ticking

"The sound you hear is the ticking clock," he said.

The measure’s passage will set the clock ticking for a host of changes, many of which will take years to come to fruition.

With the clock ticking before President-elect Trump is sworn in, Gov. Gavin Newsom is heading to Washington this week to push for the Biden administration to safeguard some marquee California programs on the environment and disaster funding that are likely to be threatened after the Trump takeover.

"Pieces of space junk are like ticking time bombs," observed Moriba Jah, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.

"We are facing a crisis of unemployment - for a population that's 2.4 million when you have almost 30% of those people unemployed, it is a crisis. It’s a ticking time bomb," he said.