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À partir d’avant-hierTED Blog

Rethinking: Notes from Session 5 of Countdown Summit

Head of TED Chris Anderson and David Lammy, Member of Parliament for Tottenham, England, host Session 5 of the TED Countdown Summit on October 14, 2021 in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)

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To take on the climate crisis, we’re in for some big rethinking — in how we live, work, eat and move forward with solutions that make livelihoods more equitable for everyone, no matter their location or background. The speakers of Countdown Summit Session 5 dig in deep to examine what can be rethought, reworked and revolutionized to make create a turning point in building a just, climate-focused future.

The event: Countdown Summit: Session 5, hosted by head of TED Chris Anderson and David Lammy, Member of Parliament for Tottenham, England, at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland on Thursday, October 14, 2021

Speakers: Al Gore, Gavin McCormick, Chibeze Ezekiel, Lucie Pinson, Nili Gilbert, Jack Dangermond and Dawn Lippert

Performance: Prominent members of the Scottish indie-folk scene Hannah Fisher and Sorren Maclean perform two beautiful, transportive songs — and call attention to the dire need for marine conservation.

Food for thought: One of the keys of reducing emissions is eating less meat, and the Countdown Summit is at the forefront attempting to go full-scale vegan. The conference’s head chef Derek Sarno gives mindful yet appetizing insights into why he made the switch to veganism — and what it means to have a plant-based and environmentally friendly diet.

The talks in brief:

Climate advocate and Nobel laureate Al Gore speaks at Session 5 of the TED Countdown Summit on October 14, 2021 in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)

Al Gore, climate advocate and Nobel laureate

Big idea: The climate crisis is the most serious manifestation of an underlying collision between human civilization as we know it and the planet’s ecological systems.

Why? The system most in jeopardy today because of climate change is the very thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet. We dump millions of tons of human-made pollution into as if it were an open sewer, the majority of it being fossil fuel emissions, trapping the heat equivalent of 600,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding everyday, says climate advocate and Nobel laureate Al Gore. This desecration of the planet is leading to record heat indexes, anomalous extreme climate events (think: fires, floods and atmospheric tsunamis) and increasingly uninhabitable lands and oceans across the world. And this is just a hint at what’s to come. Gore draws undeniable parallels between the climate crisis and COVID-19 pandemic to show how quickly things can change for the worse when ignoring obvious signs — and the frustrating questions that arise when obvious solutions are not implemented equitably. Right now, the sustainability revolution is the biggest investment opportunity in the world. We need the scale of the industrial revolution coupled with the speed of the digital revolution, Gore says, and we need reforms in the current version of capitalism to get there. A net-zero future is within reach, but first we need to flip that mental switch to truly understanding that we can stop the climate crisis. “This is the biggest emergent social movement in all of history,” Gore declares. “If anybody thinks that we don’t have the political will, remember that political will itself is a renewable resource.”


Gavin McCormick speaks at Session 5 of the TED Countdown Summit on October 14, 2021 in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)

Gavin McCormick, high-tech environmental activist

Big idea: Everybody knows that human activity is driving climate change. While governments track their own emissions, is there a way for third parties to track individual polluters?

How? By leveraging existing technology to track the carbon footprints of specific industries, green tech pioneer Gavin McCormick is helping provide tools for policymakers to zero in on the world’s worst emission culprits. As it turns out, very little is known about where human emissions are coming from. Typically self-reported by the polluters themselves, greenhouse gas data is at best an estimate of our “emissions inventory.” Without good data, it’s tough to know how to cure our climate problems. Partnering with a coalition of NGOs, tech companies and even Al Gore, McCormick’s company WattTime has helped create Climate TRACE, a global, transparent and accessible emissions tracking system that uses satellite imagery and AI to hunt down emissions — whether they’re coming from coal plants, factory farms or ocean-going vessels — and transparently report on them.


Chibeze Ezekiel, climate inclusion activist

Big idea: Africa needs new energy sources to fuel its development, but the continent should invest in renewable energy instead of cheap, polluting alternatives like coal.

Why? About 600 million people in Africa still don’t have reliable access to electricity. As a member of the Strategic Youth Network for Development in Ghana, Chibeze Ezekiel agrees that Africa needs energy, but does not believe that coal is the answer for the long-term development of Africa. In 2013, Ghana’s government began planning the construction of the country’s first coal power plant. While the project would have created many new jobs, Ezekiel knew the plant’s wastewater, ash and mercury emissions posed severe health and environmental risks to the local population. He worked with the impacted communities to discuss the consequences of the plan before launching a media campaign against it — and, to his surprise, it worked. Ghana abandoned plans to build the plant and has since decided to prioritize investments in renewable energy. As Ezekiel says, “Development and clean, breathable air should not be mutually exclusive.”


Lucie Pinson speaks at Session 5 of the TED Countdown Summit on October 14, 2021 in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)

Lucie Pinson, financial responsibility campaigner

Big idea: Pollution has a driving force: money. To cut the problem off at the source, you have to start with banks and insurance companies.

How? When we think about pollution and climate change, we usually think of puffs of black smoke rising above coal plants or oil and gas drills digging deep into the Earth. These images haunt us — but the picture is more complex, says financial responsibility campaigner Lucie Pinson. She works to decarbonize finance, convincing banks and insurance companies to stop funding or insuring fossil fuel projects and, in the process, halting development on new fossil fuel projects. She explains her three-part playbook to stop money going into dirty energy: first, make demands that are specific, measurable, achievable and time-bound; second, accept any reason for action (e.g., you might not convince a suite of finance executives of the moral necessity to stop drilling, but you can convince them of the risk to their reputations); and third, engage in what Pinson calls “collaborative blackmailing” — like publishing a bombshell report on new coal plant financing unless the bank agrees to pull out. It’s time to do more than just voting with your wallet and switching over to ethical banking; we need to join together to demand a better from banks and insurers everywhere.


“Emissions anywhere mean warming everywhere,” says investment decarbonization expert Nili Gilbert. She speaks at Session 5 of the TED Countdown Summit on October 14, 2021 in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)

Nili Gilbert, investment decarbonization expert

Big Idea: We need to decarbonize the economy we currently have and invest in a new, net-zero economy now.

How? Bringing science to finance, investment decarbonization expert Nili Gilbert wants to decarbonize the real world — not just investment portfolios. That’s a costly endeavor — net-zero carbon emissions will demand $3-5 trillion per year between now and 2050, she explains. How can we make this possible? First, Gilbert says, we need to fund transformation in every sector, from “light” (like healthcare) to “heavy” (like infrastructure). Next, climate inequality must be addressed with decarbonization goals in mind. As Gilbert says, “Greenhouse gases don’t hover in any one country. Emissions anywhere mean warming everywhere.” Markets can be a tool for positive change, but solutions need to be oriented to the reality of climate change.


Jack Dangermond, Geographic Information Systems pioneer

Big idea: If humanity is going to survive as a species, we need to understand — and map — every corner of the Earth.

