The View | Here’s what the Doomsday Clock is telling us, and the message isn’t reassuring
The Clock is signalling alarm by the dedicated abuse of information technology as a weapon of mass destruction
The world moved closer to oblivion this week as the Doomsday Clock ticked 30 seconds closer to midnight to 11:58pm. Two minutes matches the low of 1953 – but surely our current dangers are nothing like that at the height of the cold war?
In Hong Kong our darkest hours were in 1941, the Japanese invasion, or perhaps the 1967 Communist riots, which could have destroyed all Hong Kong’s hopes for the future. Today many of us have lived in a stable, prosperous China and, despite the ever-increasing influence of Beijing on our institutions, we at least have an awareness of our future.
Few people (including the 15 Nobel Laureates on the Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists) can remember the very real fear in 1953 of an imminent invasion of Europe by the Soviet Union using nuclear weapons. They are however unnerved by Donald Trump.
About North Korea, they note “hyperbolic rhetoric and provocative actions by both sides have increased the possibility of nuclear war by accident or miscalculation”. They point out that “neither allies nor adversaries have been able to reliably predict US actions – or understand when US pronouncements are real”. They see the US pulling back from a global leadership role, “reducing its commitment to seek common ground and undermining the overall effort toward solving pressing global governance challenges”.
The fret about a blossoming nuclear arms race, especially as in recent days both Trump and the Chinese military have called for an increase in their nuclear stockpiles. North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, or “Little Rocket Man”, will certainly be adding to his. In the Middle East, Trump is having wobbles about the Iranian nuclear deal. There is a lot less sensitivity at high levels about letting one off. But it is not just Trump. The cold war Allies, Russia and China increasingly invade each other’s airspace or organise military exercises on their borders. Pakistan and India have growing nuclear arsenals, and tensions in the South China Sea and East China Sea have increased.
The youngsters winding the Clock’s timepiece throw in spanners that didn’t bother the mechanism in 1953. Climate change has become the new nuclear midnight as they accuse governments of cloaking evidence about the catastrophic impact of global carbon dioxide emissions on temperatures.
