It’s three minutes to midnight, and Russia has just tested its first nuclear weapon.
It’s 17 minutes to midnight, and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty has passed—the Cold War is over.
It’s three minutes to midnight, and climate change remains unimpeded, even as nuclear stockpiles are modernized .
Perhaps one of the greatest of representations of the threats we pose to ourselves is the Doomsday Clock. At first, it invokes images of a Dr. Doom device counting down until the inevitable moment when The Thing smashes it to pieces. However, it’s time for us to reimagine what the Doomsday Clock represents. Instead we should think of it as a warning, and a reminder of the danger we’re in—even if this danger is not yet at the forefront.
Originally conceived in 1947 after the start of the atomic age (ironically by the same scientists who helped with the Manhattan Project), the Doomsday Clock was meant to serve as a symbol for how close mankind was to global catastrophe. The closer to midnight, the more danger we were in. Now headed by a group of scientists with various backgrounds, the clock stands as a reflection of the danger those scientists believe we are under due to global threats, such as nuclear weapons, climate change, biotechnology and cyber technology.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Security Board is responsible for deciding the minute hand of the clock, and has long been criticized for its “meddling” in political matters. Yet, I don’t believe the distinguished board of scientists has fooled itself into believing that its purely symbolic timepiece is taken too seriously by the world’s political leaders — but then again, that’s not really the goal.
The Doomsday Clock is not a means of speaking the truth to those in power. It is better seen as a conversation scientists are trying to have with the public regarding the danger we are in and, in some ways, regarding the trust they have in citizens’ ability to sway political action.
At the peak of the atomic age, prominent scientists — most notably Carl Sagan — feared that the continuing arms race between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. would lead to a nuclear war and a nuclear winter that would destroy humanity as we know it. In their attempts to stave off what they saw as the inevitable conclusion of the arms race, they took their fears directly to public forums instead of simply publishing their findings and waiting quietly to be taken seriously. This resulted in an outrage over the supposed danger we were all being placed in for political showboating, and a significant counter campaign by Washington to discredit the possibility of nuclear winter.
Sagan and his colleagues understood something about their lot in life and the effect their opinion would have on a small group of people with vested interests. So instead of approaching that small group, they moved their opinion directly to the public sphere and made the debate a public one. It’s the same way that Edward Snowden made us all come to terms with the NSA and the same way that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is trying to make us come to terms with our inaction against global threats.
Admittedly, the work of Sagan and Snowden was significantly more effective. Sagan had years of Cold War fear to bolster his argument, and the revelations made by Snowden were egregious enough that public attention was brought right into line.
However, that does not cheapen the importance of the Doomsday Clock. The clock’s job isn’t to immediately change anyone’s mind or force decision makers to realize that their actions could have massive ramifications. Instead, it’s job is to serve as a reminder to all of us that we are in a delicate balance. Speaking the truth to those in power or to the public is often a thankless job with no guarantee that anyone is listening, but what’s important is that even if it is quiet, the conversation continues.
It is currently three minutes to midnight. Nothing has changed, but it still can.
David Garcia is a first-year graduate student in energy science. He can be reached at [email protected].
