Reflections from the TED Countdown House at COP30 in Belém

TED Countdown is a global initiative to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. Watch climate talks on our website and look for news about upcoming events, including local TEDxCountdown events near you.

I’ve just returned from hosting two weeks of conversations, workshops and interviews at COP30 in Belém with TED Countdown. Much has been written about this COP’s shortfalls, frustrations and achievements — for excellent analysis, try Carbon Brief or Outrage and Optimism’s Inside COP podcast series. Instead, I want to share a few personal reflections about where we actually are — and what comes next.

COP30 unfolded like a split-screen experience. On one screen: the grinding paralysis of a multilateral process that requires unanimous agreement from 194 registered country delegations (with an official US delegation conspicuously absent), and the unrelenting evidence that we’re still far too slow in phasing out fossil fuels, decarbonizing our economies, and building resilience to the climate impacts already reshaping daily life.

On the other side: a vibrant, determined ecosystem of organizations and communities simply getting on with the work — building a healthier, more prosperous, more sustainable future in real time. Entrepreneurs, scientists, policymakers and concerned citizens are advancing hundreds of initiatives to reforest, restore, electrify and adapt. Those who made the journey to this modest city on the edge of the Amazon were the Doers. Despite the frustrations in the negotiating rooms, the wider spirit was practical and resolute — even joyful.

It became clear that we are both losing and winning this battle simultaneously — and mindset will be a decisive factor in which future takes hold.

At TED Countdown House — brought to life with the help of 20 extraordinary artists and an incredible local team — we transformed a historic building in the center of Belém into an open space for candid dialogue. Three thousand people came through during our 12-day program. Listening to the ideas and actions underway, several themes emerged:

1. Mitigation vs. adaptation is a false choice.
We must do both — and people on the frontlines know this instinctively, because they’re already living the collision of impacts and solutions.

2. Climate and nature are profoundly intertwined.
Climate, ecosystems and biodiversity are inseparable. Forests, oceans and grasslands aren’t just carbon sinks; they’re living infrastructure. Those closest to these landscapes — especially Indigenous communities, who safeguard more than one-third of the world’s intact forests and remaining wild landscapes — understand this deeply, and the rest of us are finally beginning to catch up.

3. Technology and traditional knowledge are not opposing forces.
We don’t need to choose between techno-optimism and ancestral wisdom — we need to direct our considerable intelligence, both human and artificial, toward solving problems that matter. Watching local guardians demonstrate how drones are transforming their ability to combat illegal deforestation on their lands was a vivid reminder: innovation is most potent when it’s in service of place, culture and stewardship.

4. China is accelerating climate solutions at remarkable scale.
China dominates the first wave of the clean technology revolution, and is moving fast to build on this. While their delegation did not step into the leadership role some hoped for in Belém, their influence is clear in other ways — including through renewable and battery technologies that are spreading rapidly across the Global South.

5. Despite a political retreat, the US is still in the game.

Turning back on tomorrow’s technologies is, for many of us, a self-defeating strategy. We were glad to host a series of meetings for the “informal” US delegation — former negotiators and leaders from cities, states, business and civil society who continue to push forward. The absence of schadenfreude from international peers was striking — a refreshing reminder of the generosity of the human spirit. Instead, there was concern, empathy and hope that the country will soon regain its footing.

6. The future requires more than technology — it requires moral courage.
Our most anticipated gatherings were those centered on courage, moral leadership and ethics. There is a deep desire for the space to talk about what matters most to people. We were honored to host the new Brazil-led Global Ethical Stocktake, to hear from its co-leaders — including Karenna Gore and Wanjira Mathai — and from respected Elders such as former Presidents Mary Robinson and Juan Manuel Santos. Indigenous leaders from every continent led wisdom ceremonies, grounding us in a relationship with the more-than-human world that is older, wiser and urgently needed.

My closing reflection is that the weather will (of course!) win. Belém offered a daily reminder of our current reality. Torrential rains flooded venues and sent rivers streaming down the streets. Around the world, heat waves strain healthcare systems; storms, floods and wildfires intensify; insurance costs soar.

We humans are notoriously bad at predicting the future. We assume today’s patterns — markets, politics, work — will continue in straight lines. But conditions can flip with surprising speed. We’ve locked in worsening extremes for decades. Yet how we respond is still being written, and each of us chooses our stance anew, every day.

Throughout the two weeks at the House, what stood out above all was stubborn optimism paired with relentless work. It feels as if the politics of climate change is lagging behind the action. People are exhausted by conflict. But in that weariness lies an opening: a chance to align with the builders, the solvers, the courageous.

There are countless ways to join this momentum. My bet is on a rising desire to fix things together — a quiet groundswell of kindness, collaboration and shared purpose. It is both more effective and more life-giving. And that, more than anything, is what I carried home from Belém.

With renewed hope,
Lindsay Levin, Head of TED Countdown

TED Countdown is a global initiative to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. Watch climate talks on our website and look for news about upcoming events, including local TEDxCountdown events near you.

TED Countdown Summit 2025 — in photos

Last month, more than 600 attendees from 69 countries gathered in Nairobi, Kenya, for Countdown’s first Summit in the Global South, a region at the forefront of climate innovation. The Summit brought together a visionary group of global innovators, business executives, scientists, policymakers, next-generation leaders, artists, activists — all united in their commitment to building a brighter future. Below, enjoy a selection of photos from the Summit. And check out TED Talks from the event, plus follow Countdown on Instagram and LinkedIn for updates.

TED Countdown Summit 2025 Photo Team: Callie Giovanna, Humphrey Gateri and Elizabeth Zeeuw

5 big ideas from day 3 of TED Countdown Summit 2025

Across the final two sessions of TED Countdown Summit 2025, experts, changemakers and dreamers explored actionable solutions to fix today’s problems, alleviate tomorrow’s and build a clean energy future. Here are some highlights from day 3:

Africa’s electric vehicle revolution is leapfrogging traditional fossil fuel transit. Electrical engineer Doreen Orishaba explores how electric bus company BasiGo is using innovative financing models and locally assembled buses to conquer Kigali’s hills, limiting environmental impact and saving operators money. With 90 percent renewable energy powering these silent electric fleets, emerging companies like BasiGo show how Africa isn’t playing catch-up in sustainable transportation — it’s poised to lead the global revolution with every green kilometer. All of those electric vehicles will need rare earth minerals that have become increasingly important across the world, which is where mining innovator Mfikeyi Makayi comes in. At KoBold, Makayi’s team is building the mine of the future through radical new AI-aided technology that can model thousands of geological possibilities simultaneously, enabling safer, more sustainable mines that maximize resource recovery while minimizing environmental impact.

Data-driven mapping is transforming the fight against deforestation. Forester-turned-data detective Tasso Azevedo reveals how collaborative mapping initiative MapBiomas has stitched together 40 years of satellite images into near-real-time, courtroom-ready evidence — turning Brazil’s once-invisible deforestation (and even secret jungle airstrips) into bright, undeniable pixels. By producing thousands of precise deforestation reports weekly, MapBiomas (with support from TED’s collaborative funding initiative The Audacious Project) has helped reduce deforestation in the Amazon by 54 percent and denied $1.5 billion in financing to properties with illegal clearing in the last two years. Now they’re expanding their scope. The goal: to map 70 percent of Earth’s tropical forests by 2030, turning the power of knowledge into protection for our planet’s lungs.

Advanced microbes, the potential of geothermal — and how to finance it all. Microbe wrangler Karsten Temme’s gene-edited soil microbes have reactivated nitrogen-fixing genes designed help farmers replace their synthetic fertilizer, opening up the potential to cut environmental harm while raising yields from Michigan to Kenya. Drawing on the spirit of turning legacy know-how into climate solutions, geothermal trailblazer Cindy Taff is redeploying oil-and-gas drilling tools to tap the energy stored in the “deep, hot, dry rock that exists everywhere,” creating 24/7 geothermal power and subsurface heat batteries without waiting for another century of R&D. Scaling living fertilizer factories and next-generation geothermal fields will take capital, which is why finance innovator Riddhima Yadav urges investors to drop purity tests and mobilize the extra $2.5 trillion a year the transition still lacks so ideas like Temme’s and Taff’s can move from promising pilots to the standards of global infrastructure.

Bold strategies to pay for — and stop — the damages of climate change. Economist Esther Duflo asks a blunt question: Why don’t we tax the world’s richest people in order to pay for climate damages? She proposes a publicly funded redistribution system, financed by taxes on billionaires and large multinational companies, to pay for the costs of climate change on developing countries and provide direct cash transfers to the people affected. She says this “grand bargain” is within reach — one where the rich world compensates the poor, sparking a cycle of global climate action. Climate justice litigator Melinda Janki approaches climate action from a different angle, using the power of law to protect nature and Indigenous communities. She describes how legal victories against ExxonMobil in her home country of Guyana have set powerful precedents that make drilling harder and costlier. Oil companies may seem invincible, she says, but they are legally vulnerable. With courage, persistence and the strategic use of law, people can fight back and win.

Systemic change in all forms, from empowering young people to tapping into ancient wisdom. For social entrepreneur Anshul Tewari, what began as a personal blog became a movement of change-making stories. He shares how Youth Ki Awaaz, a platform for Indian youth to write, share and speak out on social issues, harnesses the power of young voices. The platform has expanded into climate advocacy, proving that making impact can be a daily, accessible habit for young people everywhere. Ecological futurist Tariq Al-Olaimy also helps people rise to their best selves, but in a different way: by turning to spiritual wisdom. He explores how faith communities, often overlooked in the climate movement, offer powerful tools for navigating environmental collapse with moral courage, resilience and a spiritual compass.

6 takeaways from day 2 of TED Countdown Summit 2025

Who says climate talks can’t come with a plot twist? Day 2 of TED Countdown Summit 2025 flipped the script on what we think of as the drivers of climate progress. It’s not just solar panels and policy — it’s in the flow of money, trust and imagination. Informal economies are bursting with potential. Even refrigeration and rewilding got their spotlight as unsung heroes of resilience. The common thread? Climate action works best when it works for people. Here’s what stood out from day 2:

Capitalism, but make it work for everyone. Entrepreneur Anuj Tanna sees Africa’s informal economies not as something broken but as something brilliant — a space of creativity, community and grit. He dives into how identity, trust and peer-based learning are transforming side hustles into scalable enterprises, and why empowering this movement may be the most sustainable path forward. This thinking led him to build MESH: a platform designed to boost visibility, share skills and grow networks. His call? Stop trying to fix the informal economy. Unlock it instead. Sustainability investor Steve Howard flips the lens to capitalism itself, asking whether the same tools that helped break the planet might also help save it. With bold policy and long-term thinking, even profit-driven systems can scale climate solutions fast — if we dare to change the rules.

When profits protect the planet. We often think solving climate change means deploying new tools and training. But what if the real breakthrough starts with something far more basic: a steady paycheck? Agribusiness groundbreaker Yi Li shares how financial sustainability — not just climate solutions — is the key to long-term agricultural impact. When farmers thrive financially, she says, the climate benefits follow. Climate equity entrepreneur Sandeep Roy Choudhury highlights carbon credits as an imperfect but powerful financial tool to make solutions a reality, especially in vulnerable communities already facing the worst effects of climate change. From mangrove restoration to clean cooking initiatives that cut emissions, these projects build resilience and create jobs.

De-risking the energy transition. Renewable energy pioneer Sebastián Kind helped transform Argentina into a global model for clean energy growth — despite economic crises and skepticism — by building political trust and protecting investors. Now, through his nonprofit RELP, he’s helping other countries follow the same path. What about the uncertainties no one can control? Enter climate risk advisor Amy Barnes, who reframes climate risk insurance as a warning bell. She explains why protecting lives, infrastructure and investments means getting ahead of disasters, not just reacting to them. Barnes underscores investing in resilience, both through adaptation and smarter tools, before those safety nets disappear entirely.

Electricity is empowerment. From enduring climate shocks to preserving medicine, the infrastructure we build today will shape who thrives tomorrow. Impact investor Jacqueline Novogratz shows how electrifying the hardest-to-reach places on Earth is more than a climate solution — it’s a moral test of our courage and imagination, one we can pass by mobilizing the right kind of capital. Electricity powers a lot, including your refrigerator, which is connected to an entire network of thermal control called the “cold chain.” Writer and researcher Nicola Twilley urges us to recognize the hidden force of the refrigeration systems quietly sustaining our food, health and supply networks — quite literally, the cold that keeps life going.

We can’t fight climate change with one-size-fits-all solutions. Policy expert Harjeet Singh argues that development must mean adaptation, tailoring responses to fit local realities, not global ideals. From Indian farmers braving deadly heat waves with solar-powered pumps to floating farms in flood-prone Bangladesh, real solutions are already saving lives and livelihoods. But adaptation can’t happen in isolation; it requires development, resources and justice. Climate tech leader Hao Xu turns our attention to accelerating innovation. As vice president of sustainable social value at Tencent, he explains that we already have the science to turn CO₂ into fuel, plastic, even jet fuel. The challenge now is scaling both engineering and business. Xu makes the case for making low-carbon businesses profitable and accelerate climate action through bold, tech-driven solutions.

Conservation, everywhere and anywhere. Leading Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab, AI visionary Juan M. Lavista Ferres introduces SPARROW: Solar-Powered Acoustic and Remote Recording Observation Watch. This simple yet powerful open-source technology transforms how conservationists collect, transmit and analyze biodiversity data, turning months of delay into real-time insights critical for saving species and ecosystems now. Environmentalist Isabella Tree shows that rewilding isn’t reserved for grand parks; it can begin in your own garden. She shares how letting animals roam free on her farmland brought the land back to life — reviving ecosystems, boosting biodiversity and even capturing carbon, all in just a few years. Tree leaves us with some practical tips for rewilding at home: disturb the Earth, mimic animal behavior, welcome wetlands and leave dead things be — encouraging us all to let green spaces grow wild.

4 things we learned at day 1 of TED Countdown Summit 2025

TED Countdown Summit 2025 takes place against the backdrop of a fast-moving climate crisis and an energy transition that’s fully underway. On day 1, a remarkable line-up of speakers, spanning sectors and geographies, gathered to put a thumb on the scale and tip the world in the right direction. Here are some key takeaways from day 1:

The clean energy era will be an age of radical abundance. Renewables entrepreneur Matt Tilleard tears down the old narrative of energy as a zero-sum game, showing how the renewable revolution is shifting power from those who hoard fuel to those who innovate and deploy technology. He makes the case that renewable tech will become too plentiful for any OPEC-style chokehold, so power will be shared instead of controlled. Clean energy visionary Lei Zhang picks up this thread in the Gobi desert, home to one of the world’s largest green hydrogen projects, exploring how this and other barren landscapes hold more energy reserves than the world consumes today. “Where others see emptiness, I see abundance,” he says. James Irungu Mwangi, founder and CEO of Africa Climate Ventures, completes the vision by showcasing how Africa’s young workforce is already turning waste biomass and sunshine into jobs, food security and scalable carbon removal — proving climate action can pay today and supercharge growth tomorrow.

Sustainable relationships with nature create opportunity and address climate challenges, at every scale. At the local level, Kenyan farmer Josephine Waweru demonstrates how small-scale technological solutions like solar-powered irrigation can transform individual farms and lives in the face of climate uncertainty. At the national level, civic entrepreneur Ilona Szabó de Carvalho advocates for an economic paradigm that values standing forests over cleared land, creating “nature superpowers” through bioeconomies and innovative financial mechanisms. Both Waweru and Carvalho emphasize that nature-aligned economies outperform destructive practices.

Environmental peace-building is the most realistic path to peace. Amid the bombs falling in the Middle East, another threat silently multiplies: climate change. Nada Majdalani, the director of EcoPeace Middle East in Palestine, shares how her organization is bringing together Jordanians, Palestinians and Israelis through a vision of environmental peace-building. She shows why tapping into the region’s natural resources (like abundant sunshine) can unlock shared energy solutions that foster economic interdependence and cooperation, not conflict.

Climate action is unstoppable — and “climate realism” is a myth. Nobel Laureate Al Gore thoroughly dismantles the fossil fuel industry’s misleading narrative of “climate realism,” which aims to discredit climate goals, distort public perception and maintain the destructive status quo. Ticking through the current state of the climate crisis, Gore highlights the clear signs of progress, like the plummeting cost of solar energy and the surging adoption of electric vehicles, while calling on us all to reject fossil-fueled defeatism. “Political will itself is a renewable resource — so let’s renew it,” he says.

TED Countdown Summit 2025 kicks off in Nairobi, Kenya

TED Countdown Summit 2025 officially kicked off today in Nairobi, Kenya, bringing together a visionary group of global innovators, business executives, scientists, policymakers, next-generation leaders, artists and activists. This year’s gathering, taking place June 16-18, comes at a pivotal moment, as the world’s institutions falter and uncertainty mounts about the future. Yet, the Summit is grounded in optimism, highlighting real progress — from booming clean energy industries in China to the end of coal in the UK and Kenya’s own leadership in renewable energy and youth-driven innovation.

By convening in Nairobi — a city at the forefront of Africa’s energy transition and home to one of the world’s greenest electricity grids — the Summit aims to harness the collective wisdom and creativity of its diverse participants. Over the coming days, attendees will collaborate to fast-track solutions, bridge divides and inspire new commitments to climate action. With support from local partners and a global network of changemakers including Countdown’s Strategic Partners, Vision Council and TED Future Forum, the Summit aims to bring the best ideas from around the world to the TED stage, united in a commitment to building a brighter future.

Check out the full speaker program — featuring Nobel laureate Al Gore, environmental peacemaker Nada Majdalani, clean energy visionary Lei Zhang and many more — and watch out for talks from the Summit to be published on TED.com soon.

Accelerating solutions to the climate crisis: The talks of TEDCountdown @BloombergGreenFestival

We’re midway into the decisive decade for climate change — the decisions and actions taken today will determine the way we live tomorrow. In a special evening of TED Talks, performances and conversations, TED’s global climate initiative, TED Countdown, partnered with Bloomberg Green at the Bloomberg Green Festival in Seattle to dive into the current state of climate, big-picture thinking about the economy, the interplay of climate and democracy and more.

The event: TEDCountdown@BloombergGreenFestival, a session of TED Talks presented by TED Countdown, TED’s global climate initiative, and Bloomberg Green. Hosted by Logan McClure Davda, TED’s Head of Impact, and Manoush Zomorodi, host of NPR’s TED Radio Hour.

When and where: McCaw Hall, Seattle, WA, on July 11, 2024

Speakers: Johan Rockström, Akshat Rathi, Gaya Herrington, Nathaniel Stinnett, Deb Chachra, Aline Sousa and Hrund Gunnsteinsdóttir

Music: Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter and musician Courtney Marie Andrews performs “May Your Kindness Remain” and “If I Told,” music based on a personal journey of self-discovery and introspection.

The talks in brief:

We’re halfway through the 2020s, dubbed the most decisive decade for action on climate change. Where exactly do things stand? Climate scientist Johan Rockström offers a frank status report on the state of our planet — the more we learn, the more risk we uncover — and explains what must be done to maintain a safe operating space for humanity on Earth.

Historically, capitalist economies have pursued profits by extracting from the environment. Can we flip that script? Author and climate reporter Akshat Rathi shows how the climate crisis is forcing governments and businesses to change how capitalism works, harnessing its forces to create solutions instead of making problems worse.

It’s time to change the goal of our economic system from the relentless pursuit of growth to human and ecological well-being, says sustainability researcher and economist Gaya Herrington. She calls for a “well-being economy” that shifts the global mindset from “never enough” to “enough for each” and prioritizes solving poverty, caring for nature and fostering shared prosperity for all.

The biggest barrier to addressing the climate crisis is a lack of political will, says environmental voting advocate Nathaniel Stinnett. He explains why increasing voter participation among citizens is crucial to enacting climate solutions — and breaks down how his nonprofit organization is using behavioral science to transform climate concern into environmental action.

Infrastructure needs to be localized, flexible and reversible if we’re to empower the world with long-term, sustainable green energy, says engineering professor Deb Chachra. She explores how being plugged into the grid provides individual agency — a luxury not shared by everyone — and explains why these shared networks need to change with the environment if we’re to move the needle on climate change.

What do the people doing the daily work of implementing solutions to climate change on the ground really think? TED Countdown visited Aline Sousa, president of CENTCOOP, a network of over 1,000 waste pickers in Brasília, to hear about the importance of these often-overlooked individuals putting climate solutions into practice. She calls for better recognition — and payment — for these key players working to reduce and neutralize emissions.

Filmmaker and sustainability leader Hrund Gunnsteinsdóttir shares her journey diving into the Icelandic principle InnSæi, or intuition. She suggests tuning into your unconscious mind offers new paths to success, outlining three ways InnSæi can help humanity address our biggest existential threats.

Coalition-building: Notes on Session 4 of TED Countdown 2024 Dilemma Series

Session 4 of the TED Countdown 2024 Dilemma Series was all about coalition-building. Four speakers discussed how we can bring together the world’s best minds and ideas to rethink how we support farms, nourish the youngest generations and collaborate across seeming divides.

The event: TED Countdown 2024 Dilemma Series: The future of food, hosted by TED’s David Biello and Nicole Ng

When and where: June 6, 2024 at the TED World Theater in New York City

Speakers: Anthony Myint, June Jo Lee, Gerardo Reyes Chávez, Jon Esformes

The talks in brief:

The transition to regenerative farming is vital but expensive — and farmers don’t have the resources to do it alone. Chef and Zero Foodprint cofounder Anthony Myint offers a plan that allows everyone to be a part of the solution: With just a few more cents on every food purchase at partnered establishments, we can raise millions for the farms that need it. “Almost all of us can afford to make this change, and the truth is, we can’t afford not to make it,” says Myint.

Exploring the profound meaning behind what we choose to eat, food ethnographer June Jo Lee unpacks how our “modern hungers,” or deep desires for self-improvement and connection, inform every bite. She decodes Gen Z’s spicy, rich and complex relationship with food — and what it means for the future of gastronomy.

Farm labor is hot, back-breaking and dangerous work. To protect workers from deadly heat and workplace exploitation, farmworker Gerardo Reyes Chávez and farm manager Jon Esformes have teamed up to help advance the human rights enforcement program Fair Food Program (FFP). Their collaborative model is a blueprint for how to create more modern, humane working conditions for the world’s laborers.

At the end of the session, attendees were invited to reflect on the two-day event, sharing which ideas they’ll take forward and how they’re seeing the state of food through new eyes.

Rewriting the menu: Notes on Session 3 of TED Countdown 2024 Dilemma Series

Session 3 of the TED Countdown 2024 Dilemma Series centered around not just what we eat, but how we produce it. In four talks and an interview, speakers explore the science, policy and financing of transitioning to sustainably grown crops and meat alternatives.

The event: TED Countdown 2024 Dilemma Series: The future of food, hosted by Lindsay Levin and Nicole Ng

When and where: June 6, 2024 at the TED World Theater in New York City

Speakers: Giles E.D. Oldroyd, Helianti Hilman, Facundo Etchebehere, Peter Dawe, Berry Marttin, Sarah Lake

The talks in brief:

The soybean plant is excellent at nourishing itself through the fungus and bacteria in its roots, says researcher Giles E.D. Oldroyd. With a bit of genetic reworking, he believes it’s possible to prompt cereal crops to better utilize these naturally appearing microbes and reduce farmers’ reliance on harmful, inorganic fertilizers that can damage surrounding environments.

Indonesia has an abundance of heirloom crops, yet malnutrition remains a problem, says lawyer and food biodiversity advocate Helianti Hilman. As founder of Javara, a business dedicated to bringing back forgotten Indigenous Indonesian food, she emphasizes the importance of policies that promote culinary biodiversity to safeguard the environment and nourish communities.

How can big food companies transition to regenerative agriculture? TED’s Lindsay Levin sits down with Facundo Etchebehere, the SVP of sustainability strategy and partnerships at Danone, and Peter Dawe, the chief growth and strategy officer at McCain Foods, to discuss the progress being made in practice and policy — and what’s possible for the future.

“On a farm, cash is king,” says banker and farmer Berry Marttin. He emphasizes why financial support is so crucial to sustainable agriculture, especially as farmers play a central role in maintaining a healthy planet. Marttin proposes incentives like carbon credits to encourage farmers to adopt eco-friendly practices that benefit both the land and those who steward it.

What we eat is less about what we choose and more about what’s offered to us, says food and climate expert Sarah Lake. She traces how government subsidies drastically brought down the price of meat, leading to overconsumption and health risks, proposing we apply the same playbook to incentivize consumption of healthier, plant-rich foods.

At the end of the session, attendees were invited to share reflections on what they’ve heard and raise topics for further discussion. A number of interesting and important subjects were raised, from the need for diverse solutions at the local level to the possibilities around insect protein and food waste as nourishment for both humans and animal feed.

Protein problems: Notes on Session 2 of TED Countdown 2024 Dilemma Series

Proteins are the building blocks of life — but producing them comes at a cost to our planet and all the species that call it home. Session 2 of the TED Countdown 2024 Dilemma Series took a holistic look at our food system, from the soil that nourishes crops to the animals that graze the land.

Six pioneering speakers explored clean and healthy protein sources ranging from regenerative agriculture and fish farms to cultivating animal-free meat and brewing ethical collagen. Here’s a glimpse into the future of food that’s as innovative as it is essential.

The event: TED Countdown 2024 Dilemma Series: The future of food, hosted by TED’s David Biello and Lindsay Levin

When and where: June 6, 2024, at the TED World Theater in New York City

Speakers: Lamin Jassey, Gabe Brown, Dorcas Naishorua, Andy Jarvis, Fei Luo, Uma Valeti

The talks in brief:

Conservationist and community leader Lamin Jassey explains how a fish processing facility in The Gambia brought water pollution and food scarcity to his town, not the promised jobs and profits. He shares how the community has opposed the economic and environmental degradation — for instance, by dismantling a pipe dumping waste into their waters — and calls for more collective action against such harmful factories.

After losing most of their crops to hail and drought, farmer Gabe Brown and his wife turned to regenerative agricultural practices like integrating livestock and planting more diversely. The result? Their farm was revitalized. He shares his story — a testament to the transformative potential of restorative farming — and six healthy soil principles to bring life back to the land.

