This indicator is used to illustrate the world’s vulnerability to disasters caused by nuclear weapons, climate change, and disruptive technologies in other areas.
The authors of the article, published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BCA), pointed out that the change in political direction in the United States in 2021 has fueled hopes that the race to disaster can be stopped.
However, this change alone was “insufficient to reverse negative trends in international security” that have spread and continued across the threat horizon to 2021.
Thus, the tense relations between the United States and Russia and China are undergoing developments, particularly in the arms field, which “could mark the beginning of a new nuclear arms race.”
In addition, “the huge gap between long-term commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the actions that are carried out in the short and medium term.
Afterwards, the global response to the new coronavirus pandemic remains “totally insufficient”.
In this sense, the document pointed out: “Plans for a rapid global distribution of vaccines have collapsed, leaving poor countries largely unvaccinated and allowing new variants of the coronavirus to gain strength.”
In addition, “beyond the pandemic, worrying gaps in biosafety have made it clear that the international community must pay close attention to the management of biological research on a global scale.”
Also in this regard, the authors note that “the establishment and development of biological weapons programs mark the beginning of a new biological arms race.”
On the other hand, “despite the new US government restoring the role of science and evidence in public policy, the corruption of the information ecosystem continued in 2021.”
Given this diverse threat environment, in which some positive developments have been offset by worrying and intensifying negative trends, the BCA has estimated that the world is no safer than it is in 2020, which led to keeping the clock of the end of the world in 100 seconds before midnight.
However, this decision does not mean “in any way” that the international security situation has stabilized. “On the contrary,” they explicitly stated.
“The Clock remains the closest thing I have seen to the terminal apocalypse of civilization, as the world remains in an extremely dangerous time. In 2019, we refer to this situation as ‘the new abnormality’, which unfortunately persists”, they warned.
In general terms, they described the situation as follows: “Over the past year, despite the commendable efforts of some leaders and the public, negative trends in nuclear and biological weapons, climate change, and a variety of disruptive technologies, exacerbated by a corrupt information sphere, which undermines rational decision-making processes – have kept the world on the brink of apocalypse.
To get out of this abyss, he said, a series of measures are needed, such as the United States and the Russian Federation limiting nuclear weapons, the United States and others accelerating decarbonization, the United States and others working in the World Health Organization to reducing biological risk for all, the United States convincing allies and rivals to embrace the principle of not being the first to use nuclear weapons, the Russian Federation returning to the NATO-Russia Council, investors swapping bids on fossil fuel projects for others who are friendly to the environment, citizens of the world who question their politicians, at all levels, about what they are going to do to solve climate change.
The BCA was founded in 1945 by scientists from Albert Einstein and the University of Chicago who helped develop the first atomic weapons, as part of the Manhattan Project, and created the “Doomsday Clock” two years later, using images of the apocalypse (midnight ). and the contemporary. idiom nuclear explosion (count to zero), to illustrate the seriousness of the threats to humanity and the planet.
