Jan. 17, 2007 — Scientist Stephen Hawking described climate change Wednesday as a greater threat to the planet than terrorism.
Hawking made the remarks as other prominent scientists prepared to push the giant hand of its Doomsday Clock — a symbol of the risk of atomic cataclysm and now also of climate change — closer to midnight. Hawking warned that "as citizens of the world, we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day."
It was the fourth time since the end of the Cold War that the clock has ticked forward, this time from 11:53 to 11:55, amid fears over what the trans-Atlantic group of scientists is describing as "a second nuclear age" prompted largely by atomic standoffs with Iran and North Korea.
But the organization added that the "dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons."
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, founded in 1945 as a newsletter distributed among nuclear physicists concerned by the possibility of nuclear war, has since grown into an organization focused more generally on manmade threats to the survival of human civilization.
"As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth," said Stephen Hawking, the renowned cosmologist and mathematician.
"As citizens of the world, we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day, and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change."