The Maasai people have lived sustainably off the savannah for centuries, but the climate crisis is causing resource scarcity so severe that families trade their girls for grass, desperate to feed their cattle through the worst droughts. Miss Climate Kenya Dorcas Naishorua advocates for a better way forward, presenting her people’s resilience and sharing how they’ve been forced to adapt to a changing environment.

How do we produce food without destroying nature? It won’t be by telling people what to eat, says Andy Jarvis, the director for the future of food at the Bezos Earth Fund. He presents a menu of sustainable options (like alternative proteins and cultivated meat) that could drastically lower food’s carbon footprint while providing people with the nourishment they need.

From cosmetics to nutrition, collagen is used in many ways — but how it’s sourced from animals is ethically questionable and unsustainable, says Fei Luo, chemical engineer and CEO of Liven Proteins, a precision fermentation protein company. She delves into the groundbreaking technology of brewing animal-free collagen, which could pave the way for a functional, tasty and harm-free collagen future.

The way we make meat is destructive to humans, animals and the environment, says Uma Valeti, the CEO and founder of UPSIDE Foods. He presents a delicious, sustainable solution — cultivated meat, grown directly from animal cells — that could save billions of animal lives and drastically reduce conventional animal agriculture’s harm to the environment and human health.

Setting the table: Notes on Session 1 of TED Countdown 2024 Dilemma Series

Can we nourish 10 billion people while restoring the earth? That’s the question on hand for the TED Countdown 2024 Dilemma Series on the future of food.

In Session 1, five speakers explored how we can turn the challenge of providing healthy food for everyone into solutions for regenerating nature and society. It’s a question riddled with competing views, from how to address food insecurity and waste to the myriad cultures surrounding food production and consumption. At the same time, the food we eat is the single biggest impact we have on the planet, and it’s not just on climate change. Let’s dig in.

The event: TED Countdown 2024 Dilemma Series: The future of food, hosted by TED’s David Biello and Nicole Ng

When and where: June 5, 2024 at the TED World Theater in New York City

Speakers: Jonathan Foley, Agnes Kalibata, Gonzalo Muñoz, Dana Gunders, Aline Sousa

The talks in brief:

Sustainability scientist Jonathan Foley gives an overview of the devastating environmental impact of conventional agriculture and its associated land use. What can we do about it? He presents a potpourri of solutions to help build a sustainable food system that nourishes the world.

Smallholder farmers produce most of Africa’s food, yet they often lack the resources needed to thrive, says agricultural scientist and policymaker Agnes Kalibata. Working to empower farmers, she highlights how providing better tools, climate resilience strategies and market access can help nourish both people and the planet.

Chilean farmer and UN Climate Change High-Level Champion Gonzalo Muñoz explores the interconnectedness of food and politics, sharing how his team successfully negotiated two international pledges to make agriculture part of the climate solution, and outlines three goals for the effort’s success.

A trillion dollars’ worth of food is wasted annually, contributing significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, says food waste expert and executive director of ReFED Dana Gunders. From solar-powered cold rooms to phone apps that sell discounted restaurant leftovers, she shares innovative solutions and tips to keep good food from going to the trash.

The improper handling of waste is the third largest source of methane in the world, says Aline Sousa, but waste pickers like her help reduce this environmental impact. She dives into the monumental role of those who ensure recyclables, compostables and trash end up in the right facilities — and calls for broader support of their efforts at the local level.

TED Countdown announces membership of its Vision Council and new corporate members of the TED Future Forum

TED Countdown, a global initiative to champion and accelerate solutions to the climate crisis, is delighted to welcome Joshua Amponsem, Olivia Lazard, Omnia el Omrani, Rayne Sullivan and Riddhima Yadav to its Vision Council. They join Jim Hagemann Snabe, Gonzalo Munoz, Habiba Ahut Daggash, Manish Bhardwaj and Nigel Topping as advisors to Countdown. Learn more about the Vision Council and our other strategic partners.

Since the launch of TED Countdown in 2020, the initiative has:

• Generated more than 270 million views across 230 original pieces of content focused on climate solutions
• Raised $1.3bn in philanthropic giving for climate solutions in collaboration with TED’s Audacious Project
• Convened more than 3,000 attendees in person at major global summits and smaller focused events
• Hosted more than 1,000 TEDx events across the globe
• Produced multiple original films, including one airing on PBS stations around the US 

In 2024, TED Countdown will continue this work with new events and media projects focused on topics like the future of food and the role of AI in solutions for climate and nature. We will continue to focus on advancing business-led climate solutions through the TED Future Forum, a community of companies committed to sector-leading action to transform the global economy. We are thrilled to welcome new member companies to this year’s cohort. The full group for 2024 includes: CEMEX, Circ, COFRA, Danone, Ford, W.L. Gore, Interface, Maersk, Mars, Northvolt, Ørsted, RHR and Siemens.

These companies come from diverse industries and are all committed to the green transition for the long haul. In 2024, Forum members will come together for peer-to-peer learning and curated events focused on the role of business in driving sustainable transformation. 

“TED Countdown is founded on a spirit of radical collaboration. We will only crack climate change by working together — across business, social activism, policy and science. We are thrilled to have accomplished new advisors join our Council and, through the TED Future Forum, to partner with companies who are committed to the difficult journey of transitioning their companies to a cleaner, fairer future.”

— Lindsay Levin, Head of TED Countdown and Founder and Chair of Leaders’ Quest

Resources

• TED Countdown 2023 Impact Report
• Leveling Up Company Climate Action: 5 Key Insights from the 2023 TED Countdown Summit, a TED report on how business can accelerate climate action
• TED Explores: A New Climate Vision, a PBS special on climate solutions currently airing on PBS channels across the US

About TED Countdown 

TED Countdown is a collaboration powered by TED and Leaders’ Quest. Countdown was launched in 2020 as TED’s first issue-specific initiative in order to champion and accelerate the bold ideas and underinvested solutions that can bring us closer to achieving a zero-carbon world — one that is cleaner, healthier and fairer for all. TED Countdown and its activities are philanthropically funded.

Transforming business for a sustainable future: Insights from the 2023 TED Countdown Summit

In July 2023, over 750 global innovators, business leaders, scientists, policymakers, artists, activists and more came together in Detroit, Michigan, to explore the solutions, tools and partnerships that will bring us closer to achieving an equitable, zero-carbon world.

The TED Countdown Summit also hosted the inaugural gathering of the TED Future Forum, an initiative of TED Countdown focused on the role of business in accelerating solutions to the climate crisis and transforming the global economy.

“I know from experience that transforming a company requires a combination of dreams and details,” said Jim Hagemman Snabe, TED Future Forum Vision Council chair, chairman of Siemens AG and vice chairman of Allianz SE. “We need to dream big, before we have the answers, and then to work really hard on the details to figure it out. TED Future Forum is about helping companies to find the courage and know-how to speed up their green transition because it makes good business sense — and it’s the right thing to do.”

So how can business leaders level up their climate ambition? We’ve created this resource to synthesize and share insights from four days of TED Talks, workshops, experiential visits in Detroit and serendipitous conversations sparked by gathering together. We hope you’ll find wisdom and inspiration in the following stories, case studies and reflection prompts – and that you share it widely.

Download the report here.

Momentum: Notes from Session 7 of TED Countdown Summit 2023

TED Countdown Summit 2023 concluded with a wide-ranging session featuring eight inspiring takes from around the world on how to ensure a fast, fair transition to a clean energy future.

The event: Talks from Session 6 of TED Countdown Summit 2023, hosted by TED’s David Biello and Lindsay Levin with journalist Orlando P. Bailey.

When and where: Friday, July 14, 2023, at the Fillmore Detroit in Detroit, Michigan

Speakers: Kala Constantino, Rebecca Collyer, Rich Powell, Zainab Usman, Amir Nizar Zuabi, Sims Witherspoon, Ramón Méndez Galain, Mike Posner

There’s a green energy wave swelling in the Philippines. Kala Constantino, director of the ecology advocacy group Tara Climate Foundation introduces us to a cross-section of the actors working to build a grid for cheap and clean renewable power throughout Asia. Electricity consumers in the Philippines pay one of the highest bills in Southeast Asia due to imported fossil fuels. Yet, as an island nation, the country also loses hundreds of millions of dollars every year to the impacts of climate disasters aggravated by carbon emissions. Activists have already encouraged the government to set aside funds for renewables and slow down the construction of coal-fired plants. With their help, Constantino hopes to see the Philippines become energy independent through solar and wind power, which will not only reduce electricity costs but also create jobs in a new, profitable sector.

Rebecca Collyer is the executive director of 2023 Audacious Project grantee ReNew2030, a global coalition to scale the use of wind and solar energy. In conversation with TED science curator David Biello, Collyer explores how to ensure the transition to renewable energy is fast and fair — a crucial task, as the power sector produces more carbon emissions than any other sector in the world. She shows how, by mobilizing governments, businesses and local communities around the world, ReNew2030 aims to scale wind and solar power capacity by 2030 and set the world up for a climate-secure future — all while creating local jobs and clean air.

We’ve all heard of the dangers of NIMBY-ism (“not in my backyard”). Climate innovation leader Rich Powell takes it a step further, saying that the true barrier to immediate implementation of clean energy projects is BANANA-ism: “build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything.” This means that critical infrastructure like windmills, nuclear plants and flexible power grids can get bogged down for years in the permitting process — or killed by wealthy lobbyists seeking to keep wind farms or solar panels away from their property. Powell believes that the quickest way to solve our clean energy crisis is to remove these barriers, while keeping environmental protections like the Clean Water Act. If voters and regulators can find common ground, then he says we’ll be well on our way toward replacing our existing power grid with one focused on renewables.

Solving the climate crisis requires collective action on a global scale, but today’s economy is becoming fractured between four regions: the US, China, Europe and the rest of the world. Political economist Zainab Usman says the solution lies with policymakers, business leaders and activists. Working together worldwide, they can distribute low-carbon technology globally; prioritize consumer welfare to make green tech more accessible; and set global standards to govern the sourcing of strategic, nonrenewable materials (such as the minerals in solar panels and other green products). With these goals, Usman says, we don’t have to live out the divided, dystopian future predicted by George Orwell and other such writers long before.

Tapping into the power of theater and its ability to turn pressing issues into human stories that spark hope, theater director and playwright Amir Nizar Zuabi shares the journey of Little Amal — a 10-year-old refugee girl (who is actually a 13-foot puppet) that went on an epic, 5,000-mile migration across eight countries in a globe-trotting art piece called “The Walk.” She embodied the broken global refugee system that has left so many people vulnerable and displaced. Inspired by the impact Little Amal had on the communities she passed through, Zuabi unveils for the first time his next piece: “The Herds,” a massive migration of animal puppets that will start in West Africa and end in Norway, set to begin their travels in 2025. Evolving as they move, the herds will take on new species native to each country they encounter, raising awareness about climate change and the threat it poses to animals and humans alike in a devastating, powerful and beautiful way.

Sims Witherspoon wants to use artificial intelligence to tackle climate change. When building a sustainable future, she believes AI can help us better understand the impact of climate change on Earth’s ecosystems, accelerate the breakthrough science we need to create a carbon-free energy supply and speed up the transition to renewable energy sources. Witherspoon explains how she and her team recently partnered with Google to develop an AI that accurately predicts wind availability on one of Google’s wind farms. They trained a neural net on weather forecasts and Google’s historical turbine data and then deployed it on the wind farm to test its accuracy. Their AI ultimately performed 20 percent better than Google’s existing system, and Google has since decided to scale the technology — a win for the company and the planet.

Fifteen years ago, Uruguay was experiencing an energy crisis; today, the tiny nation produces 98 percent of its electricity from renewable sources — and even exports extra energy to countries like Argentina and Brazil. Former particle physicist Ramón Méndez Galain charted the country’s transition to renewables as head of the country’s National Energy Agency. He shares how they achieved energy stability with widespread political support by shifting away from fossil fuels toward clean energy sources like wind, solar and sustainable biomass made from rice hulls, bagasse and pulp. Uruguay also developed technologies to predict the availability of intermittent sources, like wind and solar, to determine which energy sources to rely on and when. Although the transition required massive effort, coordination and innovation, the country can now depend on a stable, sustainable and, yes, profitable energy sector.

Singer-songwriter Mike Posner performs two hit songs, “I Took a Pill in Ibiza” and “Could You Do the Same,” and delivers an inspiring talk about how he walked nearly 3,000 miles across the United States. A lot happened along the way, he says — including a life-threatening rattlesnake bite — but the journey left him with five crucial life lessons and a sense of deep, true happiness.

Community: Notes from Session 6 of TED Countdown Summit 2023

From innovative technologies upgrading our buildings to age-old Aboriginal wisdom on fire management and more, the five speakers of Session 6 of TED Countdown Summit 2023 offered transformative insights on how we can redefine our relationships to both our stuff and the world, with a focus on sustainability and resilience.

The event: Talks from Session 6 of TED Countdown Summit 2023, hosted by TED’s Logan McClure Davda and Lindsay Levin

When and where: Friday, July 14, 2023, at the Fillmore Detroit in Detroit, Michigan

Speakers: Josephine Philips, Aruna Rangachar Pohl, Oral McGuire, Donnel Baird, Gopal D. Patel

The fashion industry emits more carbon than travel from all airlines worldwide, combined. And all those clothes we toss in the charity box to make room for new ones? Many end up in landfills in Ghana or buried in a pile in the Atacama Desert so big astronauts can see it from space. To make fashion more sustainable, Josephine Philips says we need to buy less and value more the clothes we already own. When a shirt is torn, we should repair it, not toss it. Before giving away that old sweater, we should recall every experience we’ve had while wearing it, plus the time, labor and resources that went into making it — from the field that grew its cotton to the hands that stitched it together. When we value things correctly, she reminds us, we’re less wasteful, which reduces our negative impact on the planet.

Sustainable development leader Aruna Rangachar Pohl takes us on the long journey of one of India’s most beloved snacks: biscuits — revealing how the production of these treats and other highly processed goods that rely on industrial farming are hurting the planet and our health. Armed with a vision to rejuvenate productive landscapes in India equitably and sustainably, Rangachar Pohl established the India Foundation for Humanistic Development, and she shares stories of small-scale farmers in their incubator who are joining forces, acting as shareholders and purchasing resources in bulk together. Training farmers to adopt natural practices and calculate their carbon sequestration with a focus on revenue, Rangachar Pohl shows how green production really pays off. By creating a climate-resilient agricultural sector where people’s rights are protected, farming can mean a greener, tastier and healthier future for everyone.

“I acknowledge fire as a friend, as a part of my being and my spirit,” says Oral McGuire, a fire practitioner and member of the Mangarda Balladong Nyungar First Nations in southwestern Australia. A professional firefighter for 18 years, McGuire acknowledges the threat uncontrolled fire can pose to our natural environment. Connecting Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities and practices, he shares the importance of applying the right kind of fire in a sacred practice known as “kaarl-ngariny,” to maintain the health and balance of the land. By protecting and preserving nature through proper fire management, McGuire says can heal the spirit of the land and promote biodiversity at the same time.

Powering the United States’s 125 million buildings accounts for 30 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. To make matters worse, older ovens, furnaces and hot water heaters have been found to leak benzene, methane and nitrogen dioxide into homes, threatening the health of those inside. Energy upgrader Donnel Baird aims to solve this problem by moving buildings off of fossil fuels and onto renewably sourced electric power. His company BlocPower has trained thousands of people to install tech like solar panels, electric induction ovens and heat pumps. The company also works with financing to plan electrification costs into a home’s mortgage in an effort to make it more affordable, and with data accessibility so homeowners can understand the electrification plan they need.

To tackle the climate crisis, we’ll need to keep building resiliency and momentum. Gopal D. Patel is here with some good news: there’s already a time-tested, millennia-old framework to do just that. As cochair of the United Nations Multi-faith Advisory Council, Patel mobilizes faith communities for environmental advocacy and action around the world. He explains how the ideas and wisdom of faith traditions can apply to the climate movement, namely in three areas: nourishing and uplifting community; finding rituals and tradition that give a sense of belonging; and working with purposeful action. You don’t have to be religious to take advantage of these learnings, Patel says: they’re guides for anyone looking to advance climate action with a sense of renewed purpose and intention.

Renewal: Notes from Session 5 of TED Countdown Summit 2023

For Session 5 of TED Countdown Summit 2023, seven speakers underscored the urgency for collective action, highlighting the growing frequency and severity of extreme weather events; insights on the electric vehicle revolution; the interconnectedness of deforestation, pandemics and climate change; the crucial role of leadership in climate justice and more.

The event: Talks from Session 5 of TED Countdown Summit 2023, hosted by TED’s Logan McClure Davda and journalist Orlando P. Bailey

When and where: Thursday, July 13, 2023, at the Fillmore Detroit in Detroit, Michigan

Speakers: Al Roker, Cynthia Williams, Neil Vora, Ludmila Rattis, Louise Mabulo, David Lammy, Justin J. Pearson

Music: Multidisciplinary artist, musician, creative producer and Flint, Michigan native Tunde Olaniran explores themes of identity, injustice and empowerment across the worlds of music, dance, film, literature and performance art. Joined on the TED Countdown stage by four incredible dancers, Olaniran smolders through a set of songs powered by experimental electronic beats.

Al Roker is known as “America’s weatherman,” and he’s been in the weather business for a long time, reporting live from some of recent history’s worst storms and natural disasters. All this has made one thing abundantly clear to him: extreme weather is increasing in frequency and severity, and the consequences will be devastating. Offering a comprehensive overview of the knock-on effects of extreme weather, Roker encourages all of us to take small collective actions and unite in our efforts to address climate change in order to create a more sustainable, hopeful future for all.

Cynthia Williams‘s family has long worked in the auto industry — her grandfather started with General Motors during the 1940s boom, followed by her father a generation later along with nearly all her uncles. They witnessed a total transformation in the era of transportation, and today, as a sustainability executive for Ford, Williams is seeing another: the electric vehicle revolution. She explains how the car industry is already advancing towards a sustainable future by building new carbon-neutral manufacturing plants and training hundreds of thousands of workers. They’re also investing in supportive infrastructure (making sure EV charging stations are as plentiful and convenient as gas stations) and developing products that consumers want. Electric vehicles are sustainable, says Williams; they should be desirable, too.

The first rule of physicians is to do no harm — and that extends to trees, says actor and activist Rainn Wilson as he introduces Neil Vora, who leads pandemic prevention at Conservation International. Having worked at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for more than a decade previously, Vora shares his unique journey of transitioning from treating patients to protecting forests and the species in them. Highlighting the importance of preventing pandemics (not just reacting to them), Vora exposes three crucial ways deforestation impacts human health: (1) Animals living alongside humans are more likely to carry germs that can infect us; (2) When people move into deforested areas, there is more exposure to new viruses; (3) And animals are more likely to spread illness when their homes are threatened. “We have solutions to address deforestation. And if we implement them wisely, we can prevent outbreaks and mitigate climate change,” Vora says.

Ecologist Ludmila Rattis reveals the surprisingly fruitful benefits of letting nature take care of business, sharing how the digestive habits of tapirs in Amazonia spread seeds throughout the region, regenerating the forest. As tapirs walk, they eat fruit, slowly digest them and then poop, transporting the fruit seeds to new land. In a single tapir dropping, Rattis’s lab found an average of 733 seeds belonging to up to 24 different species. Creatures like dung beetles help reduce the competition in this concentrated pile of life — spreading the seeds as they roll, tunnel and bury the poop — and show how the somewhat undignified parts of nature are intertwined with our planet’s future more than we realize.

Louise Mabulo grew up on seemingly strange advice from her parents and grandparents about planting toward a full moon or burying a rock under root crops for a better yield. While others tended to regard her family’s beliefs as superstitious, Mabulo has since discovered the profound wisdom in them. She works in restorative agroforestry, and through her initiative, The Cacao Project, which works to build sustainable and climate-resilient livelihoods for farmers, she’s seen even the most bizarre stories proven true. Crops planted during a full moon do bear more fruit; root crops do thrive when planted with rocks because rocks keep the soil loose enough for air pockets to form and encourage growth. Invisible knowledge, Mabulo says, might hold the key to helping us adapt our ecosystems to a changing climate. It also affirms our spiritual and cultural connection with nature and our place in it.

In a wide-ranging and inspirational interview, Tennessee state representative Justin J. Pearson and British MP David Lammy discuss the pressing issue of climate justice and the nuances of leadership within the movement. Pearson shares his journey in the movement that began with a fight against a pipeline project in Memphis, Tennessee, emphasizing the significance of empowering the most affected communities and acknowledging the interconnectedness of different social issues. Lammy explains the need for a collective focus on large-scale issues and the role of climate justice as a unifying objective that transcends identity politics. They collectively emphasize the necessity for unifying and authentic leadership — and the need to hold powerful nations accountable for environmental action.

Magnitude: Notes from Session 4 of TED Countdown Summit 2023

To rise to the challenge of climate change, we need big, bold, gigaton-scale solutions. Session 4 of TED Countdown Summit 2023 focused on the clean technologies that need to scale fast — and made space for ideas on radical climate leadership, the use of art for environmental activism and the push for climate-friendly alternatives to the world’s most-consumed foods.

The event: Talks from Session 4 of TED Countdown Summit 2023, hosted by TED’s Lindsay Levin and systems innovator Ryan Panchadsaram

When and where: Thursday, July 13, 2023, at the Fillmore Detroit in Detroit, Michigan

Speakers: Olivia Breese, Jim Snabe, John O’Donnell, Isabella Kirkland, Marcelo Mena, Jim Whitaker, Jessica Whitaker Allen, Tao Zhang

Energy innovator Olivia Breese imagines a “love story” between green electrons and water molecules, the result of which is a molecule that can store and release energy without emitting carbon dioxide — a flexible and vastly more sustainable alternative to fossil fuels. Similar to how wind energy has scaled up to become affordable and efficient, Breese calls for global investment in green molecule production. “A world which runs entirely on green energy, it’s not a luxury. It’s a necessity,” she says.

Throughout his career, Jim Snabe has helped lead companies working to accelerate decarbonization. Now, he’s also serving as Vision Council chair for the TED Future Forum (TFF), a new initiative focused on the role of business in advancing solutions to the climate crisis. He outlines TFF’s plans to be a catalyst and community for companies committed to stepping up with greater climate ambition, issuing an invitation for anyone interested in joining the massive, collaborative effort to transform the global economy. “If we want to avoid a climate disaster, we need much more radical leadership,” he says.

Electrified industrial heat is the next trillion-dollar market, but manufacturing needs constant heat, requiring a way to store energy when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. Engineer John O’Donnell offers a solution: his company, Rondo, produces heat batteries consisting of thousands of bricks stacked in a grid, heated with renewable energy. When heated, a brick can store as much energy as a lithium battery per pound, but costs less and lasts longer. O’Donnell proposes that this “boring” (his word) but effective system could scale fast, helping to green industrial processes worldwide.

Investigating humanity’s relationship to nature, artist Isabella Kirkland paints species that once lived along the Hudson River in her work “Palisades,” showcasing the profound beauty and rarity of the diverse life that once inhabited our planet — and advocating for the conservation of that which is still here. “I think of my paintings as alarm clocks,” she says. “They’re reminders of what’s at stake; the only problem is we keep pushing the snooze button.” Using art as both a poignant record of loss (like her painting “Gone,” which depicts extinct flowers, fish and snails) and discovery (like her painting “Canopy,” which shows mosses, insects and tiny orchids all new to Western science), Kirkland highlights the danger that wildlife trade poses to nature. Creation is her form of activism, and she uses it to celebrate and advocate for all living creatures that were, are and will be, inviting us all to do the same.

Deadly and polluting methane that forms in massive landfills in places like Ghazipur, India, or Santiago, Chile, often causes fires — and heatwaves are only making the issue worse. Reducing these emissions is the most efficient way to lower Earth’s temperature within our lifetime, says biochemical engineer Marcelo Mena. But time is running out and this harmful gas needs to be cut in half by 2050 in order to effectively combat global warming. Working in more than 10 cities, Mena’s team created the Waste MAP (Methane Assessment Platform), which uses satellite information to pinpoint pollution sources ranging from organic waste, food production and enteric fermentation (a fancy way to say cow farts). Mena also introduces the enteric fermentation R&D accelerator: an ambitious, 200-million-dollar research effort to reign in livestock emissions and point the way toward a cleaner, safer future for everyone.

Rice is the world’s most consumed food source — and it accounts for 10 percent of the world’s methane emissions. Jim Whitaker (a fifth-generation rice farmer) and his daughter Jessica Whitaker Allen (a builder of conservation solutions) are seeking to grow sustainability awareness within the agricultural communities where they live in southeast Arkansas. Together, they’ve defined farming protocols that could slash rice’s environmental impacts, cutting water use, methane production and the need for fertilizer. While her dad works literally on the ground to refine irrigation methods, Jessica (a waterfowl conservationist by day) pursues funding to spread green practices — and SmartRice, a sustainable grain hybrid — first to their neighbors and, eventually, to the rest of the world. While it’s not easy to convince struggling farmers to invest in new methods, Jim and Jessica make strong arguments that the best way to preserve a farm’s bottom line is to preserve its land for future generations.

A Chinese saying goes: “There is no pleasure in eating without meat.” Every year, China consumes 26 percent of the world’s meat, 43 percent of its pork and 45 percent of its seafood. But unlike other major meat-eating countries like the United States, China has yet to embrace more climate-friendly alternative proteins because, as Tao Zhang explains, consumers there regard mock meat as a cheap, unhealthy and flavorless substitute. Since the world can’t solve climate change without China, Zhang sees swaying Chinese eaters towards these new proteins as a climate-positive business opportunity. He discusses the potential impact of investing in food innovation in China, emphasizing why more research and development are needed to create, market and distribute tasty, affordable, regionally appropriate and meat-free proteins.

Dilemmas: Notes from Session 3 of TED Countdown Summit 2023

Session 3 of TED Countdown Summit 2023 tackled some of the knottier issues related to climate change — from the massive amount of money needed to finance the global green transition, to the struggle for energy access in developing nations and the ecosystem effects of fast fashion — and offered glimpses of the world-changing solutions already underway to lead us into a clean, prosperous future for all.

