Call for arms race by Trump has Doomsday Clock jumping
A GROUP of scientists warn that human civilisation is closer to destruction than at any time since 1953. Amid nuclear proliferation, American leadership that dismisses climate change — and in a nod to the 2016 US presidential election — the risk of fake news sparking a crisis, the end is apparently a lot nearer than it used to be.
On Thursday, the Doomsday Clock, set by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, was set to two and a half minutes to midnight, a change from three minutes, where it had been for two years.
In 2015, the group changed it from five minutes to three minutes to midnight, citing threats from “unchecked climate change” and the world’s ageing nuclear weapons arsenals.
“Nuclear rhetoric is now loose and destabilising,” Thomas Pickering, a member of the group and a former US ambassador to Russia and the UN, said on Friday. He cited US President Donald Trump’s comments that South Korea and Japan might consider becoming nuclear states. “We are more than ever impressed that words matter, words count.”
The group blamed Trump for the heightened risk of apocalypse. “He has made ill-considered comments about expanding the US nuclear arsenal. He has shown a troubling propensity to discount or outright reject expert advice related to international security, including the conclusions of intelligence experts. And his nominees to head the US energy department and the Environmental Protecrhetoric tion Agency dispute the basics of climate science,” the group said. “In short, even though he has just now taken office, [he has] already made a bad international security situation worse.”
The Doomsday Clock was first set at three minutes to midnight in 1949, two years after it was established by Manhattan Project scientists who had built the first nuclear bomb. Their idea was to create a symbol to help the public understand the various threats mankind has foisted upon itself.
The Bulletin said the decision to change the clock came from what it views as “new” political from both the US and Russia regarding international conflict and the role of science. The modernisation and enlargement of nuclear arsenals in both countries are cause for concern, as is the tension between India and Pakistan, both of which possess nuclear weapons.
But the scientists see a slower doom that may also befall us. Last year was the warmest on record, while 16 of the planet’s 17 hottest years on record have been since 2001. With an allusion to one Trump aide’s term for falsehoods, David Titley, a climate science expert from Pennsylvania State University said: “Alternative facts will not make the challenge of climate change magically go away.”
The last time the clock was as close to calamity was during the Cold War of the mid-1980s.
Trump said the US had to “greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes”, and other countries should consider nuclear arms. “Let it be an arms race,” he said in December. “We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”
The world’s nuclear arsenal is about 15 000 warheads, with Russia and the US each holding about 5 000. — Bloomberg
He has already made a bad international security situation worse