A down-and-out wearing sandwich boards standing in a car park full of Cadillacs. How droll, we all thought, as we consumed our way to surfeit.

But now the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has joined in, not in fun but in deadly earnest. It has shaved a second off the Doomsday Clock, reducing the minute and a half to 89 seconds.

This is the closest the Clock has been to midnight in its 78-year history and the 89 seconds signals that the world is on a course of unprecedented risk.

The Bulletin writes: “We send a stark signal … because the world is already perilously close to the precipice, a move of even a single second should be taken as an indication of extreme danger and an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster”.

The global community faces the three-headed catastrophe of global warming, pandemics (especially anthropogenic contagion emanating from so-called high containment laboratories producing toxic pathogens lacking effective oversight controls) and nuclear weapons use.

Russia has too frequently threatened the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine as a deterrent to western involvement. Israel retains its own version of nuclear Armageddon to guarantee its “security” against its neighbours. North Korea threatens its near neighbours and wants to threaten the US. And all the while China, Russia and the US are hell-bent on improving the destructive effect of their arsenals.

As the atomic scientists recognise, the world is a much more dangerous place.

Technology has exacerbated the dangers of the three-headed monster. AI has made its way into military operations in Ukraine and the Middle East. Nations are automating decision-making on the battlefield.

Russia is experimenting with the placement of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems in orbit.

Misinformation and disinformation abound. Truth, honesty, compassion, respect for human rights and international law – these are all so “woke” and so “last century”.

Bluster, bullying and brutality are the measures of current political leadership.

US President Donald Trump has repudiated the Paris Climate Accords. He has abandoned the World Health Organisation. Like his predecessors Barack Obama and Joe Biden, he has lowered the threshold for nuclear use while improving both the weapons and their accuracy.

For their parts, China and Russia are simply amplifying the danger while they follow America’s lead.

Australia, of course, has long abandoned any serious work on nuclear disarmament and the nuclear non-proliferation regime. Instead we align ourselves ever more closely to the US, offering not a word of concern or protest at the suggestion of the chairs of the US Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees that we should share America’s “nuclear burden”.

So what does  it mean to shave one second off the doomsday clock?

Is the world simply sleepwalking to its own destruction, where each second is just another slow step towards oblivion? Are we just running out of seconds? Do the remainder increase in significance, their value multiply and the imperative for action become even more inexorable?

The answer is a resounding yes.

It is easy for us to blame the nuclear weapon states, the members of the P5 who exercise their vetoes in the UN Security Council all too frequently.

They prefer a form of the status quo where, imperceptibly, the balance of terror involves an increasing number of unpredictable players: India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea and, if its theocracy can subvert international sanctions and perhaps elicit Russian support, Iran.

Is it any wonder that there is a growing conversation in Japan, South Korea and even Australia about the acquisition of nuclear weapons?

The nuclear weapon states do carry most of the responsibility for action on the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, particularly Article VI which requires them to act in both weapons reduction and constraints on use.

Here America, China and Russia have consistently failed to face up to  the task. The rest of the global community, including Australia – which once had such an active and engaged role in international disarmament forums – seems paralysed in its complacency.

For as long as we are compliant in our inaction – whether on global warming, pandemics, or the more pressing matter of nuclear disarmament – we condone the outcome.

That is the ultimate indication of political weakness. It is also the ultimate act of immorality.