The event: Talks from Session 3 of TED Countdown Summit 2023, hosted by TED’s Lindsay Levin and David Biello

When and where: Wednesday, July 12, 2023, at the Fillmore Detroit in Detroit, Michigan

Speakers: Nili Gilbert, David Blood, Avinash Persaud, Tombo Banda, Steve Presley, Amy Powney, Payton M. Wilkins, Xiaojun “Tom” Wang

How much money is required to decarbonize the world? Sustainable investment experts Nili Gilbert and David Blood provide both macro and on-the-ground perspectives on the kinds of finance flowing to climate solutions. While some progress has been made, hard-to-abate sectors and the Global South are still being left out of solutions. The good news? There’s certainly enough capital; there are no legal barriers to allocating capital to sustainable solutions; there are amazing entrepreneurs and business people doing the work; and public policy is on the move (like the Inflation Reduction Act in the US). The key is to get money moving to the right places and, as Gilbert says, to see this moment for what it is: a massive, multigenerational opportunity for sustainable growth — greater in scale than the Industrial Revolution and on pace to transform the world in less than 30 years.

After Hurricane Maria decimated Dominica in 2017, the country declared its intention to become the first climate-resilient nation in the world. But as they sought to organize their response to future climate disasters, economist Avinash Persaud says, they quickly realized that the only real solution was to halt climate change entirely. For the developing world, the path to a greener, more sustainable future looks different than for wealthier countries. Developing nations can’t ban emissions, tax carbon or shift to renewables without hurting their growing economies and leaving large portions of their workforce unemployed. Persaud introduces the Bridgetown Initiative, a proposal to finance the green transformation of global systems, as a solution. Beginning with reducing barriers to private investment in green technologies in developing nations, the initiative also calls for more generous lending policies for resilience investments and a revenue stream created by taxing emissions from the shipping industry.

When electricity arrived in Zomba, Malawi in 1994, energy access innovator Tombo Banda says it brought her village significant changes to the health, comfort and happiness of its residents. But the reality is that 500 million people still lack access to electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa, relying on highly polluting materials like diesel and firewood. How do we get more people access to clean electrification quickly? Enter mini-grids, or localized renewable energy systems. By making the mini-grid business model more profitable, these systems can become more scalable — and enticing for private investors. Innovative approaches like using less expensive batteries and appliance financing to increase revenues can also accelerate electrification, Banda says, ultimately making electricity more accessible — and creating better lives for millions of people.

In conversation with TED’s Lindsay Levin, Nestlé North America CEO Steve Presley discusses how one of the world’s largest food companies aims to reach net zero by 2050. Their efforts include sourcing ingredients from regenerative farming, improving packaging to contain less plastic, powering manufacturing with renewable energy and offering financial incentives to local farmers who use sustainable practices. Presley shares where Nestlé has made progress and where it’s still investing for change, encouraging transformation at every step of the food production process.

Fashion designer Amy Powney designs for sustainability first, ensuring all aspects of the clothing made by Mother of Pearl, where she is creative director, are environmentally friendly and ethically produced. That ethos stands in contrast to the fast fashion garments that are often produced by underpaid workers with materials sourced from fossil fuels, endangered forests or plastics. She delves into the problems surrounding our pursuit of cheap clothing, from health and pollution to landfills that are visible from space, calling for everyone to reconsider the value of each item of clothing they own, its connection to the Earth and the lives touched by its creation.

Shutting down the fossil fuel industry means cleaner air and healthier citizens in the long term. But in the short term, it also means fewer jobs and shrinking livelihoods. While green jobs could, in time, supply a needed paycheck, the immediate impacts of closing a mine or refinery are devastating. We can protect both workers and the environment with an age-old solution: unions. As union leader and environmental justice advocate Payton Wilkins tells it, the multi-generational, multi-ethnic and multi-gender trade union movement could become a formidable force in the fight against climate change — and in places like Denmark, where unions spearhead the ascendance of clean energy, they already are. By showing workers that environmental justice and workplace equity are not mutually exclusive, Wilkins hopes to lead US unions to the front lines of the fight against climate change.

Xiaojun “Tom” Wang grew up in the Chinese province of Shanxi, the world’s largest coal producer. Each year, more than a billion tons of coal are dug out from underneath Shanxi’s mountains, helping heat and power at least 24 other provinces in China. Wang narrates the devastating impacts of coal mining — accidents in coal mines, massive landslides, damage to cultural sites — and calls for Beijing to ease the pressure on Shanxi’s coal industry. Shanxi needs support in breaking free from its coal addiction, he says, not only to transition to a clean economy, but also to protect its rich cultural heritage.

Lessons: Notes from Session 2 of TED Countdown Summit 2023

What lessons are already available to us as we tackle climate change? For Session 2 of TED Countdown Summit 2023, science, solutions and the role of industry in stemming the threat of the climate emergency took center stage.

The event: Talks from Session 2 of TED Countdown Summit 2023, hosted by TED’s Lindsay Levin and David Lammy, Member of Parliament for Tottenham, England and Shadow Foreign Secretary

When and where: Wednesday, July 12, 2023, at the Fillmore Detroit in Detroit, Michigan

Speakers: Jonathan Foley, Emma Nehrenheim, Cedrik Neike, Susan Lozier, Morten Bo Christiansen, Bo Cerup-Simonsen, Mike Duggan, Laprisha Berry Daniels

To solve climate change, the International Monetary Fund estimates that the global community needs to invest between three and six trillion dollars annually in climate solutions. Where should that money go and which projects should we fund? Jonathan Foley, executive director of Project Drawdown, uses a science-based framework to outline a plan for investing with maximum impact. First, we need to prioritize immediate actions with cumulative benefits, like stopping deforestation and cutting methane leaks. Next, we should focus our spending on cutting carbon emissions now over investing in distant high-tech solutions. Third, we must prioritize geographical hotspots with an outsized effect on climate change, like the Amazon rainforest or high-emission factories. And finally, we should invest in solutions that benefit people’s well-being, promote food security and increase access to clean water and sanitation.

Batteries will be fundamental to powering a sustainable world — but only if we don’t repeat the same mistakes of past industrialization, says battery recycler Emma Nehrenheim. She outlines the environmentally intensive impact of battery production — particularly from the extraction of minerals for lithium-ion batteries, which provide energy for electric vehicles and other key aspects of life — and proposes a shift towards a circular battery economy that uses and reuses already existing materials, vastly reducing the industry’s carbon footprint and need for mineral extraction.

We are running out of time to save our planet from climate change — and the metaverse can help. Using virtual tools like AI to cheat time in the real world, Cedrik Neike explains how “digital twin technology” (think simulated giga factories that are one-for-one digital copies of real ones) can help solve real-world problems more efficiently by providing a digital space to test solutions, without pollution. Using the example of virtually ideating the production of safer and faster-charging batteries and then bringing those learnings to the physical world, Neike points to the potential of industrial metaverses to revolutionize industries and redesign entire cities — from transportation, agriculture and housing — addressing massive challenges and avoiding the creation of excess waste at the same time.

Oceanographer Susan Lozier dives into the importance of the ocean’s natural circulation, which overturns water in a way that naturally captures carbon and regulates global temperatures. She shares the incredible research being done internationally to track changes in this overturn, as warming global temperatures could slow the circulation, lessen carbon uptake and increase the rate of climate-related disasters. While a collapse in this age-old system isn’t likely until 2100, Lozier warns of the dangers faced by future generations if we don’t change course now, calling for climate action to lower temperatures within the next 10 years.

As leader of the decarbonization team for A.P. Moller – Maersk, Morten Bo Christiansen is drawing an organizational roadmap to net zero that could help transform the global shipping industry. In conversation with TED’s Lindsay Levin, Christiansen shares his company’s ambitious goal to decarbonize their heavy-emitting business by 2040, highlighting how they’ve started implementing solutions like using green methanol as fuel in their container ships and deploying electric trucks in the US. He also points out the challenges in scaling green fuel production, price issues due to the high cost of green fuels and the need for collaborations across the value chain to manage these obstacles. Despite these challenges, Christiansen remains optimistic, making the case that the added cost to consumers for using green shipping methods is far outweighed by the urgently needed environmental benefits.

In conversation with TED’s Lindsay Levin, Bo Cerup-Simonsen, CEO of the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping, discusses the essential role of their center in orchestrating systemic, global collaboration to tackle large-scale environmental challenges. Discussing the center’s origins, purpose and the strides it’s made in technological, commercial and regulatory spaces, Cerup-Simonsen highlights the push towards green alternatives, like green methanol and ammonia, in global shipping. Through tangible initiatives like “green corridors,” which enable end-to-end zero-carbon shipping between selected ports, they’re fostering cross-industry collaboration to accelerate the green transition and sharing lessons learned in combating the uncertainty hindering decisive action from companies and nations.

Mike Duggan is serving his third term as mayor of Detroit, and he’s dead set on building the city’s climate responsiveness. His proposal is a unique one: to transform blighted, vacant lots into solar farms throughout the city. He describes how, with the buy-in of Detroiters themselves, he plans to start building these farms in different neighborhoods with the aim of powering all of Detroit’s municipal buildings and cleaning up dilapidated, vacant land from the city’s manufacturing past.

Like many cities, Detroit is already feeling the effects of climate change. In the past 10 years, two major floods have cost the city more than a billion dollars in damages. The challenge of climate change may be daunting, but human beings have moved from place to place and adapted to changes in climate (both environmental and social) throughout history. For inspiration, public health social worker Laprisha Berry Daniels mines the survival strategies her grandparents learned after leaving the Jim Crow South to settle in Detroit. The climate crisis may be unprecedented, but Daniels says we can still prepare for it by embracing the lessons of the past. First, we must accept the reality of climate change and prepare for it. Second, we should embrace the power of mutual aid. Lastly, we should empower communities to adapt through community-led planning.

Compass: Notes from Session 1 of TED Countdown Summit 2023

TED Countdown Summit 2023 kicked off in Detroit, Michigan, with a wide-ranging, solution-filled session of TED Talks and performances meant to inspire action on the world’s toughest challenge: climate change. Over the course of four days, the Summit seeks to change the conversation on climate change and tell a new, true story about how a bright, clean, just, environmentally bountiful world isn’t just possible — it’s already here.

The event: Talks from Session 1 of TED Countdown Summit 2023, hosted by TED’s Lindsay Levin and David Biello with journalist Orlando P. Bailey

When and where: Tuesday, July 11, 2023, at the Fillmore Detroit in Detroit, Michigan

Speakers: Simon Stiell, Julio Friedmann, Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, Changhua Wu, Paul Hawken, Anika Goss, Al Gore, Maxim Timchenko

Music: Detroit Youth Choir rocked the house with an energetic performance of “Hey Look Ma, I Made It” by Panic! At The Disco and “Believer” by Imagine Dragons, putting their creative skills and talents on full display.

Transformational climate action is closer than we think, says Simon Stiell, who leads the UNFCCC — the UN’s entity supporting the global response to climate change. Drawing a parallel to the meteoric growth of text messaging in the 1990s and 2000s, Stiell outlines why climate action is set up to transition from a linear to exponential pace — so long as each of us applies our particular skill sets to push the world towards its “green tipping points.” “If you act, the exponential change that is needed will happen,” he says.

How do we meet the energy needs of 10 billion people — sustainably and affordably? According to carbon removal expert Julio Friedmann, there are three key ingredients to cooking up a bright, clean future for everyone: infrastructure (think: transmission lines, roads and seaports) to make energy accessible; globally aligned (and actually affordable) innovation, like turning electricity into fuel; and more systemic, multi-tiered investment strategies on a global level. “Collective action, building together, is what makes the difficult possible and nourishes the soul through mission and purpose,” he says.

The Biden Administration has set the ambitious goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. But the US still gets 80 percent of its energy from fossil fuels. Inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s famous “moonshot” speech in 1962, the Biden Administration is now funding “Earthshots” to accelerate breakthroughs in abundant, affordable and reliable clean energy solutions. If the US is going to meet its climate goals, slashing emissions isn’t enough, says soil scientist and national science leader Asmeret Asefaw Berhe. That’s why her team at the Department of Energy is working to employ new technologies, inspired by organic carbon-capture, to sequester carbon from the atmosphere.

Policy analyst Changhua Wu says that today China is undergoing a green revolution. The country has accelerated electric vehicle adoption, increased usage of solar and other renewables (with the goal of producing one kilowatt of solar energy per capita by 2030) and is promoting a circular economy that recycles raw materials to enable sustainable growth. To avoid climate catastrophe, Wu says, the US should moderate its foreign policy and learn from China’s efforts to promote sustainability on a massive scale.

Activists are leading the charge into a sustainable future, but their work is never easy and rarely fully appreciated. After being invited to speak at TED Countdown Summit, environmental activist Hong Hoang (a winner of TED Idea Search: Southeast Asia 2022) was detained in her native Vietnam for her efforts to call global attention to Vietnam’s environmental abuses. Before a moment of silence in her honor, TED shared Hoang’s Idea Search submission video, where she emphasized the need her create climate activism in politically challenging contexts.

We pay plenty of attention to the role industry plays in the destruction of our ecosystems and in the emission of greenhouse gasses. But what about the role of industrial agriculture? According to environmentalist Paul Hawken, industrial agriculture (the “fossil food industry,” as he calls it) is the world’s biggest culprit in environmental degradation. Modern factory farms reduce the nutritional content of soil, encourage erosion, ooze toxic runoff and kill off microbial fungi that naturally sequester carbon. Hawken paints a picture of a transition to regenerative agriculture: farming that embraces ancient techniques to renew the soil and insure fertility for generations. He explains how it would create farms that soak up more water, nurture healthier crops and recreate habitats for indigenous species — restoring biodiversity and mitigating the worst impacts of climate change.

Climate change tests the social and economic fabric of cities like Detroit with rising temperatures that stretch power grids and “500-year” floods that leave mold and destruction in their wake. City visionary Anika Goss says financial stability is critical for Detroit’s survival in the face of the mounting climate crisis, and that the city must rebuild resilience in order to protect its citizens, who are overwhelmingly people of color already facing social inequity. By fostering entrepreneurship, restoring infrastructure and reviving abandoned urban spaces, she believes Detroit can overcome the unique challenges posed by the collapse of its manufacturing sector, creating thriving neighborhoods that embrace justice, sustainability and social connectivity.

Fossil fuel companies claim to be in favor of climate-friendly solutions, but do their efforts have any real impact? Nobel Laureate and climate advocate Al Gore returns to the TED Countdown stage to break down the data proving that the greed of fossil fuel executives has thwarted their attempts to support climate action. He reveals two obstacles to lowering global emissions — namely, how oil and gas companies deliberately slow down global efforts to move capital away from fossil fuels, and the ineffectiveness of carbon capture technology — and reminds everyone that “the will to act is itself a renewable resource.”

Ukrainian energy executive Maxim Timchenko shares how DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, has diversified the country’s power structures to survive Russian attacks, highlighting the resilience of renewable energy (such as wind turbines, which are a smaller, more difficult target for bombers). He outlines how they’ve expanded renewable energy production throughout the war with Russia, becoming a testing ground in the global fight against climate change and the future of energy independence.

TED is bringing its global climate conference, TED Countdown, to Detroit in summer 2023

TED Countdown, a global initiative committed to accelerating solutions to the climate crisis, announces that its second Summit will take place in Detroit, Michigan from July 11-14, 2023. The Summit will also host the inaugural gathering of the TED Future Forum, an initiative of TED Countdown, focused on the role of business in accelerating solutions to the climate crisis.

The 2023 TED Countdown Summit will convene 700 leaders from the science, activism, innovation, business, finance, policy and philanthropic sectors. Hosted at Michigan Central, a newly opened innovation hub addressing the most pressing challenges at the intersection of mobility and society, and the historic Fillmore Detroit, the Summit will include TED Talks that highlight real-world solutions at scale; Breakthrough Sessions designed to explore the tools and partnerships we need; and immersive offsite experiences with local innovators to see how the city at the heart of the American auto industry is building an inclusive, sustainable future.

The four-day event will include:

• Seven mainstage sessions, featuring 40+ TED Talks, interviews and performances
• Offsite “field” experiences, from visits to state-of-the-art EV and battery production lines and factories upcycling waste to meetings with leaders building the “black to green” economy, climate migrants settling in Michigan and policymakers working to change the regulatory landscape
• Breakthrough Sessions to scale collaboration, including working sessions on the transition to regenerative agriculture and how we fund climate adaptation as well as pitch sessions with entrepreneurs who are creating companies to solve the toughest climate problems

Featured themes and areas of focus to include:

• The state of science + progress: Where are we for the UN’s global stock take on climate progress, and how does this reframe our understanding and actions?
• Positive tipping points: Where are we making faster progress than we realize, and what are the most important breakthrough solutions to unlock now?
• Adaptive innovation: What will improve the resiliency of 3.8 billion people who face shocks in a 1.5-degree world?
• Bridging divides: How do we find unity in diversity and make progress despite our differences?

“Michigan Central is pleased to host Countdown and the TED Future Forum as we work to create a future that is more sustainable and equitable,” said Joshua Sirefman, CEO of Michigan Central. “Accelerating solutions to the climate crisis requires cultivating innovation that enables greater social, economic and physical mobility — the mission at the heart of Michigan Central’s work. Detroit is the perfect city to host these critical conversations and we are thrilled to welcome the world to the fully restored Book Depository Building.”

TED Countdown is collaborating with Detroit-based businesses, local leaders, arts organizations and the Office of the Mayor to both contribute to the Summit design and shape additional community activations. Speakers from Detroit will be prominently featured throughout the Summit program, and local organizations are partnering with TED to design experiences in the venues and throughout the city of Detroit. Existing partners include the Visit Detroit Bureau, Detroit Narrative Agency, Keep Growing Detroit, Real Times Media and Detroit Blight Busters.

“The last TED Countdown Summit was in Edinburgh, Scotland, and I’m thrilled the next one will be hosted in Detroit, Michigan,” said Carla Walker-Miller, CEO of Walker-Miller Energy Services. “Convening 700 global leaders here is an enormous opportunity to amplify amazing work across the city and foster mutual learning and sharing with a diverse audience.”

Since its launch in 2020 in partnership with Leaders’ Quest, TED Countdown has released more than 170 solutions-focused original videos and podcasts, including 140 climate TED Talks that have generated more than 230 million views, facilitated 1,000+ local climate events in 100+ countries and, with TED’s Audacious Project, generated more than $470M in philanthropic funding for climate solutions.

TED Future Forum

Convened by TED Countdown, The TED Future Forum is a community of companies committed to stepping up with greater climate ambition to help transform the global economy and create a healthy, prosperous future for all. The Forum will work with its founding companies to identify critical business-focused initiatives where we can accelerate progress. TED will then tell transformational stories of both successes and challenges at events and via TED platforms, with the goal of inspiring businesses across the economy to action.

TED Future Forum includes diverse industries with unique concerns — and all are seriously committed to the green transition for the long haul. The 13 Founding companies are: AB InBev, BCG, Bolt Threads, CEMEX, COFRA Holding, Ford, Google, Interface, Maersk, Mars, Nestlé, Ørsted and Siemens. We look forward to welcoming other companies into the Forum following the TED Countdown Summit in Detroit, Michigan, from July 11-14, 2023.

“We cannot tackle climate change without wholehearted engagement from business,” said Lindsay Levin, Countdown founding partner and head of partnerships + impact at TED. “The Future Forum is convening leaders who have the courage to change the way business operates — and to work across divides to do so.”

“I know from experience that transforming a company requires a combination of dreams and details. We need to dream big, before we have the answers, and then to work really hard on the details to figure it out,” said Jim Hagemman Snabe, TED Future Forum Vision Council chair, chairman of Siemens AG and vice chairman of Allianz SE. “TED Future Forum is about helping companies to find the courage and know-how to speed up their green transition because it makes good business sense — and it’s the right thing to do.”

“We’re thrilled to welcome Countdown and the TED Future Forum to Detroit, where Ford is working to build the future of manufacturing and to revolutionize the way people move and connect,” said Cynthia Williams, global director of sustainability, homologation and compliance at Ford Motor Company.  “People everywhere are looking to businesses like Ford for solutions and urgency in responding to climate change. We look forward to putting our minds and resources together — in what we believe will be a powerful collaboration — to help shape a future for transportation that’s more inclusive, equitable and sustainable.”

“Every day we’re seeing the increasing impacts of climate change throughout local and global communities, supply chains and food chains. A more sustainable, equitable future will require meaningful action today across the business sector to deliver on commitments made in the fight against climate change,” said Shaid Shah, president of Mars Food and Nutrition. “By partnering with TED as a founding member of the Future Forum and joining cross-industry leaders and peers, we’re scaling up our efforts — and calling on others — through collaboration and uncommon partnerships to recruit new allies in the critical fight for a more sustainable future.”

“Information is the foundation of our company. Our founders set us an ambitious, almost audacious mission: to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” said Kate Brandt, chief sustainability officer at Google. “The challenge of climate change requires ambition on a similar scale. In many ways, it’s at the heart of how we realize our mission in the years ahead. A sustainable future depends on the decisions individuals, organizations and governments make every day. We know that businesses need to move faster, together, so we’re thrilled to be a part of a burgeoning community of businesses focused on pooling innovation and knowledge to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis — and hopefully inspiring others to join us.”

“Collaboration is key to solving the urgent climate challenges the world is facing,” said Ezgi Barcenas, Chief Sustainability Officer at AB InBev. “AB InBev is thrilled to partner with TED Countdown and the TED Future Forum and its partner companies to work toward redesigning global value chains with cutting-edge innovation to create a future with more cheers.”

A subset of uniquely positioned TED Countdown partners are supporting the TED Future Forum initiative. Partners include the B Team, Environmental Defense Fund, Fundação Dom Cabral​, Generation Investment Management, Global Warming Mitigation Project, Kite Insights, Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping, Project Drawdown and Stand.Earth. A small cross-sector group of leaders provides guidance to the TED Future Forum as part of a Vision Council. This includes Jim Hagemann Snabe (Chair), Manish Bhardwaj, Habiba Ahut Daggash, Nili Gilbert, Rebecca Henderson, Wanjira Maathai, Roya Mahboob, Gonzalo Muñoz, Kim Stanley Robinson, Suzanne Simard and Nigel Topping.

Learn more about TED Countdown here, and learn more about the Detroit Summit here.

About TED

TED is on a mission to discover and spread ideas that spark imagination, embrace possibility and catalyze impact. Our organization is devoted to curiosity, reason, wonder and the pursuit of knowledge — without an agenda. We welcome people from every discipline and culture who seek a deeper understanding of the world and engagement with others, and we invite everyone to engage with ideas and activate them in your community.

TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged. Today it spans a multitude of worldwide communities and initiatives exploring everything from science and business to education, arts and global issues. Aside from the hundreds of TED Talks curated from our annual conferences and published on TED.com, we produce original podcasts, short video series, animated TED-Ed lessons and TV programs that are translated into more than 100 languages and distributed via partnerships around the world. Each year, more than 3,000 independently run TEDx events bring people together to share ideas and bridge divides in communities on every continent. Through the Audacious Project, TED has helped catalyze nearly $3 billion in funding for projects that seek to make the world more beautiful, sustainable and just. In 2020, TED launched Countdown, an initiative to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis and mobilize a movement for a net-zero emission future. View a full list of TED’s many programs and initiatives.

TED is owned by a nonprofit, nonpartisan foundation. Our aim is to help create a future worth pursuing for all. 

Follow TED on: LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook

About Michigan Central

Michigan Central is a hub for advancing new technologies and programs that address barriers to greater social, economic and physical mobility. Catalyzed by funding from Ford Motor Company, Michigan Central is both an open platform and a call-to-action — for city, regional and international inventors and investors, academics and entrepreneurs, civil society voices and government leaders and business owners and corporate partners — to advance a more sustainable, equitable future through a community-based approach to mobility solutions. Building on Detroit’s rich history as an engine of change, the transformative Michigan Central project aims to strengthen the city’s existing fabric of community and electrify its economy while inspiring collective action on the most pressing challenges at the intersection of mobility and society worldwide.

Contact 

Allison Bartella | press@ted.com 

In the Green: Visions of a sustainable future from TED Countdown and the Climate Pledge

What does it actually take to run a sustainable business?

Hear from trail-blazing business leaders on how they’re transforming their industries by committing to a net zero future. In the Green: The Business of Climate Action is a TED series presented by TED Countdown and The Climate Pledge where leaders share hard-won wisdom from companies addressing humanity’s most urgent mission: fighting climate change.

When it launched back in February, In the Green explored decarbonizing buildings, reducing the environmental impact of electronics and what nature can teach us about sustainable business. Back with new experts, the three latest episodes of the series explore industry-transforming solutions that tackle the wastefulness of standard freight truck logistics, the partnerships global businesses need to run on 100-percent renewable energy and a lightweight transportation alternative to cars.

Can we reduce the emissions of millions of freight trucks?

What are the steps to running a global business on 100-percent renewable energy?

What does it take to get more people to drive less?

Climate challenges and solutions: The talks from the TED Countdown London Session 2022

Countdown, TED’s climate action initiative founded in partnership with Leaders’ Quest, launched three years ago with a focus on accelerating solutions to climate change. The goal: to build a better future by cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 in the race to a zero-carbon world — a world that’s safer, cleaner and fairer for everyone.

Countdown set off to London to tackle the many challenges of confronting climate change — but also to present the many solutions. Nine speakers (and two performers) took us inside their innovative work, from the power of socially engaged art and the importance of centering Indigenous expertise to the latest on direct air capture technology and the potential of establishing a multi-billion-dollar carbon removal industry.

The event: Talks from TED Countdown London Session 2022, hosted by TED’s Bruno Giussani and Logan McClure Davda

When and where: Monday, October 3, 2022, at the Barbican Centre in London

Speakers: Xavier Cortada, Jade Begay, Colin Averill, George Monbiot, Huma Yusuf, Heidi Sørensen, Ksenia Petrichenko, Jan Wurzbacher, Stacy Kauk

Music: From artists MyVerse and Kristen Warren, who perform their original song “Mother’s Mind” — a rousing message told from the perspective of Mother Earth.

The talks in brief:

Xavier Cortada, eco-artist

Big idea: Art can help people engage with the future consequences of climate change.

