Arms Control Wonk reports from Oslo, where he is attending a conference titled "Achieving the Vision of a World Free of Nuclear Weapons," organized by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry and the Nuclear Threat Initiative:
I heard two new ideas today that I found interesting, not least because they were, well, new. Anyway, in both cases, the speakers suggested adopting successful ideas from other areas--one on efforts to combat climate change; the other to keep Antarctica for science. (1) An Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change for nuclear disarmament. The speaker knew how to play to the crowd, since Norway handed out a Nobel Peace Prize to the the IPCC along with Al Gore this year. Recall, that the goal of the IPCC is to assess the "latest scientific, technical and socio-economic literature" relevant to the challenge of climate change. Just replace "climate change" with "nuclear disarmament."
Can you imagine? A proliferation of the IPCC...I say worse than loose nukes.