Climate Clock

Eighty feet across, and towering four stories above New York’s Union Square, the stark, orange-tinted letters count down the critical time window remaining for humanity to act to save itself and its only home from the ravages of climate chaos.

To stay under 1.5°C warming, and prevent the worst effects of climate change from becoming irreversible, in September 2020, the Clock told us we have an alarmingly short 7 years, 102 days, and counting to make a radical transition off of fossil fuels. It struck a nerve across the world, and quickly established itself as an iconic reference point for the urgent need for climate action.

The brainchild of climate activists Gan Golan and Andrew Boyd, art-fixer Katie Peyton Hofstadter, tech maestro Adrian Carpenter, and a clutch supporting team including leading scientists, the Mayor’s office, and a host of creatives, the Climate Clock was clearly an idea, ahem, whose time had come.