Is There a Partisan Dilemma in Nuclear Disarmament?

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i worry that politicians have become too at using at turning any issue into a partisan issue. And the fact that one side will be foredoing something automatically makes it suspect to another side. I often think about that ronald wragon line that he once uttered in his dotage, of saying, if only we had e aliens coming to earth,. We could get the russians and the americans to night around a common enemy. Ah, but when it comes to nuclear disarmment, we're a long way away from that.

We’re pretty well-calibrated when it comes to dealing with common, everyday-level setbacks. But our brains aren’t naturally equipped for dealing with unlikely but world-catastrophic disasters. Yet such threats are real, both natural and human-induced. We need to collectively get better at anticipating and preparing for them, at the level of political action. Andrew Leigh is an academic and author who now serves in the Parliament of Australia. We discuss how to move the conversation about existential risks from the ivory tower to implementation in real policies.

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Andrew Leigh received his Ph.D. in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is a member of the Australian House of Representatives representing Fenner. He was previously a professor of economics at Australian National University, and has served as Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury and Charities. His recent book is What’s the Worst That Could Happen? Existential Risk and Extreme Politics.

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