2026-03-09
The 28th February invasion of Iran validates the Doomsday Clock, even if its minute hand moves a bit slowly with unfolding reality
By Chris Johansen, Green Issue Co-editor
In Green Issue February articles of 2024 and 2025, the Doomsday Clock was updated. The Doomsday Clock provides an estimate every January of how close the world is to doomsday, determined by such factors as war, climate change, disease, AI, etc. The concept was established by the The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947, by nuclear scientists who were having second thoughts about their invention of atomic weapons.
In 2023 and 2024 the Clock was adjusted to 90 seconds before midnight, the closest it had ever been. In 2025 it moved by only one second, to 89 seconds, which the present author argued did not reflect the evolving reality. An ominous reality that President Trump was about to begin his second term. The response of The Bulletin in January of this year was to only move the minute hand to 85 seconds before midnight, again underestimating the actual peril humanity and the planet faces.
In Trump’s first year of his second term, from early 2025, we saw:
- The expiry, in February 2026, of the New START treaty limiting US and Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles. The original Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty remains but it is ineffective as it only applies to the original nuclear weapons states – USA, Russia (USSR), China, UK and France. These anti-nuclear proliferation treaties had prevented nuclear conflict during the Cold War as leaders of all nuclear weapon states then thought it would be MAD (mutually assured destruction) to use them. No nuclear armed nations have signed up yet to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and have shown no inclination to do so.
- Current leaders of some nuclear armed states, such as USA, Russia, Israel and North Korea, seem to be driven by vengeance towards those that cross them and it is not beyond consideration that they would resort to nuclear weapons if sufficiently enraged. Belligerent Cold War leaders, such as Khrushchev, Nixon and Reagan, seem like gentle, forgiving souls by comparison.
- The ongoing Ukraine-Russia war and the increasing possibility of its expansion to other European countries.
- Israel’s relentless march to absorb all remaining Palestinian lands into a Greater Israel, aided and abetted by the “Board of Peace”. This will further alienate the world’s 2 billion Muslims and ensure ongoing conflict.
- The selectively applied “global rules-based order” which western nations interpret according to their rules of the day. And the general decline of the United Nations principles and their now outright rejection by the US.
- The stalling of efforts to confront climate change. Despite being near the global red line of 1.5 °C, most major greenhouse gas emitters are reluctant to slow further expansion of fossil fuels, despite advances in renewable energy. Catastrophic consequences of exceeding 2 °C now seem inevitable with the only question remaining as to how soon they will unfold.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly evolving and being deployed without any regulatory constraint.
- And so on.
If I had had any say in re-setting the Doomsday Clock this January I would have said surely it would have by now been less than one minute to midnight – I might have nominated conservatively 50 seconds.
The 28th February attack on Iran by the US and Israel has already proved this 50 second prediction wrong. It completely negates any UN-based norms of how sovereign nations should interact with each other, even if they don’t like each other. It will inevitably devolve into further global chaos, all for the sake of trying to maintain US global hegemony, with the compliance of its client states – primarily Israel but also its various sycophants such as Australia.
The Middle East will be plunged ever deeper into turmoil, with intra-Muslim conflict (Shia and Sunni) and a more general Muslim vs the West. But not only Muslim vs the West but the wider “developing world” (7 billion) vs the West (1 billion). And the inevitable disruption of global oil supplies will have widespread negative economic consequences, leading to further global unrest.
I could go on in this vein but the overall picture is clearly portrayed by Jeffrey Sachs in this video. Having lived in “the world” (i.e. outside Australia) for much of my life this portrayal pretty well reflects my own assessment – so, I’ll say no more.
I try to balance my pessimism with realistic objective analysis, sprinkled with whatever optimism I can find in the shaker. But, sadly, at this moment I find no choice but to revert back to pessimism. But, I’ll keep fighting for human sanity until the ship sinks below the waves of human stupidity.
Header photo: A plume of smoke rises after a strike in Tehran, Iran, Monday, March 2, 2026. Credit: AP Photo/Mohsen Ganji
[Opinions expressed are those of the author and not official policy of Greens WA]