Doomsday Clock Moves Ever Closer to Midnight

January 28, 2021

Members of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board, Robert Rosner and Suzet McKinney, reveal the 2021 setting of the Doomsday Clock at 100 seconds to midnight. [Source: thebulletin.org]

Amidst a deadly global pandemic, rising threat of climate change, and nuclear war, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (The Bulletin) has set its 2021 clock at 100 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to armaggedon.

In a press conference on Wednesday, January 27^th, Rachel Bronson, the director of The Bulletin, stated that “we are now at the two-minute warning due to the man-made threats of climate change and nuclear war.”

Rachel Bronson [Source: thebulletin.org]

According to Bronson, what is especially disturbing about our current moment is the “undermining of science and law-based approaches to solving major world problems and discarding of international agreements by influential leaders.”

“The early denial of the Coronavirus pandemic threat and vilifying of prominent scientists,” Bronson said, “epitomizes a dangerous erosion of science” that is leading us closer to disaster. “The falling dominoes have been made possible by years of denigrating scientists and promotion of conspiracy theories.”

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists consist of a collection of leading scientists concerned about the misapplication of technology in society.

The Doomsday Clock was first set up in 1947 as a metaphor for threats to humanity from unchecked scientific and technical advances.

Midnight is the hypothetical global catastrophe that will result from the deployment of nuclear weapons or destruction of the environment if climate change progresses.

The Clock’s original setting in 1947 was seven minutes to midnight. It has been set backward and forward 24 times since then, with the largest-ever number of minutes to midnight being 17, set in 1991.

The reason for the backslide is in part due to the growing Cold War rivalry between the U.S., China, and Russia, which has led to the dismantling of nuclear arms control agreements like the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Range Treaty (INF) in 2019 and heightened threat of nuclear winter.

Dr. Steve Fetter, a Science and Security Board member of The Bulletin and Dean of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, stated at the press conference that the

risk of nuclear war has become unacceptably high. The U.S. has embarked on a trillion-dollar nuclear modernization program, and Russia is also modernizing its nuclear arsenal in response to the U.S. deployment of ballistic missiles; and so is China. The outbreak of conventional war among these powers could very well lead to nuclear war.

Former California Governor Jerry Brown (1975-1983; 2011-2019), the executive editor of The Bulletin, echoed Fetter in denouncing the new nuclear arms race.

Brown told those at the press conference that “the U.S. and Russia, the world’s two top nuclear powers, must stop shouting at each other. It is time now to eliminate nuclear weapons, not build more, and [also] to get serious about fighting climate change.”

Brown noted that he had been around politicians for many years and found that most politicians that he worked with understood the issues pretty well but were reluctant to tell the American people the real dangers that they faced.

Brown also criticized the mainstream media for fixating on Russia’s misdeeds [real or imagined] which he said are “infinitesimal compared to the potential for a nuclear holocaust.”

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf [Source: wikipedia.com]

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the former President of Liberia and chair of the World Health Organization (WHO) Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, expressed some optimism at the press conference with a new administration in Washington which “respects science and multilateral cooperation.”

Sirleaf pointed to Biden’s support for (1) the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia, (2) the Paris climate change accords, and (3) the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran as encouraging, and conveyed hope that a new spirit and determination was beginning to take hold—a process that could “lead people to fight over the coming years to build a better world.”

See the official statement of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announcing the Doomsday Clock change—it’s worth a good read.

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