Futura-Sciences

Cette stalagmite vieille de 18 000 ans force les scientifiques à réécrire toute l'histoire de l'agriculture

Dans une grotte discrète des monts Zagros, une stalagmite a enregistré des millénaires d’histoire climatique. En révélant des variations oubliées depuis 18 000 ans, elle offre un indice inattendu sur un mystère majeur : pourquoi les premières sociétés agricoles sont-elles apparues précisément...

Futura-Sciences

Une étoile dévore lentement sa compagne depuis des milliards d’années : les astronomes découvrent une agonie presque interminable

L'astrophysique du XXe siècle nous a montré que l'Univers pouvait être violent et destructeur d'astres, pas seulement créateur. L'astrophysique du XXIe siècle n'est pas en reste, comme le prouve un nouvel exemple avec un système binaire contenant une naine brune.

Futura-Sciences

Des astronomes retrouvent enfin la matière manquante de l’Univers

Les astronomes la cherchaient depuis longtemps. Récemment, ils en avaient retrouvé la trace. Voici qu’ils sont enfin parvenus à mettre la main dessus : la matière ordinaire manquante de notre Univers. Le tout grâce à un mystérieux indic.

Futura-Sciences

Kyiv déploie une défense d’un nouveau genre : des mitrailleuses guidées par intelligence artificielle

Face aux nouveaux drones à réaction et missiles russes capables de filer entre les mailles de la défense antiaérienne, Kyiv change de méthode. Autour de la capitale, des tourelles de mitrailleuses pilotées par une IA traquent désormais automatiquement les menaces et ouvrent le feu sans...

Futura-Sciences

Vous relâchez les araignées dehors ? Ce geste peut en réalité leur être fatal

Vous trouvez une araignée dans votre salon et votre premier réflexe est de l'attraper pour la jeter dehors. Mauvaise idée, selon les spécialistes des arachnides. Ce geste, pourtant instinctif, peut nuire à l'araignée elle-même et perturber l'équilibre de votre environnement. Voici pourquoi il...

Futura-Sciences

Ce que les archéologues viennent de découvrir pourrait changer notre regard sur certains récits de la Bible

Un texte fantôme révélé par imagerie sur un manuscrit décomposé au XIIIe siècle, deux cylindres de terre cuite signés par Nabuchodonosor, un projectile de fronde portant une insulte gravée. Ces six découvertes récentes éclairent le monde dans lequel les récits bibliques ont été écrits, transmis...

Futura-Sciences

Ce n’est plus seulement 7 limites franchies : c’est leur aggravation simultanée qui inquiète les scientifiques

Canicules, incendies et océans en surchauffe. Derrière ces crises en apparence distinctes, les scientifiques voient un même signal : une Terre dont les mécanismes de protection subissent une pression sans précédent.

Futura-Sciences

Vénus aurait pu engloutir sa propre Lune : les simulations révèlent un scénario spectaculaire

L'étude du Système solaire, en parallèle avec celle des exoplanètes, semble encore pleine de surprises... au moins théoriques, comme le montre un nouveau scénario extraordinaire avec la planète Vénus !

Futura-Sciences

Pour la première fois, deux drones navals se sont affrontés en mer : la guerre vient-elle de franchir un cap ?

La guerre des drones franchit une nouvelle étape et cela se passe en mer. En mer Noire, un drone naval ukrainien a détruit son adversaire russe lors de ce qui est présenté comme le premier duel entre deux « bâtiments sans équipage ». Une scène qui pourrait préfigurer les combats navals de...

Futura-Sciences

Le changement va être brutal : une chaleur inhabituelle va regagner toute la France et aggraver la sécheresse

Un petit air d’automne a envahi la France ces derniers jours, avec un net rafraîchissement sur la quasi-totalité du pays. Mais l’été n’a pas encore dit son dernier mot, et les températures vont connaître une nouvelle hausse généralisée dès samedi.

Futura-Sciences

Des singes adoptent parfois d’autres animaux, et ces cas sont étonnamment nombreux

Longtemps considérées comme de charmantes anecdotes, les interactions sociales entre primates et autres animaux semblent en réalité largement répandues. L’étude de ce primatologue rassemble 427 cas, allant du jeu au toilettage et aux soins, dont certains évoquent de véritables liens affectifs...

