Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
1/23/2015
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists this week moved the minute hand of its symbolic “Doomsday Clock” two ticks closer to midnight, citing unchecked climate change and global nuclear weapons modernization. The Bulletin’s Science and Security Board announced Jan. 22 that it was moving the clock from 5 minutes to 3 minutes to midnight three years after moving the clock one tick up, to 5 minutes to midnight. From 2012 to 2014, the clock remained at 5 minutes to midnight. The clock, created in 1947, has been changed only 20 times before this week. The board said steps need to be taken “very soon” to avoid global catastrophe.
The last time the clock was at 3 minutes to midnight was in 1984-1988, a tense point of the Cold War when U.S.-Russian arms negotiations halted and bilateral relations were at their “iciest,” according to the Bulletin. Comprising 17 Nobel laureates, the board cited lack of political action to address climate change, global nuclear weapons modernization and outsized nuclear arsenals. “In 2015, unchecked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations, and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity, and world leaders have failed to act with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from potential catastrophe,” the group said in a statement. “These failures of political leadership endanger every person on Earth.”
Bulletin Decries ‘Extremely Dangerous Modernization Craze’
Russia, China and the U.S. have all recently either embarked upon or announced plans for modernizing their nuclear arsenals, while North Korea has reportedly tested nuclear weapons. Russia has announced it plans to discontinue nuclear cooperation with the U.S. “The disarmament process has ground to a halt, with the United States and Russia embarking on massive programs to modernize their nuclear triads—thereby undermining existing nuclear weapons treaties—and other nuclear weapons holders joining in this expensive and extremely dangerous modernization craze,” the board stated.
Board member Sharon Squassoni, the director and senior fellow at the Proliferation Prevention Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the modernization “craze” has replaced cautious optimism about reducing Cold War nuclear stockpiles and keeping the nuclear arms race in check. “That optimism has essentially evaporated in the face of two trends: sweeping nuclear weapons modernization programs and a disarmament machinery that has ground to a halt,” she said. “Although the United States and Russia no longer have the tens of thousands of nuclear weapons they had during the Cold War, the pace of reduction has slowed dramatically in recent years, well before the crisis in Crimea. From 2009 to 2013, the Obama administration cut only 309 warheads from the stockpile.”
The board agreed that progress on the climate and nuclear weapons has been too limited in recent years, according to its statement, and members were concerned that even a “limited” nuclear weapons exchange would result in large-scale deaths and further worsen the climate. Board recommendations included “dramatically” reducing proposed spending on nuclear weapons modernization programs, reenergizing the disarmament process, “with a focus on results,” and dealing “now” with the nuclear waste problem.
