This year the Doomsday Clock was set at three minutes to midnight, two minutes closer to catastrophe than in 2014. The members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board cited unchecked climate change, nuclear weapons and emerging technological threats such as synthetic biology and artificial intelligence as the reasons we are teetering towards global catastrophe. According to the authors: "In the age of synthetic biology and globalization, world governance must develop ways to react quickly and effectively to confront emerging disease and the possibility of bioterrorism."

Read more at:

• Friends of the Earth Emerging Tech webpages: http://emergingtech.foe.org.au/doomsday-clock-edges-closer-to-midnight-a...
• Three minutes and counting, Bulletin of the atomic scientists, 19 January 2015, http://thebulletin.org/three-minutes-and-counting7938