How? We’re going to have to leverage every last byte of information we can gather about our natural and built environments. Very soon, web-based interconnected technologies will be able to map literally everything that happens on Earth, allowing us to create a geographic information system (GIS) for the entire planet — a “nervous system for a more sustainable future,” as Jack Dangermond puts it. By seeing where we’re going and mapping out alternate paths to get there, we can create a global, holistic vision of a sustainable future that’s not confined to the borders of our own countries.


Dawn Lippert speaks at Session 5 of the TED Countdown Summit on October 14, 2021 in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Photo: Gilberto Tadday / TED)

Dawn Lippert, investment and community leader

Big idea: Technology is only half of the solution when it comes to climate change — investing in the communities where those technologies will be scaled and deployed is just as important.

Why? Last year, investors poured nearly half a trillion dollars into breakthrough decarbonization technologies, but only around $9 billion in funding went to community-based climate solutions. At the Elemental Excelerator, Dawn Lippert and her mentor Maurice Kaya are working to rebalance the equation, bringing community investment more in line with investments in tech. What exactly does community investment look like? “What I mean is investing in nonprofits, in education and in hiring locally — so that we actually have the capacity in local places to implement technologies,” Lippert says. Taking the example of concrete, one of the most abundantly consumed materials on the planet, Lippert explains how she helped fund a startup that introduces captured CO2 into the process of creating concrete — a breakthrough technology that could transform one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions into a carbon sink. But developing cool new technology wasn’t enough; she also worked with governments to create demand for this new concrete by passing a resolution to prefer low-carbon concrete in all new projects. In another project in Hawaii, Lippert helped bridge the gap between a nonprofit seeking to address water pollution on reefs, beaches and fishponds and a startup that turns polluted water into clean electricity, helping the two sides to speak the same language to achieve a shared goal. “For any of these new solutions to work for climate, they have to have at least these two ingredients: the technology that scales and the relationships and empathy that we share,” she says.

Mark your calendar: Tune in to the Countdown Global Livestream on October 30, 2021. This virtual event will lay out a credible and realistic pathway to a zero-carbon future. Save the date.

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Transformation: A day of future-forward talks in partnership with Brightline Initiative

Ricardo Vargas, executive director of Brightline Initiative, welcomes the audience to TEDSalon: Transformation — a virtual event featuring talks on the future of business, society and the planet. (Photo courtesy of TED)

The world is in a state of flux. Humanity is undertaking aggressive climate action, technology is rapidly evolving and the very nature of human connection is being reconfigured. At every corner of the globe, people are shaking up the old and plotting to revolutionize in big, bold ways. At this salon hosted on TED’s virtual event platform, four speakers and a performer explored how transformation will define and change the future of business, society and the planet.

The event: TED Salon: Transformation, a virtual gathering hosted by TED technology curator Simone Ross and senior curator Cyndi Stivers, presented in partnership with Brightline Initiative, with opening remarks from Brightline Initiative executive director Ricardo Vargas.

Singer-songwriter Falana performs her version of “soul fusion” at TEDSalon: Transformation, in partnership with Brightline Initiative, on November 18, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)

Music: Singer-songwriter Falana, who splits her time between Lagos, Toronto and London, performs “Send Down the Rain” from within the auditorium of the Alliance Française of Lagos — a “soul fusion” of jazz, afro beat and R&B.

The talks in brief:

“Maps are a form of storytelling,” says photographer Tawanda Kanhema. He speaks at TEDSalon: Transformation, in partnership with Brightline Initiative, on November 18, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)

Tawanda Kanhema, photographer, digital strategist    

Big idea: Huge swaths of the African continent are unmapped by the apps we take for granted in the West. This might mean you can’t zoom in on a specific address in Zimbabwe — but it might also mean that it’s difficult to deliver food or vaccines to unmapped areas sorely in need of them. Is it possible to get these communities on the map and ramp up the digital representation of Africa?

How? Tawanda Kanhema began his journey to build maps by combining existing software and data, mounting a hi-res camera on his car, a helicopter and his own body in order to photograph communities missing from digital maps. But one person can only do so much, and many places remain invisible. Kanhema shows how we can leverage existing tech to illuminate every corner of the land.

From “smart dust” to DNA-collecting swabs, journalist Sharon Weinberger takes us inside the massive (and unregulated) world of surveillance tech. She speaks at TEDSalon: Transformation, in partnership with Brightline Initiative, on November 18, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)

Sharon Weinberger, journalist, author

Big idea: The growing, multibillion-dollar market for surveillance technologies is largely unregulated. Sharon Weinberger believes it should be regulated — and that surveillance tools should be classified as a weapon.

How? Weinberger leads her talk with a chilling story of a colleague who travelled the world selling governments technological tools to spy on people, like a “caller ID” that can identify and locate people by voiceprint no matter what phone they’re using. From “smart dust” — micro-tracking devices the size of specks of dust — to surreptitious DNA-collecting swabs, everyone from governments to hacking companies are getting in on the trade of these surveillance tools. To curb this burgeoning marketplace, Weinberger proposes that we recognize data mining and surveillance tools as the weapons they are.

What does innovation really mean? And are all ideas good? Author and entrepreneur Alex Osterwalder offers some answers at TEDSalon: Transformation, in partnership with Brightline Initiative, on November 18, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)

Alex Osterwalder, author, entrepreneur

Big idea: We might be intimidated by the biographies of amazing entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, but each one of those narratives holds something we can use to enrich our own success stories. Alex Osterwalder shows us a cunningly designed business model that could help us all become disruptors, even if we don’t have the technical know-how to become inventors.

How? Osterwalder introduces the Business Model Canvas, a visual tool that helps would-be entrepreneurs find and communicate with their customers, identify assets and partners and figure out how much their idea is going to cost (and potentially earn). And while the entrepreneurial path is full of risks, Osterwalder’s model can help minimize potential pitfalls and enable pivoting at a product’s earliest stages — and scaling when it’s exactly the right time. “Innovation, entrepreneurship and disruption is not about the creative genius,” he says. “It’s increasingly a profession, a discipline that you can learn.”

Geographic information systems pioneer Jack Dangermond shares the vision behind a Geospatial Nervous System, in conversation with TED technology curator Simone Ross. They speak at TEDSalon: Transformation, in partnership with Brightline Initiative, on November 18, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)

Jack Dangermond, geographic information systems pioneer, in conversation with TED technology curator Simone Ross

Big idea: Since the dawn of civilization, humans have visualized solutions to problems in much the same way we look at maps, spreading arrays of information on top of each other and discovering new connections between the layers. In the digital age, geographic information systems (GIS) help decision-makers map complex data on a macro scale, facilitating delivery of everything from retail products (like Starbucks finding exactly the right corner to build on) to disease control (think of linking cancer outbreaks to environmental hazards like pollution). Call it a “Geospatial Nervous System.”

How? Jack Dangermond is the founder of Esri, the world’s dominant GIS company. Starting with work on digitizing maps at the dawn of the tech era, it now builds large-scale tools that tie resources from across the globe together to help its users find and understand hidden connections between data points. Its clients range from NGOs to large corporations, but most of its users are in the public sector, and literally “running the world.” It’s Dangermond’s dream to build a web-based, Geospatial Nervous System to help us use tech to improve a world stricken by natural crises like the coronavirus pandemic — with even bigger crises like climate change looming close behind.

