The Doomsday Clock may be heading closest to midnight

After World War II, the hot topic was nuclear weapons. For the first time, humans had developed technology to annihilate the entire species, and the two global superpowers were well on the verge of a nuclear arms race.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists' Science and Security Board paid special attention to this threat, launching a symbolic "Doomsday Clock" in 1947.

The Doomsday Clock started ticking at 7 minutes to midnight in 1947. Immediately, things started going awry. The Soviet Union tested it's first atomic bomb in 1949. By 1953, the arms race was in full swing, with the United States and Soviet Union trading blows in testing nuclear weapons orders of magnitude larger than Fat Man and Little Boy.

By 1958, the Doomsday Clock was down to just 2 minutes, its closest approach to midnight ever. Following the resolution of the Cuban Missle Crisis and the Partial Test Treaty Ban in 1963, the Clock ticked all the way up to 12 minutes.

There were ups and downs, largely due to the Vietnam War and proliferation of nuclear testing among other nations. But the Doomsday Clock moved all the way up to 17 minutes following the end of the Cold War.

Since 1991, however, it's all downhill. Progress on global nuclear disarmament has been painfully slow, while North Korea doesn't seem to care about any disarmament at all. However, more crucially, the emphasis has shifted from a nuclear holocaust to runaway climate change.

Earlier this year, the Science and Security Board announced it's first fractional move, with the clock now just 2 minutes and 30 seconds from midnight. As you might have guessed, it was largely due to concerns about the Trump administration's policies.

(Source: Reuters)

Axios reports that the Trump administration is about to make their potentially catastrophic move - a complete withdrawal from the highly hopeful Accord de Paris within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Suffice to say, this was probably humanity's last chance at limiting damaging on the ongoing Holocene mass extinction. Heck, Trump may just pull US completely out of the UNFCCC.

The only two other nations in the world not supporting the agreement are Nicaragua and Syria.

I have no doubt that if this happens, the Doomsday Clock will move as close to midnight as it has ever been. If the world fails to knock some sense into the USA in the coming years, we could be heading into sub-2 minute region for the very first time. Make no mistake - this is an existential threat to the homo sapiens species, among millions others.

Further reading -

• Do check out two older articles of mine - first, about the ongoing Holocene extinction event. Find that depressing? Here's for a more positive outlook to cheer yourself up. Well, a bit, anyway.
• https://www.axios.com/scoop-trump-is-pulling-u-s-out-of-paris-climate-deal-2427773025.html
• http://thebulletin.org/timeline
• https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/science/doomsday-clock-countdown-2017.html
• http://thebulletin.org/sites/default/files/Final%202017%20Clock%20Statement.pdf
  Images from Wikimedia

PS, 1st June: It has happened, the USA has withdrawn.