In an ominous sign, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced the Doomsday Clock would stay poised at three minutes till almost certain destruction.
"After serious discussions and consultations, the science and security board has arrived at its conclusion. And it says with utter dismay that the clock remains at three minutes to midnight. It is, remains the closest it has been over the last 20 years."
The virtual countdown device, which has been in use since 1947, is a visual representation of global dangers.
Professor Ian Lowe from Queensland's Griffith University says the clock was invented at a turbulent time in world history.
"In 1947 the Bulletin of American Scientists started the idea of publishing, each year, a clock giving the world an indication of how serious was the threat of actions that could end civilisation. And it was spurred by the fact that after World War II ended with the dropping of American nuclear weapons on Japan, then the USA and subsequently the UK and what was then the Soviet Union and France, then started developing nuclear weapons, they wanted to sound a warning that the deployment of nuclear weapons and their potential use in a conflict could conceivably mean the end of civilisation."
The time on the clock was last changed in January 2015, when the minute hand was moved forward from five, to three minutes to midnight.
Professor Lowe says while the clock has been as close as two minutes to midnight, at the height of the Cold War, the fact it hasn't been changed is still cause for concern.
"We should still be very worried because as they said there are more than 16,000 nuclear weapons at a hundred sites in 14 countries around the world, of those 10,000 are in military arsenals and about 6,000 are weapons that have been decommissioned but there's still nuclear material sitting there. As more countries have nuclear weapons, the probability of a leader being mad enough or desperate enough to use them steadily increases, and I think we have to worry about nuclear weapons particularly in areas as unstable as the Indian subcontinent, where sooner or later somebody is going to get their hands on nuclear material and think it will advance their political aims if they use it."
Lawrence Krauss from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists says although there have been several important positive global events recently, these have been largely overshadowed by other threats, such as the expansion of global nuclear programs.
"Developments have been mixed since we moved the clock forward a year ago. In spite of some positive news, in particular the Iran nuclear agreement and the Paris climate accord, nuclear tensions between the US and Russia have grown, the situation in North Korea has become more acute, tensions between Pakistan and India remain high even as those countries increase their nuclear arsenals, and nuclear modernisation programs in the US and Russia violate the spirit, and I believe the letter, of the Non-proliferation Treaty."
Professor Lowe says Australia is also adding to the world's worries, in particular through climate change.
"The bulletin of American Scientists said that climate change is the second-biggest threat, and they singled out Australia for being probably the only significant country in the world that's actually moved backwards on climate change in the last three years. We used to have a price on carbon, a serious renewable energy target, measures to encourage pre-commercial renewable energies, and under Tony Abbott we went backwards on all of those measures."
And he believes the future isn't going to get any brighter anytime soon.
"The significance is there is still a serious threat to civilisation and that we need to be putting pressure on our leaders, first to remove the threat of nuclear weapons, second to take purposive and concerted action on climate change, and thirdly to pay attention to the other threats to civilisation like terrorism and the threat of cyber-attacks."
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