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Action: Notes from Session 5 of the Countdown Global Launch

Countdown is a global initiative to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. Watch the talks, interviews and performances from the Countdown Global Launch at ted.com/countdown.

Actor, producer and activist Priyanka Chopra Jonas cohosts session 5 of the Countdown Global Launch on October 10, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)

It’s time to take action. This closing session of the Countdown Global Launch explored the road ahead: How to think urgently and long-term about climate change. How to take into account the interests of future generations in today’s decisions. How we as individuals, communities and organizations can contribute to shaping a better future. 

Session 5 was cohosted by the actors and activists Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Chris Hemsworth, exploring the many facets of climate action. The session also featured a number of highlights: a stunning spoken word piece by poet Amanda Gorman on ending the devastation of climate change; a call to action from filmmaker and writer Ava DuVernay about “voting for the planet” and electing sustainability-oriented leaders into office; a short video from Make My Money Matter titled “Woolly Man,” urging us to check where our pension money is going; and an announcement of the launch of Count Us In, a global movement focused on 16 steps we can all take to protect the Earth. 

Finally, head of TED Chris Anderson and head of Future Stewards Lindsay Levin closed the show, laying out the path forward for Countdown — including next year’s Countdown Summit (October 12-15, 2021, Edinburgh, Scotland), where we’ll share an actionable blueprint for a net-zero future and celebrate the progress that’s already been made. The Countdown is on!

Actor Chris Hemsworth cohosts session 5 of the Countdown Global Launch on October 10, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)

The talks in brief:

Roman Krznaric, long-view philosopher

Big idea: We don’t own the future — our descendants do. We need to strive to become good ancestors to future generations and leave behind a legacy of sustainability, justice and radical care for the planet.

How? Though they have no influence or say now, our decisions and actions have a tremendous impact on the lives of future generations. A growing movement of people across the world are looking beyond our short-term timelines and envisioning how we can create change that benefits us and our descendants. In Japan, the Future Design Movement structures community-led town and city planning sessions in a remarkable way: half of the residents participate as themselves in the present day, and the other half are tasked with imagining themselves as future citizens from 2060. By prioritizing the needs of their descendents, participants are empowered to pitch bold and ambitious solutions for climate change, health care and more. From a global campaign to grant legal personhood to nature to a groundbreaking lawsuit by a coalition of young activists suing for the right to a safe climate for future generations, the movement to restore broken ecosystems and protect the future is fierce and flourishing. Roman Krznaric names these visionaries “Time Rebels” and invites us to join them in redefining our lifespans, pursuing intergenerational justice and practicing deep love for the planet.


Sophie Howe, Future Generations Commissioner of Wales

Big idea: When well-being is the measure of a society’s success, governments will naturally trend towards lowering carbon, promoting wellness and nurturing social justice. What if a nation could create an agency to promote well-being rather than economic growth?

How? Wales is one of the first governments to enshrine well-being as a measure of a society’s success, and the first government to create an independent agency dedicated to the security of future generations. Sophie Howe, the world’s only future generations commissioner, tells us that such an agency must involve the people in decision-making. In Wales, the people have mandated policies to lower carbon emissions, promote wellness and cultivate justice. With the principles of well-being spelled out in laws that every institution in the country must follow, Wales is “acting today for a better tomorrow.” “Make it your mission to maximize your contribution to well-being,” Howe says.


Miao Wang, United Nations Young Champion of the Earth; Alok Sharma, president of COP26; and Nigel Topping, UK High Level Climate Action Champion, COP26

Big idea: Join Race To Zero, a global campaign to get businesses, cities, regions and investors to commit to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, at the latest.

How? Three participants of Race To Zero give us the lay of the land. To begin, marine conservationist Miao Wang discusses how young people worldwide are calling for change, demanding that leaders act with speed and urgency to create a world that’s healthier, fairer and more sustainable. Next, Alok Sharma talks about how organizations and institutions are already stepping up their climate ambition as they rebuild from the COVID-19 pandemic, making specific and science-based commitments to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. And finally Nigel Topping describes the exponential growth in sustainability commitments that we’re seeing in sector after sector of the economy, as leaders work to transform their supply chains. At this rate, he says, we can expect to see the transition to net-zero carbon emissions within 10 years — but it will take all of us to get there. Can we count you in?


Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives, discusses the company’s ambitious commitment for a net-zero emissions supply chain by 2030. She speaks at the Countdown Global Launch on October 10, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)

Lisa Jackson, environment and social VP at Apple, in conversation with urbanist and spatial justice activist Liz Ogbu

Big idea: Under the leadership of Lisa Jackson, former head of the EPA and now Apple’s environment and social VP, the company is already carbon neutral within their own corporate and retail boundaries. By 2030, they hope to extend carbon neutrality to their supply chain and consumers. In conversation with urbanist and spatial justice activist Liz Ogbu, Jackson shares thoughts on leadership, tech, the environment and building a green economy.

How? In conversation with urbanist and spatial justice activist Liz Ogbu, Jackson shares Apple’s green goals, saying there’s no substitute for leadership in the climate change battle. She believes that if Apple leads by example, the nation and world will follow. Apple’s transformation starts with recycling — repurposing materials rather than mining the world’s rare earth elements and “conflict metals” — but it doesn’t end there. We will not win the ecological battle without a vision of climate justice that involves the at-risk communities who stand at the front lines of environmental disaster, Jackson says. She believes that racism and climate justice are inexorably linked, and in order for the whole world to get where it needs to be, Apple (and everyone else) must tackle injustice first, and a green economy will follow. “[There’s] always been this weird belief that we’re taught … that you can either be successful, or you can do the right thing,” Jackson says. “There’s no difference between the two. It’s a false choice.”


“Our conscience tells us that we cannot remain indifferent to the suffering of those in need, to the growing economic inequalities and social injustices,” says His Holiness Pope Francis. He speaks at the Countdown Global Launch on October 10, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)

His Holiness Pope Francis, Bishop of Rome

Big idea: We have a choice to make: either continue to ignore the looming environmental crisis, or transform the way we act at every level of society in order to protect the planet and promote the dignity of everyone on it.

How? His Holiness Pope Francis invites us on a journey of transformation and action in a visionary TED Talk delivered from Vatican City. Referencing ideas from his new encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, the spiritual leader calls our attention to a global socio-environmental crisis — one marked by growing economic inequalities, social injustices and planetary harm. “We are faced with the moral imperative, and the practical urgency, to rethink many things,” he says. He proposes three courses of action to transform in the face of our precarious future: an education based on scientific data and an ethical approach; a focus on making sure everyone has safe drinking water and nutrition; and a transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, particularly by refraining from investing in companies that do not advance sustainability, social justice and the common good. Watch the full talk on TED.com.


Andri Snær Magnason, writer, poet

Big idea: We need to connect to the future in an intimate and urgent way in order to stabilize the Earth for generations to come. 

