New York’s Climate Clock Sparks Contrasting Views
Image via climateclock.world
It was months until December 31, but there was a new countdown clock in New York City. On September 19, the Climate Clock was unveiled in Union Square as an installation for Climate Week. This clock didn’t count down the seconds to the New Year; instead, it ticked down the time the world has left, if current carbon emission rates continue, before it would become impossible to limit global warming to 1.5˚C. World leaders at the Paris Climate Summit in 2015 determined that this would be the tipping point at which world temperatures and ecosystems take on irreversible damage.
Climate Clock, the organization that created the clock, has existed for over a year, but this installation sent it viral. The clock in Union Square quickly spread across social media and gained coverage from The New York Times and The Washington Post among a host of other media outlets. According to Katie Peyton Hofstadter, the Art & Research Director of Climate Clock, and Andrew Boyd, Climate Clock co-creator, the clock sent a shock wave around the world.
“It was embraced as a challenge and a great way to communicate the harshness of our deadline,” Boyd said in an interview. “[It emphasized] the requirement to act even more seriously, courageously and boldly in the face of it.”
However, not everyone is convinced that this new monument is an effective means of driving people to action. Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher and director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, said he fears the clock will make people feel complacent now and nihilistic once the deadline passes.
“[Reducing emissions] has to be something that’s baked into our societal calculations and decisions from now until at least the end of the century,” Schmidt said. “I get the need that people have to put deadlines on things, but this is a deadline that’s divorced from what’s actually happening in the physics of the system.”
He pointed out that alarming effects of climate change are already taking effect, and regardless of how much or how little time a clock says we have left, reducing emissions as much as possible should always be a top priority.
Others have indicated that the clock could spur eco-anxiety, especially within marginalized and low-income communities. In an Instagram post that garnered over 18,000 likes, climate activist Lauren Ritchie discussed how the clock puts “pressure, blame, guilt and responsibility” onto individuals who have limited resources to enact meaningful change on their own.
“I think the timing of the clock was probably not the best, especially because New York City was hit really hard with the COVID pandemic,” said Alexandria Ang, a third-year student at Macalester College from Queens, New York. “People are already anxious about that, so [...] it’s not the best time to try to be sustainable or put the environment first.”
Ang, though, still feels as though the Climate Clock’s benefits in raising awareness outweigh its downsides.
“I think the clock was really helpful in putting things in perspective,” she said. “Everyone now has this idea of a number, which might not be something they think about often.”
Hofstadter and Boyd similarly recognize eco-anxiety as an unfortunate side effect of the climate crisis. They view it, though, as something that can be overcome with the right tools.
“The first way we deal with anxiety is to tell the truth,” Hofstadter said. She feels that the hopelessness and helplessness that accompanies eco-anxiety can be resolved by getting the full truth and, if possible, providing the means so others can learn, too.
“This clock isn’t designed to just depress people,” Boyd said. “It’s a beacon of climate action. [...] We’re not just telling people what our deadline is, we’re saying that we need to turn it into a lifeline.”
A consensus wasn’t reached regarding the Climate Clock’s potential to propel individuals to action, but this monument certainly sparked a conversation among activists, consumers and scientists alike.