Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 August 2009
* A referee comments (and we vehemently agree) that it is gratifying to see the Roman Catholic Church speaking out in this manner regarding mankind's most urgent concern, which gives us hope that they will soon do so about the basic cause, namely human population.—Ed.
* See, for example, our stressing of the foreseeable effects of nuclear warfare through the early part of our Winter issue last year (Environmental Conservation, Vol. 8, No. 4, especially pp. 257–73, 1981), and the Subsequent double issue of Ambio devoted to this most alarming of all topics.—Ed.
** Another telling figure is given above on page 339, in the Appeal of ICSU to the recent 2nd Special Disarmament Session of the UN General Assembly, with their statement that ‘today the combined yield of existing nuclear weapons exceeds 13,000 megatons of TNT’, whereas ‘the totality of [chemical] explosives, used throughout the history of mankind, did not reach the equivalent in power of 10 megatons of TNT’—even though this figure should probably be increased to 25.—Ed.