How? It took a voyage to Antarctica for artist Xavier Cortada to appreciate just how dire the situation was in his home city of Miami. When he returned home, he founded the Underwater Homeowners Association: an art project designed to get his fellow Miamians to think about where all that melting Antarctic ice is going to end up. Using Cortada’s “ice paintings” as a backdrop, participants created signs displaying their homes’ height above sea level. These weren’t political signs — they were simple elevation markers — yet their unsettling message quickly excited controversy. Many realtors and homeowners were terrified the signs would affect property values. Even when the city reconsidered its support for the project, the Underwater HOA continued to meet and strategize. Cortada’s work provides a blueprint for how socially engaged art can generate a sense of collective responsibility and agency.

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Jade Begay, Indigenous rights expert

Big idea: Our obsession with carbon footprints isn’t getting us any closer to net zero emissions. Climate work should focus on people and communities, not carbon.

Why? Jade Begay works with the people affected “first and worst” by the climate crisis: Indigenous communities from the Arctic to the Amazon. And these communities tell her that the carbon markets aren’t working to reduce the devastating impacts of climate change. Begay wants to better align the climate solutions designed in corporate buildings and government halls with the needs of those on the frontlines. She offers two starting points. First, we must understand how climate change impacts Indigenous peoples’ lives and identities and conduct surveys to fill in gaps in our understanding. Second, we should allow Indigenous expertise to guide our climate actions in a way that builds trust and centers native voices without co-opting their knowledge.

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Colin Averill, forest microbiologist

Big idea: If we want to understand the environment, we should be looking deeper underground. 

How? Most trees have a symbiotic partnership with what’s known as mycorrhizal fungi — microscopic networks that help plants access soil resources with their roots. If we knew which of these fungi were most beneficial to forest health, explains Colin Averill, we could reintroduce the necessary microorganisms into forest soil, enhancing tree growth and helping fight climate change. Averill has been studying soil microorganisms for years, using DNA sequencing to understand what lives in the soil of various forests and how that life relates to forest health, particularly tree growth rate and carbon capture. After identifying which fungi are most likely to enhance these metrics, his team started a randomized controlled field trial in Wales, with 27 acres of newly planted trees. Since planting in spring 2021, they’ve found that adding a small handful of soil that’s rich with high-performing fungal communities upon seeding has helped to accelerate tree growth and carbon capture aboveground by 30 to 70 percent, depending on the tree species. These results are early, but the data suggests that there’s potential to increase yields and carbon capture in managed timber forestry systems, as well as food agriculture systems. By rewilding the soil with its natural fungal biodiversity, we could improve our management of the land and, in the process, help fight climate change.

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George Monbiot, journalist

Big idea: By ending our dependence on traditional (and destructive) farming practices, we can solve two of our great existential problems: mass extinction and the risk of global food collapse.

How? Can we find a way to feed ourselves that won’t destroy the planet? Environmental writer George Monbiot says we can, but we’ll have to radically reimagine food production. Currently, crops and pasture for farmed animals occupy 38 percent of the planet’s land — in contrast, all of our homes, businesses and infrastructure occupy just one percent. This makes farming the single greatest cause of habitat destruction, wildlife loss and extinction. Our global food system isn’t just bad for the planet, Monbiot says — it’s also vulnerable to collapse. Four corporations control 90 percent of the global grain trade, by one estimate, and much food trade passes through vulnerable chokepoints like the Suez and Panama Canals. The good news is there are solutions: developing technologies that can improve our food system’s resilience and reduce environmental impact. One of the most promising, according to Monbiot, is a technique called precision fermentation: a refined form of brewing that can produce protein-rich foods using a tiny fraction of the land, water and fertilizer required to raise either crops or animals.

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Huma Yusuf, columnist

Big idea: Pakistan is drowning in the wake of catastrophic, biblical flooding. We need a new era of climate diplomacy and a new recognition that we, as a global society, are in this together.

How? One-third of Huma Yusuf’s native Pakistan is currently underwater due to climate injustice: an exceptional monsoon coupled with flash-flooding due to the accelerated melting of Himalayan glaciers has led to vast devastation. To put it in perspective, the area that’s now underwater is larger than the entirety of Britain. Three million people have been stripped of homes and livelihoods. Hundreds have died, and survivors are dying from disease. What does the future hold? Food insecurity, famine, climate migration and conflict, says Yusuf. Pakistan needs billions in relief funds, and G20 countries (responsible for 80 percent of global greenhouse emissions, compared to Pakistan’s less-than-one-percent contribution) that have profited from fossil fuel development should be the ones to foot the bill when climate disaster strikes climate-vulnerable countries. “Let’s be clear: developing countries are not asking for charity,” says Yusuf. “Having polluted only marginally, they are climate creditors, and that credit is now due.” To move in the direction of justice, an expanded definition of reparations is the only logical, albeit politically complicated, way forward. But in order to truly make headway, the global south must acknowledge its own shortcomings and struggles with poor governance, inadequate planning, corruption and lack of infrastructure and accountability. Together is the only way to make progress, and it will take countries rising to the occasion to achieve true climate justice. ”Are we ready for a new social contract within countries and between countries?” Yusuf asks.

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Heidi Sørensen, climate bureaucrat

Big idea: Confronting climate change is about creating better cities for everyone.

How? Picture a construction site, except without the noise pollution because the machinery and the trucks are all electric. That’s what a climate-conscious worksite sounds like in Oslo, Norway. With the goal of removing 95 percent of carbon emissions by 2030, Heidi Sørensen is spearheading Oslo’s green future, making sure the necessary infrastructure and policies are in place. From a carbon-capturing facility set to launch in 2026 to electric transport, Sørensen details the measures taken so far and shares five lessons to becoming an emissions-free city. First, climate measures upgrade quality of life for everyone. Second, set ambitious goals. Third, keep all stakeholders accountable. Fourth, never underestimate what you can change as a demanding customer — the market is adaptable. And last, incentivize green mobility. Sørensen invites all cities to join Oslo in creating a future of cleaner, better cities.

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Ksenia Petrichenko, energy efficiency policy analyst

Big idea: Buildings are responsible for more than one-third of global carbon dioxide emissions, but we can transform how buildings consume energy to reduce their high environmental impact.

How? Ksenia Petrichenko has a three-tiered strategy for reducing direct emissions from the buildings where we live and work. First, she says we need to improve our buildings’ energy efficiency through better insulation, more efficient windows and appliances that require less energy for heating, cooling, cooking and lighting. Second, we need a massive shift towards electricity. And, third, of course that electricity needs to be clean, powered by wind, solar and other low-carbon energy sources. Petrichenko envisions a future where energy resources aren’t concentrated around a single power plant, and where buildings have roof-top solar panels or wind turbines that help produce some of the energy they consume. We have the technology to create smarter grids, implement peer-to-peer electricity sharing and start improving buildings’ efficiency, she says. Next up? “We need the policies, the investments, the will and a new way to look at buildings not as passive energy users but as active players in the energy system,” she says.

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Jan Wurzbacher, carbon removals entrepreneur

Big idea: The carbon removal industry is still in its infancy, but think of early smartphones — technology that started out clunky, inefficient and expensive ultimately became sleek, affordable and ubiquitous, changing everything. Jan Wurzbacher thinks nascent carbon capture technologies could be on that same trajectory.

How? While it still needs to scale by many orders of magnitude in order to make a significant impact, carbon capture plants like Orca in Iceland, built by Jan Wurzbacher’s company Climeworks, will become a crucial part of our carbon reduction toolkit. The technology is relatively easy to understand — suck in a bunch of air, filter the carbon out, store it (for now, mostly in rocks underground) and then put the carbon-free air back into the atmosphere. This is expensive, and there are other obstacles to scaling and implementation. CO2 is present in low concentration in the air — one CO2 molecule out of every 2,500 in the atmosphere. And materials used to absorb carbon are also tough to find, and they need to last a long time. Nature offers us some solutions — forests and oceans — but it needs help, and there isn’t enough area to plant entire continents of forests. Carbon removal technology is a “must-have” tool to scrub carbon from our atmosphere.

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Stacy Kauk, innovation accelerator

Big idea: We need to make carbon removal a multi-billion-dollar industry.

How? How much money does removing carbon from the atmosphere actually cost, and how do we create a profitable carbon removal market? As the lead for sustainability at Shopify, Stacy Kauk wanted to not simply pay “carbon credits” that force someone to pollute less to mitigate the mess someone else already created. In addition to cutting emissions, we must also take carbon out of the atmosphere. But creating a global carbon removal industry is incredibly expensive. Borrowing an idea created by the vaccine industry, Shopify (in partnership with Meta, Alphabet, Stripe and McKinsey) have created Frontier — a $925 million Advanced Market Commitment (AMC) to grow future carbon markets through purchase guarantees. This approach faces obstacles: clean power currently doesn’t exist at the scale to accompany carbon removal; there hasn’t been much deployment at this stage of carbon removal technology; and existing manufacturing facilities for the technology can’t keep pace with the scale the market requires. Nonetheless, Frontier is an important first step to making carbon removal a future multi-billion-dollar industry.

How a letter by Pope Francis became a movement, a TED Talk and now a film

In October 2020, for the launch of TED’s climate initiative, Countdown, HH Pope Francis gave a TED Talk (his second) on the moral imperative to act on climate change. It was inspired by his encyclical letter (book) Laudato si’, “On caring for our common home.”

An excerpt from that TED Talk is now featured in a new documentary film centered on the Pope’s message.

First published in 2015, Laudato si’ became a rare papal encyclical that permeated mainstream discourse. It hit a nerve and became a global sensation, widely commented on (and criticized).

It also gave rise to the Laudato si’ Movement, which has now brought together a stellar production team (whose previous works include the global hit My Octopus Teacher) to make the new film called The Letter – A message for our Earth. (See the trailer). It is supported by YouTube Originals, where it will premiere on October 4 at 9am US Pacific time and 6pm Central European time.

We have asked Tomás Insua, the executive director of the Laudato si’ Movement and executive producer of the film, to tell us about it.

Why turn Pope Francis’ encyclical letter Laudato si’ into a movie?

Pope Francis wrote Laudato si’ not only for Catholics but, as he says, “to all men and women of good will.” Indeed, this letter’s message comes from a deep reflection, listening to his predecessors, leaders from other denominations, and numerous scientists, philosophers, theologians and civic groups. Since not everyone is able to read a full, dense book, we decided to tell the Laudato si’ story in a different way, to spread the immensity and urgency of the challenge we face.

The film doesn’t follow the structure of the book: it rather tries to bring its essence into a dialogue between Pope Francis and voices from the world.

This idea of dialogue is central to Pope Francis’s letter, in which he says he wants to “enter a dialogue with all people about the future of our common home.” He’s so humble and willing to listen – which is in marked contrast with many of the world’s most powerful people, who continue to lead us closer to planetary collapse and are not interested in listening.

Sadly, even many who are committed to environmental solutions often don’t listen, and true dialogue with people of different perspectives is astonishingly rare. Supporting dialogue between Pope Francis and the communities that often go unheard seemed like a good way to reflect the world the Pope is calling for.

Who are those voices and how did you pick them?

The voices that are present in the dialogue documented in the film come from communities of the Indigenous, poverty, youth and science.

Cacique Odair “Dadá” Borari comes from the Borari people in Brazil’s Amazon region, where he has led groundbreaking work on environmental defense in a very dangerous place.

Arouna Kandé comes from Saint Louis in Senegal, a city he was forced to move to as a climate refugee. He now studies sustainability in order to bring new solutions to his village.

Ridhima Pandey comes from Haridwar in India, where she has led youth movements for the climate since the age of nine. Now 14 years old, she is in school and continues her leadership.

Scientists Greg Asner and Robin Martin come from Hawai’i in the United States, where they have developed an innovative technique to map underwater heat waves that kill coral reefs.

No one person is completely representative of millions of other people. But by listening to these frontline champions describe their experiences, we hope that viewers will have some sense of the world beyond them.

That gives an interactive angle to the project.

Yes, through the film’s website we also ask viewers to respond, access more information, and support the people in the film.

The five participants traveled to Rome, and then to Assisi. What happened there?

None of the people described above is traditional Catholic. And they hadn’t met before the trip. Before speaking with Pope Francis, they sat down for several days of conversation and broke bread together. During the meeting with the Pope, there was lots of laughter and even a few tears. The group then traveled to Assisi to reflect on their experiences. Tragically, while they were there one of them received devastating news about an event related to the planetary crisis that had taken place in his home territory at that very moment. In the film, we see him receive the news and how the others rallied to support him. They truly became friends. They are aware of each other’s stories, and they trust each other. They continue talking and supporting each other to this day. That kind of empathy and closeness is so important for everyone who is working on climate.

What learnings do you think they brought home from the experience chronicled in the film?

Probably one of the biggest learnings is that they have more power than they knew. All of these leaders developed incredible initiatives in their home regions long before traveling to the Vatican. But they left that meeting with Pope Francis with an even greater sense of how much they matter. They are people who are protecting this planet on behalf of all humanity. Pope Francis spent more time with them than he usually spends with heads of state and visiting dignitaries. After the meeting, which was reported by the media in his region, Cacique Dadá, the Borari leader who has been a powerfully effective land defender in a very dangerous place, said: “They will think twice before trying to kill me now.”

Tell us about the title, The Letter.

Pope Francis’ encyclical letter Laudato si’ is addressed to “every person living on this planet.” It is meant for all of us. In the film, the Vatican invites these grassroots champions through letters sent to them. We see the letters traveling along rural roads across the world. We see the letters arriving in the hands of these people whom we will come to know so well through the film. The letters connect them, and they connect us as viewers in a wider dialogue. We are called to respond to this letter.

What do you expect viewers to take away from the film?

Let me answer by quoting two very important things Pope Francis says in Laudato si’. The first is that everything is connected. What I do is based on how I value the people who will be affected by my actions. Nothing is in isolation. The second is that “we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.” This realization that the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor are one and the same is transformative.

Who filmed and produced the movie?

The film was produced by the Laudato si’ Movement, along with an Oscar- and BAFTA-winning team at Off the Fence (which has produced many great documentaries, including the global hit My Octopus Teacher). It is presented by YouTube Originals.

Tell us about the Laudato si’ Movement.

The mission of the Laudato si’ Movement is to inspire and mobilize the Catholic community to care for our common home and achieve climate and ecological justice. Like Pope Francis, we are truly worried about the state of the climate. We do believe in the power of the Laudato si’ message and believe that showing it through a movie is a great way to inspire people.

You started this project before the pandemic and had to suspend it during it. What impact did that have on the final story?

The pandemic was definitely a big challenge. Every place we worked in was very vulnerable to the virus, as we worked in places that were either isolated or had very limited healthcare services. Our production partners at Off the Fence could not in good conscience send camerapeople and staff to those locations. Instead, we sent cameras in. Over messages and video calls, we trained the local people in the use of cameras, and we gave them salaries. These constraints forced us to be creative, to go beyond what frankly had been our own limited ways of thinking. We developed much deeper and more real relationships that ultimately flowered in the film and beyond.

Has Pope Francis seen the film?

Pope Francis is a humble person. He makes it a practice to never watch films about himself.

Why TED Countdown is staging climate “Dilemma” discussions

In June 2022, TED’s climate initiative, Countdown, convened in New York for its first Dilemma Series event, titled “Is there a role for carbon credits in accelerating a fair, net-zero world?”

Carbon credits are a very controversial topic, one that elicits decidedly contrasting reactions. One hundred people gathered over 36 hours of deep conversations and hands-on workshops to confront those positions and bridge divides in a constructive manner.

The Countdown team is now preparing to stage its second Dilemma Series gathering, in London this October, around the even thornier question: “What is the role of fossil fuels between now and 2050?” We asked Lindsay Levin and Bruno Giussani, two of the cofounders of TED Countdown, why they and their team decided to create this new discussion format.

What is the Dilemma Series?

It’s a string of carefully curated events designed to look at some of the “knots” in the climate change space, where diverging positions have solidified into an inability to dialogue and seek how to undo them. Climate change is the most pressing issue facing our planet. It is also prismatically complex, and exploring ways to unlock stalled progress is vital to ensuring a safe and just future for all.

Why “dilemma”?

Most of us intuitively think of problems in terms of “choices”: situations where we weigh alternatives and decide the way forward. But as our colleague Bill Sharpe would say, complex situations often need both-and thinking instead of either-or thinking. They require us to hold competing values together rather than make straightforward choices. That’s what a dilemma is about.

Give us an example.

Think of a company. There is an inherent tension, and sometimes a direct opposition, between short-term profits and long-term investments. But both are necessary.

Or consider energy. The same kind of tension exists between the foremost necessity to extricate ourselves from fossil fuels and decarbonize the economy – without which our future will be endangered – and the equally paramount necessity of a stable and secure supply of energy, without which our present will be endangered. This is the nature of a dilemma: if one idea prevails to the exclusion of the other, we will not succeed. As said, we can’t confront these issues as straightforward either-or choices.

What is the format of the Dilemma discussions?

When we are talking about highly charged topics like fossil fuels or carbon credits, positions can become as extreme and inflexible as “what you say is BS.” These may be, in some cases, legitimate positions, but it’s difficult to see how they can be conducive to progress. Thus, the key elements of the design of a Countdown Dilemma discussion are a broad and carefully balanced representation among participants, their willingness to engage in deep listening and collaboration, and a shared agenda of finding bridges so that we can make progress despite the differences.

Sessions last 36 hours and feature some TED Talk-like moments and on-stage conversations that set the scene and offer a 360-degree view of the topic. This may include speakers with polar opposite positions. Most of the work, though, happens in small-group, participant-led workshops and brainstorms designed to explore the problem and potential solutions. Significant time is also given to “white space” moments, where people give feedback, offer a counterargument, contribute new information or data, or share feelings and emotions.

The Dilemma Series events are invitation-only, and although they are filmed, they aren’t publicly livestreamed in order to create a safe space for everyone to be able to share deeply. Those who participated in the first gathering in New York by and large told us that they found this approach transformative and an antidote to the polarization of the current climate discussions.

Who is invited to the Dilemma discussions and why?

We seek to bring together people from all sectors who have relevant knowledge, expertise and backgrounds, from business and civil society to technology and climate justice. Participants include scientists, CEOs, activists, experts, politicians, artists, frontline communities, investors and more, and come from a variety of geographies and age groups. Given that our goal is to turn differences into productive ways of working together, we can’t succeed unless we bring about an elevated awareness of different perspectives.

Why are representatives from fossil fuel companies included and being given a platform?

We reject the binary logic of “giving a platform/deplatforming.” Inviting someone to a conversation where hard questions are asked is not akin to giving them an open microphone. Extending an invitation to representatives of fossil fuel companies or banks that invest in energy does not represent an endorsement of them or their activities.

However, we live in a world where our energy system is still more than 80 percent dependent on fossil fuels. We need to rapidly transition away from that, and it’s going to be very difficult because it means we must confront the dilemma we described earlier. Imagining that we can make real progress and generate system-wide solutions by talking in separate, exclusionary circles creates echo chambers and is unlikely to generate forward movement. We recognize that some may not feel comfortable with this, but we believe in systems change and in a big-tent approach, where every organization, company, city, group, community and individual has a voice and a role to play.

What informed the creation of the Dilemma Series?

It was inspired by the learnings from a very tense moment that happened during the TED Countdown Summit in October 2021 in Edinburgh. We hosted a discussion featuring an investor, the CEO of a major oil company and a climate activist, moderated by a globally recognized climate diplomat – and it didn’t go as we had imagined. It made very visible, and painful, the tremendous tensions that traverse – and cripple – the climate transition, the anxiety felt by young generations, the continued business-first approach of the fossil fuel industry and how we have run into an incapacity to discuss and take action in the common interest.

We founded TED Countdown almost four years ago intentionally as a space to hold difficult and candid conversations and to catalyze the solutions necessary to build a zero-carbon world — one that is safer, cleaner and fairer for everyone. That hour in Edinburgh and its ripple effects taught us that it was even more urgent to create spaces where these conversations can take place constructively.

How can people sign up to participate?

Dilemma sessions are, by necessity, invitation-only and not open to the public. There are two inherent practical limitations to their organization, which we strive to be thoughtful about. One is typical to all events: there are a limited number of seats. Because of the dynamics of the gathering, which is very hands-on and participative, the ideal number is between 100 and 150. The second is representation: we make every effort to create a balanced group representing a broad set of viewpoints and diversity of tactics. We also ask all attendees to commit to participate in the whole event.

What type of vetting/fact-checking process do these sessions go through?

We apply to the Dilemma Series – from preparation to post-production – the same rigorous processes we apply to TED Talks published on TED.com, including fact-checking.

The first Dilemma discussion took place in June in New York. What was it about and how did it go?

It focused on the question, “Is there a role for carbon credits in accelerating a fair, net-zero world?” The whole space of carbon credits/offsets/removals/markets is both very contentious and very confusing. Markets lack clear and shared principles and criteria, and they lack transparency. Offsets and credits have, by and large, a substandard reputation, and often deservedly so. Removals is a word that encompasses a range of things but is mostly used interchangeably. Opinions diverge wildly, including around the concept of “net zero,” which some find useful and others dangerous. So during the New York session we put all that on the table.

We believe that when credible people disagree on something, the way out is not to dismiss one side over another but to hold and value different points of view in the same space and see what can be generated together. And despite moments of discomfort and strong disagreement, the participants embraced the process.

What will the public get to see from these discussions?

The main aim of the Dilemma Series is to show the feasibility of a different approach to climate solutions and the different paths for creating change. We count on participants to return to their organizations, communities and spheres of influence with a renewed sense of the possibilities, and to become facilitators of dialogue on problems where dialogue has become uncomfortable.

Of course we also want to bring these discussions to a broader audience in order to increase mutual and nuanced understanding and introduce ways of navigating dilemmas. We are planning to release online both the full video recordings of the main sessions, as well as a mini-documentary retracing and summarizing the whole day. One of us, together with carbon removal expert Gabrielle Walker, also turned some of the thinking into an essay published shortly after the New York event.

How does the Dilemma Series fit into the overall TED Countdown initiative?

Countdown is a collaboration between TED and Leaders’ Quest to identify and accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. We started in 2019, with a global livestreamed launch in 2020. The most visible part of our work has been about making essential ideas more visible. To date, we’ve created over 120 TED talks (seen by millions), hosted conferences and digital events and supported more than 1,000 local TEDxCountdown events in 99 countries. However, we also devote time and resources to championing climate leadership in every field. We do that by helping climate organizations attract hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to accelerate their trajectories, organizing retreats, and by exploring ways to turn the differences that stall progress into productive ways of working together, as embodied in the Dilemma Series. We don’t do this alone: we are accompanied on this journey by many engaged partner organizations and individuals who share similar aims.

You mentioned the Countdown Summit in Edinburgh in 2021. Part of that event was met with street and social media protests because of the presence of fossil fuel representatives. Aren’t you concerned about attracting more protest by choosing this theme for your London event?

Protests, social media organizing and engaged climate activism are necessary components of change. They express and organize demands that can’t be conveyed through dysfunctional political and institutional channels and create social pressure on decision-makers. We support and work closely with many activists and remain in constant dialogue with them. We see the work we are doing with Countdown and the Dilemma Series – an effort to find room for progress and open up pathways even when there are substantial differences – as complementary to engaged activism. We are fighting the same fight and we all want to contribute to creating a decarbonized, fairer world.

Is the Dilemma Series funded by corporate money?

No. TED Countdown and its activities are philanthropically funded, and we have deliberately avoided corporate sponsorships.

What’s next for climate action? The talks from the TED Countdown New York Session 2022

Countdown, TED’s climate action initiative founded in partnership with Future Stewards, launched three years ago with a focus on accelerating solutions to climate change. The goal: to highlight possible pathways forward and weave a story of how we can help build a safer, cleaner, fairer and net-zero future for all.

After creating more than 100 climate-focused TED Talks, supporting over 1,000 TEDxCountdown events and attracting hundreds of millions of dollars in climate investments, Countdown returned to New York City to explore some of the innovative solutions bringing us closer to achieving a zero-carbon world. Eight speakers (and two performers) shared exciting developments, the challenges that lay ahead and how everything from decarbonization and biochemicals to TikTok and hip-hop can be vehicles for climate action.

The event: Talks from TED Countdown New York Session 2022, hosted by TED’s Bruno Giussani and Logan McClure Davda

When and where: Tuesday, June 14, 2022, at the TED World Theater in New York City

Speakers: Zahra Biabani, James Irungu Mwangi, Olivia Lazard, Samir Ibrahim, MyVerse, Kristen Warren, Patricia Villarrubia-Gomez, Miguel A. Modestino, Yuval Noah Harari, Peggy Shepard

The talks in brief:

Zahra Biabani, climate activist

Big idea: Using the power of social media, we can promote climate optimism and avoid the hopelessness that leads to climate inaction.

How? When Zahra Biabani learned that 56 percent of Gen Zers believe humanity is doomed, she began posting “Weekly Earth Wins” videos that combine feel-good TikTok dances with positive climate news. Her goal? To combat “climate doom-ism,” an obstacle she says now rivals climate denialism in the fight to save Earth’s climate. Her comments section quickly filled up with grateful messages from young people who were losing hope. Today, Biabani is part of EcoTok, an online activist collective that uses social media to break the cycle of doom and gloom. Climate optimism, Biabani says, isn’t about ignoring the existential threat the climate crisis poses to life on Earth. It’s a way to cultivate hope so people continue fighting for change and don’t give in to “the very entities that have gotten us into this mess.”

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James Irungu Mwangi, strategist, social entrepreneur 

Big question: By themselves, cuts in emissions will not mitigate the looming disaster of climate change — and while we might be able to accelerate Mother Nature’s innate abilities to scrub greenhouse gasses, that alone won’t save us either. As the climate clock ticks, James Irungu Mwangi sees increased investments in carbon sequestering technologies like DAC (direct air capture), BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage) and BiCRS (biomass carbon removal and storage). But will these investments be enough to save us?

An answer: To date, carbon-sequestering tech has removed only 100,000 tons of CO2 from our atmosphere, a far cry from the billions of tons we must remove to reduce global warming. And scaling these technologies in places that already have a huge fossil fuel footprint will have no impact without a difficult transition to fully renewable energy. But there are places where we can sequester carbon and build a renewable power grid at the same time — places like Kenya, with plenty of forest and basalt rock, plenty of renewable energy potential and no current emissions that would need to be displaced. As humanity embarks on its biggest energy transition ever, Mwangi calls on the world to recognize and prioritize Africa’s climate action potential.

