The Doomsday Clock is broken - and we have a replacement

So the Doomsday Clock has this week moved one metaphorical minute closer to midnight, taking it to five minutes to 12 and cancelling out the move to six minutes to 12 that was made back in 2010.

All of which suggests one thing: the Doomsday Clock is broken.

It goes back, it goes forward, and never indicates any time that is not a handful of minutes away from midnight. In fact, it has never gone earlier than 17 minutes to midnight, and only stayed there for a brief period in the relatively benign nineties. If it were a wristwatch you'd throw it out.

Leaving aside the oscillating minute hand, the Sceptic Tank is also concerned about the clock's accuracy. If midnight is Doomsday, who will be left from the esteemed Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to move the clock the final few minutes necessary at the precise moment when nuclear and climatic armageddon strikes?

We fear a nightmare scenario, where the clock is left stranded at a fraudulently reassuring seven minutes to 12, even as the skies rain mercury and zombies roam the earth.

All of which brings us to our plan for a rival symbolic clock.

Let's be honest, the Doomsday Clock is pretty depressing. The word doom is right there in the title, which does not exactly inspire you to get up in the morning and engage in the daily fight to make the world a greener place.

So why not flip things round and produce a nice sparkly new Green Economy Clock that instead of counting down to the appearance of the Four Horsemen counts towards the completion of a beautifully sustainable, low-carbon, circular economy?

You can see it now: an inspiring, progressive, forward-looking metaphorical clock, set at... five minutes past midnight.

Just 23 hours and 55 minutes to go. We feel better already.

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• Topics
• Risk
• Climate change
• climate adaptation