The world didn't end last week, obviously. In fact, the not-end-of-the-world was so dull and uneventful that the whole Mayan calendar thing was already little more than a footnote by mid-afternoon Friday. Alas. At least it gave us a reasonable excuse to talk apocalypse–to check out some underground luxury bunkers and to peruse some of mankind's best doomsday ideas.
But now that the event has come and harmlessly gone, maybe we can venture the following with a modicum of sobriety: How close to the end are we really?
It's clearly an absurd and unanswerable question, but the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists might be the group best-known for trying. Currently, the hands on their infamous Doomsday Clock read "5 minutes to midnight."
In January of 2012, citing "inadequate progress on nuclear weapons reduction" and "continuing inaction on climate change," the Scientists issued the following statement when they moved those hands one minute closer to midnight: "Two years ago, it appeared that world leaders might address the truly global threats that we face. In many cases, that trend has not continued or been reversed."
Translation: Two years ago, global community, especially the U.S. and Russia, appeared poised to broker a meaningful nuclear nonproliferation treaty. It didn't really happen. Around that time, it also might have looked like nations were ready to unite around the common goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to slow the advance of climate change. That didn't happen at all.
And so, the BAS co-chair (and Arizona State University professor) Lawrence Krauss remarked:
Faced with clear and present dangers of nuclear proliferation and climate change, and the need to find sustainable and safe sources of energy, world leaders are failing to change business as usual ... As we see it, the major challenge at the heart of humanity's survival in the 21st century is how to meet energy needs for economic growth in developing and industrial countries without further damaging the climate, exposing people to loss of health and community, and without risking further spread of nuclear weapons, and in fact setting the stage for global reductions.
Allison Macfarlane, the chair of the Bulletin's Science and Security Board, was even more blunt:
The global community may be near a point of no return in efforts to prevent catastrophe from changes in Earth's atmosphere. The International Energy Agency projects that, unless societies begin building alternatives to carbon-emitting energy technologies over the next five years, the world is doomed to a warmer climate, harsher weather, droughts, famine, water scarcity, rising sea levels, loss of island nations, and increasing ocean acidification.
Which sounds bad. But by way of comparison, the Bulletin has moved the hands as close to two minutes to midnight. It was only once, way back in 1953 following the advent of the hydrogen bomb.
In 1949, the hands were at three minutes to midnight, due to reports that Russia had tested a nuclear bomb, heralding the unofficial start of the Cold War. The Doomsday Clock's hands have never inched quite so close again, and when they've rested four or five minutes to midnight, it's been primarily due to nuclear developments. When those threats cool off, they've been pushed back as far as 17 minutes from the end. Only in the last five to ten years have climatic concerns factored in; now they do so heavily.
And so the gloom sets in anew. Mayan calendar obsessives may have gotten it wrong, but the Bulletin starkly predicts that the end of mankind isn't far off after all. In sum,
"The challenges to rid the world of nuclear weapons, harness nuclear power, and meet the nearly inexorable climate disruptions from global warming are complex and interconnected. In the face of such complex problems, it is difficult to see where the capacity lies to address these challenges.”
And that will be that.