Copenhagen made the world safer, indicates the Doomsday Clock.
Want some good news? The famous 'doomsday clock', published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has been moved back for the first time in almost 20 years – suggesting the world is becoming a safer place – because of "growing political will" to address the "terror of nuclear weapons" and "runaway climate change".
The clock has been tracking the distance of the world from catastrophe since 1947, two years after atomic bombs were dropped in Japan, and has been regularly updated by the Bulletin, which was founded by a group including Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, who led the Manhattan project. It started at seven minutes to midnight and has since oscillated between two minutes (in 1953) and 17 minutes (in 1991) as the threat of nuclear war waxed and waned. Since that high spot nineteen years ago, it has steadily moved closer to doomsday, reaching five minutes away in 2007 when climate change was for the first time added to the prospect of nuclear annihilation as the greatest threats to humanity.
It has now been moved just one minute back to six minutes to midnight. Part of this, says the Bulletin, is that for the first time since the bombs were dropped, many world leaders are now looking at how to reduce nuclear stockpiles. Perhaps more surprisingly, it draws encouragement from the result of last month's Copenhagen climate summit, saying that this marked the first time that both developed and developing countries had agreed to take responsibility for their carbon emissions and had raised expectations that governments will begin to cut them through introducing regulations, promoting energy efficiency, and investing in alternative energy sources.
It adds that the clock was only moved by one minute so as "to emphasize how much needs to be accomplished, while at the same time recognising signs of collaboration among the United States, Russia, the European Union, India, China, Brazil and others on nuclear security and climate stabilisation."
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