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Olivia Lazard, environmental peacemaking expert

Big idea: A fossil-fuel-free future is crucial to world peace and the resolution of future conflict, and renewables are the path to this future. But they require materials — minerals such as lithium, which must be mined. The countries controlling these resources and their processing (such as China) will find themselves at the center of the global stage.

How? The nations sitting on the natural resources crucial to renewable development are at the epicenter of a new geopolitical reality, as the recent invasion of mineral-rich Ukraine highlights. And while countries in Central Asia, Latin America and Africa could reap great economic benefits from their resources, these resources also put them at risk for exploitation. To avoid this, we must extract resources safely, fight corruption and invest in sustainable economic models. Our ticket to green growth is hidden deep within the environment, Lazard says — this time, let’s make sure we don’t make the same mistakes that got us here.

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Samir Ibrahim, climate entrepreneur, with artists MyVerse and Kristen Warren

Big idea: Hip-hop can make climate action mainstream.

How? The climate crisis is urgent, says Samir Ibrahim, but talking about climate change is generally boring — not to mention depressing. As a climate-positive CEO and a lifelong hip-hop lover, Ibrahim’s got an off-beat idea for inspiring climate action through hip-hop. In 1993, Snoop Dogg’s hit “Gin and Juice” led to a 20 percent increase in sales of Seagram’s Gin (the brand named in the song). Ibrahim believes that future hip-hop artists can do for the climate crisis what Snoop Dogg did for his song’s eponymous mixed drink. He points to the long history of hip-hop artists leveraging their cultural capital to influence society’s views and engagement with topics like mental health and suicide. He says hip-hop can also bring climate vernacular to the masses. As a proof of concept, he invites MyVerse and Kristen Warren onstage to perform their original climate-focused rap.

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Patricia Villarrubia-Gomez, plastic pollution researcher

Big idea: Swapping plastic grocery bags for canvas totes won’t solve our plastic problem. If we want to address the climate consequences of producing and consuming plastic, we need to consider plastic as more than a waste management issue.

How? Plastic now touches even the most remote areas of the planet — from the snowy caps of Mount Everest to the deepest sea trenches to unborn babies in the womb. According to Patricia Villarrubia Gomez, the total mass of plastics is now double the total mass of all living animals on the planet. And all of this plastic spells trouble for our planet’s future. Villarrubia Gomez breaks down the consequences of plastic production at every stage, from fossil fuel extraction to the disposal of single-use plastics in landfills, incinerators and our planet’s precious waterways. Even after it’s thrown away, plastic continues to wreak havoc, releasing greenhouse gasses and other toxins. To deal with this staggeringly complex problem, Villarrubia Gomez says, we need to address plastic’s entire lifecycle, including its production, design and disposal.

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Miguel A. Modestino, sustainable engineering researcher 

Big question: Modern industry is the foundation of not only the world’s economies but also of the human way of life. Yet without crucial reforms to chemical manufacturing, global industry could be central to society’s downfall. Its massive carbon footprint (and that of the fossil fuels that lie at its heart) has already contributed to the loss of natural wonders such as the tropical glaciers in Miguel A. Modestino’s native Venezuela. How might industry contribute to a sustainable future?

An answer: Modestino’s research team at New York University studies electrochemical engineering — chemical reactions that source their energy directly from electricity, as opposed to fossil fuels. They’re working to develop new reactions that aim to increase efficiency and decrease the emissions impact of chemical manufacturing, supply chains and transportation. These innovations, in tandem with retrofitting chemical plants to run on renewables and sequestering carbon before it hits the atmosphere, could transform not only the chemical industry but also the face of the planet.

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Yuval Noah Harari, historian, scholar 

Big idea: Nobody really knows how much it will cost to dodge the worst impacts of climate change. Yet Yuval Noah Harari’s research indicates that humanity might avert catastrophe by investing only two percent of global GDP into climate solutions. In other words, solving climate change will not require major disruption — we just need to change our priorities.

How? Researchers may quibble about the exact number, but the truth is simple — only a small amount of global GDP would be required to avoid the most apocalyptic climate change scenarios. And this money will not be sacrificed, but rather directed towards investments in new infrastructure and energy sources that will not only save the planet but also establish new (and sustainable) vectors of global posterity. A slight shift of political priorities spearheaded by citizens and politicians is all we need to redirect our resources. “As the climate crisis worsens, too many people are swinging from denial straight to despair,” Harari says. “But we should not lose hope. Humanity has enormous resources under its command, and by applying them wisely, we can still prevent ecological cataclysm.”

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Peggy Shepard, environmental justice leader

Big idea: To achieve environmental justice, we must address the disproportionate impact of pollution and environmental hazards on Black and brown communities.

Why? Everyone has the right to live in a clean environment, says Peggy Shepard. But in the United States, the complex legacy of racism, housing segregation and zoning laws have long determined where people of color can live. As a result, many Black and brown families often reside in what Shepard calls “sacrifice zones”: communities on the frontlines of pollution and environmental hazards like landfills, incinerators or petrochemical plants. By raising awareness about the health consequences of contamination and mobilizing those most affected, Shepard explains, the environmental justice movement aims to turn high-risk areas into some of the world’s first “green zones.”

In the Green: A series on climate action from TED Countdown and The Climate Pledge

From emitting less carbon to using green materials, businesses across the world are committing to measurable climate action — but what exactly are they doing, and why? In the Green: The Business of Climate Action is a TED series, presented by TED Countdown and The Climate Pledge, that gives an inside look at the thinking, steps and vision that goes behind building more sustainable companies.

Tune in and meet senior leaders from around the business world as they share important lessons on reducing climate impact that can be applied to workplaces everywhere. In the first three episodes, delve into the environmental impact of buildings, how the seemingly mundane devices we use daily determine our footprint on the planet and how we can redesign business with nature in mind.

What does it take to decarbonize the buildings we spend the majority of our time in?

Electronics have a big role to play in the climate – here’s how to reduce their impact.

What can businesses learn from nature about greener practices?

Watch now: TED’s Countdown@COP26, featuring three live-streamed events

The United Nations climate change conference COP26 is gathering this week and next in Glasgow, Scotland, and TED’s own climate initiative, Countdown, is going to be part of it. You can participate, too!

From November 4-6, Countdown@COP26 will host a series of three events from the COP26 Climate Action Hub in Glasgow. The live-streamed events will feature bold ideas to tackle the climate crisis, in the form of talks and interviews. Tune in each day at 6:30pm GMT to be a part of the conversation.

Session 1 — November 4, 2021 (6:30-8pm GMT)

Session 2 — November 5, 2021 (6:30-8pm GMT)

Session 3 — November 6, 2021 (6:30-8pm GMT)

Join TED’s Countdown@COP26: three live-streamed events from November 4-6, 2021

The United Nations climate change conference COP26 is gathering this week and next in Glasgow, Scotland, and TED’s own climate initiative, Countdown, is going to be part of it. You can participate, too — by tuning in to the COP26 live platform on November 4-6 (each day at 11:30am PT, 2:30pm ET, 6:30pm GMT, 7:30pm CET).

Watch Countdown@COP26 »

Just three weeks after gathering 800 people in Edinburgh for Countdown Summit and three days after a successful Global Climate Livestream, the events — hosted live from the COP26 Climate Action Hub — will feature bold ideas to tackle the climate crisis in the form of talks and interviews.

Here’s the full lineup:

Session 1 — November 4, 2021 (6:30-8pm GMT)

The opening session of Countdown@COP26 features: Johan Rockström (Earth system scientist, on the state of climate in s live interview), Ilissa Ocko (atmospheric scientist, on cutting methane emissions), Solomon Goldstein-Rose (climate author, on cleaning the electricity grid), Jamie C. Beard (environmentalist, on geothermal energy), Chibeze Ezekiel (activist, on stopping the construction of Ghana’s first coal plant), and John Doerr and Ryan Panchadsaram (authors of Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving our Climate Crisis Now in a live interview). Hosted by Lindsay Levin, CEO of Leaders’ Quest, and Chris Anderson, Head of TED.

Session 2 — November 5, 2021 (6:30-8pm GMT)

The second session of Countdown@COP26 features: Gavin McCormick (cofounder of the Climate Trace coalition, on monitoring and measuring greenhouse gas emissions), Tzeporah Berman (chair of the Fossil Fuel Non Proliferation Treaty), Jim Hagemann Snabe (chairman of Maersk and Siemens, on decarbonizing maritime shipping), Katharine Hayhoe (climate scientist and communicator, author of Saving Us), Enric Sala (marine ecologist, on the 30×30 Initiative), Melati Wijsen (activist, on lessons from ten years of youth activism), Brother Phap Dung and Brother Spirit (monastics from the Buddhist community of Plum Village in a live interview) and the Kids of the Republic of Palau. Hosted by Lindsay Levin, CEO, Leaders’ Quest, and Bruno Giussani, Global Curator, TED, and Lead Curator, Countdown.

Session 3 — November 6, 2021 (6:30-8pm GMT)

The third session of Countdown@COP26 features: Jane Zelikova (ecosystem scientist, on soil as a carbon sink), Gabrielle Walker (carbon removal thinker), Hongqiao Liu (Journalist and policy expert, on China and climate), Kim Stanley Robinson (author of The Ministry for the Future in a live interview), Nemonte Nenquimo (Indigenous leader from Ecuador) and Naima Penniman (multidimensional artist). Hosted by Lindsay Levin, CEO, Leaders’ Quest, and Bruno Giussani, Global Curator, TED, and Lead Curator, Countdown.

Countdown is a global initiative to champion and accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. The goal is to build a better future by cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 in the race to a zero-carbon world — a world that is safer, cleaner and fairer for everyone. Every person, organization, company, city and nation is invited to collaborate with Countdown and take action on climate. It is a movement open to everyone — and everyone has a vital role to play.

Learn more about #TEDCountdown:

Website: https://countdown.ted.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TEDCountdown
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tedcountdown
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tedtoks
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TED

Together with COP26, TED hosts Countdown, a global livestream presented by YouTube Originals

In collaboration with the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), TED announced today details of the Countdown Global Livestream taking place 12-2:30pm ET on Saturday, October 30 on TED’s YouTube channel. Building on the success of the 2020 Countdown launch, this free global event, presented by YouTube Originals, will lay out a credible and realistic pathway to a net-zero future by bringing together key solutions from the Countdown Summit earlier this month, stories of local action from the around the world, cutting-edge science and technology, social and cultural discussions and a global call to action.  The Livestream will take place on the eve of the official opening of COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland. 

Hosted by Latif Nasser (co-host of Radiolab) from the TED World Theater in New York, the Livestream will combine new TED Talks, live performances, short films, expert conversations and animated explainers to vividly explain the climate crisis, focusing on solutions and calling for leaders and citizens everywhere to step up.

“We believe that all of us must play a role in addressing climate change,” said Chris Anderson, Countdown founding partner and head of TED. “While global leaders start to gather in Glasgow, we created the Countdown Global Livestream as a place for family and friends across the globe to come together to take action on climate change.” Lindsay Levin, Countdown founding partner and CEO of Leaders’ Quest, added, “We know we’re in a global crisis, yet we spend too little time focused on the solutions. The Countdown Global Livestream will showcase examples of positive changes already underway and how we can scale them to build a better future for everyone.”

The virtual event will be structured around five themes — A Pathway Opens, Reducing, Protecting, Transforming and One Planet — each pulling together moments from TED Countdown talks by climate experts, activists and business and government leaders. Celebrity guests include Don Cheadle, Regina Hall, Rooney Mara, Joaquin Phoenix, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Mark Ruffalo, Forest Whitaker and Rainn Wilson as well as YouTube content creators AsapSCIENCE (@asapscience), Joe Hanson (@itsoktobesmart), Prajakta Koli (@mostlysane) and Mark Vins (@bravewilderness). Speakers include Xiye Bastida, Tzeporah Berman, Christiana Figueres, Al Gore, Jim Hagemann Snabe, Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, Amina J. Mohammed, Nemonte Nenquimo, Johan Rockström, Reverend Lennox Yearwood and more. The Livestream will cover everything from climate justice to the importance of COP26, from Indigenous climate knowledge to transforming industries, and feature a declaration from young activists.  

Musicians Valerie June, Dave Matthews and Charlie Puth will perform. 

Check out the full line-up here.

TED Countdown wraps up a week of YouTube Originals programming focused on sustainability. For more YouTube sustainability content, check out youtube.com/sustainability. 

About TED Countdown 

TED Countdown is a global initiative powered by TED and Future Stewards to champion and accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. Countdown combines TED’s signature blend of actionable and research-backed ideas, cutting-edge science and moments of wonder and inspiration to mobilize millions to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 in the race to a zero-carbon world.

Countdown launched October 2020 via a free live virtual event featuring talks and performances by Pope Francis, Prince William, Christiana Figueres and Al Gore, as well as scientists, activists, artists, schools and leaders from business and government. One year later, in October 2021, the Countdown Summit brought together hundreds of leaders in Edinburgh, Scotland as TED speakers shared a blueprint for a beautiful net-zero future. This plan — along with inspiring stories of local action — will be amplified by hundreds of TEDx Countdown events around the world and through a special global livestream event on October 30, 2021.

Learn more about #TEDCountdown on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.

What to expect from COP26: A conversation from TED Countdown Summit

The closing session of the TED Countdown Summit in Edinburgh on Friday, October 15, 2021 started with a discussion about the upcoming United Nations climate conference, COP26, which will take place in Glasgow from October 31-November 12, 2021. The discussion — featuring Patricia Espinosa, Laurence Tubiana and Gonzalo Muñoz — touched on how the process works and what we can expect from this crucial global gathering, whose ambition was described in an earlier TED Talk by Alok Sharma, its president, as our last chance to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

The conversation, which is presented here in its entirety, featured three key protagonists of global climate negotiations present and past:

Patricia Espinosa is the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, which is the UN entity tasked with leading the global response to the threat of climate change. It’s also the organizer of the COP gathering, together with the host governments (this year, the UK in partnership with Italy). COP stands for “Conference of the Parties” to the Framework Convention.

Laurence Tubiana is the CEO of the European Climate Foundation. She was France’s climate change ambassador and one of the architects of the Paris Agreement.

Gonzalo Muñoz, who led the discussion, is the UN’s High Level Climate Action Champion for COP25, which took place last year.

Reflecting on the challenges of previous COP conferences, Espinosa describes the importance of the human aspects of these landmark meetings and how to best build trust. Tubiana shares the story of bringing the draft of the Paris Agreement to the negotiating group comprised of oil-producing countries and the world’s biggest emitters on the very last day of COP21 in 2015 in Paris — and what happened next. The three speakers see both excitement and concern emerging ahead of COP26. As Tubiana says, “We have to bet that we can win.”

Join us Saturday, October 30 @ 12pm ET for the Countdown Global Livestream

Take action on climate change. Tune in on Saturday, October 30, 2021 at 12pm ET for the TED Countdown Global Livestream: an empowering virtual event laying out a credible and realistic pathway to a net-zero future. Presented in collaboration with YouTube Originals and COP26.

Watch on TED’s YouTube channel on October 30 @ 12pm ET »

Hosted live from the TED World Theater in New York City by two-time TED speaker and Radiolab host Latif Nasser, this free virtual event combines new TED Talks, live performances, short films, expert conversations and more, vividly explaining the climate crisis, focusing on solutions and calling for leaders and citizens everywhere to step up.

Here’s the full lineup:

A Pathway Opens – presented by Mark Ruffalo, featuring:
Amina J. Mohammed, UN Deputy Secretary-General
Gabriel Kra, Climate tech investor
Clover Hogan, Climate activist and researcher on eco-anxiety
Johan Rockström, Climate impact scholar
John Doerr, Engineer, investor & Ryan Panchadsaram, Systems innovator 

Reducing – presented by Forest Whitaker, featuring:
Tzeporah Berman, Environmental campaigner
Ilissa Ocko, Atmospheric scientist
Ermias Kebreab, Animal scientist
Chibeze Ezekiel, Climate inclusion activist

Protecting – presented by Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, featuring:
Enric Sala, Marine ecologist
Susan Ruffo, Ocean expert
Shweta Narayan, Climate and health campaigner
Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, Clean air advocate
Ma Jun, Environmentalist, writer, scholar

Transforming – presented by Joaquin Phoenix & Rooney Mara, featuring:
Solomon Goldstein-Rose, Climate author
Solitaire Townsend, Sustainability solution seeker
Jim Hagemann-Snabe, Chairman, Maersk and Siemens
Nili Gilbert, Investment decarbonization expert
Vishaan Chakrabarti, Architect and author
Derek Sarno, Chef

One Planet – presented by Regina Hall, featuring:
Melati Wijsen, Activist, social entrepreneur
Sophia Kianni, Climate knowledge translator
Farwiza Farhan, Forest conservationist
Nemonte Nenquimo, Indigenous leader
Sister True Dedication, Zen Buddhist nun

Other features include:

• Musical performances by Valerie June, Dave Matthews, Charlie Puth
• Al Roker + Vice President Al Gore on extreme weather
• What is COP26? And why does it matter? With Christiana Figueres, Gonzalo Munoz and other climate leaders from around the world
• Climate justice with Reverend Lennox Yearwood
• A declaration to leaders around the world about the changes young people want to see in the real economy now, shared by Shiv Soin + Xiye Bastida
• TED’s Science Curator David Biello answering your questions
• An exciting update on the Drive Electric campaign with TED Countdown speaker Monica Araya
• Animated explainers and more!

Countdown is a global initiative to champion and accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. The goal is to build a better future by cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 in the race to a zero-carbon world — a world that is safer, cleaner and fairer for everyone. Every person, organization, company, city and nation is invited to collaborate with Countdown and take action on climate. It is a movement open to everyone — and everyone has a vital role to play.

Learn more about #TEDCountdown:
Website: https://countdown.ted.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TEDCountdown
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tedcountdown
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tedtoks
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TED

One planet: Notes from Session 7 of Countdown Summit

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After a week of hearing from the cutting-edge of climate action, we’ve filled our minds and hearts with ideas and solutions for a net-zero future. We gather for this final session of Countdown energized, curious and hopeful, knowing that we all share this floating rock in space — and we that need to take care of it together.

Session 7 brings us an incredible group of speakers who are helping heal the world, from confronting greenwashing and increasing access to climate information in all languages to protecting Earth’s natural habitats and designing sustainable cities.

The event: Countdown Summit: Session 7, hosted by Future Stewards cofounder Lindsay Levin and TED’s Chris Anderson Bruno Giussani, at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland on Friday, October 15, 2021

Speakers: Patricia Espinosa, Laurence Tubiana, Gonzalo Muñoz, Xiye Bastida, Shiv Soin, Vishaan Chakrabarti, Nemonte Nenquimo, Sister True Dedication, Sophia Kianni

Performance: Experimental vocalist and virtuoso instrumentalist Reeps100 fills the room with otherworldly sounds and complex rhythms that transcend genre. Reminiscent of beatboxing, experimental jazz and electronic music, this new-wave pioneer treats the Countdown audience to a performance like no other, exploring the past, present and future of vocal expression.

A pledge: The children of Palau have created the Palau Pledge to protect their island, home to incredibly rich marine life, fertile soils and a population of 20,000 people. They promise to respect and preserve its culture, and they share this promise with visitors as part of the visa in their passports when they visit, so that all who come can bring this sentiment back home with them: “We do not inherit the land and waters from our ancestors. We borrow them from our children.”

The talks in brief:

Gonzalo Muñoz, UN’s High Level Climate Action Champion, COP25; Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change; and Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation

Big idea: Just two and a half weeks out from the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, where are we?

The answer: Reflecting on the challenges of previous COP conferences, Patricia Espinosa — Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change — explains how important the human aspect is to these landmark meetings. Building trust and making people feel comfortable and welcome are top-of-mind for her heading into Glasgow, lessons she learned when Mexico played host to COP16 after a failed effort to reach a global climate agreement in Copenhagen in 2009. “We have the solutions. We have the creativity. We have the resources. We need to ask our leaders to make it happen,” she says of the upcoming meeting. For Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation, showing vulnerability is also part of the process of change. She shares the story of bringing the draft of the Paris Agreement to the negotiating group comprised of oil-producing countries and the world’s biggest emitters on the very last day of COP21 in 2015, describing what they would like and what they would hate in the new agreement. After a long, loud silence, her emotions broke and she began to cry, only to be greeted with compassion by the group — as well as a commitment to signing the agreement. Now, Tubiana sees both excitement and fear emerging ahead of COP26. “We have to bet that we can win,” she says.

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Xiye Bastida and Shiv Soin, climate activists

Big idea: A list of demands for leaders of the world.

How? Xiye Bastida and Shiv Soin come bearing a list of six demands for global leaders, written by youth climate activists this week at Countdown: 1) Divest from all fossil fuel investments, reinvest in green energy and ensure a just transition led by workers and impacted communities; 2) Center climate justice in all key policy decisions; 3) Stop all open pipelines and oil extraction initiatives from Line 3 in the United States to Cambo in Scotland; 4) Hold large corporations accountable for their actions that contribute directly to the climate crisis; 5) Create policies to protect activists’ rights to peaceful protest and safeguard democracy around the world; and 6) Remove the economic, political and social influence of fossil fuel companies from key international climate negotiations. This list of demands is not exhaustive to solve the climate crisis, they say — it’s the bare minimum.

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Vishaan Chakrabarti, architect and author

Big idea: To house the Earth’s growing population without worsening our climate, we need to construct new dwellings on a human scale. 

How? By 2100, the UN estimates that the Earth’s population will grow to just over 11 billion people. Architect and author Vishaan Chakrabarti wants us to start thinking about how we’ll house all these people, and how new construction can fight climate change rather than make it worse. While tall-timber construction, solar glass and green energy grids offer hope for future skyscrapers, these technologies are still new (and expensive). Chakrabarti proposes a “goldilocks” solution: compact, walkable neighborhoods where all buildings are human-scale, meaning two and three stories tall like the row houses in Boston or the hutongs in Beijing. By designing at this scale, we can construct buildings to accommodate more people than single-family homes and still have enough roof space to generate solar power to meet each building’s needs. The neighborhoods Chakrabarti imagines can also host more trees than typical urban dwellings and support green mass transit systems such as light rail, express buses and bike networks. It’s an inspiring vision for the future where housing works in harmony with the planet.

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Nemonte Nenquimo, Indigenous leader 

Big idea: People worldwide must stand with the Amazon’s Indigenous communities and demand that the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest stop.

Why? For thousands of years, the Amazonian rainforest has provided life, nourishment, water and spiritual connection to its Indigenous inhabitants, explains Waorani leader Nemonte Nenquimo — but the endless extraction of its natural resources by outsiders is destroying the forest and the lives of those who live there. When she walks through the Amazon rainforest, she sees plants she can eat, leaves she can use to heal, vines to make baskets and wood to build good homes. But outsiders, she says, are blind to the value of the jungle. They view the Amazon as land to plunder and exploit for oil, natural minerals, fertile soil — with dire consequences for the forest and the entire planet. The Amazon is burning, Nenquimo reminds us. Oil spills and mineral extraction have contaminated its waterways; big agriculture has clear-cut millions of hectares of forest, destroying wildlife and damaging the sacred spiritual connection the Amazon’s Indigenous communities have with the land. She demands that outsiders leave the guardianship of the forest to those who have inhabited it for thousands of years. “Mother Earth is waiting for us to respect her,” she says, “and we as Indigenous peoples expect the same.”

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Sister True Dedication, Zen Buddhist nun

Big idea: In order to take the kind of radical, decisive action that our planet is calling for, we need to be fully present, grounded and alert.

How? Why is it so hard to change the direction of our civilization? At this point, what’s missing is not more facts, information or even technology — it’s insight, says Zen Buddhist nun Sister True Dedication. We can’t hope to change the world if we can’t change our way of seeing things, says Sister True’s teacher, Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh. So, how do we do it? One step at a time — literally. Sister True guides us through the art of mindful walking, a powerful meditation practice centered in Zen tradition. Every moment of movement is a chance to become more aware of ourselves, the world around us and where those two experiences meet. While moving through space, Sister True puts forth three questions to help spark further awakening. The first: who are you? An invitation to reflect on how you are connected through time and being. Second: where are you? Check in with whether you’re present and comfortable. If not, embrace those feelings in order to understand why they’re there. And finally: what do you want? Explore ways to reconnect with what’s essential to creating innermost peace. We can’t help the planet if we’re numb or overwhelmed — nurturing mindful and radical love is the key to awakening to the preciousness of life and the strength we have to save it.

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Sophia Kianni, Climate knowledge translator

Big idea: The vast majority of scientific articles are written in English. That’s a big problem for climate change, because 75 percent of the world doesn’t speak it.

Why? When Sophia Kianni was just 12 years old, she witnessed smog so thick in her native Iran that it obscured the stars. When talking to her relatives about it, she was shocked that they knew almost nothing about how climate change was causing this — a direct result of the lack of climate resources available in Farsi. With 80 percent of scholarly articles written entirely in English according to a SCOPUS study, language remains a significant barrier in the transfer of scientific information. Kianni explains how this inaccessibility comes at a high cost — especially to countries that are at most risk of climate change. “As recently as six years ago, over 40 percent of adults in the world had never heard of climate change. Let me repeat that: two adults out of five had never heard of climate change,” says Kianni. In an effort to close that gap, she founded Climate Cardinals: an international youth-led nonprofit that’s working to make climate information more accessible. Having translated articles into hundreds of languages, word by word, they help protect the planet by not allowing English to be the barrier to climate action. “People who are being disproportionately affected by climate change deserve to have access to the resources they need to make sense of the disasters that are destroying their communities and what they can do about it,” Kianni.

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.

Protecting: Notes from Session 6 of Countdown Summit

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It’s the last morning of Countdown Summit, and we have a better sense of the exciting climate initiatives that are scaling up — but also of the size of the mountain we’re climbing.

In Session 6, eight speakers take it all on — from forests and soil, to markets and law, to arts and communication.

The event: Countdown Summit: Session 6, hosted by Paris Climate Agreement architect Christiana Figueres and TED’s Bruno Giussani, at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland on Friday, October 15, 2021

Speakers: Farwiza Farhan, Jane Zelikova, Sathya Raghu Mokkapati, Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Solitaire Townsend, Lucas Joppa, James K. Thornton, Naima Penniman

Performance: Poet and “freedom-forging futurist” Naima Penniman delivers a stunning spoken word poem — an evocative, moving tribute to the natural world and our connection to it.