How? In 2019, the Earth lost its first glacier to climate change: the Okjökull glacier in Borgarfjörður, Iceland. “In the next 200 years, we expect all our glaciers to follow the same pattern,” says Andri Snær Magnason. He wrote “A letter to the future” — a memorial placed at the base of where Okjökull once stood — in poetic, poignant form: “This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it.” Magnason invites us to recognize how glaciers connect us to the past, present and future. These icy bodies, that once felt eternal to people like his glacier-exploring grandparents only decades ago, are now at risk of vanishing. “The year 2100 is not a distant future — it is practically tomorrow,” Magnason says. Now is the time to act, so that future generations look back on us with pride and gratitude, because we helped secure their future.

Actor and singer Cynthia Erivo performs “What a Wonderful World,” accompanied by pianist Gary Motley, at the Countdown Global Launch on October 10, 2020. (Photo courtesy of TED)

In a moment of musical beauty that calls for reflection, Cynthia Erivo performs a moving rendition of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World,” accompanied by pianist Gary Motley. With her words and voice, Erivo urges us all to do better for the Earth and the generations to come.

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TED and Future Stewards announce Countdown, a global initiative to champion and accelerate solutions to the climate crisis

Par : TED Staff

Prince William, His Holiness Pope Francis, Yemi Alade, Monica Araya, Xiye Bastida, Jesper Brodin, Don Cheadle, Dave Clark, Christiana Figueres, Al Gore, António Guterres, Chris Hemsworth, Kara Hurst, Lisa Jackson, Rose Mutiso, Johan Rockström, Prince Royce, Mark Ruffalo, Sigrid, Jaden Smith, Nigel Topping and Ursula von der Leyen join scientists, activists, artists, schools and leaders from business and government to accelerate and amplify solutions

Countdown, a global initiative to champion and accelerate solutions to the climate crisis, will launch on October 10, 2020 with a free five-hour live virtual event featuring leading thinkers and doers. This is the moment to act, and they will outline what a healthy, abundant, zero-emission future can look like—turning ideas into action. The event will combine TED’s signature blend of actionable and research-backed ideas, cutting-edge science, and moments of wonder and inspiration. Countdown is one part of a broader series of actions and events this fall including the Bloomberg Green Festival, Climate Week NYC and others, all with the collective objective of informing and activating millions in the lead-up to a successful UN Climate Change Conference in November 2021.

The Countdown launch will be streamed live on TED’s YouTube channel. This global event will be the first-ever TED conference that is free and open to the public. Segments from the event, including the biggest talks and performances, will be made available immediately across all digital platforms. The program includes 50+ pieces of content—talks, performances, animations and more. Speakers will touch on topics such as:

  • Climate science and the climate crisis: Where are we today?

  • Why climate justice matters

  • Putting climate back on the political and social agenda

  • What businesses can do—and are doing—to transform and transition

  • Rethinking our cities

  • Stepping up at work and at home

  • The path to a safer, cleaner, fairer future for people and the planet

A full agenda and speaker list can be found here.

In addition to the live global event, over 500 TEDx Countdown virtual events in nine languages are planned around the world, encouraging communities and citizens to take action locally while also feeding local solutions and ideas into the global conversation. Countdown has also convened a global Youth Council of recognized activists who will help shape the Countdown agenda throughout the year. Additionally, Countdown is working to engage people through art with ten public art installations in global cities around the 10.10.20 event and open calls for art––illustration and photography––to run throughout the year on the Countdown website.

“The moment to act on climate change has been upon us for too long, and now is the time to unite all levels of society—business leaders, courageous political actors, scientists and individuals—to get to net-zero emissions before 2050,” said Chris Anderson, Countdown founding partner and Head of TED. “Climate is a top priority for TED and members of our community, and we are proud to fully dedicate our organization in the fight for our collective future.”

Countdown brings together a powerful collaboration of partners from all sectors to act on climate change,” said Lindsay Levin, Countdown founding partner and CEO of Leaders’ Quest. “We need to work together with courage and compassion to deliver a healthy, fair, resilient future for everyone.”

With so many people who have already committed to addressing climate change, Countdown is about radical collaboration—convening all stakeholders to build on the critical work already underway and bringing existing, powerful solutions to an even broader audience. Powered by TED and Future Stewards, Countdown aims to answer five fundamental, interconnected questions that inform a blueprint for a better future:

  • ENERGY: How rapidly can we switch to 100% clean power?

  • TRANSPORT: How can we upgrade the way we move people and things?

  • MATERIALS: How can we re-imagine and re-make the stuff around us?

  • FOOD: How can we spark a worldwide shift to healthier food systems?

  • NATURE: How do we better protect and re-green the earth?

Countdown is asking companies and organizations to join the Race to Zero through Business Ambition for 1.5°C, which is a commitment to set science-based targets aligned with limiting global warming to 1.5°C, and through The Climate Pledge, which calls on signatories to be net-zero carbon by 2040—a decade ahead of the Paris Agreement goal of 2050.

“We can inspire others through action and example, because there is no hope without action,” said 17-year-old climate justice activist Xiye Bastida, a lead organizer of the Fridays for Future youth climate strike movement. “We are fighting to ensure this planet survives and flourishes for future generations, which requires intergenerational cooperation. Countdown is about coming together across ages and sectors to protect the earth and ensure we leave it better than we found it.”

“Five years after the unanimous signing of the Paris Agreement, many countries, companies and citizens are doing what they can about the climate crisis. But this is not enough,” said Christiana Figueres, former UN climate chief (2010-2016), now co-founder of Global Optimism. “We have this decisive decade to achieve what is necessary—cutting global emissions in half over the next ten years is vital to meeting the goal of net zero by 2050. I am delighted to partner with Countdown to increase the global stock of stubborn optimism that is needed to push every company and country—and engage citizens—in actions that decouple carbon from our economy and way of life in this decade.”

Following the launch, Countdown will facilitate a number of sector leader working groups along with the initiative’s network of partner organizations through November 2021. These will focus on delivering breakthrough progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the lead-up to the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. During next year’s Countdown Summit (October 12-15, 2021, Edinburgh, Scotland), the initiative will share an actionable blueprint for a net-zero future and celebrate the progress that’s already been made.

Citizens are the critical component of this initiative and anyone can #JoinTheCountdown by:

Connect at Countdown@ted.com

About TED

TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, often in the form of short talks delivered by leading thinkers and doers. Many of these talks are given at TED conferences, intimate TED Salons and thousands of independently organized TEDx events around the world. Videos of these talks are made available, free, on TED.com and other platforms. Audio versions of TED Talks are published to TED Talks Daily, available on all podcast platforms.

Follow TED on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and on LinkedIn.

About Future Stewards

Future Stewards is a coalition of partners (Leaders’ Quest, Global Optimism and We Mean Business) working together to build a regenerative future – where we meet the needs of all, within the means of the planet. Founded after the Paris Agreement, Future Stewards equips individuals, businesses and communities with the awareness and tools required to tackle systemic problems, scale what works and build cross-sector collaboration.

