Interview with Faculty person Dr. Muhammad Atiq-ur-Rahman B.Sc. CRP (UET), M.Sc. UDP & EM (Bangkok), Ph.D. S.E.(Japan) Post-Doc. (Japan) Associate Prof. of Environmental Sciences Department Lahore College for Women University on Global Warming Issue.

Rabia Yousaf: As you think about the range of threats facing the world today–specifically those that have the potential to cause cataclysmic harm–such as climate change, global pandemics, and your particular expertise, nuclear disaster, where on the field do you place the nuclear risk in relation to other critical challenges?

Dr. Muhammad Atiq-ur-Rahman : We face many challenges in our personal lives, our communities and our nations.  But two stand out in their seriousness and consequences:  global warming and nuclear weapons.  Both threaten destruction on a planetary scale.  Both are caused by machines we built. Both are preventable and reversible.  But both require new ways of thinking and new leadership to find solutions.  Continuing with current policies courts global catastrophe. Other problems also cause or could cause massive human suffering, such as war in the Middle East or the poverty conditions of much of humanity.  And others can have global consequences, such as pandemics.  But only nuclear weapons and global warming have the potential for fundamentally altering or even ending all that human civilization has accomplished over the past millennia.

Rabia Yousaf:  What do you think should or can be done to improve the effects of global warming going forward?
 

 Dr. Muhammad Atiq-ur-Rahman:  I’m in favor of air capture, not just sequestering carbon dioxide at power plants, but actually sucking it out of the air and burying it.  Klaus Lackner at Columbia has devised a system for doing this with membranes.  The membranes love to bind CO₂ when they’re dry, but then it can easily be washed out (Sometimes called “artificial trees,” Lackner’s technology can reportedly remove about 1000 times more carbon dioxide from the air than could a real tree of the same size).  

Rabia Yousaf:  I can’t imagine who will pay for that…

Dr. Muhammad Atiq-ur-Rahman:  This technology won’t change the playing field for the energy companies, so some sort of carbon tax will have to be charged, when people use carbon-based fuels.  Of course, the consumer will pay it.  When people start feeling the real effects of global warming, they will be ready to do something.

Rabia Yousaf: Lastly, what is the core driver for you to work on this issue day in and day out, and what is truly at stake if we don’t get it right?

Dr. Muhammad Atiq-ur-Rahman: People often fail to realize just how completely destructive these weapons are. Mankind has the power to destroy human life as we know it. The use of one nuclear weapon would be devastating, ten would be unimaginable, and one hundred would cause destruction beyond anything humankind has ever seen. We have thousands. I do not believe that fallible human beings can control this destructive power indefinitely.

Our troops, our public and our nation deserve a smarter, safer policy.  If we miss this opportunity to modernize our security policies to meet the needs of the 21^st Century, we could slip back into a world of more nuclear states, more nuclear arms races, and greater risk of nuclear terrorism.  I believe we are smarter than this.  I am optimistic that over the next few years we will make the right choices, choose the right strategies and budgets and move step by step towards few weapons and greater security.  That is not just my vision, it is my passion.