After holding steady last year, the Doomsday Clock is now lurching toward destruction.
The minute hand on the Doomsday Clock ticked closer to midnight Wednesday, as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said they're seeing an increase in dangers to humanity, from climate change to nuclear warfare. The group took the "unprecedented" step of moving the clock 30 seconds closer to midnight, to leave it at two-and-a-half minutes away.
The advance in the Hand of Doom puts humanity closer to a civilization-ending event than at any time since the beginning of the Cold War. Even during the worst US-Soviet face-offs, the prospect for disaster was often rated much less certain.
"Over the course of 2016, the global security landscape darkened as the international community failed to come effectively to grips with humanity's most pressing existential threats, nuclear weapons and climate change ... This already-threatening world situation was the backdrop for a rise in strident nationalism worldwide in 2016, including in a U.S. presidential campaign during which the eventual victor, Donald Trump, made disturbing comments about the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons and expressed disbelief in the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change."
There are two great threats out there that can fell civilization. One passive, where failure to act ensures disaster. One active, where action equals catastrophe.
And Donald Trump is on the wrong side of them both.
The rise of nationalism makes it not only harder to forge any broad agreement to deal with a problem like climate change, it also makes it more likely that some nation will use nuclear weapons, secure in the philosophy of “our country first” and operating with the assumption that shattered alliances and increasing isolationism make it unlikely for an uninvolved nation to respond.
The Doomsday Clock has existed since 1947 and is the most well-known indicator of the current level of global threat. The clock last moved forward in 2015 driven mostly by concerns over climate change. The current setting represents the greatest level of concern in 60 years.
The setting is the closest the clock has come to midnight since 1953, when scientists moved it to two minutes from midnight after seeing both the U.S. and the Soviet Union test hydrogen bombs.