Doomsday Clock ticks as Russia's nuclear threat adds to world's already perilous situation

While the nuclear risk may or may not happen, the Doomsday Clock has in recent years also been tracking the climate crisis with growing alarm, writes John Gibbons

Vladimir Putin’s bellicose rhetoric since the invasion of Ukraine has included repeated thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons. File picture: Mikhail Klimentyev via AP

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”, Charles Dickens wrote in 1859. “It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair”.

Today, a century and a half later, his opening lines from ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ still ring true. There are more people alive now than at any other time in history, and more are living free from the shackles of abject poverty, hunger, disease and early death than ever before.