Futura-Sciences

Des chercheurs ont créé 8,3 milliards de faux humains… et les entreprises peuvent les tester !

Une équipe scientifique vient de dévoiler MatrAIx, une infrastructure open source capable de simuler 8,3 milliards d’individualités virtuelles. Cette modélisation est essentiellement tournée vers le business, car le jumeau numérique de la population mondiale promet de révolutionner le test de...

Futura-Sciences

Voici pourquoi relâcher une araignée dehors serait souvent une mauvaise idée selon les spécialistes

Vous trouvez une araignée dans votre salon et votre premier réflexe est de l'attraper pour la jeter dehors. Mauvaise idée, selon les spécialistes des arachnides. Ce geste, pourtant instinctif, peut nuire à l'araignée elle-même et perturber l'équilibre de votre environnement. Voici pourquoi il...

Futura-Sciences

12 semaines de jeûne intermittent : une étude révèle ce qu’il reste de la perte de poids un an après

Perdre du poids est une chose, éviter de le reprendre en est une autre. Selon une étude publiée dans Clinical Nutrition, le jeûne intermittent pourrait contribuer à maintenir les résultats obtenus plusieurs mois après la fin de l'intervention. Que faut-il réellement en penser ?

Futura-Sciences

Cette pierre découverte par hasard dans une mine iranienne pourrait bien bouleverser la physique quantique

Et si l'intrication quantique, ce phénomène que les physiciens peinent à recréer en laboratoire, existait déjà à l'état naturel, enfouie dans la roche ? Une pierre verdâtre extraite d'une mine iranienne pourrait bien cacher l'un des états de la matière les plus convoités. De quoi rêver d'une...

Futura-Sciences

La photo de la semaine : le « requin le plus laid du monde » a enfin été filmé vivant !

Une première mondiale. C’est ce que représente notre photo de la semaine. Celle d’une créature mystérieuse et, n’ayons pas peur de mots... affreuse, filmée pour la première fois vivante dans les grands fonds : un requin-gobelin.

Futura-Sciences

Une nouvelle étude fait le lien entre la physique classique et la physique quantique

Des scientifiques du MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) ont démontré que certains concepts mathématiques de la physique classique permettent de décrire les comportements souvent étranges et contre-intuitifs qui se produisent à l'échelle quantique.

Futura-Sciences

Voici le phénomène méconnu qui pourrait faire chuter des populations animales bien avant la limite critique

Le réchauffement climatique met la biodiversité en danger. Et nous n’avions jusqu’ici peut-être pas tout à fait conscience d’à quel point une montée des températures peut avoir un effet dévastateur sur les populations.

Futura-Sciences

Attention aux contrefaçons : voici comment choisir les bonnes lunettes pour admirer l’éclipse du soleil du 12 août sans danger

Le 12 août prochain, une éclipse solaire offrira un spectacle rare aux observateurs du monde entier. Visible depuis la France métropolitaine, elle promet des conditions d’observation particulièrement impressionnantes dans certaines régions. Mais attention : admirer le Soleil, même partiellement...

Futura-Sciences

Artemis III : derrière la nomination de l'astronaute italien Luca Parmitano, ce que la Nasa ne dit pas vraiment

La Nasa et l'ESA ont annoncé hier soir la composition de l'équipage d'Artemis III : l'astronaute italien Luca Parmitano en sera le pilote. Une première européenne saluée des deux côtés de l'Atlantique. Il y a ce que le communiqué dit… et ce qu'il tait. Notre analyse.

Futura-Sciences

Araignées bleues, papillons à plumes… cette région d’Afrique cachait un monde presque inconnu

Dans une région longtemps restée inaccessible aux scientifiques, une expédition a révélé une biodiversité exceptionnelle. Parmi les trouvailles figurent des dizaines d’espèces potentiellement inconnues de la science, dont une étonnante araignée fluorescente.

Futura-Sciences

Des chercheurs du MIT ont créé un pacemaker autocollant : sans implant, ni chirurgie

Une équipe de chercheurs américains présente une nouvelle approche du pacemaker sans intervention invasive. Leur technologie, encore expérimentale, pourrait ouvrir la voie à une nouvelle génération de dispositifs médicaux portables.

