It is now 2.5 minutes to midnight. Words matter when Trump speaks of nuclear weapons, climate.
Thank you to Scott Stapf of the Hastings Group's Tweet, calling attention to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' (BAS) historic announcement regarding its iconic Dooms Day Clock -- by setting the Clock at two and a half minutes to midnight, BAS has pegged the current danger to people and the planet -- from nuclear weapons, climate change, and other technological threats such as cyber attacks -- at the same level as 1953, when the U.S. and U.S.S.R. first began exchanging hydrogen bomb test blasts, in the earliest days of the Cold War nuclear arms race.
Watch the BAS press conference, held today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Note that one BAS speaker pointed to cyber attacks impacting the grid -- and highlighting the potentially catastrophic risks to nuclear power plants as a case in point (atomic reactors, and their high-level radioactive waste storage pools, depend on the electric grid for its primary source of electricity to run safety and cooling systems), another BAS speaker gave nuclear power as a hopeful example of positive technological development that could make the world a better place. Beyond Nuclear very much disagrees with the latter assertion, of course.
The Washington Post has reported on this story. Two of the BAS speakers at the press conference above, Lawrence M. Krauss and David Titley, have published an op-ed at the New York Times entitled "Thanks to Trump, the Doomsday Clock Advances toward Midnight."
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There are those who think the BAS Doomsday Clock is too optimistic. See the film Thirty Seconds to Midnight -- The Final Wake Up Call, posted online at YouTube.
Here is a description of the film:
Filmmaker Regis Tremblay states what few others dare to say. Humanity is on the brink of extinction! Nuclear power is not safe. 48 of America’s nuclear power plants are leaking and there is no way to get rid of nuclear waste. America’s reckless provocations of both Russia and China, two nuclear-armed countries, risk a nuclear holocaust from which no one survives. Climate change and global warming, if not mitigated immediately, will end the human experiment on earth sooner rather than later.
A shocking documentary that traces the origins of U.S. genocides, military interventions and wars from the 15th century when the white, colonial explorers first came to the Americas to the very present. American Exceptionalism, Manifest Destiny, and the right to claim the earth and its resources as their own are the beliefs that are the foundation of American foreign policy in the 21st Century that has humanity on the brink of extinction.
Dr. Helen Caldicott [Beyond Nuclear's founding president], Ray McGovern, Chris Hedges, Ann Wright, Peter Kusnick, Bill McKibben, David Vine and other activists, scholars, and authors explain and clarify the crisis and
threats to life on the planet.
The only real hope lies in the result of the epic battle for humanity’s survival between two contrasting world views. On one side is the unipolar, capitalist world-domination by the U.S. enforced by the most lethal military the world has ever seen.
On the other side is a view held by Russia, China and the BRICS nations built on a multi-polar world based on respect, the sovereignty of all nations, international law, the equal value of all people, and cooperation.
So here we are. Humanity’s epic battle for survival. An old paradigm based on white, colonial domination and empire versus the shared vision of others who are working for a peaceful world based on justice, international law and the prosperity of all people.
The only question is, will the crazed neocons in Washington, realizing they have lost, take the whole world down with them.