![]() The symbol of this kind of threat isn’t a clock - it’s one of those ever-proliferating graphs that shows the temperature going upwards into new highs. But there will be no single Earth-killing moment. It’ll just be a world that gets harder to live in, with devastating local disasters, worsening weather extremes and growing systemic problems. It’s what scholars call a “slow disaster,” something that will unfold over decades, even centuries. There won’t be some single abrupt event that ends the world. The tragic stories we read of Hiroshima are not of the people who died immediately, but of survivors who had to rebuild their lives, city and nation.Ĭlimate change is a different kind of risk altogether. As catastrophic as nuclear strikes could be, they wouldn’t be the end of history. But even nuclear war wouldn’t be quite so abrupt there would be a lot of survivors, even in the nations that were directly attacked, and they would have to deal with whatever came next. “Midnight” implies a finality: the end-of-the-world hard stop that we associate with nuclear war. The changes to what the Doomsday Clock measures also highlight the symbol’s biggest problem. We can apply lessons from tackling another existential problem to the climate crisis. What lessons does that have for climate change? Opinion Op-Ed: The world population hit 8 billion - but with a peak in sight. But the nuclear threat didn’t go away, as we’ve seen again and again since then. That decision was understandable, since concerns over nuclear war were being eclipsed by growing awareness of climate change - with more extreme weather events, intensifying droughts, migration pressures and disease risks. ![]() That year, the Bulletin expanded the clock’s symbolism - from almost exclusively a measure of nuclear risk to encompassing other existential threats, particularly climate change, as well as biological and cyberthreats. After his death in 1973, the changes were handled by the Bulletin’s board of directors and, as of 2008, by a science and security board composed of experts. In its early years, the Bulletin’s founding editor in chief, physicist Eugene Rabinowitch, determined all of the clock’s changes. Only in 1949, when its clock hands were moved for the first time following the Soviet Union’s first atomic bomb test, did it start being understood as some kind of measurement of existential risk. The Doomsday Clock’s original design and setting, seven minutes to midnight, were purely aesthetic choices. The Bulletin aimed to draw scientists into discussions about their responsibilities in dealing with the new problems created by nuclear technology, and to make sure the public had independent, expert assessments of these new threats.īut it took a few years more for the publication to become an official doomsayer. They believed that once mushroom clouds rose over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, scientists could no longer be disengaged from the world of politics. ![]() The Bulletin was founded in late 1945 by scientists who were connected to the invention of the atomic bomb. But let’s be honest: The 21st century hasn’t exactly felt like it is trending in the right direction. In the last 10 years, it has marched closer to midnight five times, and it retreated just once since 1991. It was never meant to be a scientific instrument. The Doomsday Clock is, of course, a subjective measure of current risk. The dangerous idea of possessing or even using nuclear weapons is fading with the emergence of a new generation of so-called tactical nuclear weapons. Opinion Op-Ed: How the nuclear weapons taboo is fading
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