A digital clock counting down the time remaining to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees celsius, called the Climate Clock, has been on display in New York City since September 2020. Four stories high and 80 feet across, the installment in Manhattan’s Union Square digitally displays orange numbers ticking down the years and seconds left in the “carbon budget.”
A TikTok video calling this climate-focused art installation an “end of the world time clock” was posted on October 25 and currently has over 3.4 million views.
A 2018 special report produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change outlined the potential impacts of 1.5 degrees celsius global warming. The “carbon budget” that the climate clock refers to is the total amount of carbon dioxide that human activities can emit while limiting a specific level of global warming.
Andrew Bawiec, environmental studies senior and director of USC’s Environmental Student Assembly community outreach, said the clock “draws attention” and creates a “spectacle,” but is not actually helpful.
“It presents climate change as this doomsday, as this ticking time bomb like it’s going to be some explosive apocalyptic event, when that’s not the case at all,” Bawiec said. “The climate is actively changing and those changes are gradual.”
The climate clock is currently counting down to July 21, 2029. This deadline is based on research published by the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change, a non-profit scientific think tank based in Berlin.
New York City’s clock is one of five currently on display. Clocks were also installed in Berlin, Glasgow, Rome and Seoul, according to the Climate Clock website.
Kilian Ashley, an earth sciences PhD candidate, said not enough people have a sense of urgency when it comes to slowing climate change.
“There’s this perception that it’s a problem that is looming out there in the future and that we will eventually get our act together and solve it,” Ashley said. “The reality is much more nuanced than that.”
Ashley said the installation is misleading and carbon emissions won’t stop when the clock hits zero. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), average carbon emissions rose over two parts per million (ppm) in 2023, marking the twelfth consecutive year of carbon dioxide emissions growth over two ppm. Carbon dioxide is measured by how many molecules of carbon dioxide are in one million molecules of dry air.
“Twenty years from now we will still be emitting a lot of carbon, and that’s what we really need to start addressing,” Ashley said.
Earth’s carbon dioxide levels currently sit at 423 ppm according to NOAA. Carbon levels in November of last year were measured at 421 ppm. Impacts of climate change, such as carbon emissions, will develop overtime and not become immediately apparent as the climate clock deadline approaches.
“It’s not going to look like a dried up lake bed with a boat in the middle of it everywhere, and it doesn’t currently look like that,” Ashley said. “However, there are places that are becoming drier, there are deserts that are expanding, there are fires that are burning, and it’s currently more than it’s ever been.”
The New York City installation isn’t the only catalyst for sparking recent conversations surrounding carbon emissions and climate change.
Hope Hsiao, a junior studying arts, technology and business of innovation and co-director of USC’s Environmental Student Assembly, said climate-inspired art too often does not lead to measurable change.
“I think that a lot of people feel very pessimistic about things that are being done, policy-wise, globally, about climate change,” she said. “I feel like installations like this create a message and a symbol, but it doesn’t really create any actionable initiatives.”
Hsiao added that targeted and localized campaigns are more effective at mobilizing people who are not already concerned with the climate. California had one such actionable cause on the ballot this November — voters passed Prop. 4, allowing for a $10 billion dollar budget to be allocated to wildfire prevention and water supply projects.
“Policy is the best way to make big changes, but little changes all add up,” Ashley noted. “You, individually, changing your habits is not going to impact all that much when it comes to climate. However, when everyone does it, it does make a big difference.”
The climate clock may serve as a reminder of the carbon budget and contribution to global warming to New Yorkers, but Bawiec said it does not reflect the fact that the timeline of climate change is not uniform across the globe.
“For the people that are actively facing the effects of climate change, a clock is useless. A countdown is useless, like the Sahel region in Africa that’s facing mass desertification,” they said. “The Africans living there that are facing mass drought and desertification alongside other issues, they don’t need a clock to tell them about the urgency of climate change.”
They said that the date is arbitrary, as those living in the southern hemisphere will face repercussions of climate change before those in the northern hemisphere will.
“I feel like each decade, we get a new doomsday date. It just seems like another one of those dates when that’s really not the thing that we should be focusing on right now,” Bawiec said. “There is no singular timeline for the progression of climate change.”