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In Case You Missed It: Highlights from TED2019

Twelve mainstage sessions, two rocking sessions of talks from TED Fellows, a special session of TED Unplugged, a live podcast recording and much more amounted to an unforgettable week at TED2019. (Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED)

If we learned anything at TED2019, it’s that life doesn’t fit into simple narratives, and that there are no simple answers to the big problems we’re facing. But we can use those problems, our discomfort and even our anger to find the energy to make change.

Twelve mainstage sessions, two rocking sessions of talks from TED Fellows, a special session of TED Unplugged, a live podcast recording and much more amounted to an unforgettable week. Any attempt to summarize it all will be woefully incomplete, but here’s a try.

What happened to the internet? Once a place of so much promise, now a source of so much division. Journalist Carole Cadwalldr opened the conference with an electrifying talk on Facebook’s role in Brexit — and how the same players were involved in 2016 US presidential election. She traced the contours of the growing threat social media poses to democracy and calls out the “gods of Silicon Valley,” naming names — one of whom, Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, sat down to talk with TED’s Chris Anderson and Whitney Pennington Rodgers the following day. Dorsey acknowledged problems with harassment on the platform and explained some of the work his team is doing to make it better.

Hannah Gadsby broke comedy. Her words, and she makes a compelling case in one of the most talked-about moments of the conference. Look for her talk release on April 29.

Humanity strikes back! Eight huge Audacious Project–supported ideas launched at TED this year. From a groundbreaking project at the Center for Policing Equity to work with police and communities and to collect data on police behavior and set goals to make it more fair … to a new effort to sequester carbon in soil … and more, you can help support these projects and change the world for good.

10 years of TED Fellows. Celebrating a decade of the program in two sessions of exuberant talks, the TED Fellows showed some wow moments, including Brandon Clifford‘s discovery of how to make multi-ton stones “dance,” Arnav Kapur‘s wearable device that allows for silent speech and Skylar Tibbits‘s giant canvas bladders that might save sinking islands. At the same time, they reminded us some of the pain that can exist behind breakthroughs, with Brandon Anderson speaking poignantly about the loss of his life partner during a routine traffic stop — which inspired him to develop a first-of-its-kind platform to report police conduct — and Erika Hamden opening up about her team’s failures in building FIREBall, a UV telescope that can observe extremely faint light from huge clouds of hydrogen gas in and around galaxies.

Connection is a superpower. If you haven’t heard of the blockbuster megahit Crazy Rich Asians, then, well, it’s possible you’re living under a large rock. Whether or not you saw it, the film’s director, Jon M. Chu, has a TED Talk about connection — to his family, his culture, to film and technology — that goes far beyond the movie. The theme of connection rang throughout the conference: from Priya Parker’s three easy steps to turn our everyday get-togethers into meaningful and transformative gatherings to Barbara J. King’s heartbreaking examples of grief in the animal kingdom to Sarah Kay’s epic opening poem about the universe — and our place in it.

Meet DigiDoug. TED takes tech seriously, and Doug Roble took us up on it, debuting his team’s breakthrough motion capture tech, which renders a 3D likeness (known as Digital Doug) in real time — down to Roble’s facial expressions, pores and wrinkles. The demo felt like one of those shifts, where you see what the future’s going to look like. Outside the theater, attendees got a chance to interact with DigiDoug in VR, talking on a virtual TED stage with Roble (who is actually in another room close by, responding to the “digital you” in real time).

New hope for political leadership. There was no shortage of calls to fix the broken, leaderless systems at the top of world governments throughout the conference. The optimists in the room won out during Michael Tubbs’s epic talk about building new civic structures. The mayor of Stockton, California (and the youngest ever of a city with more than 100,000 people), Tubbs shared his vision for governing strategies that recognize systems that place people in compromised situations — and that view impoverished and violent communities with compassion. “When we see someone different from us, they should not reflect our fears, our anxieties, our insecurities, the prejudices we have been taught, our biases. We should see ourselves. We should see our common humanity.”

Exploring the final frontier. A surprise appearance from Sheperd Doeleman, head of the Event Horizon Telescope — whose work produced the historic, first-ever image of a black hole that made waves last week — sent the conference deep into space, and it never really came back. Astrophysicist Juna Kollmeier, head of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, shared her work mapping the observable universe — a feat, she says, that we’ll complete in just 40 years.  “Think about it. We’ve gone from arranging clamshells to general relativity in a few thousand years,” she says. “If we hang on 40 more, we can map all the galaxies.” And in the Fellows talks, Moriba Jah, a space environmentalist and inventor of the orbital garbage monitoring software AstriaGraph, showed how space has a garbage problem. Around half a million objects, some as small as a speck of paint, orbit the Earth — and there’s no consensus on what’s in orbit or where.

Go to sleep. A lack of sleep can lead to more than drowsiness and irritability. Matt Walker shared how it can be deadly as well, leading to an increased risk of Parkinson’s, cancer, heart attacks and more. “Sleep is the Swiss army knife of health,” he says, “It’s not an optional lifestyle luxury. Sleep is a non-negotiable biological necessity. It is your life support system, and it is mother nature’s best effort yet at immortality.”

The amazing group of speakers who shared their world-changing ideas on the mainstage at TED2019: Bigger Than Us, April 15 – 19, 2019 in Vancouver, BC, Canada. (Photo: Bret Hartman / TED)

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In Case You Missed It: Highlights from day 2 of TED2019

Head of TED Chris Anderson and TED current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers talk with Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, about the future of one of the world’s most important messaging platforms. They speak at TED2019: Bigger Than Us, April 16, 2019 in Vancouver, BC, Canada. (Photo: Bret Hartman / TED)

Here’s what happened on Tuesday of TED2019. A few news-making highlights first:

Jack Dorsey proposed a new way Twitter could work — by following topics and not individual people and brands. Hmm. Also, fun fact: If he had it to do over again, he would not have built the Like button. Watch for Jack Dorsey’s Q&A with Chris Anderson and Whitney Pennington Rodgers on TED.com today.

Digital Domain’s Doug Roble showed, for the first time outside his studio, a jaw-dropping digital animation tool mapped to a live human actor. This avatar-creating wonder tool could revolutionize filmmaking … and also your next video chat.

The Audacious Project unveiled eight ambitious projects to change the world — from a data-backed approach to fighting racist activity, to a sweeping global drive to breed plants that are better for the planet. Between them — and thanks to a good old-fashioned fund drive last night — they raised a collective $283 million, and each project now has enough seed funding to launch. But they’re only halfway to a collective goal of — wait for it — $567m.

And some larger themes emerged …

Changing, fast and slow: In Chris’s indelible image, Twitter is a ship, Jack Dorsey is the captain, and a few of the passengers have come up from steerage to ask if Dorsey might consider, perhaps, turning away from the path of the iceberg. As Chris says: “You’re showing this extraordinary calm, but we’re all standing outside saying, Jack, turn the f*cking wheel.” Jack’s response: “Quickness will not get this job done.” He’s looking for deeper, systemic change (including a few suggested moves that some Twitter users did not love). Rafael Casal had the same question — “How fast should change happen?” — after he touched off a Twitter firestorm around an issue of racial unfairness. He made one brief point on the platform; it gained traction over a weekend; and it got ugly real fast. Now, he asks: Is social media just too quick on the trigger to allow for nuanced discussion of social change? Working at another timescale altogether, Safeena Husain spoke about a deep investment in the far future — by educating young girls today, starting with the 1.4 million girls in India who never go to school. Investing now, today, in the potential of these girls could have a material effect on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, aimed at creating a better world by 2030. Why not start now?

