“The Doomsday Clock is a design that warns the public about how close we are to destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own making. It is a metaphor, a reminder of the perils we must address if we are to survive on the planet.

When the Doomsday Clock was created in 1947, the greatest danger to humanity came from nuclear weapons, in particular from the prospect that the United States and the Soviet Union were headed for a nuclear arms race. The Bulletin considered possible catastrophic disruptions from climate change in its hand-setting deliberations for the first time in 2007.”

– The Doomsday Clock Website

When the Doomsday Clock hits midnight, it symbolizes that humanity has reached a point of termination, rendering the Earth largely uninhabitable. If and when the clock hits midnight, doesn’t mean an instant end to civilization (rendering the clock largely symbolic), but the consequences of what the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists are trying to warn us of, are finally creeping their way through mainstream media.

Global temperature is predicted to be the highest it’s ever been since pre-industrial times, sea levels have been continuously rising, the Great Barrier Reef is soon approaching a point of no return, with five mass coral bleachings, and that’s just the tip of the melting iceberg.

We read headlines like this every other day, and the worst part is not that a majority of systems in place aren’t doing anything substantial, but the fact that we, who will have to live with the consequences of literal doomsday, are slowly becoming jaded. Every time we read a worse headline, research it for class, or read another article on Climate Change, the more desensitized and hopeless we become.

Yet the true danger lies in forgetting who controls the seconds of the clock. Those who let AI companies use necessary reserves of drinking water to run massive data centres. Leader(s) who increase drilling for oil, while actively pulling back renewable energy programs. Those fighting for territory in Antarctica, while simultaneously ignoring its melting glaciers which shed 150 billion tonnes of ice annually. It’s times like this when I’m reminded of the lorax – only when the last tree is cut down, the last stream polluted, will we realise we cannot eat money.

Humanity has a history of only acting past the point of no return. We only banned CFC’s after the ozone had a huge hole in it, and we only advocated for nuclear proliferation after seeing the damage done to Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the second world war. So the question now lies – will we only act after we’ve inherited a planet past the point of no return?

Probably.

But,

Do we have the option not to act?

Absolutely not.

Those who believe that the tolling of Midnight Bells is inevitable, are those who shall never see the sunrise, looming beyond the horizon.