It was in early October, when the conflict in Ukraine got bogged down, that US President Joe Biden, at the head of the only country to have used atomic weapons in wartime, mentioned the risk of an "apocalypse". nuclear.
He was reacting to Russian President Vladimir Putin's threats to use the lethal weapon in Ukraine, a country ravaged by Russian bombs that killed thousands and whose invasion on February 24 upset the geopolitical order and stability. world.
Russian President Vladimir Putin oversees the training of his nuclear deterrent forces via video link, October 26, 2022 in Moscow © Alexei Babushkin / SPUTNIK/AFP/Archives
"We haven't faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962," said Mr. Biden in a dramatic register that thrilled the whole world.
Some evoke the memory of the Second World War and even fear a third.
The Zaporijjia nuclear power plant, September 11, 2022 in Enerhodar, Ukraine © STRINGER / AFP / Archives
The threat of disaster is also on everyone's mind as Ukraine's Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, comes under dangerous fire.
Calls to create a security perimeter there have remained a dead letter and the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, denounces "madness".
The director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi makes a statement to the press after visiting the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant on September 1, 2022 in Ukraine © Genya SAVILOV / AFP/Archives
"Whoever it is, stop this madness!" He urged in mid-November, as Russians and Ukrainians accused each other of being responsible for the shootings.
doomsday clock
The fall of a missile in Poland in mid-November has once again raised fears of the worst, that the Atlantic Alliance will be dragged against its will into a war against Russia with unforeseeable consequences.
“Thank God,” whispered an American diplomat on condition of anonymity when it appeared that the missile, in all likelihood, did not come from Russia but from Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense.
Experts inspect the site where a missile fell, in the Polish village of Przewodow, six kilometers from the border with Ukraine, on November 16, 2022 © HANDOUT / Polish police/AFP/Archives
And so it is that in 2022, without forgetting Iran and North Korea, the nuclear threat will have been omnipresent.
The reclusive communist country, endowed with atomic weapons, could in particular soon carry out a new nuclear test.
In an annual report, the Global Challenges Foundation, a Swedish research center, estimates that the risk of a recourse to nuclear weapons has never been so strong as since 1945 when the United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in the Japan.
Any possible Russian nuclear strike would undoubtedly concern a small "tactical" weapon, but experts fear escalation.
“It would be a complete game changer,” warns Kennette Benedict, a researcher at the University of Chicago and adviser to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which will deliver in January the latest predictions of the “doomsday clock”, currently set at 100 seconds. before midnight.
"The clock of the apocalypse", January 20, 2022 in Washington © - / The Hastings Group/AFP/Archives
"Life or Death"
In this context of general anxiety and a world already on edge after the Covid-19 epidemic and soaring inflation, the planet exceeded the threshold of 8 billion inhabitants in 2022, according to the UN. .
And it is threatened with a catastrophe of another type: that of global warming.
8 billion people on Earth © Julia Han JANICKI / AFP/Archives
From historic floods in Pakistan this fall to fires in the United States or in the Brazilian Amazon, passing through exceptional heat waves in Europe and drought in the Horn of Africa, natural disasters follow one another, attributed by scientists to this global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions.
Heat records are linked in China, in the south of France or in Quebec and to the borders of the Arctic, stirring up awareness of the need to act.
Fire in the Klamath National Forest, near the town of Yreka, on July 31, 2022 in California © DAVID MCNEW / AFP/Archives
"It is a question of life and death for us, for our security today and for our survival tomorrow," warned UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in October, before the annual conference. on the climate (COP27) in November in Egypt.
This finally gives birth to a mixed record with an agreement on aid to poor countries affected by climate change but without great ambition on the reduction of these greenhouse gases.
An area flooded by monsoon rains in Dadu district, Sindh province, on September 7, 2022 in Pakistan © Aamir QURESHI / AFP/Archives
The commitments made in Sharm el-Sheikh, if they are fully kept, would put the world on the trajectory of +2.4°C in 2100 at best and, at the current rate of emissions, on that of a catastrophic +2, 8°C.
"What we really need are more refined assessments of how the risks (caused by climate change) could cascade across the world," said Luke Kemp of Cambridge University, who deplores a relative "dedramatization "of certain actors, including scientists.
However, all has not been for the worse this year when massive vaccination campaigns have made it possible to, perhaps, turn the page on the Covid-19 epidemic, the World Health Organization (WHO ) recently estimating that at least 90% of the world's population has some form of immunity.
A Covid-19 vaccination center set up at Wembley Stadium on December 19, 2022 in London © Tolga Akmen / AFP/Archives
And one of the most ardent critics of the ambient "pessimism", Steven Pinker, of Harvard University, points out that, overall, violence has drastically decreased in the world during modern times.
© 2022 AFP