Obama’s plans to end nukes and curb climate change raise cautious optimism.

By Larry Greenemeier

The human race can breathe a tiny bit easier (but not too much) now that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved the hand of its Doomsday Clock one minute farther away from midnight, the time which symbolizes catastrophic destruction and the apocalyptic end of civilization. The clock now reads six minutes from that end-of-days witching hour after it was changed during a press conference Thursday in New York City, citing an increased awareness and interest in stopping key threats to humanity (in particular nuclear conflict and global warming) since U.S. President Barack Obama took office about a year ago.

But the Bulletin, a group established shortly after World War II by the likes of Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer, tempered its actions with the major caveat that humankind could slip closer to oblivion again if the world’s governments do not follow through on promises made to curb the creation of more nuclear weapons and greenhouse gases. Although the Bulletin was originally formed out of concern for global nuclear annihilation, the group has since broadened its purview to include the world’s vulnerability to climate change.

The Bulletin’s members at Thursday’s press conference noted that leaders of nations equipped with nuclear weapons have expressed the desire to cooperate in reducing their arsenals and securing nuclear bomb-making material. This includes a shared sentiment between Obama and Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev that nuclear arms negotiations that could bring down deployed strategic warheads from more than 2,000 to about 1,500 each.

One growing challenge to the Bulletin’s original mission is that newer generations of policymakers were born into a post–Cold War world with a diminished awareness of the damage that nukes can inflict. One way to ensure that the lesson of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not forgotten is for the world’s nuclear powers (the U.S. and U.K., Russia, France and China) and countries that have tested and/or deployed nuclear weapons (in particular, India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan) to ratify agreements such as the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which the U.S. Senate also has yet to do.

For the first time since nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan 65 years ago, many world leaders are looking for ways to reduce nuclear weapon stockpiles, and they are pledging to curb climate-changing gases that could make our planet inhabitable, said Lawrence Krauss, co-chair of the Bulletin’s Board of Sponsors and director of the new Origins Initiative at Arizona State University in Phoenix. Krauss and his Bulletin colleagues credit Obama’s election as a major part of new arms reduction talks with Russia, the now-stalled negotiations with Iran to close its nuclear enrichment program, and the potential of a U.S.-led effort to secure all loose fissile material in four years.

Another factor in the Bulletin’s measured optimism is the indication that security threats are more likely to be asymmetrical, coming from decentralized terrorist groups or nations suffering from economic collapse and resource scarcity exacerbated by climate change. In such situations there is no single target (like Washington or Moscow) for nukes, rendering them less effective either as offensive weapons or deterents.

Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Bulletin member and head of Quaid-i-Azam University’s physics department in Pakistan, called for a moratorium on the development of materials that go into nuclear weapons and on testing nuclear weapons. He noted that India and his native Pakistan are making fissible material as quickly as they possibly can.

Although the Bulletin was created by scientists, engineers and other experts who had developed the atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II, the group in recent years has turned a good part of its attention to the threats posed by climate change. In fact, nukes and climate change are closely linked given that some see nuclear energy as one way to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels. The Bulletin acknowledges that the increased use of carbon-free nuclear energy could help mitigate global warming brought on by fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions but concludes that the possibility of misusing enriched uranium and separated plutonium to create bombs is a terrible trade-off for trying to control climate change.