RESETTING OF DOOMSDAY CLOCK TO FIVE MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

That this House notes with deep concern the decision by the eminent Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BOAS), in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 18 Nobel laureates, to move the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock from seven to five minutes to midnight on 17th January; agrees with the BOAS board statement that the `continued presence of some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia are symptomatic of a larger failure to solve the problems posed by the most destructive technology on Earth'; believes that the retention of British nuclear weapons of mass destruction further exacerbates the global security problem; supports the statement by British Nobel laureate Professor Stephen Hawking, of the University of Cambridge, made at the ceremony at the Royal Society marking the resetting of the Doomsday Clock's closeness to atomic Armageddon, that in respect of the stewardship of the global atomic arsenals `but for good luck, we would all be dead'; recognises the importance of the observation by Professor Hawking that the world stands at the brink of a second nuclear age and a period of unprecedented climate change, wherein scientists have a special responsibility to inform the public and advise leaders about the nuclear perils that humanity faces; and supports the urgent call by Professor Hawking that great peril must be foreseen if governments and society do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete.