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this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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I agree, to be perfectly honest. I imagine the folks who initially came up with this clock thought it was a good idea, but at this point it's just a cartoonish shadow of what it was supposed to be. We can only be minutes/seconds from total annihilation for so many years before people shrug and completely lose interest. It's like listening to a Mayan cultist talk about what's coming in 2012, or a Christian fundamentalist talk about the coming rapture. It also ignores basic psychology, in that even if you accept the gravity of the clock's meaning, you're still left utterly powerless to do anything about it, all while thinking...."ok, so what now?"
If the argument is that the long-term trends of humanity are such that we have a significantly higher chance of self-ceasing (an argument that I'd agree with given climate change), then that needs to be stated, especially since the clock has generally been seen as how close we are to imminent destruction.
The question, then, is how to best represent the fact that we're already knee deep in a slow moving global catastrophe, as opposed to on the brink of an imminent one?
I have a graduate degree in climate policy and have worked in the environmental field for almost 15 years. We do not have a high chance of self-ceasing thanks to climate change, and I implore you to stop framing it that way. That kind of language is absolutely and unequivocally unhelpful when it comes to communicating the challenges we face. The fact that laypeople have spent decades saying climate change is going to "destroy the planet" or "kill us all" is exactly the kind of problem I'm talking about. It breeds paralysis because it's something that you can't possibly conjure a constructive response to address. If literal Armageddon is coming, then the solution isn't to try to stop it, the solution is to live your life as best you can, while you can.
Do we face significant challenges as a result of climate change? Absolutely. Is some kind of global food crisis and/or localized famine likely? Absolutely. Will storms and sea level changes displace entire communities of people and worsen an already bad immigration crisis across the globe? Absolutely. Will infrastructure suffer and become increasingly expensive to maintain and adapt? Absolutely. Will changes stress local ecosystems such that extinctions become more likely? Absolutely. Will governments struggle to meaningfully respond when the public purse is constantly stressed by increasingly expensive natural disasters? Absolutely. Will some people die of heat stress, starvation, drowning, etc? Absolutely. Will we "self-cease" as a result?
NO.
So then given that I don't accept your premise that global annihilation is in any way relevant to climate change, and given that the threat of nuclear Armageddon is something the individual is completely powerless to address, I'd like to counter that a "Doomsday" anything that constantly creeps closer and closer to an imaginary red line, is a completely fucking stupid way to communicate the challenges we face.
Let me put it to you this way: if someone told you an asteroid was going to hit the Earth 90 seconds from now, would you try to stop it? Or would you call your friends and family and tell them you love them?
The question remains. The clock is supposed to be about impending doom. Slow moving disasters can include many things and I used climate change as an example. But there are many others. Disease, blight and even an asteroid if it's big enough.
The issue really is that these people don't like the reminder because they don't want to act because they are still comfortable and they know any meaningful action "threatens" their way of life (because they can only think within the box capitalism created for them, making them fear anything outside of it).
They'll tell you they do act until they're blue in the face, but it will come down to things like driving an EV and using a reusable cup at Starbucks. Because it's about making themselves feel better, not fighting the actual problem - same as framing the clock as fearmongering instead of the desperate call to action it has become..
Which I've already clarified is ridiculous and unhelpful even if a crisis deserves our utmost attention. That's on both a pragmatic and a psychological level. If you want a long series of continuous eye rolls, by all means continue telling people the sky is literally falling.
None of which include global annihilation as even a remote possibility.
Do you think telling people we're seconds from an asteroid hitting will help them do literally anything? What if you tell them that every single day for 40 years? Do you think it'll help them more in 40 years than it does today?
Since you completely avoided meaningfully responding to literally anything I just wrote and fell back on repeating yourself as if I somehow don't understand English, I'll bow out here. Enjoy your masturbatory doom fetish.
You know it's not exclusively climate change that will be our downfall?
How many different ways can I tell you guys that a doomsday clock is the most ludicrous and flatly ineffective tool for communicating the stresses we're facing in the 21st century? Do you need me to send you a telegram? Maybe a passenger pigeon? I can have it written in the sky by a biplane if that'll help. Maybe in another language? Hieroglyphics perhaps?
My dude, I studied this. I have two graduate degrees in these subjects. I'm no stranger to the very real problems we're facing as a global species, and in fact I've dedicated my entire career to fighting environmental degradation, often at the expense of my family, my finances, and my health.
A DOOMSDAY CLOCK IS STUPID AND HASN'T HELPED ME OR ANY OF MY COLLEAGUES AT ANY POINT IN OUR ENTIRE PROFESSIONAL CAREERS.
God fucking damn y'all are dense.
Oh yeah the clock is stupid, lol, but we should prepare for collapse by 2030, 2050 at the latest.
Whatever the fuck you do in the comfort of your own basement is your business, chief.
Thank you!