Playing with personas: As Doug Roble demos his jaw-dropping tool to create detailed, real-time digital renderings of a person — in this case, Doug himself, plus an alternate personality named Elbor — a thought arises: Will this next-gen avatar lead to more deepfakes, more fraudulent online personalities? (The likely answer: Yes, but honestly, what won’t?) Meanwhile, from the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Roger Hanlon told us about shape-shifting cephalopods who change their skin color and texture in a blink, to hide, to mate, to blow human minds. Hanlon suggests their smart skin, and their ability to deploy it in sophisticated ways and in a flash, is an alternative form of intelligence, driven by their strange and wonderful and very, very large brains.

Service and meaning: Matt Cutts worked at Google for almost 17 years, and he took what he thought would be a six-month break to join the US government’s digital service. Three-plus years later, he’s still in government, finding deep meaning and satisfaction in solving problems that affect real people’s lives. At TED Unplugged, he makes the case to his fellow technologists that if you want to really make an impact, you should leave Silicon Valley, wave goodbye to those crazy perks and free meals, and enter a world where office furniture isn’t a given — but the impact is. Julius Maada Bio, the president of Sierra Leone, offered his own take on the meaning of service. He first took power in a military coup, but his goal, he says, was always to return the country to democratic rule. His other major goal: “Sierra Leone must be a secure, peaceful and just society where every person can thrive and contribute.” Over the past decades, he’s moved steadily toward that objective. Plant biologist Joanne Chory is committed to an equally large and far-seeing goal: developing plants that capture carbon better and for longer than common crops do now which will help mitigate our planet’s creeping carbon levels. Her vision, her sense of mission and her nothing-can-stop-me persistence are genuinely inspiring.

Curiosity makes us human: Educator Brittany Packnett meditates on confidence, the hidden skill that powers many of our other skills. Confidence is what helps you put plans into action, and what helps you keep moving even after you fail. What builds confidence? One key factor, she says, is curiosity, the desire to push beyond who you are and what you know. Mentalist Derren Brown taps into the curiosity of the audience by guessing our innermost questions (and even one guy’s password). How did he do it? He’ll never tell. Appearing via robot, David Deutsch meditates on another force that moves us: the drive for new “explanatory knowledge.” As humans, we desire to understand things and explain them and change them and make them new. As he says: “From the human perspective, the only alternative to that living hell of static societies is continual creation of new ideas, behaviors, new kinds of objects.”

Watch the first TED Talk released from TED2019: Carole Cadwalladr.

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Power: Notes from Session 2 of TED2019

Rafael Casal sent a tweet that sparked a weeks-long online protest; he tells the story of what he learned at TED2019: Bigger Than Us on April 16, 2019, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Photo: Bret Hartman / TED

Power drives everything. Whether it’s political, economic, online — power makes the rules and makes things move. At Session 2 of TED2019, we explore how different centers of global power are dramatically playing out across the world stage.

The event: Talks and performances from TED2019, Session 2: Power, hosted by TED’s Chris Anderson and Whitney Pennington Rodgers

When and where: Tuesday, April 16, 2019, 8:45am, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC.

Speakers: Rafael Casal, Jack Dorsey, Adena Friedman, Peter Beck and Julius Maada Bio

The talks in brief:

Rafael Casal, poet, filmmaker, actor (you know him from Blindspotting), activist, incorrigible Tweeter

  • Big idea: Online protest travels fast. Justice can be delivered quickly — but the argument can also quickly devolve into a loud, angry mess. How do we mix activism and nuanced debate?
  • How? Rafael Casal tells the cautionary tale of a 2016 Twitter firestorm he helped spark. The hashtag he started — #MakeRoomForOak, a campaign for the actor Oak Onaudowan, who was asked to step down as the lead of a new Broadway show — blew up, kicking off a debate about representation and diversity in the arts. But within a week, the hashtag turned into an ugly shouting match, coopted by misinformation, threats and abuse. This, says Casal, is part of a massive cultural shift in what activism looks like. We’re still on the social media learning curve, and, sure, the nuance gets lost sometimes. But these debates are bringing long-unheard issues to center stage — and making impact. It’s on us to keep failing loud, teaching others to succeed and steadily arriving at justice.
  • Quote of the talk: “Our messy moments online are not just a mess, but evidence of work being done to protest the injustices that are long overdue for some volume.”

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, CEO and chair of Square, and a cofounder of both

  • Big idea: Twitter was built around the concept of follows, likes and retweets. This focus has created a network culture that rewards what Chris Anderson calls the “eloquently obnoxious” — and harassment and political manipulation. Is it possible to rebuild Twitter to de-emphasize virality and encourage diversity, respect and healthy participation?
  • How? By identifying four key metrics for conversation health, Twitter can begin to discourage bad behavior and encourage learning and a diversity of opinions. But Twitter is also studying fundamental shifts to their platform, including deemphasizing statistics (followers, retweets) and allowing users to follow their interests rather than individual accounts — opening the door for a wider spectrum of opinions. Read a full recap of Jack’s interview with TED’s Chris Anderson and Whitney Pennington Rodgers here.
  • Quote of the talk: “We can’t build a business that is successful unless we have a diversity of perspective inside of our walls, that actually feel these issues every single day — and that’s not just with the team … it’s also within our leadership.”

As social media disrupts elections worldwide, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey answers tough questions about how to build a healthy network and encourage reflective conversation. He speaks with TED’s Chris Anderson and Whitney Pennington Rodgers during Session 2 of TED2019: Bigger Than Us on April 16, 2019 in Vancouver, BC, Canada. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)

Adena Friedman, President and CEO of Nasdaq

  • Big idea: Capitalism is getting the blame for some of the world’s most entrenched problems, like income inequality and climate change. And yes, it’s far from perfect, but it’s the best option we have right now: a system that provides freedom and choice, and in return drives the economy forward.
  • How? Global markets let people put their money behind ideas that make society better, Friedman says. Since the public can buy a piece of companies, they have the chance to become partial owners and have a say in that company’s future. What’s more, new tech is causing new markets to form that could change our lives for the better. Imagine a micro-insurance policy where you could upload your personal data and get quotes for a plan. You’d be empowered to pick from competing offers from multiple sellers — and be able to control your personal data (and even reap benefits from it). Markets can help level the playing field, Friedman says — we just need to imagine more and new ways to do it.
  • Quote of the talk: “We can create markets of tomorrow for people, with people, for the benefit of more people.”

