Clocks tick. They click through the seconds, minutes and hours of a day and then start again. They measure without an end goal. Time just goes on.

However, one clock has a very definite end. And it’s counting down.

The Climate Clock counts down the time until we burn through the global carbon budget. It shows how much time we have left to act before climate change is entirely out of our control.

To show this urgency, the clock is now visible in New York City.

“Metronome” is a two-piece art installation on the One Union Square building, which is located in New York City’s Union Square. One half of the piece is a brick wall patterned with concentric circles and a void-like hole that releases steam at noon and midnight. The other half, titled “The Passage,” is typically a normal clock, albeit a confusing one.

Spanning 15 digits across, the digital clock provides the current time of day, as well as how much time remains until midnight. Creators Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel wanted the timepiece to represent a sand timer, showing how much has passed and still remains. In this way, the clock has always counted down.

Then, on Sept. 19, the clock was repurposed by artists and climate change activists Gan Golan and Andrew Boyd. They designed the famous clock to depict how much time remains to take action on climate change. “Metronome” continues to count down, but not just until the end of the day.

Now, it doesn’t signal the end of the world, but the potential beginning of the end.

The World Meteorological Organization says the “global carbon budget determines the input of carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere by emissions of human activity, balanced by output in the carbon reservoirs on land or in the ocean.”

The inputs include emissions from fossil fuel combustion and land use change, which is the transformation of land by human activities like fracking. The outputs refer to the amount of CO2 held within the atmosphere, the oceans and the ground (through soil and vegetation).

If the input outpaces the output, then the earth’s temperature will rise, and this rise is what leads to ice melting at the poles, extreme weather conditions and lands becoming uninhabitable.

The “Metronome” display is part of an ongoing effort to raise awareness about climate change. Climate Clock provides the countdown, but it also shows the percentage of the world’s energy from renewable sources, based on models from climate scientists.

The first globally established climate clock is in Berlin, which debuted on Sept. 18, 2019. Then, in 2021, Boyd and Golan plan to set up another clock in Paris. The artists want to continue placing visual displays around the world. Dedicated to this awareness, they even made a hand-held climate clock for Greta Thunberg, a 17-year-old Swedish climate activist.

The artists want to emphasize that “Metronome” is not a doomsday clock.

The famous Doomsday Clock was established in 1947 by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. With the Manhattan Project and resulting development of nuclear technology, the Doomsday Clock was created to represent how much time humanity had left, in a metaphorical sense. The scientists did not have a specific endpoint calculated, but the threat of nuclear weapons and possible destruction seemed close to world ending. The time before Doomsday has moved throughout history, depending on the political situation of the time. It has always been a reflection of the era, not of scientific calculation.

The climate clock is anything but metaphorical. It is entirely based on science.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Golan said, “It’s telling us there is still time, but we can’t waste it … Every hour, every minute, every second, counts.”

The world won’t end when the clock reaches zero, but at that point, we might not be able to stop what happens next. Golan and Boyd want to instill a sense of urgency. Time remains. A lot can occur in seven years, but we have to start now.

I appreciate the artists’ effort. We need to be talking about the climate. We need to make changes. But I question who their intended audience is. Who are they targeting with a visual display of the climate clock?

The average New York City dweller or worker can’t fix climate change on their own. To a degree, if we all band together, we can make an impact, but realistically, it’s no longer up to us. Recycling, using reusable bags and conserving water are great practices that we should all adopt. But they are not enough.

Carbon emissions must be drastically cut or reduced. It needs to be an international effort, focused on policies or agreements that aim toward the use of clean energy. It’s a large-scale issue, spanning politics, economies and science.

Is putting a countdown on the side of a building enough to encourage the right people?

Truthfully, I don’t know.

I can do my part and hope that others take the climate concern to heart. We can vote for candidates that recognize climate change and insist on action. We can sign petitions. A simple Google search for climate change petitions leads to multiple organizations requesting support. We can change our lifestyles to produce less waste because every little bit of effort is worth it. We can educate ourselves on climate change and sustainability.

It can be daunting. To see the clock and realize how little time we have—it is daunting. But we aren’t out of time—not yet anyway. We don’t have to feel helpless.

We can demand the climate crisis be at the forefront of our attention. It is easy to become complacent or push it to the side since it doesn’t always appear imminent. We can’t let this crisis be pushed aside.

The clock’s not yet zero.

Maddie Peters can be reached at pete9542@stthomas.edu.