{"id":79380,"date":"2025-02-10T07:16:46","date_gmt":"2025-02-10T07:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/activist\/are-we-steamrolling-towards-the-apocalypse\/"},"modified":"2025-02-10T07:16:46","modified_gmt":"2025-02-10T07:16:46","slug":"are-we-steamrolling-towards-the-apocalypse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=79380","title":{"rendered":"Are we steamrolling towards the apocalypse?"},"content":{"rendered":"


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One second closer to midnight \u2014 While the rolling news cycle, intensifying climate crisis and rapidly advancing technology can make it feel as if the end days are upon us, newsletter columnist Emma Garland remembers that things have always been terrible, and that is a natural part of human life.<\/p>\n

This column first featured in Huck\u2019s culture newsletter. Sign up here<\/a> to make sure it lands in your inbox every month.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

We tend to think of things in terms of the direction in which they\u2019re headed: forward or backwards. These are political terms as much as kinetic ones. To look \u2018backwards\u2019 is generally considered to be bad; the enemy of progression and a rejection of the present \u2013 its gains and stresses both. I do wonder, though, if this fixation on moving forwards is as \u2018progressive\u2019 as it once was. It seems increasingly the case that the answers to our myriad contemporary problems lie in a not particularly distant past that we\u2019ve largely already forgotten.<\/p>\n

A lot has happened in the first month of 2025. A combination of dry vegetation and 80mph Santa Ana winds set Los\u00a0Angeles<\/a> ablaze, with fast moving wildfires tearing through neighbourhoods and destroying over 16,000 homes. On January 15, with parts of the city still on fire, David Lynch \u2013 a once in a lifetime filmmaker who defined and deconstructed LA better than anyone \u2013 passed away at the age of 78. A ceasefire deal between Israel-Hamas came into effect on January 19, but that didn\u2019t stop an Israeli sniper shooting a Palestinian child dead<\/a> in Rafah, nor the Israeli army opening fire on a man trying to retrieve the child\u2019s body. Following a relatively uneventful inauguration on January 20, Donald Trump moved into The White House, his victory reflecting what some members of the new right wing are calling<\/a> \u201cthe first influencer election\u201d. <\/p>\n

As if to commemorate these things and more, the Doomsday Clock was moved<\/a> forward on January 28. Citing the disintegration of nuclear arms control, tensions in the Middle East, the climate crisis, and rapid advances in AI along with its potential military applications as factors, Atomic scientists set the clock to 89 seconds before midnight \u2013 the theoretical point of global annihilation. Metaphorically speaking, that brings us closer than ever to the destruction of humanity. Spend more than 45 seconds doomscrolling X and that will feel about right. However, there is an issue with the announcement: the Doomsday Clock is quite literally running out of time. \u201cThat problem is something the entire field of existential risk suffers from,\u201d Bryan Walsh writes for Vox<\/em><\/a>. \u201cThere are only so many times you can issue a warning before it starts to feel meaningless, especially as we seem to get closer and closer to annihilation without, quite, getting there.\u201d<\/p>\n

He makes a good point. The Doomsday Clock represents the estimated likelihood of a human-made global catastrophe. When it was designed in 1947, that mostly meant nuclear war, but the remit has since broadened to incorporate modern technological developments and the climate crisis. Each year seems to bring fresh horrors in both departments, to make no mention of constant war, leaving the seconds nowhere to go but down. It\u2019s easy, then, to feel defeated by the thing that\u2019s intended to galvanise. We see the same phenomenon in climate reporting, with the media reporting a \u2018final warning\u2019 from scientists on fossil fuels, meat consumption and other issues every year since they were formally laid out in the 1992 document \u2018World Scientists\u2019 Warning to Humanity.\u2019 Simply put: it\u2019s hard to get an accurate read on how bad things actually are while being told they are really bad all the time<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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\u201cHysteria is not fortifying. By all means be concerned about the state of the world, as well you should, but also don\u2019t underestimate small daily actions in the face of seemingly insurmountable horrors.\u201d<\/p>\n