Futura-Sciences

La chapelle la plus photographiée du Tyrol italien semble sortie d'un conte de fées

Au cœur du Tyrol italien, une petite chapelle se dresse, humble et droite, face à la grandeur des Dolomites. Lovée dans l’écrin verdoyant des prairies, elle paraît minuscule sous la garde solennelle des pics acérés qui découpent le ciel. Ce refuge de pierre et de bois, posé à la lisière du...

Futura-Sciences

Quand la Lune était géante dans le ciel, elle aurait maintenu la Terre en enfer… et préparé la vie

Il y a 4,5 milliards d’années, la Terre n’avait rien d’un monde habitable : recouverte d’un océan de magma et enveloppée d’une atmosphère étouffante, elle était pourtant déjà le théâtre de processus essentiels à l’émergence de la vie. Une nouvelle étude montre que la jeune Lune, en exerçant...

Futura-Sciences

Notre santé est en jeu : une étude relie clairement disparition des insectes et santé humaine

Un effondrement est en route : elle ne sera pas causée par la chute d’une météorite, ni par une invasion venue d’ailleurs, mais par un phénomène dont l’humain est directement responsable, et dont personne ne semble se soucier : la disparition des insectes. Et la santé de certaines populations en...

Futura-Sciences

Sans ce basculement géologique il y a 3,7 milliards d’années, la vie aurait pu rester impossible sur Terre, selon une étude

Et si les continents avaient joué un rôle clé dans l’apparition de la vie sur Terre ? Selon une nouvelle étude, les premières masses continentales auraient profondément modifié la chimie des océans primitifs en régulant la concentration de bore, un élément qui pourrait avoir été essentiel à la...

Futura-Sciences

Sommes-nous vraiment trop nombreux sur Terre ? La réponse est plus dérangeante qu’il n’y paraît

La planète compte 8 milliards d’humains sur Terre. La question de la « surpopulation » est-elle un mythe ou une réalité ? De Malthus jusqu’à The Population Bomb, les crises et impacts écologiques alimentent le débat, entre le vieillissement des sociétés occidentales et l’explosion démographique...

Futura-Sciences

Les plantes entendent-elles les sons ? Une expérience du MIT révèle une piste étonnante avec la pluie !

« La pluie qui tombe réveille le sol. » Le calendrier traditionnel japonais en a fait l’une de ses 72 microsaisons. La science, aujourd’hui, lui donne un écho inattendu : certaines graines semblent réellement réagir au bruit de la pluie.

Futura-Sciences

Ce que l’extrême droite faisait déjà avec les premiers ordinateurs devrait nous alerter sur l’IA

Bien avant les réseaux sociaux et l’IA générative, l’extrême droite radicale avait déjà compris comment détourner chaque innovation pour diffuser sa propagande. Remonter cette histoire oubliée aide à mesurer ce qui est en train de se rejouer aujourd’hui, à bien plus grande échelle.

Futura-Sciences

Démence : un simple spray nasal serait capable de freiner, voire d'inverser le déclin cognitif !

Et si le déclin cognitif lié à l’âge n’était pas irréversible ? Des chercheurs américains ont mis au point un spray nasal capable de réduire l’inflammation cérébrale et d’améliorer la mémoire dans des modèles animaux. Une piste prometteuse, encore expérimentale, qui pourrait à terme transformer...

Futura-Sciences

One Health Summit : a-t-on enfin avancé sur l’essentiel avant la prochaine crise sanitaire ?

Le « One Health Summit » a réuni, du 5 au 7 avril derniers à Lyon, dirigeants et scientifiques du monde entier pour explorer les liens indissociables entre la santé humaine, animale et environnementale. Objectif : favoriser le dialogue entre États, scientifiques et acteurs de terrain pour...

Futura-Sciences

Grippe aviaire : et si le vrai problème était notre façon même d’élever les animaux ?

Les zoonoses, comme la grippe aviaire avec près d’un milliard d’euros de pertes en 2021-2022, rappellent que santé animale, humaine et environnementale sont indissociables. Notre gestion des crises sanitaires a trouvé ses limites mais l'agroécologie, en combinant prévention, résistance des...

