For thousands of years, apocalyptic prophecies have borne little fruit. But with threats from nuclear war and climate change rising, should the planet at least start considering the worst?
When the world rings up in 2022, few would have expected the US president to be talking about the risk of doomsday after Russia’s threats of going nuclear in its invasion of Ukraine.
“We haven’t faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis” in 1962, Joe Biden said in October.
And in the year that humanity welcomed its eighth billionth member, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the planet was on the “highway to climate hell”.
Widely attributed to climate change, floods submerged a third of Pakistan, China sweated under an unprecedented 70-day heatwave and crops failed in the Horn of Africa, while the world united The nation lagged behind on the blessed goal of checking warming. 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) above pre-industrial levels.
