The Doomsday Clock has accompanied us for almost seventy years. It is a constant reminder of humanity's potential for self-destruction and of the accumulated failures decade after decade to move away from that possibility. The Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists updated the position of the hand, placing humanity at three minutes to midnight, a position not reached since 1984.
A Brief History of the Doomsday Clock
With the beginning of the Atomic Age came the end of World War II, and humanity learned the destructive capacity of nuclear devices in a war conflict. Wars ceased to be a clash of soldiers and resources over specific territories, and from that point on, all of them carry the possibility of annihilating the human species forever. In 1947, the Doomsday Clock had its first publication, setting the hand at seven minutes to midnight. The situation deteriorated rapidly in the following six years, and the 1953 update placed the hand at two minutes, “courtesy” of the thermonuclear tests carried out by the Soviet Union and the United States. The Clock never returned to being that close to the end, but those responsible for the Bulletin decided to move the hand again, adopting a position that had not been touched since 1984: We are three minutes from the apocalypse.
Reasons for the Change
The reasons for moving the clock forward are relatively similar to those we saw in 2012, when the hand was at five minutes. An acceleration in the accumulation and development of nuclear weapons, coupled with the renewed conflict between the United States and Russia over the situation in Ukraine, gives a certain “traditional” tint to the update; however, the main reason lies in climate change. According to Kennette Benedict, executive director of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, this combination of factors represents an extraordinary and undeniable threat to the continuity of the human race on the planet. The harshest criticism from the Bulletin was directed at world political leaders for their spectacular failure to act with the speed and determination needed to combat the effects of global warming.
What's Next?
If current parameters hold, the next update of the Clock should take place in 2018, but the next meeting of our intrepid leaders will be in Paris before the end of the year, to set new goals that should come into effect during 2020. In the minds of many, this is nothing more than kicking the can down the road. Sivan Kartha, a member of the Bulletin and scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute, was blunt: Current emissions of gases that promote the so-called greenhouse effect have increased by 50 percent since 1990. With the price of a barrel at 47 dollars, we already know what to expect.
