Presentation by Jonathan Granoff, President Global Security Institute
delivered to the Halki Summit on “Global Responsibility and Environmental Sustainability: A Conversation on Environment, Ethics, and Innovation”
June 18-20, 2012
Istanbul, Turkey
The reigns of law and morality are necessary to control the horses of technology and science and guide them from destruction into the greener pastures of creativity and service for life. This is an existential and spiritual necessity in the nuclear age.
The nuclear weapons age began at 5:29:45 a.m. Mountain War Time, July 16, 1945, when the first atom bomb was tested in a portion of the bleak barren Alamogordo bombing range in the New Mexico desert chillingly named Jornado de Muerto (Journey of Death). After the thunderous roar of the shock wave, a huge pillar of smoke rose 30,000 feet, creating the first icon of the nuclear age—the fearsome mushroom cloud. A blast of energy of unprecedented destructive magnitude bathed the surrounding mountain in a brilliant light that could be seen 150 miles away. J. Robert Oppenheimer, Director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, the organization responsible for the design of the first atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Engineer District of the War Department, uttered a sober description from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita: “‘Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.’”
Jonathan Granoff is the President of the Global Security Institute, a representative to United Nations of the World Summits of Nobel Peace Laureates, a former Adjunct Professor of International Law at Widener University School of Law, and Senior Advisor to the Committee on National Security American Bar Association International Law Section.
