NYC just turned the giant Union Square clock into a ClimateClock to hold governments and corporations accountable.
Metronome’s digital clock in Manhattan, a 62-foot-wide electronic clock with a 15-digit display facing Manhattan’s Union Square, has been one of the city’s most prominent and baffling public art projects.
Now the Clock got an Update and started showing up from Saturday 3:20 p.m., messages including “The Earth has a deadline” began to appear on the display.
Then numbers — 7:103:15:40:07 — showed up, representing the years, days, hours, minutes and seconds until that deadline.
What is the carbon emissions deadline?
We are on a budget regarding carbon emissions, meaning we can only go so far with greenhouse gas emissions and still have a 67% chance of keeping the world under 2.7°F (1.5°C) of warming.
Global warming was likely to reach 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels between 2030 and 2052 if it continues at the current rate. That level of warming is projected to increase damage to many ecosystems and cause an estimated $54 trillion in damage.
Mr. Golan and Mr. Boyd have created a website, climateclock.world. It includes an explanation for the Climate Clock numbers.
“You can’t argue with science,” “You just have to reckon with it.”
Mr. Boyd said near Union Square on Saturday.
The project will be on display until September 27, the end of climate week.
MCC Carbon Clock
The MCC Carbon Clock shows how much CO2 can be released into the atmosphere to limit global warming to a maximum of 1.5°C and 2°C, respectively.
With just a few clicks, you can compare the estimates for both temperature targets and see how much time is left in each scenario.
The atmosphere can absorb, calculated from end-2017, no more than 420 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2 if we are to stay below the 1.5°C threshold.
However, since around 42 Gt of CO2 is emitted globally every year—the equivalent of 1332 tonnes per second—this budget is expected to be used up in just over nine years.
The budget for staying below the 2°C threshold, for its part, of approximately 1170 Gt, will be exhausted in about 26 years.
