Editorial: Doomsday conspiracy
The countdown was set into motion in 1947 when the advocacy group used a clock to represent the potential and likelihood of people doing something to end existence as we know it.
This week, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an advocacy group, made its annual announcement about the Earth moving closer to its destruction. The ominous Doomsday Clock has now been advanced to 89 seconds till midnight, the closest it has ever been. The counter keeps track of humanity's proximity from annihilation — citing threats that include climate change, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, instability in the Middle East, the threat of pandemics, and the incorporation of AI in military operations.
For the past two years, the clock has stood at 90 seconds to midnight. This year, the group has expressed its anxieties about developments such as cooperation between North Korea, Russia, and China in developing nuclear programmes. President Putin has gone so far as to say that if pushed into the corner, he would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons in his war against Ukraine.
The countdown was set into motion in 1947 when the advocacy group used a clock to represent the potential and likelihood of people doing something to end existence as we know it. After the end of the Cold War, the clock was as close as 17 minutes to midnight. Over the past few years, aiming to address rapid global changes, the group has changed from counting down the minutes until midnight to counting down the seconds.
From a pragmatic standpoint, does it make sense to subscribe to such a nihilistic viewpoint on world affairs? In a recent commentary, the celebrated author Amitav Ghosh drew attention to the ecocide that is now taking place in the Nicobar Islands in the name of infrastructure development. His angst was directed at the plight of Indigenous groups like the Shompen who could be driven to extinction by the government's requirement to develop tourist resorts, naval bases and all-round modern amenities in this pristine natural haven.
Ghosh, like other empathetic observers of nature’s destruction, has also been critical of India’s tendency to stage manage forests, like it is being done in Ranthambore. The flip side of such management is that the natives of the region who have nurtured such forests for thousands of years and lived in harmony with the wildlife, which included big cats, are now being displaced on account of generating higher tourism revenues. Another challenge is that of terraforming, essentially building swathes of real estate in regions that should ideally be devoid of any vegetation.
The recent wildfires witnessed Los Angeles is being viewed as a prime example of capitalism gone horribly wrong, with reports highlighting how real estate companies are now approaching survivors in Altadena with offers to pick up their lands at throwaway prices, only to create more developments in the land parcels that just got ravaged by the fires.
The developments in the US mirror those taking place in India, specifically in high altitude regions, such as the infrastructure projects near the mountains. Last October, the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) said the controversial proposed widening of the Chardham project’s Gangotri-Dharasu stretch in the Bhagirathi Eco-Sensitive Zone (BESZ) is not in violation of Supreme Court’s December 2021 order.
Such assurances seem to be de-rigueur at a time when the most ‘powerful’ leader on the planet dismisses the threats of climate change and finite resources as fake news. So, it falls upon leaders from the global south to turn the narrative. The question is whether they are up to the challenge before it’s too late.
