![]() ![]() That doesn’t mean all is lost on the climate front, Kartha said. He spoke optimistically about the swift increase in public alarm over the climate threat, which could prompt greater efforts to address the crisis. That’s more than can be said for nuclear proliferation. “During the depths of the last Ice Age, the earth was only a few degrees colder, yet its surface was utterly transformed.” “Let me put it into perspective,” he said. Kartha pointed to the last Ice Age, when average global temperatures were only five degrees lower than today’s. “Government policies are hardly commensurate to an emergency,” Sivan Kartha, a senior scientist at the Stockholm Environmental Institute who spoke on climate inaction at the Bulletin’s announcement, said. Even a slight variation in the world’s average temperatures-which have already increased one degree Celsius in recent history-could doom human civilization. COP25, for example, was panned by the media as little more than an empty display by some countries, despite the scientific evidence pointing to the serious consequences of a warming world. UN secretary-general, António Guterres, described himself as “ disappointed” with the outcome. During the announcement, experts pointed to a lack of urgency by national representatives during 2019’s international climate conferences. But even then, they did not move as close to midnight as they did today.Ĭlimate change is one factor that has made the world more dangerous. Those hazards brought the clock’s arms past the two-minute mark, which is where they sat during the Cuban Missile Crisis, considered by many the closest humanity came to self-destruction. The Doomsday Clock was originally envisioned to exclusively track nuclear proliferation, but in recent years it has added climate change and now unrestrained technological growth as under-addressed threats to the future. The task is wake up! Wake up America, wake up the world!” This is the time, he said, that average citizens had to pressure governments instead of waiting governments to take the lead. ![]() “Most of them are totally ignorant, blind, and deaf to our predicament. “I’ve spent my life seeking the favor of these powerful people” he said. Jerry Brown, the executive chair of the Bulletin and four-term former governor of California, appeared at the Washington, DC, event and admonished policy makers for their failure to meaningfully confront the threats. The science and security board of the Bulletin explained some of the reasons for the alarming time change: World leaders have stalled nuclear de-escalation, failed to address the rising tides of the climate crisis, and continued to invest in potentially dangerous technologies. ![]() ![]() This is the first time since the clock was created in 1947 that the hands have come so close to midnight. The clock is maintained by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a non-profit founded in 1945 by nuclear scientists who were involved in the Manhattan Project in order to monitor human-made existential threats. Thursday morning, scientists responsible for maintaining the Doomsday Clock-a metaphor for how close mankind stands to its own destruction-announced that it advanced 20 seconds from last year, to within 2 minutes of midnight, the bookend marking human extinction. The Doomsday Clock reads 100 seconds to midnight, a decision made by The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. ![]()
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