The Guardian - Suzanne Goldenberg
Symbolic clock is now at three minutes to apocalypse, the darkest hour for humanity since the cold war
The symbolic doomsday clock moved to three minutes before midnight on
Thursday because of the gathering dangers of climate change and nuclear
proliferation, signalling the gravest threat to humanity since the
throes of the cold war.
It was the closest the clock has come to midnight since 1984, when
arms-control negotiations stalled and virtually all channels of
communication between the US and the former Soviet Union closed down.
“It is now three minutes to midnight,” said Kennette Bennedict, the
executive director of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, announcing
the two-minute shift toward the midnight hour.
The move came as scientists sounded a warning about climate change
for the second time in three years. The last move of the clock hands,
from six minutes to five minutes to midnight, in 2012, was also because
of climate change.
As the scientists noted last Thursday, 2014 was the hottest year in 130 years of systematic record keeping. Nine of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000.
But the scientists suggested that the greater danger lay in the failure of leaders to recognise and act on climate change.
“Stunning government failures have imperiled civilisations on a
global scale,” Benedict said. “World leaders have failed to act on a
scale or at a speed to protect humanity from catastrophe.”
The greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change have risen
more since 2000 than in the three previous decades combined, Richard
Somerville, a research professor at the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography, said. Even so, he observed, negotiators had steadily
lowered their ambitions for a global climate deal.
Meanwhile, the scientists said, global efforts to reduce nuclear
arsenals have slowed since 2009, and all of the nuclear powers were
expanding reactors and weapons programmes.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the symbolic clock in
1947 to indicate the cold war threat. In 1991, when the threat of
nuclear annihilation receded with the end of the cold war, the clock
stood at 17 minutes to midnight.
But it was now moving closer to the apocalypse because of climate
change. “We are not saying it is too late to take action, but the window
to take action is closing rapidly,” Benedict said.
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