Before today, January 26 was already a day steeped in history: In 1980, it marked the beginning of diplomatic relations between Israel and Egypt; 12 years later, former Russian President Boris Yeltsin said he’d remove nuclear crosshairs from U.S. cities; and, six years after that, former President Bill Clinton denied having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. But all of those events will now pale in comparison to the yuge announcement that we’re now closer to Doomsday than ever.
In a New York Times op-ed, The Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists members Lawrence M. Krauss and David Titley report that their organization has nudged the Doomsday Clock’s minute hand closer to midnight than it had been in 54 years. The clock previously lingered at two minutes before midnight thanks to Soviet thermonuclear weapons testing. “Never before has the Bulletin decided to advance the clock largely because of the statements of a single person,” they wrote, but this is President Donald “Let’s build a wall and tear down society” Trump we’re talking about here. In addition to his ignorant statements about nuclear weapons, the 45th President‘s appointed an Energy Secretary who probably still doesn’t know what the job entails. (Not to mention that he lost Dancing With The Stars.)
But it’s not just Trump’s cavalier attitude about nuclear armaments that’s worrisome to the organization; the group’s also taken into account the now flagging efforts to limit climate change. They must not have heard that the President has proven climate change isn’t real, or, at the very least, it’s no longer part of the government’s agenda.