Futura-Sciences

Les néonazis, pionniers du numérique : des tracts imprimés aux chatbots, une radicalisation 2.0

Les néonazis des années 1980 rêvaient d’un réseau mondial pour diffuser leur idéologie. De la propagande, jadis imprimée, aux chatbots des suprémacistes américains, l’extrême droite agit désormais au grand jour, au nez et à la barbe des démocraties. Son arme secrète ? La liberté d’expression,...

Futura-Sciences

La Gen Z remet au goût du jour une tendance de resto que beaucoup fuyaient

Et si dîner entre inconnus devenait la nouvelle norme ? La gen Z bouleverse les codes de la restauration en remettant au goût du jour les grandes tables partagées. 90 % des jeunes de cette génération déclarent apprécier ce format convivial. Un chiffre qui interpelle à l'heure où le lien social...

TED Blog

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

TED Blog

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.

TED Blog

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.

TED Blog

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 Blog

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.

TED Blog

Enchanters: Notes on Session 10 of TED2024

Session 10 of TED2024 plumbs the depths of human emotions, celebrating the beauty of community art, the everyday bravery of family life, the power of sound and more.

The event: Talks from Session 10 of TED2024: The Brave and the Brilliant, hosted by TED’s Helen Walters

When and where: Thursday, April 18, 2024, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Speakers: Jaime Rojo, Lily Yeh, Mark Grimmer, Kelly Corrigan, Felipe Sánchez Luna, Kylan Gibbs, Lear deBessonet

Performance: Joined onstage by a marching band, broadway legend Brian Stokes Mitchell belts “The Impossible Dream (The Quest)” accompanied by pianist Todd Almond — and participation from TED-attendees-turned-singers throughout the TED Theater.

The talks in brief: 

Photographer Jaime Rojo shares his experience photographing the migration of monarch butterflies across North America each year, diving into the latest research behind how these mesmerizing insects make their multi-thousand-mile journey.

From Rwanda to North Philadelphia to the Chinese countryside, barefoot artist Lily Yeh uses the world’s streets and walls as her canvas, collaborating with local communities to weave beauty and healing through the vibrant tapestry of their collective stories and talents.

We are living in the age of immersive experiences, says Mark Grimmer, cofounder of 59 Productions. Redefining narrative possibilities, he shares several multidisciplinary projects, including a multi-sensory exhibit of David Bowie that re-animated his kaleidoscopic career through a whirlwind of objects, costumes and videos — and showed what happens when diverse ideas collide.

Kelly Corrigan ponders the “Olympic achievements” of everyday bravery: the mundane triumphs each of us racks up simply navigating life’s tribulations, big and small. While bravery may consist of simply hanging around and listening (regardless of whether times are tough or boring), its reward is a “maximum dosage” of total human emotion.

In an astounding sonic experience, Felipe Sánchez Luna takes the audience on a journey of music and code, mixing notes and rhythms with ones and zeroes. His composition combines real recordings with data, AI-driven music and human creativity to tap into the transformative power of sound to evoke a deeper, emotional understanding of our world.

Video games are increasingly immersive, but they can still make you feel like you’re in a “closed” system, taken from one scripted point to another based on the buttons you press. Inworld cofounder Kylan Gibbs is helping expand this world with “AI agents” — characters powered by AI that have depth, realism and “brains.” He explains how these agents generate new game outcomes unique to each player’s decisions, augmenting our ability to tell stories.

Church pageants, football games and Mardi Gras aren’t just spectacles — they’re universal human experiences. Theater director Lear deBessonet‘s productions ignite the communal, healing thrill of collective expression by drawing their huge casts (often involving scores of performers) from a cross-section of their host communities.

TED2024, held April 15-19, 2024, in Vancouver, BC, Canada, is a week of talks, discovery sessions, excursions, dinners, performances and more celebrating “The Brave and the Brilliant.” Special thanks to our strategic partners PwC, Adobe, Schneider Electric and Northwestern Mutual.

TED Blog

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.

TED Blog

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.

TED Blog

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.

TED Blog

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.

TED Blog

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.

TED Blog

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.

TED Blog

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.

TED Blog

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 Blog

Ideas that are way, way out there: Notes on Session 4 of TED2023

In a session that was by turns soul-stirring, uproariously funny, deadly serious and brilliantly colorful, seven speakers transported the TED audience to a solar engineering project in outer space, a 24-hour concert and performance, a movement to prove that birds aren’t real and more.

