The New Statesman Daily The best of the New Statesman, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. World Review The New Statesman’s global affairs newsletter, every Monday and Friday. The Crash A weekly newsletter helping you fit together the pieces of the global economic slowdown. It, once again, urged world leaders to eliminate the threat posed by nuclear weapons for good.Select and enter your email address Morning Call Quick and essential guide to domestic and global politics from the New Statesman's politics team. “At present, national plans for fossil fuel development and production are anything but encouraging.”Īddressing the world’s nuclear landscape, the Bulletin said the US and Russia continued to accelerate their nuclear modernisation efforts, while North Korea, China, India, and Pakistan pursued “improved” and larger nuclear forces. “In aggregate, the G20 countries had committed approximately $240bn to stimulus spending that supports fossil fuel energy by the end of 2020, versus $160bn for clean energy,” the Bulletin said. The plans for economic recovery worldwide, they added, needed a greater emphasis on low-carbon investment. The scientists further warned that the spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories, often by world leaders themselves, is worsening the threat of nuclear conflict and the climate emergency.

“In this time of genuine crisis, governments too often abdicated responsibility, ignored scientific advice, did not cooperate or communicate effectively, and consequently failed to protect the health and welfare of their citizens,” it added. “The pandemic revealed just how unprepared and unwilling countries and the international system are to handle global emergencies properly,” the organisation said in a statement. One of the major reasons the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the ‘Doomsday Clock’ to ‘100 seconds to midnight’ this year was due to the debilitating impact of the coronavirus pandemic. It is the parochialism of nation-states in the face of oblivion Why was the ‘Doomsday Clock’ set to ‘100 seconds to midnight’ again in 2021? The Bulletin also blamed the growing inaction of governments across the world in combating climate change.Įditorial | ‘Doomsday Clock’ is closer to apocalypse than ever. It pointed out that the nuclear threat had increased largely because of the development of nuclear weapons in North Korea and the collapse of the US’ nuclear deal with Iran. The group warned that leaders had undermined several major arms control treaties and negotiations, thus increasing the risk of possible nuclear war. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists January 28, 2021 “Events like the deadly assault earlier this month on the US Capitol renewed legitimate concerns about national leaders who have sole control of the use of nuclear weapons.” - 2021 #Doomsda圜lock statement from the Bulletin’s Science & Security Board. We now face a true emergency – an absolutely unacceptable state of world affairs that has eliminated any margin for error or further delay,” Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of the Bulletin, said in a statement. It is the closest to Doomsday we have ever been in the history of the Doomsday Clock. We are now expressing how close the world is to catastrophe in seconds – not hours, or even minutes. In its press release last year, the Bulletin announced that it had taken the drastic step of setting the ‘Doomsday Clock’ at the ‘100 seconds from midnight’ position due to the prevailing climate conditions, “cyber-based disinformation” and nuclear risk. Why was the clock set at ‘100 seconds from midnight’ in the first place? The furthest it has been is 17 minutes after the end of the Cold War in 1991.

The clock was originally set to seven minutes to midnight and has since moved closer or further away from the dreaded 12 o’clock position. The reason the scientists selected a clock to convey the metaphor is twofold - they wanted to use the imagery of an apocalypse (midnight) as well as the “contemporary idiom of a nuclear explosion” (countdown to zero) to illustrate the threats to humanity.

Over the years, they have included other existential threats, such as climate change and disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence. When it was first created in 1947, the hands of the clock were placed based on the threat posed by nuclear weapons, which the scientists then perceived to be the greatest threat to humanity.

It is set annually by a panel of scientists, including 13 Nobel laureates, based on the threats - old and new - that the world faced in that year. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, founded by Albert Einstein and students from the University of Chicago in 1945, created the ‘Doomsday Clock’ as a symbol to represent how close the world is to a possible apocalypse.

3 minutes to midnight doomsday clock