"Danger is high, and the margin for error is low," Bronson said. How these and other considerations will inform the Doomsday Clock's time in 2022 remain to be seen, but humanity is already in the realm of the two-minute warning period and every second counts, BAS President and CEO Rachel Bronson said in 2020. Globally, more than 330 million people have contracted COVID-19, and more than 5.5 million people have died, according to the Coronavirus Resource Center maintained by Johns Hopkins University and Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. and has killed more than 850,000 Americans, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on Jan. To date, COVID-19 has infected more than 66 million people in the U.S. The COVID-19 pandemic has also continued to surge, fueled by the emergence in 2021 of the highly contagious omicron variant by public resistance to vaccinations, lockdowns and mask mandates and by unequal access to vaccines and other preventative resources in countries worldwide. The top 10 ways to destroy planet Earth It is more critical than ever, as Einstein and the philosopher Bertrand Russell noted, for everyone to “remember your humanity, and forget the rest.- Doomsdays: Top 9 real ways the world could end We therefore appeal to the international community to facilitate negotiations for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine and take steps to build a sustainable architecture for peace.Īs the hands of the Doomsday Clock approach midnight, the choice facing the world is clear. In January 2022, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States reiterated the 1985 statement by then-US president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Leaders know that no country will be spared the grave toll of such a war. New conflict-prevention and resolution mechanisms, particularly to address disputes between leading political, economic, and military powers, are needed to advocate for mutual assured survival instead of mutual assured destruction. An atomic clock is the most accurate type of timepiece in the world, designed to measure time according to vibrations within atomgs. A fundamental component of such an arrangement must be the elimination of nuclear, biological, chemical, and autonomous lethal weapons. Whether the issue is climate change or nuclear weapons, we need a global governance grid capable of addressing existential problems that nation-states alone cannot tackle. Quite simply, the world needs to construct a new “world order” that safeguards humanity. To reverse this grim trend, we need a new global security architecture to constrain nuclear weapons, hypersonic missiles, killer pathogens, and the mounting military capability of automated weapons powered by artificial intelligence. In 1991, with the end of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the first treaty to provide for deep cuts to the two countries’ strategic nuclear weapons arsenals, prompting the Bulletin to set the clock hand to 17 minutes to midnight. More generally, the myriad flashpoints and conflicts around the world have pushed countries toward a nuclear tipping point, triggering a “ proliferation epidemic” instead of constructive dialogue. Anything surviving would soon be killed by radiation, a severe nuclear winter, and ecosystem collapse. The use of such weapons would undoubtedly trigger immediate retaliation, destroying much of the planet within hours. Russia, for example, threatened to use newly tested hypersonic missiles that can travel at more than 15 times the speed of sound, autonomously determine their trajectories, and deliver nuclear payloads undetected by radar. After years of geopolitical rifts, civil wars, and human catastrophes, we appear to have arrived at a point where leaders can brandish the nuclear threat in the most cavalier fashion.Īmid the incalculable suffering caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the world’s great powers remained more focused on their military capabilities than on human welfare. Instead of withdrawing from the precipice, the world seems to be hastening toward it. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, even relatively pacifist countries have started to rearm. These are malicious values, and yet powers around the world are increasingly promoting them. Thucydides, the Greek historian and philosopher, warned of how the dreadful collapse of humane values under the pressure of war could push humans to exalt “vengeance above innocence and profit above justice”. This time, it should move forward to just one minute to midnight. Given such incendiary rhetoric, the apparent erosion of collective mechanisms to manage conflict and global security risks, and the fact that nine countries possess a total of 13 100 nuclear weapons, it may now be necessary to reset the Doomsday Clock once again.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |