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SARCASTIC LAUGHTER erupted when a civil society representative expressed his "admiration for the delegate of the United States, who with one insensitive, ill-timed, inappropriate and diplomatically inept intervention" had "managed to dispel the considerable goodwill the US had garnered by its decision to participate" in Vienna Conference on Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons.

The speaker was Richard Lennane, who prefers to call himself the "chief inflammatory officer" of Wildfire, a Geneva-based disarmament initiative. He was making a statement at the final session of the conference in the Austrian capital on 8-9 December – the third after the Oslo (Norway) gathering in 2013 and Nayarit (Mexico) earlier this year.

Unlike the previous conferences, the United States and Britain – two of the five members of the nuclear club, along withfor Energy and Environmental Research, Nuclear Information Project of the Federation of American Scientists, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the Union of Concerned Scientist pointed out in a joint statement, "nearly five years after the successful 2010 NPT review conference, follow-through on the consensus action plan – particularly the 22 interrelated disarmament steps – has been very disappointing.

"Since the entry into force of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) in 2011," the statement added, "Russia and the United States have failed to start talks to further reduce their still enormous nuclear stockpiles, which far exceed any plausible deterrence requirements."

2015 will also mark the 70th anniversary of the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the consequences of which are still being felt by hibakusha (survivors) and