Doomsday clock is moved nearer to zero hour

Citing a lack of progress on arms reduction, growing nuclear proliferation risks, and inaction on climate change, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced the minute hand on its famed doomsday clock by one minute, to five minutes before midnight. In announcing the change on 10 January, the scientist-activists of the Bulletin, which has now moved the hands 20 times since it began using the clock in 1947, judged that the hopefulness that had warranted moving the hands back one minute in 2010 has now faded.

“The world strikes us as more dangerous that it did two years ago,” said Robert Socolow, a member of the Bulletin‘s science and security board, which, together with its board of sponsors, decided to make the change. In a statement, the Bulletin put it this way: “Two years ago, it appeared that world leaders might address the truly global threats that we face. In many cases, that trend has not continued or [has] been reversed.”

The clock is meant to assess recent developments and trends in nuclear weapons, nuclear energy, climate change, and biosecurity. Kennette Benedict, Bulletin executive director, said moving the hands came after “very difficult deliberations” by the two boards. In 2010, “We all had a sense that there might be a breakthrough, she said. “Today the sense is that we need new thinking.”

Lawrence Krauss, cochair of the board of sponsors sees “no dramatic evidence” that reductions in nuclear weapons will continue. “There’s even talk of new weapons systems,” he said.

Jayantha Dhanapala, another sponsor, said the US and Russia had failed to follow through on the promise of further arms control that came with the signing of the START 2 Treaty in 2010. The continued failure by the US, China, and other nations to join the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and to begin work on a treaty to end fissile materials production have also been disappointing, he said.

Allison Macfarlane, chair of the Bulletin‘s science and security board, acknowledged that President Obama’s announcement of a new defense strategy, which carries with it the likelihood of further reductions in the US nuclear arsenal, was “one of the more positive trends we noted.” But Socolow, a science and security board member, said the clock is not meant to be “excessively US-centric.” There is no sign that the thinking that resulted in the cold war arms buildup between the US and the Soviet Union won’t be replicated by other aspiring nuclear powers, he said.

Pointing to climate change, Macfarlane warned that the world “may be near a point of no return in efforts to prevent catastrophe from changes in the Earth’s atmosphere.” She noted projections by the International Energy Agency that the world has only five years to build alternatives to carbon-emitting energy technologies before it is “doomed to a warmer climate, harsher weather, droughts, famine, water scarcity, rising sea levels, loss of island nations, and increasing ocean acidification.”

On a positive note, said Benedict, the board was heartened by the Arab Spring, Occupy movements, and political protests in Russia and by “the actions of ordinary citizens in Japan as they call for fair treatment and attention to their needs” in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident.

The Bulletin takes no official position on the use of nuclear power. But Krauss and Socolow noted that any reduction in future nuclear generation as a results of the Fukushima disaster will mean less help from nuclear power in mitigating climate change.