The talks in brief:

Farwiza Farhan, TED Fellow and forest conservationist

Big idea: Farwiza Farhan is well-known for her fight to preserve the Leseur ecosystem, one of the last places on Earth where orangutans, rhinos, elephants and tigers still roam the wilderness together. But for Farhan, the true warriors are the women on the ground fighting day-to-day conservation battles.

How? Farhan is inspired by women like Sumini, an Indonesian conservationist helming the first woman-led ranger team at the front lines of forest preservation. Working within a patriarchal tribe where women are typically subservient, Sumini led the efforts to map her native forest, a crucial first step for both government recognition of her homeland and for saving its crucial environmental and economic resources. In a country where forestry initiatives usually benefit male elders (and strengthen existing inequalities), social and environmental justice requires nurturing women like Sumini in every local community, Farhan says.

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Jane Zelikova, climate change scientist

Big Idea: From growing crops to storing carbon, healthy soil matters more now than ever — and we need to protect it.

Why? Under your feet, soil is teeming with hardworking and diverse microbial life that has the potential to stop global warming in its tracks, says climate change scientist Jane Zelikova. The “wee beasties” (or microbes, as described by Dutch scientist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek centuries ago) help accumulate and store massive amounts of carbon, clean water, nourish crops and reduce pollution — but ​​over the last 12,000 years, we have lost billions of tons of that carbon in our soils. Zelikova urges us to rethink agricultural practices to protect our soils and the carbon they hold; to get more carbon in the ground by growing diverse, climate-adapted crops; and to leave the microbes alone to do what they do best. “Soils are the literal foundation of life on this planet — the reason that we eat and the climate solution just waiting to be unlocked,” says Zelikova. “Let’s build back our soils and help our planet by looking down to the ground.”

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Sathya Raghu Mokkapati, TED Fellow and green farming innovator

Big idea: Small-scale farmers need a dependable, regular income to avoid poverty. “Greenhouse-in-a-box” technology can help.

How? For small-scale farmers in India, farming has long been an unreliable source of income, as crops that flourish one season can fail the next. Climate risk is now making the profession nearly impossible. According to TED Fellow and green farming innovator Sathya Raghu Mokkapati, one farmer in India dies by suicide every 51 minutes. The Indian entrepreneur is determined to improve the plight of small farmers and provide them with dependable income even amidst the ongoing threat of climate change. That’s why he and his team developed what they call a greenhouse-in-a-box. The small, easy-to-build structure is covered with netting to cut off heat, prevent bugs and increase crop yields using less water. Raghu Mokkapati estimates that this low-cost technology can bring a farmer an extra $100 per month in profits. So far, nearly 2,000 farmers in South India have joined Raghu Mokkapati in his movement — he hopes to reach 100,000 farmers in the next five years.

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Sandrine Dixson-Declève, co-president of the Club of Rome

Big idea: In the 50 years since The Limits to Growth report was published by the Club of Rome, the alarming climate trends that it warned about have drastically increased.

What have we learned since then? Updated models of humanity’s growth continue to show that the business-as-usual scenario isn’t working, demonstrating that we must shift our growth patterns, says Sandrine Dixson-Declève, co-president of the Club of Rome. With the launch of the EarthforAll initiative, Dixson-Declève and the Club of Rome have identified five turnarounds that will enable us to thrive: energy, food, inequality, poverty and population (including health and education). Previewing the Club’s next report, Dixson-Declève explains that now is the time to do things differently, transitioning new and existing capital towards solutions. She estimates that the cost of shifting to sustainable growth will be around five percent of global GDP each year — an achievable, single-digit number. The cost of inaction is much greater. “We have too much bad news for complacency, but we have too much good news for despair,” says Dixson-Declève, quoting The Limits to Growth coauthor Donella Meadows. “Let’s kick complacency out the door.”

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Solitaire Townsend, sustainability solution seeker

Big idea: The industry of “professional services” — such as advertising and PR firms, big management consultancies and finance companies, corporate law firms and lobbyists — have a massive but largely unnoticed influence on climate.

How? Solitaire Townsend calls it the “X-industry,” where “X” stands for influence. Even though the direct carbon footprint of this sector is relatively small, the “brainprint” of the X-industry is felt everywhere — they’re the storytellers and problem-solvers who act as “the grease in the wheels of all businesses on Earth,” Townsend says. For instance: big consulting groups provide financial modeling for new oil and gas exploration; lobbyists fight for less regulation of those projects; and PR firms protect the reputations of companies that do the drilling. In this sense, the greenhouse gas impact of the industry is enormous — if uncalculated. Building off the three groups of carbon emission measurement (referred to as Scopes 1, 2 and 3), Townsend believes we need a new “Scope X” — a way to calculate the “emissions of influence” of the X-industry and hold it to account. Armed with this data, the X-industry could move from being an abettor in environmental destruction to part of the solution.

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Lucas Joppa, Microsoft’s Chief Environmental Officer

Big idea: By treating the plan to achieve net-zero carbon emissions as a coding challenge, we can identify and resolve “bugs” in the system.

How? The developers of any net-zero carbon program face the same challenge as software engineers, says Lucas Joppa, Chief Environmental Officer at Microsoft. Issues with the program are bugs in the code. Joppa identifies three of these “bugs” in our plan to achieve net-zero and explains how to fix them. First, we need a common definition for the term net-zero. Without one, our progress as a planet remains difficult to track. Second, we struggle to define the impact or benefit of different carbon offsets on the climate because we lack a universal unit of measurement for carbon offsets. We need to standardize both how we record carbon outputs and how we measure carbon offsets. Third, we should support the fledgling market for carbon removal and ensure that it’s as robust as the market for carbon offsets. Although we’re working against the clock, Joppa believes we will rise to what has become the greatest challenge of our time: recoding our current course on climate change.

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James K. Thornton, eco-lawyer and author

Big idea: There are signs that China is becoming a global environmental leader.

How? James K. Thornton is the founder of ClientEarth, a nonprofit law firm working to address the climate crisis. He tells the story of his team’s work in China, where they’ve been training judges and prosecutors on climate law and litigation in a growing effort to use the power of the legal system to create positive environmental impact. He estimates that their cooperation with China’s environment ministry, judiciary and federal prosecutors has initiated some 80,000 environmental cases — ranging from environmental NGOs suing polluting companies to large financial institutions ending their investments in coal. More needs to be done, Thornton says, but the current, systematic commitment to change is a sign of hope.

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.

Rethinking: Notes from Session 5 of Countdown Summit

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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:

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.”

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Decarbonizing fossil fuels: An unedited discussion from TED Countdown Summit

The Countdown Summit in Edinburgh featured this morning a difficult and at moments emotional on-stage discussion on fossil fuels and accelerating the trajectory of decarbonization.

We are publishing here the complete, unedited video account of that discussion, as a matter of record.

The conversation included Chris James, founder of Engine No. 1, the activist fund that successfully installed three new directors on the board of the US’s largest oil firm, ExxonMobil; Lauren MacDonald, Scottish climate activist and a member of the Stop Cambo campaign, fighting against a proposed offshore oil field west of the Shetlands; and Ben van Beurden, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, the largest Europe-based oil and gas company. The discussion was moderated by Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican diplomat who steered the global effort that culminated in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

After her first statement and a question to van Beurden, MacDonald walked out of the stage. The conversation continued among the other participants. Lindsay Levin, one of the co-hosts of Countdown Summit, returned to prompt van Beurden to answer that question. Earth systems scientist and TED speaker Johan Rockström also appears later in the video to challenge van Beurden on the science behind Shell’s net-zero plans.

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The discussion about decarbonizing fossil fuels has elicited a number of questions, which — in addition to releasing the complete unedited video of that session — we address here.

Countdown was created intentionally as a space to hold difficult and candid conversations and to catalyze the solutions necessary to build a zero-carbon world — a world that is safer, cleaner and fairer for everyone. We believe in systems change and in a big-tent approach, where every organization, company, city, group and individual has a voice and a role to play. That’s why the four-day Countdown Summit program featured activists, scientists, political and business leaders, indigenous and spiritual leaders, innovators and many more.

We originally designed a discussion to challenge the role of fossil fuel companies, and to address the question of decarbonizing fossil fuels. It was to be an on-stage dialogue between Shell’s CEO, Ben van Beurden, and Chris James, founder of Engine No. 1, the activist fund that successfully installed three new directors on the board of the US’s largest oil firm, ExxonMobil, to push for meaningful and urgent climate action from within. The conversation was moderated by Christiana Figueres, the main architect of the Paris Agreement. Given that Shell is in the top 10 highest emitting companies, its impact cannot be ignored.

Following discussions with the Stop Cambo campaign, which is fighting against a proposed offshore oil field north of Scotland (of which Shell is a shareholder), we offered for them to nominate a panelist to join this conversation. Lauren MacDonald was nominated to speak on their behalf. The format was agreed upon in conversation with MacDonald, including the sequence in which the panelists would speak — with MacDonald to have the last word.

We offered MacDonald the same speaker support and coaching provided to all TED speakers, but did not influence the content of what she wanted to say. This offer was optional; MacDonald accepted it. During the event, given MacDonald’s decision to leave the stage early, she cut short how much she was able to say. However, our moderator asked van Beurden to answer the question MacDonald had asked of him — which he did.

Extending an invitation to Shell’s CEO to be interviewed on stage does not represent an endorsement of Shell or their activities. We see this as part of TED’s open-tent approach to impact discussions and create solutions-focused dialogue.

It’s also important to note that Countdown is philanthropically funded, and we have deliberately avoided any corporate sponsorship.

It is our view that many of the concerns raised are indicative of a larger and complex discussion within the climate community around how we approach climate solutions and the different paths of creating change. The “how” is always the hardest part, but we will continue to create spaces for those uncomfortable conversations essential to accelerate our pathway to a zero-carbon world.

UPDATE: On December 2, 2021, Shell announced its withdrawal from the Cambo oil field project (BBC / Reuters).

Reducing: Notes from Session 4 of Countdown Summit

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How will we get the 55 gigatons of global greenhouse emissions produced each year down to zero? By rapidly scaling up proven green technologies, finding innovative and brilliant ways to trap carbon and ending destructive practices.

In Session 4 of Countdown Summit, 10 speakers shared the actions we need to take to attack climate change at its source — and end the 400-year-old legacy of extraction that began with colonialism and stretches to today.

The event: Countdown Summit: Session 4, hosted by Future Stewards cofounder Lindsay Levin and David Lammy, Member of Parliament for Tottenham, England, at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland on Thursday, October 14, 2021

Speakers: John Doerr, Ryan Panchadsaram, Ilissa Ocko, Ermias Kebreab, Rainn Wilson, Nat Keohane, Gabrielle Walker, Ben van Beurden, Chris James and Lauren MacDonald

The talks in brief:

John Doerr, engineer and investor, and Ryan Panchadsaram, systems innovator

Big idea: The action plan to solve the world’s climate crisis is here.

How? John Doerr and Ryan Panchadsaram have teamed up to map out what concerted global action on climate could look like using Doerr’s proven system for setting up and tracking goals and success known as OKRs: objectives and key results. Together, they’ve broken down the road to climate action into six big parts: electrifying transportation; decarbonizing the grid with alternatives like wind, solar and nuclear; fixing the food industry; protecting nature; cleaning up business; and removing carbon. As Panchadsaram underscores, all six must be enacted at once — and quickly — alongside winning at politics and policy, so that climate commitments have follow-through. This can be achieved by turning movements into real action, innovating to drive down the cost of clean tech and investing in research, deployment and philanthropy. While these needs are both practical and ambitious, leaders and business executives are underestimating the economic opportunity — and the human cost — if we don’t act fast. Doerr and Panchadsaram call for investment now, scaling up what we already know works as well as finding new solutions. Their plan requires the United States and Europe to lead the way by showing that decarbonizing can be done and that a clean green economy is possible in order to lower the costs for everyone — especially those who have suffered the most but contributed the least to the climate problem. “How much more damage do we have to endure before we realize it’s cheaper to save this planet than to ruin it?” Doerr asks.

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Ilissa Ocko, atmospheric scientist

Big idea: Cutting methane emissions is the single most effective way to slow the rate of climate change.

How? Methane gas emissions could cause a greater short-term increase in global warming than CO2 emissions, says atmospheric scientist Ilissa Ocko. Fortunately, we can use available technologies to halve methane emissions from human activities like fossil fuel production, waste management and agriculture. Methane gas is a significant byproduct of oil, coal and gas extraction, but with sensor technology, we can detect and quantify emissions with unprecedented precision, eliminating the majority of accidental emissions at no net cost. Waste management also produces methane when bacteria decompose garbage and sludge in wastewater. Ocko proposes we vacuum up the methane emitted from landfills and use this gas for electricity. (Although burning methane does emit CO2, CO2 traps a lot less heat than methane). Finally, Ocko says we need to tackle the number one methane polluter: raising livestock. Some solutions include using higher quality feed for cows and covering manure lagoons. If we implement rapid, full-scale efforts in each sector, Ocko is confident we will reap the climate benefits in our lifetimes. “We could slow down the rate of warming by as much as 30 percent before mid-century,” she says.

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Ermias Kebreab, animal scientist

Big idea: Feeding cattle seaweed could drastically reduce global methane emissions, cutting into one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gasses.

How? Scientists have long known that cows are a huge source of greenhouse gasses, contributing up to four percent of emissions globally each year. And since humanity doesn’t seem to be willing to adopt a plant-based diet on anything near the global scale required to ameliorate these emissions, we need to find ways to make cattle less — ahem — gassy. Animal scientist Ermias Kebreab is developing a green solution, sourced from just below the surface of our oceans: seaweed. Inspired by research showing that feeding cattle seaweed could drastically reduce the methane produced by burping, he’s devised ways to feed it to dairy animals in a scalable way. Eventually, Kebreab and his colleagues discovered they could cut methane emissions from cattle up to a staggering 98 percent with the proper combination of feed and seaweed.

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Rainn Wilson, actor and activist

Big idea: Surely there must be something funny about climate change.

Right? Not really, says actor and activist Rainn Wilson, in a comedic interlude between talks. Backed up by an ensemble of famous friends like Maria Bamford, Larry Wilmore, Weird Al Yankovic and many more, Wilson searches for the comedic light in humanity’s greatest challenge and comes up with — well, basically nothing. (Although in a dark, twisted way, not finding any humor at all can be kind of funny in itself.) “Maybe there’s nothing funny about climate change,” says Al Madrigal. “Let’s fix it.”

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Nat Keohane, climate policy advocate

Big idea: We can’t solve climate change without tropical forests.

Why? Deforestation means carbon pollution, as eliminating tropical forests means losing one of the world’s most important carbon sinks, responsible for absorbing over one-fifth of emissions made from burning fossil fuels. And right now, instead of protecting rainforests, we’re cutting them down at alarming rates, pushing us closer to a tipping point. The heart of the problem is economic, says climate policy advocate Nat Keohane. That so long as it’s profitable to chop down forests for timber or clear them for agriculture, we’ll continue to lose them unless incentives are worth more to keep these important places alive. He proposes a way forward, successfully happening in Brazil’s Mato Grosso within the Amazon, where the state is now a model of economic development and forest protection — down 85 percent in deforestation since making the leap toward sustainable growth for beef and soy. How did they do it? Using the three key building blocks for any credible green market, which is also upheld by his coalition, LEAF: precision carbon measurements, standardizing buyer quality and creating a transaction platform for companies looking to make good on their climate commitments. “If we can expand LEAF globally, we can stop tropical deforestation, protect some of the largest carbon sinks on the planet and enable forest nations and local populations to thrive and grow, Keohane says. “All because we harness the power of the market to reflect the full value of standing forest.”

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Gabrielle Walker, writer, carbon removal thinker

Big idea: We can harness the power of nature, human ingenuity and technology to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stop climate change from getting worse.

How? What do wooly pigs have to do with the future of our planet? According to writer Gabrielle Walker, this relative of the Scottish wild boar is one example of a new approach to addressing climate change through carbon removal. Walker says reducing carbon emissions isn’t enough to slow global warming; we also need to take billions of tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere in the next few decades. On the Isle of Mule in Scotland, wooly pigs root out the undergrowth leftover from sheep grazing, allowing native trees to grow back and, eventually, suck carbon from the air. Other carbon removal solutions are equally ingenious and surprising. For instance, basalt rock formed from volcanic lava naturally traps carbon, but we can accelerate the carbon capture process by grinding the rock and spreading it across agricultural fields. Walker also says we can use technology to speed up carbon removal. She points to a giant fan in Texas that strips CO2 from the air and buries it underground as well as construction projects that use wood (natural carbon stores) to build skyscrapers instead of high-emitting materials like concrete.

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Chris James, cofounder of the activist fund Engine No. 1; Lauren MacDonald, climate justice activist; and Ben van Beurden, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell

Big idea: The path to decarbonizing fossil fuels.

How? Session 4 closed with a conversation between Chris James, cofounder of Engine No. 1, the activist fund that successfully installed three new directors on the board of the US’s largest oil firm, ExxonMobil; Lauren MacDonald, Scottish climate activist and a member of the Stop Cambo campaign, fighting against a proposed offshore oil field west of the Shetlands; and Ben van Beurden, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, the largest Europe-based oil and gas company. The discussion was moderated by Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican diplomat who steered the global effort that culminated in the 2015 Paris Agreement. The difficult and at moments emotional onstage panel covered fossil fuels and accelerating the trajectory of decarbonization. Read more about it here.

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.

Transforming: Notes from Session 3 of Countdown Summit

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When looking to make big change, you can’t be shy about it — and Countdown is as much about boldly transforming the systems already in place as it is about creating new ones.

Working to reshape harder-to-abate industries like oil, gas, cement and aviation, the pioneering speakers of Session 3 share tangible solutions and groundbreaking ideas that will get us all to a healthier planet.

The event: Countdown Summit: Session 3, hosted by Future Stewards cofounder Lindsay Levin and TED’s Chris Anderson, at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland on Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Speakers: Bjørn Otto Sverdrup, Ryah Whalen, Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, Shweta Narayan, Hongqiao Liu, Mahendra Singhi, Rachel Kyte, Vera Songwe, Susan Ruffo

Performance: Inviting the audience to clap and sway to their vibrantly playful sound, legendary Scottish indie-pop band Belle and Sebastian give a bright rendition of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” and their own “Song for Sunshine.”

The talks in brief:

Bjørn Otto Sverdrup, Chair of the Executive Committee of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, sustainability expert

Big idea: Bringing the oil and gas industry to a net-zero emissions state is key to curbing climate change.

Why? Responsible for a significant chunk of global carbon emissions, the oil and gas industry needs to make a sharp turn into sustainable territory. Bjørn Otto Sverdrup leads the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, an organization that brings together twelve of the world’s largest oil and gas companies in an effort to spearhead what he calls the 1/4/20 challenge, named after the 20 gigatons of emissions produced annually by the industry. Their goal is for the industry to achieve net-zero emissions — a daunting pivot that demands brazen policy changes, new technologies and a top-down rethink of how we consume energy. But before logistical difficulties can be fully solved, we need a fundamental transformation of how we think and what we believe is possible. “Daring to say ‘net-zero’ changes minds,” says Sverdrup. “It shifts your mindset from defensive to proactive, from incremental change to having your eyes on the end goal.”

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Ryah Whalen, innovator and aviation expert

Big idea: There are three big things that need to be addressed if the flying industry is to get off the ground on climate action.

What are they? Air travel builds bridges and connects us, it takes people to new lives and experiences — but it also comes at a cost to the planet. Ryah Whalen points out that it’s not an easy task to decarbonize flying; planes manufactured today have a lifespan of about 30 years, meaning the planes we create and fly in today will still be in the skies come 2050. If nothing’s done in the industry, air travel stands to create almost a quarter of the world’s emissions yearly moving forward. To reroute from a polluted future, Whalen breaks the problem down into three sections of the industry that need to be addressed to stave off emission growth. First, aircraft design must be coupled with a thorough change of every layer of air traffic management, down to individual pilot behaviors. Second, we need to switch to biofuels and bring their costs down. And finally, sustainable innovations like hybrid-electric aircraft and green hydrogen need to create rapid progress at scale. While challenges lie ahead — notably the billions in investments needed for change — the world and lives are at stake. Individual choices to limit flying can only get us so far. If we want any hope of getting to zero emissions, it will take collective action from all parts of the air travel industry.

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Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, grassroots campaigner 

Big idea: Breathing clean air is every child’s human right, and governments have a duty to protect it.

Why? Linked to premature deaths across the globe, air pollution is an invisible calamity — and unsafe air is especially bad for children. Grassroots campaigner Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah shares the heartrending story of her daughter Ella, whose asthma was triggered to a fatal point by unsafe levels of air pollution, and tragically, was the first person in the world to have air pollution listed as a cause of death on her death certificate. “8.7 million people a year are dying from heart attacks, asthma, cancer and other illnesses,” explains Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, and the fossil fuels causing air pollution are a contributor to this tragic statistic. She urges the world to embrace a solution that already exists: to shift from toxic fuels to clean, electrified, public transport and, most importantly, to mobilize and demand clean air.

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Shweta Narayan, climate and health campaigner

Big idea: As greenhouse gases and toxic pollutants encroach on both our atmosphere and our bodies, ancient wisdom offers humanity hope in this new phase of civilization, where individual well-being and environmental health intersect. 

How? Environmental destruction is the biggest global health issue threatening humanity today — straining infrastructure and power grids, spurring pandemics and causing pollution. Shweta Narayan introduces a new perspective: by viewing climate change and degradation through the lens of the Hippocratic Oath — an ancient set of ethical standards sworn by physicians — every person has a role to play in ecological survival. Narayan encourages us to place “first do no harm” to the planet at the heart of our all of our choices. “It’s impossible to have healthy people on a sick planet,” says Shweta Narayan.

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Hongqiao Liu, journalist and policy expert

Big idea: As the world’s largest carbon emitter (and its second-largest economy), China plays a pivotal role in mitigating climate change. The steps it takes towards becoming net-zero by 2060 are crucial on a global scale. 

How? In 2020, Chinese president Xi Jinping pledged to the UN that China would both peak its emissions by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2060 — a change that will require action at an unheard-of scale and speed, explains environmental journalist Hongqiao Liu. While it’s still reliant on fossil fuels to drive its economy, China is also a world leader in renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure. This is already transforming energy consumption — but is it enough? Citing economist Zou Ji, Liu is hopeful for change. In addition to burgeoning green energy production, which may allow China to reach peak emissions years ahead of its goal, the country’s leaders are also now downplaying GDP as a metric of economic health, which could be a crucial step towards sustainable growth — and one which could inspire a paradigm shift around the world.

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Mahendra Singhi, CEO, Dalmia Cement

Big idea: With carbon-capture and neutralizing technology, notoriously hard-to-abate sectors like cement could transform it into carbon-negative industries.

How? Cement is vital to modernizing infrastructure of all kinds in the developing world — but manufacturing it comes at an enormous environmental cost. Producing and transporting a single ton of cement still emits half a ton of CO2, even after decades of efforts to reduce its carbon footprint. At Dalmia Cement, one of the largest producers of cement in India, Mahendra Singhi is determined to transform the industry into a sustainable one. To make cement carbon-negative, the company is targeting the two largest sources of CO2 emissions in the manufacturing pipeline: the fossil fuels used to process and transport the material and clinkerisation, the chemical process that makes cement a usable product. And while adopting renewable energy sources like electric cars and green fuel is relatively straightforward, the more difficult challenge is turning the CO2 produced by the clinkerisation process — which represents up to half of the CO2 emissions associated with cement — into a productive material. Large-scale carbon capture plants might be the ticket to sparing this CO2 from the atmosphere and transforming it into something usable. Though still a nascent technology, Dalmia’s recent feasibility study on the subject “proved that it is technologically and economically viable,” says Singhi. “From 2040, my cement manufacturing process will not emit a gram of CO2.”

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Rachel Kyte, sustainable development diplomat and activist

Big idea: If we want clean cooling systems that don’t contribute to global warming, we must tackle issues of sustainability and fairness at the same time.

How? Global surface temperatures are at an all-time high — but the way we cool down is heating up the planet even more. Most traditional cooling methods are energy inefficient and depend on polluting refrigerants like hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). Activist Rachel Kyte, who works to identify paths to cleaner energy systems, outlines four steps to climbing out of this intensely pollutive and disparate system. First, we need to move away from building designs that center on traditional air conditioning — think ultra-white, heat reflective paint and garden-rich rooftops. According to Kyte, the cooling technologies we use need to be at least 50 percent more efficient than today’s most sustainable unit. Next, governments must commit to HFC-free technologies on a global scale. Finally, we need cold chains for perishable medicines, food and other products — for every community on the planet. While some bask in air-conditioned suburban homes, billions of people around the world don’t even have access to the basics. “What is scary is that we are not having enough conversations in enough places and driving enough investments into affordable, non-polluting efficient solutions for cooling for everyone,” says Kyte.

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Vera Songwe, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa

Big idea: The peatlands of the Congo Basin are an invaluable resource in the fight against climate change, and protecting them via a responsible development plan should be a global priority.

Why? Recently identified as one of the world’s most efficient carbon sinks, the peatlands of the Central African Congo Basin absorb a sizeable portion of global emissions. But, like many other biodiverse territories, it’s on the verge of being churned into grist for the capitalist mill. Vera Songwe believes that money and resources should flow in the other direction. At a price of $50 per unit of the 30 billion tons of carbon the peatlands soak up, a $1.5 trillion Peatlands Development Fund could be established to transform the economic realities of communities in the region. A budget that size would ensure robust local infrastructure, create jobs  and, most importantly, nudge regional economic development in the direction of preservation instead of exploitation. “This is not just about decarbonization, it is about development with dignity,” says Songwe. “We must collectively ask the markets to recognize and adequately reward Africa’s contribution to slowing climate change by putting a price on carbon.”

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Susan Ruffo, ocean expert

Big idea: The ocean is an unsung hero in the story of climate change, providing readymade solutions to the climate crisis — if we are smart enough to recognize them.