The event: Talks from Session 4 of TED2023: Possibility, hosted by comedian Pardis Parker and TED’s head of curation Helen Walters

When and where: Tuesday, April 18, 2023, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Speakers: Yara Shahidi, Ali Hajimiri, Nadya Tolokonnikova, Tavares Strachan, Machine Dazzle, Doris Mitsch, Peter McIndoe

The talks in brief:

You may know actor and producer Yara Shahidi from the hit shows black-ish and grown-ish. Sure, she may be in a unique position, but like anybody growing up, she juggles multiple interests, passions and jobs. From her vantage point, she sees that the best way to create a truly fulfilling life is to lead with curiosity — and she invites us all to join her in recommitting to wherever our minds and hearts take us. Don’t second-guess what “distracts” you, she says: that’s your curiosity coming through, an act of creation in itself. Denying your imagination only limits the infinite possibilities just over the horizon.

From laptops to phones and AirPods, wireless technology permeates modern life. What if the energy powering these technologies was also wireless? Space solar-power experimenter Ali Hajimiri sees this future, once the stuff of science fiction, on the near horizon. By exploiting the interference property of waves, we can already direct energy from a generator to a wireless light bulb. Now imagine scaling up this capability: the generator becomes a solar panel orbiting Earth, the light bulb a remote village or a war-torn city with power outages. Recently, Hajimiri’s team made a key step toward this vision, launching a rocket that will unfold in space into an array of flexible solar panels designed to transmit energy to Earth. 

In a quick, fascinating talk, TED community member Terry Moore discusses the mathematics behind what’s known as Penrose tiling, a type of design characterized by aperiodicity, where simple patterns expand infinitely in any direction without ever repeating. He shows how, when you take a closer look, this type of design shows up in human cultures across millennia (long before Roger Penrose “invented” it in 1974). The takeaway? This pattern is like life — complicated, impossible to predict, unfolding differently based on every decision — yet, underlying everything, there’s a hidden unity that holds things together. “When we see these amazing designs, we can know they’re not decorations,” Moore says. “They’re a statement, they’re a message. Look, listen. You can hear their voices.”

In 2012, conceptual artist and activist Nadya Tolokonnikova and her resistance group, Pussy Riot, were sentenced to two years in prison for speaking out against Vladimir Putin’s regime. Since her release, she’s founded the independent investigative news agency Mediazona and organized support for a number of international art and women’s movements. While she now lives in exile, Tolokonnikova stands as a leading voice in the fight for freedom in Russia, named a top enemy of Putin simply because, in her words, “courage is contagious.” Now she calls for everyone to embrace the courage within themselves and delivered a powerful message to Putin himself: “You have already lost. You know it. … The world is with Ukraine.”

Conceptual artist Tavares Strachan has always been hungry for uncovering and sharing novel experiences. On his journey to the Arctic, he learned about the lesser-known travels of African American explorer Matthew Henson, who was part of the first human crew to reach the North Pole, sparking a pivot in his artwork towards a quest to tell lost stories. Strachan created the Encyclopedia of Invisibility, a 3,000-page leather-bound book with more than 17,000 entries on things often left out of history courses, from Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the mother of rock and roll, to the Minos, an all-female military regiment from the Kingdom of Dahomey (present-day Benin), and many more. He also shares the story of Robert Henry Lawrence Jr., the first Black astronaut, for whom Strachan worked with SpaceX to produce a satellite and blast a golden bust called ENOCH with the astronaut’s likeness into space — launching his legacy to the stars.. “If you really pay attention, you start to see these lost stories all around you,” says Strachan. “When you find them, you realize that they can speak with a very loud mouth.”

“My approach is maximal,” says Machine Dazzle, a self-described radical, queer, emotionally driven, instinct-based concept artist and thinker. He takes us on a stunning tour of his boundary-pushing work — including costumes such as a bouffant made out of metallic pipe cleaners, a dress made of hot dogs and barbwire and a headdress made out of dynamite and toilet paper (to name just a few) — and demonstrates the power of tapping into the full complexity of yourself. He’s joined onstage by his friend Matty Crosland, who undergoes a costume-fueled transformation as Machine Dazzle speaks.

Have you ever been curious about what the world gets up to as it passes you by? Not the world you know, but the one outside human perception and awareness. