Explosive Nuclear Spending

The world's spending more than ever on nuclear weapons. The eight nuclear powers — Britain, China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia and the United States — plus North Korea, which aspires to join the atomic club, are collectively pouring approximately $100 billion into their nuclear weapons programs this year.

And, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), more than 5,000 nuclear weapons are now deployed around the world.

With social spending cuts on the rise in too many countries to count, there's a petition to "cut nuclear weapons and the $1 trillion per decade we spend on them, instead of cutting the things we really need," writes Bruce Blair on Time.com. "Citizens need to bring this to the attention of their governments urgently. You can sign the petition here: www.cutnukes.globalzero.org."

You can also check out this OtherWords op-ed by Kingston Reif on New START, and this column by William A. Collins that calls for scrapping nuclear weapons and reactors.