Why? A vital part of our life support system here on earth, the ocean produces half of the earth’s oxygen (that’s one in every two breaths you take). It helps regulate the planet’s temperature and absorbs anywhere from a quarter to a third of the CO2 we put into the atmosphere — making it the world’s largest carbon sink. The ocean does a lot for us already — our first priority should be not messing that up, says Susan Ruffo, Senior Advisor for Ocean and Climate at United Nations Foundation. Beyond that, there’s a thrilling range of ocean-based climate solutions we could tap into — from the carbon-absorbing power of mangroves and salt marshes to dense oysters reefs that could lower the risk of major flood damage — if we start to appreciate the ocean’s role in helping us address the climate crisis.

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.

Imagining: Notes from Session 2 of Countdown Summit

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There’s a lot of information on what we’re doing wrong when it comes to climate, and what the world would look like if we keep up the damage. But there’s very little information on what life could look like if we all did our job to repair the planet.

At Session 2 of the Countdown Summit, seven speakers stretched our imaginations — envisioning what it will take to create a different, better future and exactly how far (or close) we are from realizing it.

The event: Countdown Summit: Session 2, hosted by Paris Climate Agreement architect Christiana Figueres and TED’s Bruno Giussani, with facilitation by Leaders’ Quest’s Jayma Pau and Carolina Moeller, at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland on Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Speakers: Solomon Goldstein-Rose, Tzeporah Berman, Dan Jørgensen, Vandana Singh, Enric Sala, Thomas Crowther, Nicola Sturgeon

The talks in brief:

Solomon Goldstein-Rose, climate author

Big idea: To really power our grid from clean energy, we must build more production capacity than we think we need — a lot more. Although many estimates show that we need two and a half times more green production than we currently have, Solomon Goldstein-Rose says we need five times that: a grand total of 12 times today’s clean energy production. Where can we get all this power?

An answer: To go net-negative (not net-zero), to electrify everything with renewables in all parts of the world (not just the wealthy ones) and to power things that can’t be electrified (like airplanes), climate author Solomon Goldstein-Rose affirms that we need more than a green revolution in production. To get where we need to go, the world needs an entirely new electricity grid. As he puts it, we should be “building new things that we’ve barely ever built before, in massive amounts, to create a new system entirely.” Although it’s a tall order, the benefits of such a transformation go far beyond survival: if we can reimagine our power production, we will also create a healthier, cleaner and more prosperous world for everyone.

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Tzeporah Berman, environmental campaigner

Big Idea: The fossil fuel industry has gone largely unregulated. It’s time to wind down its rampant production with a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty for the future of our planet.

How? As climate policy experts negotiate policies set to reduce carbon emissions, the fossil fuel industry continues to grow and pollute for the sake of oil, gas and coal, says environmental campaigner Tzeporah Berman. “Our governments are only regulating emissions and not production of fossil fuels,” she says. As a decades-long advocate for the protection of Canada’s Great Northern Forest, Berman has spent years reaching out to CEOs of oil companies and studying climate policies and has come to a crucial conclusion: without a single mention of “fossil fuels” in the 2015 Paris Agreement, fossil fuel production has escaped regulation. “We are currently on track today to produce 120 percent more fossil fuels in the next decade than the world should burn to stay below 1.5 degrees,” she says. It’s time to stop relying on future technologies that are not yet at scale to solve the problems we’re facing today and begin curbing destructive processes now. The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty can help us get there.

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Dan Jørgensen, Minister for Climate, Energy and Utilities of Denmark

Big idea: Wind energy will be the cornerstone of the green transformation the world needs.

How? Over the last two decades, the wind energy industry has grown at a dizzying pace. (Fun fact: one wind turbine’s single rotation generates enough electricity to charge 1,314 cell phones.) Building off of this exponential growth, Dan Jørgensen, Denmark’s Minister for Climate, Energy and Utilities, lays out his country’s decision to cut 70 percent of its emissions by 2030 and close down the nation’s oil industry by 2050. Their aim is to direct all investment and innovation towards a fossil-free future and create the world’s first “energy islands”:” think scaled-up wind farms that can generate enough electricity for 10 million European households. Offshore wind power could supply the world’s entire electricity demand 18 times over, Jørgensen says, making it a true game-changer in the fight against climate change.

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Vandana Singh, climate imagination fellow

Big idea: Science and speculative fiction can support new narratives about our climate future — and inspire action instead of dread.

How? Earlier this year, Countdown partnered with the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University and to create the Climate Imagination Fellowship. In collaboration with ClimateWorks and the United Nations, the fellowship aims to support visionary thinkers who engage with the climate crisis by imagining vibrant futures. Speculative fiction writer and physics professor Vandana Singh is one of four inaugural Climate Imagination Fellows. On the TED stage, she shares an excerpt from her latest work: a captivating tale of how collective dreaming could help humans recognize our interdependence with the planet — and take action to protect it.

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Enric Sala, marine ecologist

Big idea: As a diver in the 1970s, Enric Sala saw once-lush oceanscapes reduced to underwater deserts — but later, in marine preserves like the Medes Islands in Spain and Cabo Pulmo in Mexico, he also witnessed the ocean’s power to rejuvenate itself when left to its own natural devices. Could “rewilding” the planet help us restore biodiversity and reduce the impacts of climate change?

How? Marine preserves demonstrate how quickly the environment — land or sea — can rebound from the ravages of overuse and global warming. Trees, grasslands, kelp forests and the biodiversity they shelter are our best weapons against climate change, says marine ecologist Enric Sala — but only work if we allow them to do their work undisturbed by human activity. At present, only seven percent of Earth’s oceans and less than a fifth of land are protected as wilderness. In 2018, Sala and his colleagues at National Geographic partnered with the Wyss Institute to target the biodiversity powerhouses most worth preserving, with the aim of “30 by 30”: rewilding 30 percent of the Earth’s surface and of the ocean floor by 2030.

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Thomas Crowther, ecosystem ecology professor

Big Idea: An online, open-data platform to support and connect the global restoration movement can bring transparency to humanity’s footprint on the planet. 

How? There are hundreds of thousands of local communities, Indigenous populations and more working to protect and revitalize nature — making connectivity between these efforts of utmost importance. Enter Restor, a powerful platform in development that ecosystem ecology professor Thomas Crowther describes as “a Google Maps for restoration.” With about 72,000 sites in its database, Restor holds information about thousands of projects around the world, across every imaginable ecosystem, available to explore, learn about and connect with. Crowther gives a tour of this incredible tool, showing how you can learn about native species, environmental conditions and geology to try and predict information about local ecologies. And he shares his vision for the future of Restor and a world where, thanks to data collection, supply chains become so transparent that consumers can know the exact environmental impact of products before they ever leave the store.

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Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland

Big idea: When we talk about tackling climate change, it’s often about bigger countries like the US or China. We must recognize the ambition, leadership and action of small countries, too.

Why? Small countries have no time for small objectives, says First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon. For example, countries like Himalayan nation of Bhutan are leading the way towards a positive climate future, with 130 countries now following in its footsteps towards carbon neutrality; or the tiny island nation of Fiji, which played host the UN climate conference in 2017. Scotland has a special responsibility, considering its rich industrial history, to offset its disproportionate contributions to climate change. And it’s already made big steps, Sturgeon says, like decarbonizing faster than any other G20 nation and establishing a climate justice fund. When large countries fail to act, it’s the smaller regions, states and nations that keep the climate action momentum going — but that can’t always be the case. Countries of all shapes and sizes must step up to the challenge. “We cannot allow our size to be something that we hide behind when it comes to tackling climate change,” she says. “We must think big in our ambition. We must act big in what we do, and we must be big when it comes to the impact we make.”

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.

A global campaign to advance zero-emission transport gains momentum through The Audacious Project

Thanks to a coalition of climate activists, organizations and researchers — powered by philanthropy — a cleaner, healthier, more equitable transportation future is now within reach. 

For the opening session of the Countdown Summit, head of TED Chris Anderson announced, in conversation with electrification advocate Monica Araya, a catalytic funding boost of 300 million dollars to the Drive Electric campaign. 

The ambitious initiative will accelerate the transition to electric for all vehicles and set the world on the path to 100-percent zero-emission road transportation for the benefit of the climate, health and the economy. The Drive Electric network includes more than 70 partners who have already built an impressive track record in electric vehicle (EV) policy advancement. Over the next five years, they will push for all new road vehicle sales to be electric by 2040, with cars as early as 2030 and buses by 2035. This accelerated shift away from fossil fuels cuts previously estimated timelines by 20 years and will avert more than 160 billion tons of cumulative carbon dioxide emissions.

“Drive Electric partners are advancing the work we urgently need to ensure global climate stability, and what most excites me is that every achievement has a measurable impact on everyday people,” said Araya, who sits on the Drive Electric Steering Committee and is a ClimateWorks Distinguished Fellow. “This is about cleaning the air by eliminating the pollution from diesel trucks,” she continued. “This is about making cities quieter and healthier with electric buses, cars and e-bikes. And this is about accelerating investments and creating jobs for a better, more sustainable economy.”

Accelerating systems change in a multi-trillion-dollar industry like global transportation requires ambitious scale. With this funding, Drive Electric has now raised more than half of the campaign’s goal of one billion dollars to support a crucial five-year window to accelerate the transition to EVs in time to avoid disastrous climate outcomes. The Audacious Project harnessed the expertise of partners like the Climate Leadership Initiative to catalyze this historic funding towards a sector currently underrepresented in philanthropy. 

“The Drive Electric campaign represents a new and exciting model for helping speed the transitions we most need for climate,” said Anna Verghese, executive director of the Audacious Project. “To reach our climate goals, it will require a highly coordinated, multi-sector collaboration of trusted experts on the ground who know what is required. We are excited to see how these efforts could inspire other industries to reimagine change at scale.”

The Audacious coalition

The Audacious Project was formed in partnership with The Bridgespan Group as a springboard for social impact. Using TED’s curatorial expertise to surface ideas, the initiative convenes investors and social entrepreneurs to channel funds towards pressing global issues. A remarkable group of individuals and organizations make this work possible, among them: the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; Nat Simons and Laura Baxter-Simons (Sea Change Foundation); the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation; Quadrature Climate Foundation; Oak Foundation; Chris Larsen and Lyna Lam; Laura and Gary Lauder and Family; Rick and Nancy Moskovitz (Sea Grape Foundation); Jeff and Marieke Rothschild; Ev and Sara Williams (Someland Foundation). 

Learn more about the campaign by watching Monica Araya and Chris Anderson in conversation here, and by visiting their Audacious project page.

Join the movement for 100-percent emissions-free transport and tune into the TED Countdown Global Livestream on October 30, 2021 to learn about more climate actions you can take.

A pathway opens: Notes from Session 1 of Countdown Summit

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Countdown is the most ambitious initiative TED has endeavored upon. A meeting point and invitation to all, from any walk of life, to participate in the story of solving the climate crisis in urgent and crucial ways. A call-in to businesses, governments, society, investors and everyday people to drive action with passion, energy and a deep desire for change.

Bringing together individuals who have spent decades pushing toward a zero-emission future and highlighting the new generation of dedicated changemakers, Session 1 took the first step on the marathon path to curtailing the world’s biggest existential threat with ambition, realism — and an invigorating dose of optimism.

The event: Countdown Summit: Session 1, hosted by Future Stewards cofounder Lindsay Levin and TED’s Chris Anderson and Bruno Giussani, at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland on Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Speakers: Zac Goldsmith, Amina J. Mohammed, Selina Neirok Leem, Johan Rockström, Gabriel Kra, Nigel Topping, Jim Hagemann Snabe, Monica Araya and Melati Wijsen

Performances: Let It Happen, a dance trio comprised of Dutch twin sisters Norah and Yarah along with younger sister Rosa, who vibrantly lit up the TED stage to remixes of classic American songs “Get On the Good Foot” by James Brown and “Hit the Road Jack” by Ray Charles.

The talks in brief:

Zac Goldsmith, UK Minister for the Pacific, environmental advocate

Big Idea: Restoring and preserving natural systems is humanity’s single greatest mission in the fight against climate change — but in order to achieve this, governments need to prioritize protecting nature.

How? Despite knowing that Earth’s ecological systems make life possible, forests continue to be cut down and oceans filled with trash as climate change reaps its effects. Clean technology has made big leaps towards curbing the destruction by pushing for green energy and renewables, explains UK Minister for the Pacific Zac Goldsmith, but tech can’t compare to the solutions nature has to offer if restored. Take mangroves, for example, which absorb carbon from the air and protect coastal communities from storms but are not as prioritized as cement defenses that function at only a fraction of the efficiency mangroves naturally provide. The issue lies in what solutions the economy values most. “Markets barely register the cost of destroying those natural systems, and until governments change that … we are always going to be playing catch up,” says Goldsmith. He urges governments to pass laws that protect at least thirty percent of land and sea by 2030, to support the world’s Indigenous peoples and to remove deforestation and degradation from supply chains. By redirecting incentives (and budgets), nature can recover from the damage of all the systems in place set against it — and thrive.

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Amina J. Mohammed, UN Deputy Secretary-General

Big idea: As we work to decarbonize the global economy, we should prioritize projects like the Great Green Wall that use climate action as a vehicle to deliver dignity, economic opportunity and equality for all.

How? When UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed was a young girl, Lake Chad looked like an ocean — it touched the border of four countries and sustained over 30 million people. Today, more than 90 percent of this freshwater basin has dried up, along with the economic opportunities it once provided for millions of farmers, fisherfolk and marketplace sellers. The devastation grows with extreme weather events like the dry, windy Harmattan, meaning “more jobs lost, hunger and families displaced — a perfect storm for instability and, sadly, more violence.” But Mohammed remains hopeful; she believes we can decarbonize our planet and meet the aims of the Paris Climate agreement through strategic climate action that invests in human potential. She provides the Great Green Wall — a project aiming to plant 100 million trees on the edge of the Sahara to stop desertification, restore degraded land and improve water harvesting — as an example. Beyond the climate benefits, Mohammed believes the project will create green economic opportunities for half a billion people. She acknowledges that transformative climate actions like this will require massive investments from rich countries and, perhaps more importantly, vocal solidarity from people worldwide. “Friends,” she says, “it’s time to make some serious noise.”

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Selina Neirok Leem, youth climate activist

Big idea: Communities at the frontlines of climate change like the low-lying Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean are at risk of losing everything to something they didn’t contribute to creating. Climate adaptation is now their only choice.

Why? For 23-year-old climate warrior Selina Neirok Leem, climate change isn’t a distant threat to be negotiated over decades-long timelines — it’s the ever-present reality of her home in the Marshall Islands. The youngest delegate at the COP21 conference that adopted the Paris Agreement in 2015, Leem and her fellow Marshall Islanders now bear witness to floods from continually rising seas that routinely send them seeking shelter on hard-to-find high ground, threatening livelihoods, access to clean water and their way of life. In a stirring poem and talk, she explains that climate adaptation is the only choice for her people now. “We’ve been told to move. To become climate change refugees,” she says. “I’m not even sure who would even take us in. But to those who think that we should just accept our fate, I want to say: adaptation and indigenous knowledge are the solutions.”

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Johan Rockström, climate impact scholar

Big idea: There are three key messages about the climate crisis that you need to know.

What are they? First, a message from the scientific community: the Sixth Assessment Report the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the latest in a series of landmark reports that assess the threat of climate change, is a code red for humanity, vividly explaining the alarming extent of the global crisis. As climate impact scholar Johan Rockström says, the alarm bell of climate change has been ringing for decades, but humanity kept hitting the snooze button. Now is the time to wake up and act. Message two: tipping points. We are now forced to consider the real risk of destabilizing the planet, as the big biophysical systems that regulate climate — from the Greenland ice sheet to the Amazon rainforest — approach their irreversible tipping points that could make Earth uninhabitable for humanity. As Rockström puts it: “We’re sleepwalking in a minefield.” Finally, message three: the window of opportunity is still open, but barely. He stresses the importance of all countries participating in the transformation to sustainability, going from billions to trillions in investment and putting end dates on coal and the combustion engine.

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Gabriel Kra, climate tech investor

Big idea: We need to stop thinking about climate change as a problem and regard it more as an opportunity.

Why? We have better technologies, policies and, most importantly, a clearer sense of urgency bundled with some of the best minds of our time dedicated to solving the climate crisis. As an investor, Gabriel Kra knows this firsthand from his experience in Silicon Valley, where he has a bird’s-eye view of the entrepreneurs, inventors and fellow investors focused like never before on what he calls “the great business opportunity of our generation.” From his soaring optimism, he offers a few on-the-ground details from electric cars and alternative energies to sustainable architecture and optimized software that should be cause to share in his building excitement for these burgeoning technologies. And these examples are just the beginning, Kra explains. Each new or improved aspect paves a better and more realistic path toward a greener future. By constantly developing and revolutionizing innovations, we are on track to solve one of the biggest problems of our time — and that’s something to be wildly optimistic about.

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Nigel Topping, UN High Level Climate Action Champion for COP26

Big idea: There are distinct pathways to transform the economy and ratchet up climate ambition.

How? As High Level Climate Action Champion for the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26), Nigel Topping works to help economies scale up their climate ambitions in support of local governments ahead of the landmark meeting. So, what’s changed since the Paris Agreement of 2015? Topping says there’s a much stronger sense of urgency, driven in part by our lived experiences — the disruptions of climate change feel closer to home than ever — and the reality that we can not just achieve sustainability but instead make it the key development story of this century. The focus now should shift to positively disrupting the patterns of the global economy that keep us from climate action and creating ambition loops between policy and the private sector to accelerate progress.

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Jim Hagemann Snabe, Chairman, Mærsk and Siemens

Big idea: We need dramatic, exponential scale expansion in solar, wind, green hydrogen and green fuel plants to deliver on the growing demand for green shipping.

How? At Mærsk, the world’s largest maritime shipping company, Jim Hagemann Snabe is leading an effort to decarbonize logistics by 2050. After looking at carbon-reducing options like “slow steaming” — slowing down the speed of a vessel so it uses less fuel — and running ships on battery power and liquid natural gas, Mærsk, the A. P. Moller Foundation and the Center for Zero Carbon Shipping in Copenhagen think they’ve landed on a viable path towards carbon neutrality for the shipping giant: Power-to-X. Through a special process, Power-to-X turns green electricity into a green liquid fuel that can be used in combustion engines, meaning existing ships can be retrofitted to run on renewable energy. While still expensive, the benefits of Power-to-X greatly outweigh the costs — and Hagemann Snabe urges governments to show leadership by imposing a global price on CO2, which would eliminate the affordability argument completely. “We have the technologies needed to create a sustainable future. What we need is leadership to get us there faster,” he says.

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Monica Araya, electrification advocate

Big Idea: A global movement towards emissions-free transport is one of the key steps towards a sustainable future in the face of climate change — and everyone has a role to play.

How? Leading the shift towards clean transport, 70 organizations have come together to establish the Drive Electric campaign, an initiative pushing for all new road vehicle sales to be electric by 2035. Spearheading this movement over the crucial next five years, electrification advocate Monica Araya is working to set the world on a path towards completely emissions-free transportation — which will potentially cut 160 billion tons of cumulative carbon dioxide emissions. To reach these goals, she explains, we have to work with all levers of change, from cities to politicians to corporations to citizens so this goal can be funded — and realized. The price tag for change? Araya says the switch to all-electric will cost $1 billion — and announces that the Audacious Project, TED’s initiative to inspire and fund global change, has recently secured a breakthrough $300 million in funding towards this effort. With hopes of inspiring other industries to follow suit, these big leaps towards climate stability show that scalable change is possible and every effort towards it counts.

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Melati Wijsen, climate activist, social entrepreneur

Big idea: When starting on the journey of activism, young people need tools and support to lead and make the change they want to see in the world.

How? Activism is a tough job, especially for young people yearning for immediate change — something climate activist Melati Wijsen has learned over ten years of pushing for environmental protection, starting at age 12 in her home on the island of Bali, Indonesia. How can young changemakers acquire the skills they need and keep from burning out? First, Wijsen says, activists must take care of themselves. When exhaustion sets in, it’s time to take a break and rely on colleagues to continue the work. Second, create support networks to share resources, information and inspiration — like Circle of Youth within YOUTHTOPIA, an educational platform where activist peers learn from each other. Third, look out for companies touting youth activism to advance their brands — a tactic Wijsen calls “youthwashing.” Young people seeking change need seats at the bargaining table, not lip service for their causes.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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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.

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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?

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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.

The making of His Holiness Pope Francis’s second TED Talk

The speaker sits in front of a bookshelf, notes in hand, a deliberate tone to his voice. As we live through a pandemic and see an even bigger socio-environmental crisis quickly approaching, he says, we all face a choice: “The choice between what matters, and what doesn’t.”

That’s how His Holiness Pope Francis frames his second TED Talk, which was livestreamed on October 10, 2020 during the closing session of the Global Launch of TED’s climate initiative, Countdown. 

The head of the Roman Catholic Church is not new to the TED stage: he gave his first TED Talk in 2017, surprising the audience at TED’s annual conference in Vancouver via video. His acceptance to give a second TED Talk highlights his strong advocacy for action on climate change. We asked Bruno Giussani, TED’s Global Curator, who led the team that developed the Countdown program, to share the genesis of the talk.

What about the present moment made it the right time for Pope Francis to give a second TED Talk?

Bruno Giussani: In 2015, Pope Francis published an important Encyclical letter (a book) about the environment or, in his words, about “caring for our common home.” It is called “Laudato Si'” (“Praise be to You”), and it received global attention. In it he put forward the concept of “integral ecology,” and wrote: “Although the post-industrial period may well be remembered as one of the most irresponsible in history, nonetheless there is reason to hope that humanity at the dawn of the 21st century will be remembered for having generously shouldered its grave responsibilities.” That same year, 195 countries signed the historic Paris Agreement committing to do their part to keep the increase in global temperature under 1.5 degrees Celsius and well below 2 degrees, to lower the risk of dramatic impacts of climate change. 

Five years later, fires, floods, droughts and hurricanes occupy the front pages. Science has never been so rich in data and so conclusive about what’s going on: we humans and our activities are changing the climate. Yet, as the data and the analysis that we have shared during Countdown show, the world is not on track to reach the targets of the Paris Agreement, and we have not really started shouldering the responsibilities the Pope wrote about. 

Pope Francis has repeatedly referenced the need for real action and advocated for science, and I have the feeling he harbors impatience for the lack of progress. Actually, just one week before the Countdown Global Launch, he published a new Encyclical, Fratelli Tutti (Brothers All). It is a vast analysis of the current moment, discussing the twin climate and social crises, the challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and the way forward, and a renewed call for solidarity as well as personal and collective responsibility. All of these themes intersect with the intentions and goals of Countdown.

What are the core messages of Pope Francis’s second TED Talk?

BG: He asks us to listen to the science. He underscores the urgency of confronting climate change and social inequity. He conveys how we won’t come out the same from the COVID-19 crisis. And he invites us to partake in what he calls “a journey of transformation and of action.”

He also voices three very concrete suggestions concerning education, access to food and water, and transitioning to clean energy sources. On the latter, he makes the case for divesting from “those companies that do not meet the parameters of integral ecology,” which I understand to mean first and foremost fossil fuel companies.

To whom is this talk addressed?

BG: As he says himself, it’s addressed to “all people of Faith, Christian or not, and all people of goodwill.”

How important is it that a major religious leader is speaking on climate change?

BG: We live in a world where everything has become politics or profit. Face masks become a political battleground and vaccines become a race for profit, to use current examples. The role of spiritual and religious leaders in social and environmental activism is to remind us of the essential values that reside above politics and profit: those of the common good, of dialogue, inclusion and compassion. 

At the end of the talk, Pope Francis speaks of the future being built “not in isolation, but rather in community and in harmony.” Over the years he has convened several gatherings of scientists, businesspeople and interfaith dialogues, and he has launched many other initiatives focused on the climate. 

Nor is this a Catholic exclusive. From the Dalai Lama to Indigenous spiritual leaders, from the Church of England to the Bahá’í, there is a lot of religious engagement for the protection of the planet and of those who live on it. In the US, there is a group of Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, for instance, and in India a few years ago, a Hindu Declaration on Climate Change was issued. But it is true that the voice of Pope Francis is of particular power and resonates well beyond the confines of the Catholic Church.

How does one go about inviting the Pope to give a TED Talk?

BG: One goes through contacts established throughout the years and benefits from the generosity of people who opened doors and made introductions. Pope Francis gave his first TED Talk in 2017, so many at the Vatican are now familiar with TED. The demands on the Pope’s time are plenty, and we are enormously appreciative of his kindness in considering our invitation and in engaging with Countdown. 

How was the talk prepared? TED curators usually work closely with the speakers.

BG: We worked with several of Pope Francis’s collaborators over a period of months, discussing ideas, options and framing. In the end, of course, Pope Francis decided what he wanted to say in the talk. He was filmed by a crew from the Vatican Television Center, and then the talk was subtitled in several languages by a group of TED Translators. 

The Pope spoke from a private study on the ground floor of the guesthouse where he lives in Vatican City. It is a rather unpretentious building called Domus Sanctae Marthae. When he became Pope, he decided to live there instead of occupying the papal apartments above St. Peter’s Square. I believe this choice manifests a genuine preference for a simpler life. But it also sends a message: that just because things have been done a certain way in the past doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t be changed. Which, of course, is a message that maps perfectly onto the climate crisis. 

Can you tell us a little about your observations of Francis, the man? Does he have a sense of humor?

BG: He certainly does. He’s warm and evidently cares for people, who they are and what they think. He’s an acute observer and quick-witted. I had the privilege to be invited, together with a couple dozen other people, to the early-morning Mass that he celebrates in the private chapel at Domus Sanctae Marthae. When I met him afterwards, he pointed out immediately that he had noticed my nodding at certain passages in his sermon. I had nodded indeed: his words related to the themes of his first TED Talk. He’s also 83 years old and carries the double weight of being the spiritual leader of 1.3 billion Catholics and at the same time the head of the Church’s complex hierarchy.

Breakthroughs: Notes from Session 4 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.

The world around us is mainly made of two things: nature and the materials that we extract from it. To fight climate change, we need to protect and regenerate nature and transform materials into low- or zero-carbon alternatives. Session 4 explored the nexus of protection, regeneration and transformation, using powerful examples.

