technologies.