Peter Beck, engineer, CEO of Rocket Lab

  • Big idea: We’re in the dawn of a space revolution. If we leverage breakthrough tech (like tiny spacecraft and 3D-printed engines), we can dramatically increase access to space — and improve life for all of us on Earth.
  • How? Rocket Lab plans to launch thousands of rockets into space in the near future. But how to do it? By shrinking spacecraft to the size of a fingertip (obviously) and by ramping up launches to once every 72 hours. There’s bound to be technical and bureaucratic hurdles to overcome, Beck says — but we’ll be able to access space like never before. Soon, Rocket Lab will open up the search for extraterrestrial life, spark more learning about the solar system and help create a global internet network — on every millimeter of Earth.
  • Quote of the talk: “There’s a revolution in the space industry — not a revolution of the big, but of the small.”

Julius Maada Bio, president of Sierra Leone

  • Big idea: When Maada Bio first gained political power in 1996, he wanted to transform Sierra Leone into a country that would be secure, peaceful and fair — especially the disenfranchised youth. More than 20 years letter, he reflects on how he did just that.
  • How? To create a truly prosperous nation, Maada Bio realized that he’d need to invest in developing a skilled workforce. He traveled across the country, engaging citizens who had become disillusioned with the country’s politics. He talked to talented young people, who shared their knowledge and vision for a better future. The result? Maada Bio has helped launch a free education program, promote STEM scholarships for women and girls and, among other key investments, dedicate a percentage of the national budget toward health care for all citizens. Because in the end, he says, leadership is about having faith in his people — and championing the beauty of their big, bold ideas.
  • Quote of the talk: “So in my mind, this is what leadership is about: a mission to listen with empathy to the craziest ideas, the hopes and aspirations of a younger generation who are just looking for a chance to be better and to make our country better.”

Hosts Whitney Pennington Rodgers, left, and Helen Walters open Session 2 of TED2019: Bigger Than Us on April 16, 2019 in Vancouver, BC, Canada. (Photo: Bret Hartman / TED)

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How Twitter shapes global public conversation: Jack Dorsey speaks at TED2019

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square, speaks about Twitter’s impact on the global conversation at TED2019: Bigger Than Us, on April 16, 2019, in Vancouver, BC, Canada. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)

Jack Dorsey is a bit of an enigma. The CEO of Twitter and Square, Dorsey is known for his amazing sense of calm in turbulent times — while his network takes a serious chunk of the blame for the divisiveness seen around the world, both online and off.

At TED2019, head of TED Chris Anderson and TED current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers join Dorsey to discuss Twitter, the health of the global conversation and how the service could change what it incentivizes users to do — moving away from outrage and mob behavior and towards productive, healthy conversation. Online, users were asked to send in questions via Twitter using the hashtag #AskJackAtTED, and their questions were displayed live on screens behind the stage.

So to start: What worries Jack? “The health of the conversation,” he says. “Our purpose is to serve the public conversation, and we have seen a number of attacks on it. We’ve seen abuse, we’ve seen harassment, we’ve seen manipulation, automatic and human coordination, misinformation … What worries me most is our ability to address it in a systemic way that is scalable.”

And an undue portion of that abuse and harassment is directed toward people of color, specifically black women, Pennington Rodgers notes. How is Twitter creating a safe space for these people?

“It’s a pretty terrible situation when you’re coming to a service where, ideally, you want to learn something about the world, and you spend a majority of your time reporting abuse, receiving harassment,” Dorsey says. “Last year, we decided that we’re going to apply a lot more machine learning, a lot more deep learning to the problem, and try to be a lot more proactive, so we can take the burden off the victim completely.”

Dorsey says that, as of today, about 38 percent of abusive tweets are flagged by algorithms, so users don’t actually have to report them: “That’s up from 0 percent about a year ago.” But humans still review anything that’s flagged before taking it down.

Twitter is also focusing on representation within the company itself. “We can’t build a business that’s successful unless we have a diversity of perspective inside our walls that actually feel these issues every single day.”

What else could change to shift behavior on the platform, to combat harassment and the feeling that Twitter is some sort of gladiatorial combat zone, where harassment and insults reign supreme? “If I had to start the service again, I probably would not emphasize the follower count as much. I would not emphasize the ‘like’ count as much. I don’t think I would even create ‘like’ in the first place — because it doesn’t actually push what we believe now to be the most important thing, which is healthy contribution back to the network.”

Turning to Twitter’s role in elections, Dorsey describes a project to measure conversational health. The company worked with Cortico, a nonprofit affiliated with the MIT Media Lab, to create four measurable indicators of conversational health: shared attention, shared reality, receptivity and variety of perspective. “Implicit in all four of these is the understanding that, as they increase, the conversation gets healthier and healthier,” he says.

But the service needs help — not just indicators — fast. One of the questions flooding in from the online audience asks a question many are asking: What is Twitter doing to get rid of Nazis and other hate groups?

Dorsey says that the company is focused on conduct, like patterns of harassment, more than content. While Twitter has taken some action on the KKK, the American Nazi Party and others, he acknowledges there’s plenty of work left to do, and that people can’t do it alone.

“I don’t think our rules are very understandable,” Dorsey says. “We’re simplifying the rules so that they’re human-readable, so that people can actually understand, themselves, when something is against our terms and when something is not … Our big focus is on removing the burden of work from the victims — both the humans receiving the abuse and the ones having to review it.”

Looking ahead, Dorsey wants Twitter to be a place for reflective engagement, even if that means sacrificing time spent on the site — a major driver of ad revenue. “More relevance means less time on the service, and that’s perfectly fine,” he says.

That said, getting users (and keeping them) on the site every day is definitely important. “Our goal right now, the metric that’s most important, is one around daily active usage,” Dorsey says. “Are we actually delivering something that people value every single day?”

But that doesn’t necessarily mean people will see things they value every day. What about those who are drawn in by the outrage, by the chance to add fuel to the fire, pushing daily active usage — and anger — up?

“You can’t just optimize around one metric,” Dorsey admits. “Ultimately we want to get a metric that says: ‘I learned something from Twitter, and I’m walking away with something valuable.'”

Beyond metrics, how can Twitter dial up the urgency and move on the threats posed to democracy and culture by some of its users?

“We could do a bunch of superficial things, but we need the changes to last,” Dorsey says. “That means questioning how the system works and how the framework works and what is needed for the world today, given how quickly everything is moving … Quickness will not get the job done; it’s focus, it’s prioritization; it’s understanding the fundamentals of the network and building a framework that scales and that is resilient to change — and being open about where we are so we can continue to earn trust.”

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Breaking out: Notes from Session 3 of TEDWomen 2018

“I have seen a world where women are denied, and I have also seen what can happen when you invest in the potential of half of your population,” says activist Shad Begum. She speaks at TEDWomen 2018: Showing Up, on November 29, 2018, in Palm Springs, California. (Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED)

In session 3 of TEDWomen 2018, hosted by social justice documentarian Jess Search, a lineup of speakers and performers — Eldra Jackson III, Shad Begum, Emily Quinn, Shohini GhoseClimbing PoeTree, Maeve Higgins and Lindy Lou Isonhood — explored toxic masculinity, quantum computing, immigration, the death penalty and much more.

