89 SECONDS TO MIDNIGHT
“The world is closer to catastrophe than ever before. The Doomsday Clock is not a prediction, but a warning.”
— Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
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The theme of CACMUN 47, “Eighty Nine Seconds to Midnight,” is grounded in the Doomsday Clock, a symbol created in 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Updated annually by scientists and global security experts, the clock does not measure time but rather the proximity of humanity to self-destruction. Midnight represents the point of irreversible global catastrophe, and as of 2024, the clock was set to just eighty nine seconds away — the closest it has ever been. This decision was not symbolic for the sake of drama. It was based on measurable, intensifying threats facing the world: the growing risk of nuclear conflict, the accelerating pace of climate collapse, the development of artificial intelligence without regulation, and the steady erosion of democratic norms and international cooperation.
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The Doomsday Clock is not a prediction. It is a warning. And like all warnings, it calls for action. It is a reflection of the dangerous imbalance between the scale of global problems and the slowness of political responses.
The Urgency of 2025
The conflicts are not new — but the stakes have changed.
In January 2025, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza continues with no meaningful international intervention. Over thirty thousand civilians have died, infrastructure has collapsed, and accountability remains absent. In Ukraine, the war has entered its third year, shifting from a territorial dispute into a grinding conflict with global repercussions. In Sudan, the military and paramilitary continue to compete for power while the population faces famine. In Myanmar, repression deepens. In Haiti, governance has all but collapsed. These are not temporary shocks. They are the visible symptoms of a deeper shift in global order. The United Nations, created to prevent these very breakdowns, struggles under the weight of veto power, diplomatic inertia, and shrinking trust. Treaties are ignored. Norms are violated. And the pace of global crises continues to outstrip the response of the systems designed to manage them. Meanwhile, climate disasters are growing in both frequency and severity. In 2023, floods in Libya killed thousands in a single day. Wildfires in Canada and Greece blanketed entire regions in smoke. And despite record-breaking temperatures and scientific consensus, fossil fuel expansion continues. The world is not failing because of lack of knowledge. It is failing because of lack of collective action. And that is where this year’s theme draws its urgency. We are not at the beginning of these crises. We are in the middle of them. To treat them as future concerns is to misunderstand the moment entirely. For delegates, this means something simple but difficult. You must approach your committees with the understanding that what you are discussing is not distant. These topics reflect what is already underway — and what your generation will be responsible for continuing, transforming, or ending.
We did not choose this theme to be dramatic. We chose it because it reflects something real. Eighty nine seconds to midnight is not an exaggeration. It is a careful, evidence-based signal of how much pressure our world is under. It reflects the widening gap between risk and response, between what we know and what we are willing to do. But it also reminds us that we are still here. There is still time. And what we do with it matters.
CACMUN does not exist to offer solutions that sound good in a resolution. It exists to push you to think seriously about what leadership actually means in a world that is uncertain, unstable, and moving quickly. We are not asking you to fix global problems. We are asking you to take them seriously. To engage them with discipline and humility. To understand that the way you debate here reflects the way you will face conflict later, in rooms that will not have placards or formal rules.
If you come to this conference only to speak, you will miss what it offers. Speak, but also listen. Defend your position, but also question it. Represent a country, but also remember your own values. The issues you will encounter are not abstract. They are drawn from the world as it exists now, not the one we wish it were.
Midnight is not guaranteed. That is the point of the clock. It moves in both directions. The question is whether we are moving with it or pushing against it. That is the question this theme asks. That is the question this moment demands.
What happens next is still undecided. But you are not powerless. The clock is ticking. And what you do in these rooms — how you speak, how you think, how you lead — is your answer.
