Tower and Town, May 2018 (view the full edition)Two Minutes To Midnight"We're in a strange place right now: they've advanced the doomsday clock. The number of minutes to midnight has been moving up and I worry about the world I'm leaving my children. Most people I know just have their fingers crossed that we can make it the next four years without starting a nuclear war over penis size" Neil Gaiman, "Norse Methodology" At the end of the WWII some atomic scientists created a new bulletin. The cover of the bulletin contained an image of a clock to indicate the danger to humanity. When the clock was set at its highest, two minutes to midnight back in 1953, nuclear threat was high but global warming was a distant hypothetical threat. Since that time carbon dioxide pollution has increased six fold and not surprisingly the earth has warmed as consequence, now by about one degree centigrade. This might not sound much but let me put it in perspective. During the depth of the last ice age the earth was only around five degrees colder than it is now. 2017, however, ushered in rising existential nuclear threats and consequently the clock is now pushed up again to two minutes to midnight. Raik Jarjis |