To: Joint Committee Emergency Preparedness and Management and Joint Committee Public Safety and Homeland Security

Re: State Bill H.738 and S.1488 to establish Citizens Commission on Nuclear Weapons and Climate Change

From: Patricia Hynes, Montague MA, Traprock Center for Peace and Justice and Nuclearban.us

Date: June 9, 2023

Thank you for this opportunity to write in support of the State Bill H.738 and S.1488 to establish a Citizens Commission on Nuclear Weapons and Climate Change

The two issues, encompassed in this bill – nuclear weapons and climate change – are leading our world, our country, our state and, consequently, our citizens of Massachusetts into an emergency of never-before proportion.  Mayors for Peace, of which Massachusetts has many, have called for a world free of nuclear weapons.  Recent health-threatening smoke in our state from Canadian forest fires brings home the severity of even remote climate crises for the people of Massachusetts.

We are a state with many weapons manufacturers, including nuclear weapons, and extensive military research, thus making Massachusetts a heightened target in a nuclear war.  Climate crisis threatens our state agriculture and forests; our coastal cities and towns, including Boston, with sea-level rise; and urban citizens in treeless and concrete-covered neighborhoods, uniquely the poor and people of color. 

Don’t we people of the state of Massachusetts, who voted you into office, deserve a voice in our state policy on both nuclear weapons and climate?  A truly democratic government in Massachusetts would give its citizens a forum for our voices, which the above-named House and Senate bill would provide.  You can do this by supporting MA House bill 738 and Senate bill 1488 to set up a Citizens’ Commission on Nuclear Weapons and Climate Change.