It is still 3 minutes to midnight.

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	It is still 3 minutes to midnight
	In the past year, the international community has made positive strides in regard to humanity’s two most pressing existential threats: nuclear weapons and climate change. In July 2015, at the end of nearly two years of negotiations, six world powers and Iran reached a historic agreement that limits the Iranian nuclear program and aims to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weaponry. And in December of last year, nearly 200 countries agreed in Paris to a process by which they will attempt to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide, aiming to keep the increase in world temperature well below 2.0 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level. But the diplomatic successes on Iran and in Paris have been offset, at least, by negative events in the nuclear and climate arenas. The members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Science and Security Board find the world situation to be highly threatening to humanity—so threatening that the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock must remain at three minutes to midnight, the closest it has been to catastrophe since the early days of above-ground hydrogen bomb testing. North Korea’s nuclear test, vastly expensive nuclear modernization programs in the United States and around the globe, the world’s collective inability to effectively deal with nuclear waste, and the drumbeat of continued climate change remain very serious challenges. And as the Board writes in the 2016 Doomsday Clock Statement, “When we call these dangers existential, that is exactly what we mean: They threaten the very existence of civilization…” The video recording of the Doomsday Clock international news conference will be posted on our website within a few hours of the conclusion of the program. Board members Thomas Pickering, Lawrence Krauss, Sivan Kartha, and Sharon Squassoni were joined via a live, two-way link from Stanford University by California Governor Jerry Brown, former Secretary of State George Shultz, and former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry. As the signatories to 2016 Doomsday Clock Statement make clear, the Earth remains perilously and inexcusably close to metaphorical midnight. You can read the full report on the Bulletin’s website at www.thebulletin.org. It is still 3 minutes to midnight.