The Doomsday Clock 5-17-2016

17, May 2016                 The Doomsday Clock

Shortly after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists established a Doomsday Clock in 1947. Every year they estimate how close we are to midnight, the time when all species on earth cease to exist. Two prevailing threats, global warming and nuclear annihilation, moved us two minutes closer. We are currently at three minutes to midnight. A peek into the Russian archives reveals how close we actually were to MAD, mutual Assured Destruction in the 1980’s.

Recently, the U.S. has sharply increased military exercises closer to its adversaries, China and Russia. China and Russia have responded by counter measures bringing us much closer to a fateful accident. There have been several close encounters and an actual collision occurred when a Russian jet struck a Danish commercial airliner.

President Obama, contrary to his earlier pledge to promote a nuclear free world, has earmarked 1 trillion dollars to create smaller “more usable” nuclear weapons. There is little doubt our adversaries have accepted the gauntlet and are undergoing similar programs. All efforts to create a nuclear free zone in the Middle East have been vetoed by the US out of concern that Israel would have to publically reveal its possession of a large cache of nuclear weapons.

The threat of global warming is very real. Virtually all the ice masses are rapidly melting. Severe droughts have gripped much of the planet. About 300 million people in India are on the edge of starvation from severe droughts and farmer suicides are at an all-time high. The groundwater is depleted as the Himalayan glaciers melt. This will undermine the water supply for huge areas in South Asia which will trigger mass migration of people seeking safer ground. Sea levels are expected to rise 3 to 6 feet by the end of the century. Other species are being killed at unprecedented levels called the fifth extinction. On the home front we have a ‘human’ tornado threatening to occupy the White House, accelerating the movement of the Doomsday Clock. For more, go to http://callforsocialjustice.blogspot.com/