Dear Dub: Problematic Climate Clock
A few weeks ago, I noticed a large portion of the people I follow on Instagram sharing a post by The New York Times on the climate clock facing Union Square in Manhattan. I will refer to this clock as the “clock of doom.” If you haven’t heard, it counts down the years, days, hours, minutes and seconds until the climate crisis will be irreversible. Seems like a really good idea, right?
We are always looking for new ways to make people aware of the climate crisis we are facing and encourage them to take it seriously through means such as voting, changing our eating habits, producing less waste, etc. So, what’s wrong with the clock of doom? Yeah, it’s gloomy and scary, but it’s making people aware, right? Right. Well, sort of. Of course, we want to spread awareness about human-induced climate change and that it can only be reversed through our actions and mindfulness. We also want to encourage people to do their best on an individual level to be better to the environment through eating less meat, reducing our use of single-use plastic, voting for candidates with progressive environmental policies, encouraging our universities to divest, and much more.
But when we start to think critically about what this clock really means and the audience it is targeted at, we can begin to see some problems. The Instagram account @itsecogal posted in response to the problematic nature of the clock, raising the question of “who is this clock actually serving?” If we think about the target audience of the clock, it is the population of NYC and those who will walk by it every day and be forced to acknowledge the existential dread that climate change has induced. As @itsecogal points out, those who walk by the clock everyday are going to largely represent low-income people and marginalized communities as well as homeless people who currently and historically have contributed the least to climate change. These communities also bear the brunt of eco-anxiety, as they contribute the least to climate change and possess the least agency to do much about it. So, why is this clock of doom being blasted in front of these people and these communities, rather than in the faces of the few large companies and conglomerated who have had the largest and most harmful impact on climate change?
According to The Guardian, just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions including ExxonMobil, Shell, British Petroleum and Chevron. These companies are investor-owned and have had the highest rate of emissions since 1998. So my questions is, why don’t we put this clock in front of the CEO’s and investors of these and the remaining 95 companies that have made the most enormous impact on climate change instead of continually pressuring consumers to believe that it is their fault and they must be the ones to “fix” climate change? And even more problematic is that this clock is directed towards low-income and marginalized communities who should not be the ones to have to bear the brunt of the eco-anxiety from performative symbols such as this clock of doom. While I understand why so many people were reposting this clock on Instagram, I believe we need to think more critically when it comes to environmental activism and be aware of who the audience of this activism is. If you want to put the clock in the office of the CEO of ExxonMobil, I am all for it. But in front of communities that make up NYC, that just doesn’t sit quite right with me.