The risk of civil collapse from nuclear weapons and the climate crisis is at a record high, US scientists and former officials said, calling the current environment “profoundly unstable.”
They said the rise of “cyber-enabled disinformation campaigns” compounds both threats by keeping the public from insisting on progress.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced its symbolic “doomsday clock” has moved forward to 100 seconds to midnight, the closest to catastrophe that the scientists have judged the world to be at any point since its creation in 1947, at the outset of the Cold War.
Photo: AFP
“The world needs to wake up. Our planet faces two simultaneous existential threats,” said Mary Robinson, chair of an independent group of global leaders called The Elders, and the former president of Ireland and former UN high commissioner of human rights.
Robinson said that countries that do not aim to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions heating the planet and instead exploit fossil fuels are issuing “a death sentence for humanity.”
She said while public pressure presents a “sliver of hope” for the climate, there is no such pressure on leaders to avert nuclear threats.
As long as nuclear weapons are available, it is inevitable they will one day be used, “by accident, miscalculation or design,” she said.
Robert Rosner, chair of the Bulletin’s science and security board, said society has normalized a very dangerous world, and that “information warfare” is undermining “the public’s ability to sort out what’s true and what’s patently false.”
Sharon Squassoni, a board member and research professor at George Washington University, noted the US’ withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement, which has resulted in Tehran reducing compliance.
Although some thought US President Donald Trump’s unique approach might bring North Korea to the negotiating table, no real progress has ensued, she said.
The warning comes as nuclear arms control is in danger of dying out altogether. The Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty lapsed in August after the US accused Russia of cheating and Trump said he would leave the 1987 treaty altogether.
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