The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists will announce this morning how close we are to midnight on the symbolic Doomsday Clock.
First used in 1947, the clock is used as a metaphor meant to measure how close humanity is to destroying civilization. Its hands are moved forward or back depending on the world’s level of vulnerability, with midnight representing catastrophe.
Though the clock typically moves by full minutes, the non-profit group of scientists moved it by just 30 seconds in both 2017 and 2018. It currently sits at two minutes to midnight.
The last time it was set to two minutes to midnight was in 1953, when the United States and the Soviet Union were testing hydrogen bombs for the first time.
(The clock’s hands were furthest from midnight — set at 17 minutes to — in 1991, at the end of the Cold War.)
In announcing the decision to move the clock ahead by 30 seconds last year, the bulletin said it took into account several factors, including rising tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, as well as insufficient response to climate change.
At last year’s announcement, Sivan Kartha, who at the time headed the bulletin’s science and security board, noted that climate change wasn’t even an issue in 1953.
“Since that time, what we’ve dumped into the atmosphere has increased sixfold. And as a consequence, Earth has warmed by one degree,” said Kartha, who is also a senior scientist at the Stockholm Environmental Institute.
Thursday’s announcement will be broadcast at 10 a.m. ET from the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and will include former California governor Jerry Brown, the executive chair of the bulletin.