This penultimate session was hosted by digital content creators Hannah Stocking and Prajakta Koli, who highlighted the global span of Countdown and the innovative climate solutions already in existence. The session also featured a TED-Ed Lesson, created by educator Brent Loken, which asked: Can we create the “perfect” farm? And finally, we heard from TEDx organizers across the globe — including Kampala, Uganda; Putalisadak, Nepal; Almaty, Khazikstan; Darlinghurst, Australia; Rome, Italy; and Sana’a, Yemen, among others — who are hosting TEDx Countdown events today. In total, more than 600 TEDx Countdown events are happening across 86 countries.

The talks in brief:

Thomas Crowther, ecosystem ecology professor

Big Idea: Across the world, people are working together to restore the natural glory of biodiverse ecosystems. By gathering and openly sharing these projects, we can unite a robust movement of responsible environmental stewardship and restoration.

How? Restor is a data platform that aims to connect and share the learnings of environmental conservationists who are developing micro- or macro-level projects that reintroduce biodiversity to essential landscapes worldwide. It evolved from another climate change solution — the Trillion Trees movement, which Thomas Crowther helped bring to the mainstream. Research showed that planting a trillion trees worldwide could help capture up to 30 percent of the excess carbon in the atmosphere; however, following criticism that the Trillion Trees movement sought to simply offset carbon emissions, Crowther realized that solving the climate crisis is going to take more than planting trees. We need solutions as diverse as our ecosystems themselves. With Restor, conservationists can learn about key biodiversity restoration projects from around the world, and with machine learning, we can glean insights that will help us develop more resilient and effective solutions.

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Ernestine Leikeki Sevidzem, climate and gender activist

Big idea: We need to care for and live in harmony with the environment.

How? By nurturing a generation — young and old — to protect the nature that provides for them: a forest generation, as Sevidzem calls it. In her native Cameroon, she teaches her community a nature-first dedication to restoring the 20,000-hectare Kilum-Ijim forest that sustains and supplies livelihood for hundreds of thousands of people. Her organization also helps develop gender equality by training people as beekeepers to harness the economic opportunities present in harvesting and selling products from honey and beeswax. In educating both children and adults on what it means to love and preserve the Earth, Sevidzem stands by the need for all of us to foster generations that will inherit a mindset that works with nature, not against it. “We can’t fight the climate emergency if we can’t protect and regenerate our land,” she says.

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John Doerr, engineer and investor, in conversation with Hal Harvey, climate policy expert

Big idea: Humanity has to act globally, at speed and at scale, if there’s any hope of cutting the world’s carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2030. 

How? While it’s difficult to remain optimistic in the face of ever-increasing carbon production, countries like Germany and China have implemented energy policies that have reduced solar costs by 80 percent and wind by half. As a result, it’s now cheaper to generate clean energy than it is to burn dirty fossil fuels. If the 20 largest-emitting countries — which are responsible for 75 percent of the world’s emissions — commit to green grids, electric transportation and efficient homes and factories, then scalable energy solutions could become a global reality. Although Doerr estimates that we only have 70-80 percent of the energy technology we need to avoid climate catastrophe, he and Harvey believe that committed governments and investment in amazing entrepreneurs could turn things around. “The good news is it’s now clearly cheaper to save the planet than to ruin it,” Doerr says. “The bad news is we are fast running out of time.”

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Karen Scrivener, cement researcher

Big idea: We can cut down the CO2 emissions of concrete — the second most-used substance on Earth (behind water), responsible for eight percent of the world’s carbon footprint.

How? If concrete were a country, it would rank third for emissions, after China and the USA, says Karen Scrivener, who is working on new, greener ways to make this crucial building material. When concrete cools after it’s mixed, the limestone that helps hold it together breaks down, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And while we can’t make concrete without a bonding material, it’s possible we could replace concrete with things like LC3 — a concrete-like mixture of calcine clay, limestone and cement that doesn’t require heating the limestone, slashing concrete’s carbon emissions by 40 percent. Despite its enormous emissions, concrete is still the lowest-impact building material we have, emitting less carbon than iron, steel or bricks. “The possibility to replace portland cement with a different material with [the] same properties … but with a much lighter carbon footprint, is really crucial to confront climate change,” Scrivener says. “It can be done fast, and it can be done on a very large scale, with the possibility to eliminate more that 400 million tons of CO2 every year.”

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Tom Schuler, cement entrepreneur

Big idea: Over the last 2,000 years, the art of mixing cement and using it to bind concrete hasn’t changed very much — but the sad truth is that concrete, which is all around us, is one of the biggest emitters of carbon, both when it’s made and when it’s destroyed. But there’s an opportunity to take the carbon out of our infrastructure.

How? One of the key ingredients of concrete is cement, and portland cement is made of limestone — which releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when it breaks down as it is heated and cured (or destroyed). Tom Schuler’s company has figured out a way to use less limestone in making cement — and even repurpose waste carbon dioxide as a catalyst for curing concrete. This innovation could potentially save trillions of gallons of water, use existing processes and factories, and even make concrete carbon negative, cutting emissions from concrete by as much as 70 percent.

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Rahwa Ghirmatzion and Zelalem Adefris, climate activists, in a video narrated by actor, author and director Don Cheadle

Big idea: Under-resourced communities are the most vulnerable to the instability of climate change — and the best equipped to create new, sustainable, resilient solutions for those challenges.

How? The rising threats of natural disasters, extreme temperatures and polluted environments are driving up energy costs and exacerbating housing insecurity across the United States. In response, marginalized communities across the country are coming together to design people-powered projects that address the issues of climate catastrophe and social inequality. These problems are all connected, and the solutions will be too, says Don Cheadle, introducing social and climate justice advocates Rahwa Ghirmatzion and Zelalem Adefris. In Buffalo, New York, Ghirmatzion shows how the nonprofit PUSH Buffalo mobilized 800 residents to transform an abandoned school into a solar-powered community center, offering affordable housing units to the elderly and mutual aid resources throughout the pandemic. And at Catalyst Miami in Florida, Adefris shares how she’s helping to build a coalition of local partners working to ensure housing is affordable and energy-efficient. One collective, Konscious Kontractors, formed in 2017 to help restore and fortify neighborhoods devastated by Hurricane Irma. To mitigate the impacts of the changing climate, we will need to work alongside our neighbors in our communities to create solutions that are inclusive, innovative and long-lasting.

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Prince William, The Duke of Cambridge

Big idea: Fixing climate change is possible if we urgently focus human ingenuity and purpose on repairing our planet.

How: Speaking from beneath a nearly 1,000-year-old oak tree on the grounds at Windsor Castle, Prince William issues a challenge to every person around the globe: to show leadership on climate change. With just 10 years to fix the climate before its effects damage the Earth beyond repair, he calls this new decade the most consequential period in history, saying, “The science is irrefutable. If we do not act in this decade, the damage that we have done will be irreversible. And the effects felt not just by future generations but by all of us alive today.” But the same speed of human innovation that accelerated climate change is precisely what makes him optimistic about our future. Inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s audacious “Moonshot” mission, Prince William now calls on us to rise to our greatest challenge ever: the Earthshot. A set of ambitious goals targeted across industries and sectors, they include: protecting and restoring nature, cleaning the air, reviving oceans, building a waste-free world and fixing the climate … all in the next decade. To do it, we will need people in every corner of the globe working together with urgency, creativity and the belief that it is possible. If we succeed, we win the health of our planet for all. Watch the full talk on TED.com.

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Norwegian singer-songwriter Sigrid, standing in front of a stunning view of a forest lake, delights with uplifting vocals, warm guitar strums and delicate melodies in a performance of her songs “Home to You” and “Don’t Kill My Vibe.”

The making of Prince William’s TED Talk

In a park close to Windsor Castle, to the West of London, is an old oak with a large protruding root. It’s sitting on that root that Prince William, The Duke of Cambridge, gives his first TED Talk as part of Countdown, TED’s climate initiative launched on October 10, 2020. 

Prince William’s climate engagement is known. Just two days before the Countdown Global Launch, he escalated his commitment by announcing the Earthshot Prize, a new global award for the environment to incentivize change and help repair our planet over the next ten years — a critical period for changing climate change. “The science is irrefutable. If we do not act in this decade, the damage that we have done will be irreversible and the effects felt not just by future generations, but by all of us alive today,” Prince William says in his thoughtful talk. 

A talk of this nature requires careful preparation. We asked Bruno Giussani, TED’s global curator and the person responsible for the Countdown program, how it came to be.

What are the core messages of The Duke’s TED Talk?

Bruno Giussani: It is an optimistic talk. Very clear on the nature and the scope of the climate challenge, but also optimistic that we can rise to the biggest challenges of our time. He takes inspiration from President John F. Kennedy’s Moonshot in the 1960s, which catalyzed, around the goal of putting a man on the Moon within a decade, the development of solutions and technologies that have then percolated into daily lives. Think, for instance, of breathing equipment, CAT scanners and solar panels. Prince William urges us to harness that same spirit of human ingenuity and purpose, and turn it, to use his words, towards “the most pressing challenge we have ever faced: repairing the planet.”

From Moonshot to Earthshot. Tell us about the Earthshot Prize.

BG: It is a compelling and ambitious vision. The Prize is centered around five clear goals — or Earthshots — underpinned by science-based targets to trigger and accelerate new ways of thinking as well as new technologies, policies and solutions for the planet. The five goals are: protect and restore nature; clean our air; revive the oceans; build a waste-free world; and fix our climate. Starting next year and until 2030, the Prize will be awarded every year to five winners, one per Earthshot. The awards are each worth £1 million GBP (about $1.3 million USD). 

And the Earthshot Prize is a strategic partner of Countdown.

BG: Yes, the two initiatives are quite complementary, both global in nature, built on a collaborative approach and rooted in science. We look forward to continuing the collaboration with Prince William and The Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. 

How does one go about inviting Prince William to give a TED Talk?

BG: We had been thinking about inviting Prince William for a while, we were just waiting for the right opportunity. When a member of the TED community alerted us about the work The Duke’s team is doing on the Earthshot Prize and how it mapped onto the aims of Countdown, we felt that the moment had come. We engaged preliminary discussions with his brilliant team, which rapidly led to his decision to accept the invitation.

Why do you think he agreed to doing this talk?

BG: He is very focused right now on the climate and ecological emergency. The Earthshot Prize has a real chance to contribute to accelerating solutions, and it could change the narrative to one of excitement and opportunity. In the talk, Prince William was able to set out his vision of how we can bring a sense of optimism and hope to meet the challenge of this moment. In his own words: “I’m determined to both start and end this decade as an optimist”.

Did Prince William write his own talk?

BG: Like every person in his position, The Duke has collaborators helping prepare his public speeches. This was no different. We discussed ideas, drafts and framing, and we had a very productive discussion with him — via videoconference of course. At the end, obviously, he decided what he wanted to keep in the talk and what not. If you watch it, you will immediately appreciate the genuine and deeply felt nature of the message he’s conveying from under that old oak.  

What is The Duke of Cambridge like?

BG: Prince William is remarkably humble and approachable for someone who has spent his whole life in the public eye. His constant focus on how to get things done gives the strong impression of someone who is very determined to make an impact on the world and will use all resources he has available to him to do it. He asks good questions and listens carefully to the answers. 

Who filmed the talk?

BG: You are right to point that out: the talk is filmed in an intensely simple — a man under a tree — yet very powerful way. It was filmed by great British documentary producer, Alastair Fothergill. Among other titles to his credit, he was the series producer of world-famous nature documentaries such as The Blue Planet and Planet Earth.

Transformation: Notes from Session 3 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.

Transforming big systems is a huge task. Energy, transportation, industry and infrastructure all pose their own challenges. And yet that transformation is already happening. The experts in Session 3 showed us how and where, and offered powerful ideas for accelerating it: developing an economy without coal, decarbonizing fossil fuels, electrifying mobility and more.

This session was cohosted by actor and activist Jane Fonda and climate activist Xiye Bastida, who kicked off the hour by discussing what it means to fight for climate justice and how to ignite large-scale change.

The talks in brief:

Varun Sivaram, clean energy executive, physicist, author

Big idea: India has a historic opportunity to power its industrialization with clean energy. 

How? In a country where fossil fuels are still a luxury for many (only six percent of Indians own cars, and only two percent have air conditioning), India has a unique opportunity to build a new, green energy infrastructure from the ground up. An incredible 70 percent of India’s infrastructure of 2030 hasn’t been built yet, says Varun Sivaram, CTO of India’s largest renewable energy company, presenting the nation with a historic opportunity to industrialize using clean energy. By making renewable energy “the beating heart of a reimagined economy,” Sivaram thinks India can add thousands of gigawatts of solar and wind production capacity, green the country’s power grid and transportation system, and radically improve energy efficiency — electrifying communities that remain beyond the reach of the power grid.

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Myles Allen, climate science scholar

Big idea: The fossil fuel industry can play a central role in solving climate change by decarbonizing their product. Oil and gas companies know how to decarbonize their fuels, and they have the money to do it. Now, they need the will.

How? The fossil fuel industry contributes 85 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions. To stop global warming, oil and gas companies need to stop dumping carbon into the atmosphere — but that doesn’t mean they have to stop selling their product altogether, says climate scientist Myles Allen. In lieu of a total ban on fossil fuels, which would harm the growth of developing countries (and is frankly unrealistic), Allen proposes a bold plan for fossil fuel companies to progressively decarbonize their product and reach net zero emissions by 2050. Engineers at energy companies have known how to decarbonize fossil fuels for years: collect CO2 as it burns, purify and compress it, and inject it deep into the Earth from which it came, where it can be stored for thousands of years. This process is expensive, so fuel companies haven’t done it yet at scale. But Allen puts forth a progressive decarbonization model in which 10 percent of fuels can be decarbonized by 2030, 50 percent by 2040 and 100 percent by 2050, allowing companies time to build a robust carbon dioxide disposal industry that works for everyone. With the know-how, money and plan to get to net zero emissions, all fossil fuel companies need now is will power. 

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Rose M. Mutiso, energy researcher

Big idea: The world must reach a zero emission future. On the way there, Africa deserves its fair share of the carbon budget to make that transition possible and equitable. 

Why? 48 African countries, combined, are responsible for less than one percent of the world’s carbon footprint, says Rose M. Mutiso. Pointing to this stark divide between those with limited energy access and those who have it in abundance, she highlights why Africa’s energy needs must be prioritized when reimagining the global carbon budget. The solution may sound counterintuitive, but to achieve a zero emission future, Africa needs to produce more carbon in the short term in order to develop in the long term — all while wealthier continents drastically cut their own emissions. For climate adaptation to be possible, Mutiso says, the world must recognize the vulnerability of developing countries and grant them the resources needed to build resilient infrastructures.

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Monica Araya, electrification advocate

Big idea: The global shift to 100-percent clean transportation is under way.

How? People around the world are demanding clean air — and cities are responding, says Monica Araya. In her home base of Amsterdam, for instance, the city is rolling out a plan to make all transportation fully emission-free by 2030. The city will ban petrol and diesel vehicles, starting with public buses and working up to all kinds of traffic, from taxis, trucks and ferries to personal cars and motorcycles. Other cities across the globe are following suit by electrifying transportation options and championing sustainable forms of travel. There is (and will be) resistance to change, Araya notes — our addiction to fossil fuels runs deep. So we need clever combinations of finance and policy. Whether we can create healthy cities, while meeting our transportation needs, all depends on the choices we make this decade. “The end of the internal combustion engine is within sight,” Araya says. “The question is no longer whether this will happen, but when.”

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Al Gore and climate activists Ximena Loría, Nana Firman, Gloria Kasang Bulus and Tim Guinee

Big idea: It’s been almost 15 years since Al Gore sounded the alarm on climate change with An Inconvenient Truth. Today, with the Climate Reality Project, he’s helping mold future leaders to build the movement for climate survival and social justice from the ground up.

How? Gore introduces us to four of the graduates of the Climate Reality Project, who each confront climate change on their own terms and on their own doorsteps: Ximena Loría, founder of Misión 2 Grados, an NGO influencing public policy in Central America; Nana Firman, “daughter of the rainforest” and advocate for climate justice among Indigenous peoples; Gloria Kasang Bulus, a Nigerian activist for women and education; and Tim Guinee, a first responder and climate change fighter in upstate New York. Together, they’re gathering local actors into a global, grass-roots movement that aims to turn the climate fight around. “The global pandemic, structural and institutional racism with its horrific violence, the worsening impacts of the climate crisis: all of these have accelerated the emergence of a new and widespread collective understanding of our connection to the natural world, the consequences of ignoring science and our sacred obligation to build a just society for all,” Gore says.

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Stephen Wilkes, photographer

Big idea: When we look at a landscape in the wild, we see only a moment in time. Photographer Stephen Wikes seeks to grasp the complex choreography of the natural world as it transitions from day to night — and to more deeply feel the impacts the human race is having on Earth’s ecosystems.

How? Using a special technique that captures the passage of time from day to night in a single image, Stephen Wilkes is able to photograph vanishing habitats and species in astonishing detail. These narrative images reveal how Earth changes over time, in all its beautiful complexity, and drive home the impacts of climate change with unprecedented force — from the threat of melting ice to the Arctic food chain to the disruption of flamingo migrations in Africa. “Our planet is changing before our eyes, but to witness that change is also to witness the remarkable relationships between all of nature — to see the infinite beauty of it, to learn how much bigger than us it is, and why it is worth fighting for,” Wilkes says.

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With an acoustic guitar on her knee, folk songwriter Raye Zaragoza sings her original song “Fight For You,” dedicated to everyone who stands up for the Earth. Later in the session, musician and actor Yemi Alade returns to sing “Africa,” a celebration song for a continent already experiencing the harmful effects of climate change.

Leadership: Notes from Session 2 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.

The climate crisis demands leadership at every level. Governments, cities and businesses are three key players in designing and implementing the necessary transition. In Session 2 of the Countdown Global Launch, cohosted by climate advocate Al Gore and actor, musician and activist Jaden Smith, speakers discussed putting climate back on the political and social agenda, rethinking cities and what businesses can do to transform.

Gore and Smith opened the session by talking about how young people are at the forefront of climate activism, and discussed the global art collaboration between Countdown and Fine Acts: ten public artworks on the topic of climate change, аll launching on 10.10.2020 in ten cities around the world, all created by TED Fellows.

The talks in brief:

Severn Cullis-Suzuki, environmental educator

Big idea: Nearly 30 years ago, 12-year-old Severn Cullis-Suzuki spoke at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit in hopes of reversing the planet’s slide into ecological disaster. Some at the summit listened, producing the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, among other then-radical documents. But for the rest of the world, it was business, politics and full-steam-ahead economic growth. Now in 2020, with the Paris Agreement once again stoking the fervor to fight climate change, it’s time to make sure governments actually listen. 

How? Cullis-Suzuki believes that crises can show us not only the potential for societies to react decisively against existential threats, but also expose the inequities, injustices and weaknesses of our infrastructure. COVID-19 is one such crisis: it has sparked calls for social justice and shown just how deadly indecision can be. Cullis-Suzuki believes it’s a warning. She reminds us that if we don’t change, next time could be far worse. This time, if we can make our actions reflect our words around climate change, we can work towards a better world for our children.  

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Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission

Big idea: The European Union has committed to becoming the first carbon-free continent by 2050, with the goal of reducing emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030. These ambitious goals are vital — and possible — and they require everyone’s participation. 

How? The evidence of climate change is unfolding before us: melting glaciers, forest fires, unpredictable weather. This is only the beginning. Such extreme circumstances call for extreme action, and that is exactly what Ursula von der Leyen has laid out in response. Resolving not to be derailed by COVID-19, the EU’s commitment to climate action milestones is now stronger than ever, von der Leyen says. She details some of the 50 actions in the European Green Deal aimed at building a more sustainable world, such as planting trees, creating a circular economy, recycling and more. With the crisis escalating every day, she calls for action from every direction.

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Olafur Eliasson, artist

Big idea: Known for big, attention-grabbing installations — like his four towering waterfalls in New York’s East River — Olafur Eliasson has scaled down his latest project: an art platform for kids designed to spur budding climate activists to lead discussions on some of the biggest issues on the planet.

How? Inspired by world-shaping movements helmed by the planet’s youngest environmentalists, Eliasson built Earth Speakr, an app that helps concerned kids get serious messages in front of adults in a fun, novel way. The app uses AR to let kids animate photos of anything — trees, rocks, water — and record a message from nature, speaking in their own voices. These recorded messages help get the word out about the issues kids care about most — conservation, climate change, pollution and more.

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Rebecca Henderson, capitalism rethinker

Big idea: Capitalism is driving climate change — but for-profit businesses can also help fix it. 

How? “We let capitalism morph into something monstrous,” says economist Rebecca Henderson. Companies emit massive amounts of greenhouse gases that wreck the environment and harm human health, and governments don’t hold them accountable to pay for the damages. If governments won’t do it, Henderson says, it’s time for businesses themselves to step up on their own. Sound counterintuitive? Henderson thinks it may be the only option: it’ll be hard to stay in business if the world continues to be rocked by the negative effects of climate change. She’s confident that business leaders can start to marshal change with a four-pronged framework: start paying for the climate damage they cause; persuade competitors to do the same; let investors know there’s money to be made in a clean economy; and convince governments to implement these changes far and wide. “The truth is: business is screwed if we don’t fix climate change,” Henderson says.

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Elif Shafak, novelist and political scientist

Big idea: There is a sublime art at the heart of storytelling: the art of foregrounding silence, bringing to light things that we don’t talk about, and using these things to “speak louder than demagoguery and apathy.” Writers can learn to voice the unspoken loudly enough to inspire action.

How? “One of the many beauties of the art of storytelling is to imagine yourself inside someone else’s voice,” says writer Elif Shafak. Surprisingly, we can learn a lot from imagining the voices of trees, whose experience of time, stillness and impermanence are utterly different than our own. Listen to the trees, she says, and discover that “hidden inside [their] story is the past and the future of humanity.” 

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Jesper Brodin, CEO of Ingka Group (IKEA), in conversation with Pia Heidenmark Cook, CSO of Ingka Group (IKEA)

Big idea: Success in business doesn’t mean being at odds with the Earth. What’s good for climate can be good for business, too. 

How? Jesper Brodin and Pia Heidenmark Cook discuss the company’s ambitious commitment to go climate positive (going beyond net-zero emissions by actually removing carbon from the atmosphere) by 2030 — and still remain profitable. The popular Swedish furniture and design company is rethinking how to make their entire business sustainable, from their raw materials and supply chain and to their products’ disposal. Their plan includes sourcing sustainable cotton for fabrics, buying wood from solely sustainable sources by the end of 2020 and committing to fully renewable and recycled materials for all their products by 2030. They’re also thinking about how to extend the life of products, once people have already bought them, through reuse, repurposing or recycling. The exciting part about their plan, Brodin and Cook say, is that none of these innovations will affect the quality, form, function and affordability of their products.

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Dave Clark, SVP of worldwide operations at Amazon, and Kara Hurst, head of worldwide sustainability at Amazon

Big idea: Amazon is making a commitment to sustainability across its expansive array of businesses — and inviting other companies to do the same.

How? In 2019, Amazon cofounded the Climate Pledge, a commitment to become a net-zero carbon company by 2040. Dave Clark and Kara Hurst discuss how they’re working together to reduce Amazon’s carbon footprint across all aspects of business, from embedding sustainability teams throughout the organization to rethinking entire supply chains. For instance, last year Amazon ordered 100,000 electric delivery vehicles from the startup Rivian in an effort to begin converting the company’s fleet to renewable energy. The scale of transformation will be massive, Clark and Hurst say, and they’re encouraging other companies to follow suit. “One thing we know about the scale of the urgent challenge we have in front of us is that it’s going to take everyone. We cannot do it alone,” Hurst says, “It’s going to take companies and governments, communities and individuals, to come up with solutions, new innovations and technologies.”

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Aparna Nancherla, comedian

Big idea: Taking out the trash can be fun.

Why? If you love garbage, you can get an endless supply with “the stuff that our modernist, consumer, carbon-powered culture makes us buy endlessly, and often for no good reason,” says Aparna Nancherla. She runs through the pleasure and pain of garbage, from “micro-decluttering” by throwing things away, to the fact that only 10 percent of our plastic gets recycled. Nancherla shares the dire state of our recycling industry (imagining the Pacific garbage patch as a wedding destination), but there’s also plenty of humor around just how hard it is to stay green in a world that’s choking on ever-larger piles of trash.

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Carlos Moreno, scientific director, Panthéon Sorbonne University-IAE Paris

Big idea: Urban areas should be built to function as “15-minute cities,” so that inhabitants have access to all services they need to live, learn and thrive within their immediate vicinity.

How? City life has become more inconvenient than ever, with long commutes, underutilized spaces and lack of access. Our acceptance of this dysfunction has reached a peak. Carlos Moreno invites us to ask ourselves: “What do we need to create a 15-minute city?” This would mean access to necessities like school, work, parks, cultural centers, shops and living space all within a 15-minute walk, at all times. Moreno’s ideas to create cities like this are guided by four principles: ecology, proximity, solidarity and participation, with inhabitants actively taking part in their neighborhoods’ transformations. He calls for urban areas to adapt to humans, not the other way around. 

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Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, Mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone

Big idea: Trees offer us a crucial way to trap carbon and save the climate. Get planting.

How? Driving home one day outside Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr gazed out at the landscape in horror. The lush green forest she used to know had disappeared, replaced with barren hills. The shock wasn’t merely visual. Without trees standing as a critical bulwark against land erosion, the citizens of Freetown — where more than 70 informal settlements have sprung up in the last two decades — are at great risk of catastrophic effects of climate change, a fact driven home in August 2017, when a massive landslide killed 1,000 people there in less than five minutes. In that moment, Aki-Sawyerr vowed to save her city in the most direct way she could — she ran for mayor, won and has now committed to making Freetown a “tree town” once again. She’s on track to increase vegetation cover in the city by 50 percent by the end of her term in 2022, planting one million trees along the way. Freetown citizens have planted half a million seedlings so far, all tracked using a custom app, setting the stage for a safer environment and stirring collective civic pride. “A million trees is our city’s small contribution to increasing the much-needed global carbon sink,” Aki-Sawyerr says.

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Actress and musician Yemi Alade joins the show to close out the session, singing and dancing to the upbeat tune “True Love.”