Wars and climate crisis keep Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight
The Doomsday Clock, a symbolic countdown to human extinction, has stayed at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it had been since it was established in 1947, a panel of international scientists has said.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists cited the continuing threat of a nuclear escalation in Ukraine, the “horrors of modern war” in Israel and Gaza and the lack of action on the climate crisis, which threatens “billions of lives”.
“Ninety seconds to midnight is profoundly unsustainable,” said Rachel
Bronson, the president and chief executive of the organisation.
Last year, the Bulletin set its metaphorical Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it had been since it was established after the second world war.
The panel of international scientists said in 2023 that humanity’s continued existence was at greater risk than ever before, largely as a result of the invasion of Ukraine and Russia’s “thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons”.
Founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein and others who helped develop the first atomic weapons, the Bulletin attempts to educate people on potentially worldending dangers.
Every year, the Bulletin updates the time of its symbolic Doomsday Clock to illustrate global human-created threats it considers existential, including nuclear war and biothreats – such as Covid-19 – artificial intelligence and the climate crisis. Striking midnight represents the end of the world.
The hands of the clock are set each year by the Bulletin’s science and security board with the support of its board of sponsors, which includes 10 Nobel laureates.
In its 2024 announcement, the Bulletin said a variety of global threats influenced their decision including: “the Russia-Ukraine war and deterioration of nuclear arms reduction agreements; the climate crisis and 2023’s official designation as the hottest year on record; the increased sophistication of genetic engineering technologies; and the dramatic advance of generative AI, which could magnify disinformation and corrupt the global information environment making it harder to solve the larger existential challenges”.
The Bulletin has been criticised for using “scare tactics” with the clock gradually but alarmingly moving closer and closer to midnight over the decades.
Before 2017, when it moved to two minutes and 30 seconds to midnight,