2 Minutes to Midnight- Is That All the Time We Have Left?

Two years ago, when I last checked out the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists” and its famous Doomsday Clock, a symbolic tool created with the purpose of estimating how close we are to the destruction of civilization, or midnight, it indicated that we were two and a half minutes away from a global disaster. In the meantime the hands of the clock have moved in the unwanted direction, so last year they reached two minutes to midnight and in January 2019, the last time it was updated, the imaginary clock remained at the same hour.

As a matter of fact, those metaphorical two minutes represent the closer the clock has been to the zero hours since its inception back in 1947. It has been there before only in 1953, at the height of the Cold War, when the world superpowers were testing hydrogen bombs, but it also went in the opposite direction, landing back at 17 minutes in 1991, when the Cold War was over. However, that period of relative stability and optimism hasn’t lasted for long, and it appears that the dark times are back, at least according to the scientists who update this clock every year.

But how much do those two minutes to midnight represent in real time? How much time do we still have left until that hypothetical doomsday arrives? I think it won’t happen during our lifetime, but for the future generations the threat is real, and they may witness the end of the world as we know it. There are several factors which can accelerate this process and if mankind doesn’t  somehow deal with them, it may reach the brink of the precipice and eventually fall in the deep chasm below:

1. Nuclear power- I suppose the countries which possess it will never destroy their nuclear arsenal completely, so it falls into the wrong hands of a tyrant or a maniac who imagines himself as the ruler of the world, it may lead mankind to annihilation sooner than we expected.

2. Biotechnology– it can do us a lot of good, but it can also harm us by the creation and intentional or accidental release from the labs of new pathogens that can kill millions of people before an antidote is discovered.

3. Emerging technologies– they can improve people’s lives, but they can also be used to subdue people, to control their minds and help those ruthless individuals whose hunger for power and appetite for destruction are unlimited reach their evil goals.

4. Climate change– global warming is a reality which cannot be denied because we already feel its consequences; as long as people who have the greatest influence and political power on the world stage, such as the president of the USA, keep on denying that it exists and do not support  the efforts made for the preservation of the environment,  as long as deforestation of the Amazon and other pristine forests of the world continues at an alarming rate, as long as the glaciers keep melting in the Arctic and on mountain peaks,  the thinning of the ozone layer which has protected our planet from the harmful sun rays will accelerate in the following decades with disastrous consequences for mankind, as well as the flora and fauna of the Earth.

In my view, those 2 minutes to midnight represent the maximum we can afford to reach. We’re confronted with a countdown to extinction that it’s still reversible. We can still move the hands of the clock backward, but we must always keep an eye on those who have political, military and economic power and do our best to prevent them from doing things that can harm our suffering planet furthermore. It is still not too late to get as far away as possible from the dreaded midnight!

The image is taken from Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/en/clock-clock-face-time-pointer-1804349/