It can’t have been easy to work out what to do with the hands on the Doomsday Clock this year. In one of the odder group rituals of the reality-based community, a panel of experts ceremoniously set the hands on a drawing of a clock on Tuesday night.
They’ve done this every year since 1947 to express how well they think we’ve alleviated existential threats, initially from nuclear weapons, but now including the likes of climate change and cyberattacks.
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The closer to midnight – doomsday – the worse we’ve done. The clock has been hovering around 5 minutes to the hour for a decade, but in 2015, after a general lack of progress on nuclear non-proliferation and climate change, the hands moved to 3 minutes to midnight. This year, the sages .
Why? The latest picture is mixed. There was agreement in Paris at the end of 2015 to limit global warming – feeble, but at least an agreement. And Iran earlier agreed to verified limits on its nuclear activities.
But China and Pakistan are increasing their nuclear arsenals, North Korea tested what may have been a more usable nuke, and the US and Russia plan to modernise their own arsenals, at a cost of $350 billion in the US. Panel member Sharon Squassoni, of Washington DC think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies, remarked that you’re not likely to reduce your reliance on nukes when you’re spending that much.
Metaphor for destruction
Those who maintain the clock stand by its importance in its 70th year.
“The clock is a metaphor for how close we are to destroying the planet,” said Rachel Bronson, head of the , a journal about global security launched by scientists who made the first atomic bomb. Actually, she means for destroying civilisation. The planet is likely to survive our wars and warming; our hard-won welfare may not.
In 1947, the clock was set at 7 minutes to midnight. Since then, it has moved back and forth. Its worst moment, 2 minutes to midnight, came in 1953 when the US and Russia tested their first hydrogen bombs. At its most euphoric, it was 17 minutes to midnight in 1991 as the cold war ended and the US and Russia agreed to cut their nuclear arsenals.
These days, global threats go well beyond nuclear war, and the inputs for the clock have rightly been expanded. Climate change was added in 2007, and a now tabulates the various threats that provide a quasi-quantitative basis for each year’s “direness” index.
That said, the final call on where the clock’s hands point seems as much about gut feeling as a calculation on the back of an eminent scientist’s envelope – but these are also . I suspect this is as valid as any prediction in a complex world can get.
As a metaphor, the Doomsday Clock is undeniably powerful, judging from the global press coverage of this yearly ritual alone, although one wonders how many onlookers really heed its warnings. At least they can’t say we didn’t try to warn them – with a retro, but still relevant, bit of graphics.
