Doomsday Clock stuck near midnight due to climate change and nuclear war
Source: Guardian
The Doomsday Clock, the symbolic countdown to humanity’s end, remained stuck on the brink of the apocalypse for a second year on Tuesday, because of the continued existential threats posed by nuclear war and climate change.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the group which created the clock in 1947, said it was keeping the clock hands set at three minutes to midnight – the closest the clock has come to destruction since the throes of the cold war in 1984.
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“The decision not to move the hands of the clock in 2016 is not good news,” Lawrence Krauss, who chairs the Bulletin’s board of sponsors, said in announcing the new clock setting.
The scientists, reinforced by former US cabinet secretaries William Perry and George Shultz, based their dire symbolic forecast on challenges of a global scale such as nuclear war and climate change.
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Leaders needed to focus on the big challenges of the age, said Jerry Brown, California’s governor.
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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/26/doomsday-clock-three-minutes-to-midnight-climate-change-nuclear-war
Video of the announcement is at http://clock.thebulletin.org/2016
and is worth watching.
= new reply since forum marked as read
It's about as useful as Punxsutawney Phil - nobody in power is affected by it
and anyone who is influenced by it is powerless to do anything about it.
Still, symbolism still has a place in human society so I have no problem
with it being kept (along with its annual rituals) and revered as a semi-religious
artifact for the modern world.
Their iconic doomsday clock is an incredible social/political metaphor for the state of the world.
I gladly DURec this thread.
