‘Doomsday Clock’ remains at 100 seconds to midnight

The “Doomsday Clock” which represents the perils to human existence remains at 100 seconds to midnight this year, with advances like COVID-19 vaccines offset by rising misinformation and threats of conflict.

The group of scientists that set the Clock did welcome “last year’s leadership change in the United States” suggesting it had “provided hope that what seemed like a global race toward catastrophe might be halted and even reversed.”

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein and the University of Chicago. Two years later, the group created the Doomsday Clock  to symbolically tick towards midnight, the point of a hypothetical global catastrophe. Initially its main focus was the prospect of a world-ending nuclear conflagration in the Cold War, but the group has since broadened its scope to include other threats to humanity and the planet, such as climate change.

In 1991, amid the ‘end of history’ euphoria and optimism as the Soviet Union collapsed, the clock was put back to 17 minutes to midnight, but it has been ticking forward since

The Doomsday Clock is set by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 11 Nobel laureates.

‘Existential catastrophe’

According to the Clock, the world has remained equally vulnerable to the threats posed by war, climate change and pandemics for the third year in a row.

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists president Rachel Bronson urged world leaders to do a “far better job of countering disinformation, heeding science and cooperating” in order “to avoid an existential catastrophe, one that would dwarf anything it has yet seen.”

• Doomsday tourism and climate change: Visiting natural wonders before they disappear

  Transient treasure

  Of the 2 million-odd people who visit the Great Barrier Reef annually, a 2016 survey found that 69 percent were coming to see the UNESCO World Heritage site “before it’s too late.” And no wonder. The IPCC says that even if we manage to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, 99 percent of the world’s coral will be wiped out. Tourists can hasten their demise by touching or polluting reefs.

• Doomsday tourism and climate change: Visiting natural wonders before they disappear

  Bearly there

  And what’s the carbon cost of flying to remote natural wonders under threat? A 2010 study found that the business of polar-bear safaris in Churchill, Canada, had an annual CO2 footprint of 20 megatons. Most visitors arrived by plane, and while 88 percent of them said humans were responsible for climate change, only 69 percent agreed that air travel was a contributing cause.

• Doomsday tourism and climate change: Visiting natural wonders before they disappear

  Art of the apocalypse

  Along with the polar bear, one of the most iconic images of climate change must be the dramatic curves of an iceberg sculpted by the warming atmosphere. Gliding between the melting giants on a cruise ship is a haunting experience that tourists will pay huge sums for. In the early 1990s just 5,000 people visited Antarctica each year, compared to over 46,000 in 2018.

• Doomsday tourism and climate change: Visiting natural wonders before they disappear

  Peak season

  You don’t have to go to the poles to see vanishing ice. Kilimanjaro’s snowy peaks are a striking sight above the equatorial savannah of the national park, which generates €44 million ($50 million) from tourism annually. Many visitors climb to the Furtwängler Glacier — where 85 percent of the ice has vanished over the last century. The rest is unlikely to survive much beyond mid-century.

• Doomsday tourism and climate change: Visiting natural wonders before they disappear

  King without a crown

  When Montana’s Glacier National Park opened in 1910, it boasted over 100 of the ice features from which it took its name. Now, there are fewer than two dozen. So dramatic is their retreat, that the park has become a center of climate science research. Some 3 million hikers and holidaymakers also visit the “crown of the continent” each year, soaking in the dying days of its ice-capped glory.

• Doomsday tourism and climate change: Visiting natural wonders before they disappear

  Paradise lost

  The Maldives are the archetypal tourist paradise: 1,200 coral islands with white beaches rising just 2.5 meters above the turquoise waters. In 2017, the president decided to build new airports and megaresorts to accommodate seven times as many tourists, and use the revenue to build new islands and relocate communities. He has since been voted out of office and faces corruption charges.

• Doomsday tourism and climate change: Visiting natural wonders before they disappear

  Saltwater swamps

  It’s not just islands that are going under as sea levels rise. Wetlands like Florida’s Everglades are disappearing too. Over the last century, around half the Everglades have been drained and turned over to agriculture. Now, saltwater is seeping into what’s left, making it the only critically endangered World Heritage site in the United States.

• Doomsday tourism and climate change: Visiting natural wonders before they disappear

  Disturbing the peace

  The Galapagos will be forever associated with Darwin, who realized their unique wildlife had evolved over countless generations in isolation. Today, they are besieged by visitors and environmental changes are happening too fast for species to adapt. Ocean warming has left iconic creatures like the marine iguana starving, while UNESCO lists tourism among the greatest threats to the archipelago.

  Author: Ruby Russell

“The Clock remains the closest it has ever been to civilization-ending apocalypse because the world remains stuck in an extremely dangerous moment,” Bronson told reporters on the 75th anniversary of the clock’s inception.

No country is immune to threats to democracy, the Bulletin said, “as the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol demonstrated.”

Background of the Clock

The Bulletin was founded by Einstein, J Robert Oppenheimer and other scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project which produced the first nuclear weapons.

When the clock first began to tick, World War II was still fresh in the mind, as the United States and the USSR were about to embark on an arms race that would see the two nations on the brink of war for a large part of the next four decades.

By the early 1990s and with the Cold War drawing to a close, the Doomsday Clock was put back to 17 minutes before midnight — the lowest level of threat the group has ever perceived. Other significant breakthroughs came in the form of arms reduction treaties being signed.

In its statement on Thursday, the Bulletin noted hopeful developments at the start of 2021, including the renewal of the New START Treaty between the United States and Russia and some improvements in a still “inadequate” global response to the COVID pandemic. 

But it said international tensions continued to loom , including most recently over Ukraine. The United States, Russia and China meanwhile continue their development hypersonic weapons.

Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/doomsday-clock-remains-at-100-seconds-to-midnight/a-60502591?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf