Re: “Wake up — it is two minutes to midnight,” comment, Aug. 7.
Dr. Jonathan Down deserves our gratitude for his work toward peace and disarmament. However, his message would be stronger if he dealt more directly with facts.
He states a “fact” that the risk of nuclear catastrophe is higher now than during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War. This is simply untrue. Since the Second World War, several treaties have been negotiated to reduce the manufacture of nuclear warheads and to control their use. There were 64,200 nuclear warheads in the world in 1986. Today, there are about 10,200, and the number is decreasing routinely. Progress is being made.
The Doomsday Clock is an appealing metaphor, but it is based on creative imagining — not on facts. The Doomsday Clock founder, Eugene Rabinowitch, said it was created “to preserve civilization by scaring men into rationality.” As Steven Pinker writes: “If the hands of a clock point to a few minutes to midnight for 72 years, something is wrong with the clock.”
At the 2015 Annual Clock Symposium, the keynote lecture was delivered by Gareth Evans, an authority on the subject. He stated that nuclear security “would benefit by being conducted a little less emotionally … than has tended to be the case.”
In 1830, Thomas Macaulay wrote: “On what principle is it, that when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration ahead of us?” I guess that the imaginary Doomsday Clock is now at about 9 p.m.
David Stocks
Colwood
