English Audio Request

But this catastrophic threat could be merely in abeyance. In the next 100 years, geopolitical realignments could lead to a nuclear standoff between new superpowers, which might be handled less well than the Cuba crisis was. Moreover, we are confronted by a proliferation of nuclear weapons (in North Korea and Iran for instance). There is now a growing risk of nuclear weapons going off in a localised conflict, and the Bulletin's clock stands at seven minutes to midnight. The nuclear threat will always be with us.
But what are the promises and threats from 21st-century science? Science offers immense hope, and exciting prospects. There are genuine grounds for being a techno-optimist.
The technologies that fuel economic growth today - IT, miniaturisation and biotech - are environmentally and socially benign. They are sparing of energy and raw materials. They boost quality of life in the developing and the developed world, and have much further to go. That is surely good news. But opinion polls reveal public concern that science may be advancing too fast to be properly controlled. It is not only advancing faster than ever, it is opening up the prospects of new kinds of change.
Whatever else may have changed over preceding centuries, humans have not for thousands of years. But in this century, targeted drugs to enhance memory or change mood, genetic modification, and perhaps silicon implants into the brain, may alter human beings themselves. That is something qualitatively new in our history.
Our species could be transformed within a few centuries. And there are other disquieting prospects. Collective human actions are transforming, even ravaging, the biosphere - perhaps irreversibly - through global warming and loss of biodiversity. We have entered a new geological era, the anthropocene. We do not fully understand the consequences of rising populations and increasing energy consumption on the interwoven fabric of atmosphere, water, land and life.
We are collectively endangering our planet, but there is a potential threat from individuals too. "Bio" and "cyber" expertise will be accessible to millions. It does not require large, special-purpose facilities as do nuclear weapons. Even a single person will have the capability to cause widespread disruption through error or terror. There will always be disaffected loners, and the "leverage" each can exert is ever-growing. It would be hard to eliminate such risks, even with very intrusive surveillance.The global village will have its global village idiots.