The biggest challenges now facing humanity are climate change, war and poverty. If money could be saved by disarmament and redistributed to deal with the other challenges, it would be of enormous benefit to humanity.

After a series of national and international conventions, world leaders have reached some sort of consensus on poverty and climate change. Of these, poverty is easier to address, since individual nations find it in their own interest to alleviate it.

However, little progress has been made on climate change or disarmament. The recent Copenhagen climate conference witnessed an unfortunate amount of discord, as individual countries sought to cut emissions by as little as possible.