WASHINGTON: Scientists assessing threats to humankind yesterday moved the 'Doomsday Clock' two minutes closer to midnight, symbolically suggesting we are that much closer to self destruction.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) which maintains the Clock said the world was facing dual threats - a potential for nuclear war and the slow but irreversible effects of climate change, better known as global warming.
Kennette Benedict, executive director of the BAS said carbon emitting technologies posed dangers that “are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons". While nuclear explosions would cause great and widespread destruction in a very short period, climate change would take much longer but “cause irremediable harm to the habitats upon which human societies depend for survival" she said.
Although only symbolic, according to the new clock setting, humankind now stands five minutes away from the hour of complete destruction, according to the timepiece.
The gesture is intended as a forewarning to people and governments that continue to stock up nuclear arsenal and pursue their economic goals mostly at the cost of the environment and ultimately human lives.
British scientist Stephen Hawking said the scientists' community was better placed to assess the dangers from nuclear weapons. It was also learning how some of our other activities, technologies and industries were causing slow but irremediable destruction that can and should be avoided. "As citizens of the world, we have a duty to share that knowledge and alert the public to the unnecessary risk that we live with every day" he said.
The concept Clock was created in 1947 by the BAS which has since then been urging world leaders to enforce nuclear disarmament. The Clock has been moved 18 times, backwards and forwards, over the past 60 years. The last time was in 2002 after Washington withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty saying there was danger from terrorism-supporting nations that could acquire or build nuclear weapons.
