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Are you old enough to remember back to 1984? That’s the year (not the book), when Peter Garrett, frontman of Midnight Oil, ran for a seat in the Australian Senate, and they released a song called “Minutes to Midnight”. Since then, many references about this have made their way into songs – from Iron Maiden to Smashing Pumpkins, Sting to Linkin Park.

These “minutes to midnight” are a reference to the Doomsday Clock, where midnight is a hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario and the closer we are to it, the more likely humanity is to face Armageddon. Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe, former Head of the School of Science at Griffith University, and one of Australia’s most accomplished, leading environmental scientists, explains more.