The World Remains Five Minutes From Midnight

Lasrick writes "The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announces whether their Doomsday Clock has been moved with this open letter to President Obama, outlining progress on a number of fronts, but also detailing what still needs to be done to avoid various threats to humanity." From the article: "2012 was a year in which the problems of the world pressed forward, but too many of its citizens stood back. In the U.S. elections the focus was "the economy, stupid," with barely a word about the severe long-term trends that threaten the population's well-being to a far greater extent: climate change, the continuing menace of nuclear oblivion, and the vulnerabilities of the world's energy sources."

Comments

Doomsday clock

[AG the other]

I've been seeing reports of this so called clock for a long time and I can't help pointing out that so far, for thousands of years, every single prediction of the end of the world and humanity has been wrong.

Re:Doomsday clock

[hawguy]

I've been seeing reports of this so called clock for a long time and I can't help pointing out that so far, for thousands of years, every single prediction of the end of the world and humanity has been wrong.

Well, of course every prediction of the end of the world and humanity has been wrong - you wouldn't be able to make that observation otherwise.

Re:Doomsday clock

[jcr]

Why address long term goals? Like the tea party and their cronies always say. Long term thinking?

Obviously you have no idea at all what the Tea Party is all about. Piling on debt without end is not long-term thinking.

-jcr

Re:Doomsday clock

[amorsen]

Bullshit. Entitlement reform would require little or no tax increases to reduce our debt. Typical bleeding heart crap.

Show me a proposal without tax increases that would not cut deeply into the things that Republicans cannot afford to cut, like Medicare/Medicaid for retirees or defense. It has to be something you can get the average rural white American on board with.

Re:Doomsday clock

[LordLimecat]

Except according to wikipedia this adjustment was not because "we're worse off", it was adjusted because nothing had changed and apparently a statement needed to be made:

Lack of global political action to address.....
So if it wasnt already clear that this is a stupid arbitrary soapbox, here you go.

Re:Doomsday clock

[toddestan]

The Tea Party says they want spending cuts, but when pressed for details they either have nothing or only offer sound bites that sound good but account for only a tiny amount of the total spending.

Re:Doomsday clock

[phantomfive]

I don't think that's accurate, the tea-party motto is "taxed too much," not "pay no taxes."

In general, these are people who are unhappy with how their taxes are being spent. They didn't like the bank bailout, they didn't like the stimulus that followed, and they didn't like what was looking like a giant expansion of the government into healthcare.

And honestly, I can't say I disagree. Personally, I think we need to stop spending so much on the military, and a lot of people were upset about the banks, that was kind of the idea behind OWS, too.

Re:Doomsday clock

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea behind OWS is that the rich are raping this country, and that the wealth disparity has grown so great, that so much of our nations wealth is locked up in the hands of so few that it is now impossible for the country to ever be prosperous again.

If taxes are lowered for the rich, and a rich man save a millions dollars for the year, what happens? That million dollars goes into an off shore account, or buys a bunch of gold or something. No real benefit to our economy. Now take that million dollars and give it to 300 poor people or so equally, and you have hundreds of things being bought, cars bought, computers bought, couches, beds. That money benefits the economy and makes the whole country more prosperous. And the majority of it goes back to the rich men anyway, but along the way creates jobs, and lets poor people sleep on beds that are not 20 years old, pays for a laptop for a kid going to college. Guess what, if we took 80% of the wealth from the richest people in the country, our economy would be fixed over night, and those rich people would still have more money than they could ever hope to spend.

The bank bailouts are just a symptom of a system that the wealthy have spent decades molding so that no matter what happens they win, and everyone else looses. They are playing a childish greedy zero sum game with the lives of millions of Americans, for no particularly good reason. They were able to do this because of ignorant republicans and now truly stupid tea party garbage. They should suffer and so should their enablers equally suffer for this monstrous sin.

Re:Doomsday clock

[servies]

As a Dutch person I can only say: yawn...
If you really think that just a modest spending restraint is the solution to the US debt, then you're an idiot...
The only solution to the US debt is a tax raise and a significant spending restraint.
If you don't get it by now: You're in it till over your heads... It's a miracle you can still breathe...
As a Dutch I really don't get it: more than 50% of the US population is against a tax raise for the 'filthy' rich which only constitutes a maximum of 3% of your population... Why do those (more than) 50% care for those 3%, they certainly don't care for you?....
If those 3% can raise their wealth by driving that 50% into poverty they certainly will do so... The other way around will never happen...
Btw, my taxrate is about 40%, those 'filthy' rich in the US don't even pay half of that with all the shortcuts they can make...

Re:Doomsday clock

[amorsen]

I know the Tea Party movement does not want the government to spend money. However, they are not acting on that. They are not asking Republicans to promise to cut expenditures or even to not add new ones. Instead they are demanding that Republicans promise to never increase taxes.

Tea Party is all about leaving the bill to the future generation.

they switched the meaning.

[gl4ss]

it makes the clock bullshit. it will never be even 23 pm. and now it's totally useless as indicator for following how the nuke situation is going.

the number is just pulled out of the ass, status quo remaining the same has pushed it closer to midnight several times. but moving it to half past eleven or whatever wouldn't be right because "they don't want to give the wrong message that you shouldn't be afraid".

This is a stopped clock

[icebike]

This "doomsday clock" hasn't ticked in years. The Atomic Scientists bulletin has used it for every Cause célèbre since the day it was invented. No amount of change will ever move those hands again, because there will always be another issue to adopt, another bandwagon to jump on, another social issue to champion.

Once the threat of nuclear war subsided from the fever pitch of the 60's, they, like most anti-everything protest movements, had to find other horses to ride, preferably one that couldn't reject them. So climate change it is. And cyber technologies!!

And if we don't heed them, we are reminded (annually it turns out) that We are DOOMED, Doomed I tell you!.