If a conflict between India and Pakistan – currently locked in a tense standoff over the disputed Kashmir region – turns nuclear, it would not only kill millions of people but also spark a global climate catastrophe.
According to a study – carried out by Science Advances – the use of weapons of mass destruction by the two South Asian rivals in 20205 would kill 50 to 125 million people. The figures are based on a scenario, if Pakistan attacked urban targets in 2025 with 150-kiloton nuclear weapons and if India attacked with 100-kiloton nuclear weapons.
The latest flare-up in India-Pakistan tensions emanated from New Delhi’s military clampdown in part of Jammu and Kashmir it controls, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked autonomy for the Himalayan region on August 5. Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has likened the Indian BJP government and its ideological parent organization RSS to Nazi Germans and Italian fascist leaders during WWII.
President Donald Trump has offered to mediate on the thorny Kashmir dispute, pointing out that both countries possess nuclear weapons and must work out their dispute. The United Nations has also urged restraint in the face of human rights violations and threats to peace and security.
Stratford Worldview, a research organization, recently also asked the intelligence community to stay focused on the possibility of such a dark scenario as Kashmir crisis continues to fester.
Meanwhile, the danger of a conflict breaking out between India and Pakistan continues to echo across human rights and diplomatic communities as more than eight million people in Kashmir – where India now has deployed around one million troops – remain under siege with a communication blockade.
American Association for the Advancement of Science also cited the research in a report, saying that massive smoke rising into the air from burnt cities and targets would release 16 to 36 teragrams of black carbon into the atmosphere.
In the nightmarish scenario, the smoke layers would block out sunlight, cool the global surface by 2-5°Celcius and reduce precipitation by 15 to 30%.
The climatic disaster would diminish the rate at which plants store energy as biomass (net primary productivity) by 15 to 30% on land and by 5 to 15% in oceans, the AAAS explained.
The cumulative effect could be a mass starvation.
The AAAS refers to Owen B. Toon, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado and his colleagues, who note that India and Pakistan may expand their nuclear weapon arsenals from between 140 and 150 warheads by current estimates to between 200 and 250 warheads by the year 2025.
“It is disconcerting to think the actions of Indian and Pakistani generals could possibly start a war that could impact the entire world more than any previous world war,” said Toon.
“We hope India and Pakistan will use this information to stop building their nuclear arsenals and to start solving the Kashmir problem through negotiation.”
The report not only confirms long-feared consequences of a nuclear exchange between two large countries – India having a billion plus people and Pakistan having a population of over 200 million people – but also warns of unprecedented effect on the global climate change – which has already manifested terrible ramifications due to warming oceans and the planet.