Eldra Jackson III shares his work breaking the cycle of emotional illiteracy that allows men to victimize others. He speaks at TEDWomen 2018: Showing Up, on November 29, 2018, in Palm Springs, California. (Photo: Callie Giovanna / TED)

An empathetic cure for toxic masculinity. Toxic masculinity is a disease that victimizes both its targets and its perpetrators, says educator Eldra Jackson III. Growing up, he had a “chronic case” of it — “so much so that [he] spent 24 years of a life sentence in prison for kidnapping, robbery and attempted murder.” As a teen, Jackson’s heroes were athletes and gangsters. So when sports didn’t work out as a career path, he gravitated toward what seemed the only other option: a life of crime. Jackson landed in jail, “where I didn’t care how I lived or if I died,” he says. He found a cure for this disease through Inside Circle, an organization founded by Patrick Nolan to combat gang violence in the prison yard. Through an exercise called Circle Time — “men sitting with men and cutting through the bullshit and challenging structural ways of thinking” — Jackson learned that “characteristics usually defined as weaknesses are parts of the whole, healthy man.” Today, as a free man, Jackson teaches his own sons what he has learned, and in doing so, he seeks to “eradicate the cycle of emotional illiteracy and groupthink that allows our males to continue to victimize others.”

Strengthening women’s leadership in Pakistan and beyond. Pakistani activist Shad Begum has spent her life working for the right of every woman to live to her full potential. “When women show up, things get better for everyone,” Begum says. “Yet I have found all too often women underestimate their own strength, potential and self-respect.” To counteract this troubling reality, Begum has invested in women’s leadership — first by founding the Association for Behaviour and Knowledge Transformation in 1994 and then by running for public office in Dir, Pakistan, in 2001 — and winning. Her fellow male councilors told her to buy sewing machines for the local women; instead she advocated for what she knew they really wanted: more access to clean drinking water. In the years since, Begum’s seen change happening at the local level as women find their place in the political process. She helped train 300 women and youth candidates for the 2015 local elections: 50 percent of them won and are now sitting in the local councils. And perhaps even more promising: While fewer than one hundred women voted in Dir’s 2013 general elections and 2015 local elections, more than 93,000 women turned out to vote in the 2018 general elections. “I have seen a world where women are denied, and I have also seen what can happen when you invest in the potential of half of your population,” Begum says. Now it’s time to keep making that investment.

“If there are infinite ways for our bodies to look, our minds to think, personalities to act — wouldn’t it make sense that there’s that much variety in biological sex, too?” asks intersex activist Emily Quinn. She speaks at TEDWomen 2018: Showing Up, on November 29, 2018, in Palm Springs. (Photo: Marla Aufmuth / TED)

Let’s talk about (biological) sex. We put people in boxes based on their genitalia, says intersex activist Emily Quinn, as if what’s between somebody’s legs tells you anything about that person — their kindness, generosity, humor. As an intersex individual who was born with both a vagina and and testicles, Quinn has been told since she was a child (and still as an adult) that her biology puts her at risk — despite the fact that a surgery to remove her genitals would most likely do more physical and emotional harm than good. Quinn asks: What constitutes a man, a woman? Does lacking or having certain organs disqualify a person from being who they are? Much like gender, biological sex exists on a spectrum and shouldn’t be boiled down to just male and female, she suggests. There are so many other human traits that have more than two options — think: hair color, eye color, complexion, height, even noses. Globally, intersex people aren’t rare or new; they’ve existed throughout every culture in history and represent about 2 percent of the global population — the same percentage as genetic redheads. (For scale, 2 percent is roughly about 150 million people, more than the entire population of Russia.) “If there are infinite ways for our bodies to look, our minds to think, personalities to act — wouldn’t it make sense that there’s that much variety in biological sex, too?” Quinn asks.

The weird world of quantum computing. What if you read about a computer that could “teleport” data across space and time, was physically impossible to hack and could simulate biological systems down to their subatomic particles? You’d probably think you were reading a science-fiction novel — but in fact, these are just a few of the real-life possibilities of quantum computers. Computer scientist Shohini Ghose works with quantum computers that store data not as binary zeros and ones, but as a spectrum of probabilities that a particular bit of information is true or false. And if you find that confusing, “don’t worry — you’re getting it.” The best way of understanding these strange devices is to realize that a quantum computer “is not just a more powerful version of our current computers,” she says — it’s something else entirely, “just like a light bulb is not a more powerful candle.” And like the light bulb, quantum computers will one day illuminate technological horizons we can barely imagine. As Ghose puts it: “The future is fundamentally uncertain, and to me, that is certainly exciting.”

A dazzling performance of poetry and song. Alixa Garcia and Naima Penniman of Climbing PoeTree mesmerize the audience with their poems “Being Human” and “Awakening.” In “Being Human,” they explore wonder and imagination, pairing awe-inducing spoken word with a flute and beatboxing performance that defies genres. “We believe creativity is the antidote to destruction,” Penniman says in between pieces. Supported by musicians Claudia Cuentas and Tonya Abernathy, they close out with “Awakening,” combining stunning vocals and ukulele in a powerful tribute to humanity’s fight for truth, justice and freedom.

The “good immigrant” trap. Irish comedian, writer and podcaster Maeve Higgins grew up learning about those who left Ireland, fleeing famine, oppression and seeking a new life. In 2014, she left Ireland herself, moving to Brooklyn on an O1 visa, which is designated for “aliens of extraordinary ability,” or those who have achieved in their fields. Since then, she’s travelled around the US, hearing stories of immigrants who have left their old homes behind in search of a new life. She’s found a pattern in these stories: We divide immigrants into good and bad. While people were celebrating the immigrants of the French national football team during their World Cup win this summer, for instance, migrants were drowning in the Mediterranean, while US politicians shut down the borders their ancestors passed through. This year, the US is on track to accept the fewest refugees in its history, Higgins says. Immigrants are being divided up by what they’re worth — some get O1 visas, while others are shut out. “People should not be considered valuable just because they do something of value to us,” Higgins says. “When we dehumanize another, we dehumanize ourselves. People are valuable because they are people. The moment we forget that, or deny it, terrible things happen.”

A new outlook on the death penalty. Human rights activist Lindy Lou Isonhood comes from a conservative Christian family in a conservative US state — but she’s here to tell us that the death penalty has new opponents. A native of Yazoo City, Mississippi, where the death penalty is “an unspoken part of the culture,” Isonhood was selected to be a juror in a murder case, and voted “yes” to giving a man named Bobby Wilcher the death penalty. After the case, the people around her told her to move on, but she couldn’t; it haunted her that she had sentenced a fellow human to die. She became a “silent survivor,” coping with PTSD on her own — until 12 years later, when Wilcher’s execution date was set. Searching for peace, Isonhood visited Wilcher in jail and apologized for her part in his sentencing. Wilcher forgave her, and after he was granted a last-minute stay, the two kept talking; in the months before his eventual execution, they became friends. After his execution, Isonhood sought out her fellow jury members because she had to know: Was she the only one who had been so deeply affected? What she found: “All those years, and I finally realized I was not the only disillusioned juror.” Now she’s found inspiration in her granddaughters, she says: “Because of my experience, they’re now more equipped to stand on their own and think for themselves.” Out of a dark situation, a sense of hope for the next generation.

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