MIT students created a countdown clock to show how close the globe is to reaching a concerning level of warming — a global average increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius. It’s the third year the university has projected a giant countdown onto one of its buildings in Cambridge. This year the number of days left is measured in a very Boston metric: sports.
There’s only 60 Bruins games, six Patriots games and 30 Red Sox games scheduled — or about six months — until scientists estimate the globe reaches a point of no return for extreme weather and species loss.
“Everyone is really alarmed because even college students at a very technical university have trouble conceptualizing how soon this is,” said Norah Miller, an aerospace engineering student at MIT, who created this year's climate clock message. “Even though a lot of us are not Boston natives, these kinds of statistics in terms of sports really hit home.”
“Trying to get the message further out to an average person, out to children, out to everyone will convey a greater collective action” to prevent a two degrees Celsius average increase, she said.
Miller said she wants the message to be an alert but also to inspire action.
The clock projection also shows greenhouse gas emissions and the percentage of renewable energy available in the world.
An increase of two to three degrees Celsius would result in even more severe impacts: major loss of warm water coral reef systems; a serious increase in extreme weather events and spread of infectious diseases; significant inland and coastal flooding; and islands such as the Maldives would be uninhabitable.
The countdown project started back in 2020, when MIT Professor Susan Murcott created the first countdown projection with her students.
“I’ve been living all my life in and around Boston and I’ve seen the Citgo sign for my whole life," she said. "I felt we needed a different sign for the 21st century besides the fossil fuel industries advertisement.”
MIT is projecting the clock during the United Nations climate change conference in Dubai. The goal to limit global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius was the target countries agreed to at the 2015 conference in Paris.
More information
MIT D-Lab class: D-Lab Climate Change and Planetary Health
Contact
Susan Murcott, MIT D-Lab Lecturer