On Thursday, January 25th, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the ‘doomsday clock’ forward by 30 seconds, to two minutes to midnight. The last time – and only time – the clock has been this close to midnight was in 1953. That was at a time when both the US and the Soviet Union had exploded their first hydrogen bombs, increasing the destructive power of nuclear weapons by a thousand-fold from the first atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“In 2017, world leaders failed to respond effectively to the looming threats of nuclear war and climate change, making the world security situation more dangerous than it was a year ago—and as dangerous as it has been since World War II,”
according to the world’s leading nuclear scientists.
The very real threat of a nuclear war between the US and North Korea has dropped out of the headlines, but the threat is still there – and is likely to return to the headlines after the Winter Olympics in South Korea are safely out of the way.
The fact that the United States and 8 other countries continue to stockpile weapons that have the capacity to destroy all life on earth is nothing short of insanity. That they are threatening to actually use these weapons should provoke us all to immediate action! There is no other time than NOW to do something about this.
Luckily, the world has already begun to rise up. People all over the world are expressing their concern and their outrage about the threat these weapons pose to all of us. And they have the backing of a majority of their parliaments and even of their presidents and prime ministers.
Nuclear weapons have been comprehensively banned and outlawed by the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. We can take steps to implement this treaty in the US right now. We can get cities and states and businesses and faith communities in the US to commit themselves to the treaty in the same way that 14 states, hundreds of cities and thousands of businesses in the US have committed themselves to the Paris Climate Accords. We have to do this, and we have to do it now. Please join us!
