WASHINGTON — The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced Tuesday that it has moved its metaphorical Doomsday Clock closer than ever to midnight, the hypothetical hour of Armageddon, reflecting experts’ assessment that humanity is confronting unprecedented threats to its existence.
The 2023 countdown time was set at “90 seconds to midnight,” the group’s leaders announced in a press conference on the National Press Club. This recent time was 10 seconds closer to “doomsday” than it was set to a yr ago. The group has been measuring real and existential threats to humankind, from climate change to the prospects of nuclear war, for greater than 70 years.
“The purpose of the clock is to evaluate where humanity is, and whether we’re safer or at greater risk,” said Dr. Rachel Bronson, president and chief executive of the bulletin. “And as we move the clock closer to midnight, we’re sending a message that the situation is becoming more urgent.”
This yr, the continuing Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s thinly veiled threat to deploy nuclear weapons within the conflict raised the worldwide threat to humanity, the group said.
“Putin has given no indication that he’s willing to just accept defeat,” said Dr. Steven Fetter, a professor on the University of Maryland and a nuclear-threat expert.
“But even when nuclear use is avoided in Ukraine, the war has challenged the nuclear order, the system of agreements and understandings that had been constructed over six many years to limit the risks of nuclear weapons,” said Fetter.
The renewed global threat of nuclear war was compounded by the continuing Covid pandemic, experts noted.
“Events like Covid-19 can not be considered rare, once-in-a-century occurrences,” said Dr. Suzet McKinney, principal and director of life sciences at Chicago real estate developer Sterling Bay.
“The whole number and variety of infectious disease outbreaks has increased significantly during the last 40 years, with greater than half brought on by zoonotic diseases, that’s, disease originating in animals and transmitted to humans,” she said, adding that there is “no clear end in sight” to the pandemic.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by the late physicist and Nobel laureate Albert Einstein, in addition to scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project to construct the primary atomic bomb. The primary clock was unveiled in 1947.
The clock’s threats “deal with manmade threats: nuclear risk, climate change and recent disruptive technologies, including bio technologies,” said Bronson. “We on the bulletin imagine that because humans created these threats, we are able to reduce them.”
“The challenges outlined by today’s announcement by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists couldn’t be more global in nature,” said Mary Robinson, the previous president of Ireland. “Nobody country can tackle them on their very own, regardless of how large their population, how strong their economy, or how feared their military.”
