As of Thursday, the world doomsday clock sits at 11:57. The clock is a measure created by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to show just how near disaster the planet is at any given time. When the clock hits midnight, it's all over.
"In 2015, unchecked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity," the bulletin said in a statement.
11:57 is the closest the clock has been to midnight since 1984, during the midst of the Cold War. The two Texans in the U.S. Senate, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, are unwilling to take even the smallest steps to promote whatever corrections are still possible with regard to climate change.
Wednesday, in an amendment to the bill that will allow the Keystone XL oil pipeline to move forward, senators were asked to affirm that they believed climate change was real and that human activity contributes to it. The question should not be controversial. The consensus of the scientific community is that, since 1950, human activity has been the dominant force behind global warming.
Cruz and Cornyn voted against the amendment. Tick-tock.
