Today the cover of the Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists (BAS) depicted the Doomsday clock at 23.55, ie five minutes to midnight. When the clock hits midnight, in theory, it foretells the end of civilisation.
First started in 1947 after World War Two, the clock shows how close the world is to total shutdown, extermination of human life, the end of society. It has never been put higher than 23.58 during a period of nuclear bomb detonation testing by both America and Russia as part of the cold war (1953) and was put at 23.53 after the supposed 9/11 attacks.
But it is certainly not all about nuclear superpower and the so called “nuclear winter” that would cause the death of man, it is also about climate change and global warming. There are not that many things that make me worry about the earth and the safety of friends and relatives, but the idea that our lovely little world could turn into one big maelstrom of horror does scare me a little. Let’s face it, I live on a flood plain just a couple of feet above sea level. If we were hit by the same kind of tsunami that hit Asia a couple of years ago, my part of the country would be inundated to, well, almost Bristol.!
Apparently we can all make a difference, maybe we can, maybe we can’t but at a higher level the only people that can actually do anything to resist this messed up, unnatural effect on the earth is heads of state, Presidents, Prime Ministers, Kings and Queens… Recently when people were being advised to avoid taking unnecessary flights and to travel by land or sea instead Mr Blair alledgedly said this “A personal sacrifice is pointless, sooner or later we will solve this problem with science”.
What.!? Don’t worry about recycling or anything like that because some boffin in a lab will invent a chemical compound that will somehow save our bacon. Truly an irresponsible statement.
Then again, as I have stated before, do any of us actually care about what might happen 50 years down the road… will we survive that long without some mass epidemic ridding the cities of us or a terrorist flings a missile across a continent and a nuclear enchange results.? During the Cuban Missile Crisis the world was LITERALLY on the brink of nuclear war, to the point where just ONE overflight by an observed aircraft that could possibly carry nuclear weapons would have resulted in a red button being pushed and Armageddon kicking off. Interesting fact, if that had in fact happened then a city like London would have lost 97% of it’s population. So in one strike around 7.5 million people would have been wiped off the face of the earth.
Time for the world leaders to start putting their own asses on the line and talking straight… the USA signing up to the Kyoto agreement, developing nations like China and North Korea reducing their heavy oil and coal fired power stations and massively polluting industry and taking up European standards. It would shove prices for pretty much everything totally up the wall but then again, is that a small price to pay for the survival of the human race. The dinosaurs died out because of one natural disaster and the worst thing they ever did was eat vegetation and break wind a lot. Mankind has raped this planet to within an inch of it’s life (see Red Dwarf book “The Last Human”) and maybe now it is time to take stock, look at changes we can make, back down over nuclear arms reduction talks and let peace prevail.
Otherwise it is curtains for us all.