What Time is It Until Doomsday?

Environmental & Science Education, Sustainability, Water & Watersheds, Sustainable Energy & Transportation

by Edward Hessler

By Garry Knight (Flickr: 4:06 PM)
 [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

I just received the results of the 24th annual "Questionnaire on Environmental Problems and the Survival of Humankind" from the Asahi Glass Foundation. A few highlights follow:

The average time for the Environmental Doomsday Clock this year was 9:27 pm, an advancement of 4 minutes from last year.  The time reflects concern about human survival prospects.

"Climate change" continued to be the most frequently selected environmental condition of concern in determining the time, followed by "pollution/contamination," "water resources," "biodiversity," and "land use."

Overall, when arranging the top-ranked environmental conditions of concern in descending order of severity on the Environmental Doomsday Clock, "biodiversity" and "population" have the most advanced time of 9:36 pm.  These were followed by "pollution/contamination," then "lifestyles" and "environment and economy" at the same time on the Environmental Doomsday Clock.

Questionnaires were mailed April 2015 with a return deadline of June 2015. 25,306 questionnaires were mailed (24070 overseas and 1236 within Japan). The response rate was 8.2%.

For access to the results, a description of how the time on the Environmental Doomsday Clock is calculated, regional doomsday times, perceptions of time based on respondent age and shifts in time by generation, the complete responses to the questionnaire and other details see here.