Former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also called on world leaders to take action in a world made more dangerous by Covid-19, extreme weather events and Russia’s “appalling war against Ukraine”. .
“Leaders did not heed the Doomsday Clock warnings in 2020,” Ban said. “We all continue to pay the price. In 2023 it is vital for the good of all that they act.”
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, also highlighted the change in the hands of the clock. In a statement, its chief executive, Beatrice Fihn, said they are “fed up” with no action being taken after the clock warnings.
“The leaders of the nuclear weapon states must urgently negotiate nuclear disarmament, and the G7 meeting in Hiroshima in May 2023 is the perfect place to outline that plan,” Fihn said.
On Twitter the news received some skeptical comments, questioning the usefulness of the watch or its reliability.
“We do not predict the future,” the panel notes on its website, anticipating criticism. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists “is somewhat like a doctor making a diagnosis. We look at data the same way doctors look at lab tests and X-rays, and we also take into account factors that are more difficult to quantify.” , as doctors do when talking to patients and family members.
“Then we arrive at a sentence that summarizes what could happen if the leaders and the citizens do not act to cure the diseases,” the scientists explain.
In its beginnings, in 1947, after World War II, it was seven minutes to midnight. The clock reached 17 minutes to doomsday after the Cold War in 1991.
The Bulletin was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and other scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project that produced the first nuclear weapons.
With information from AFP and Reuters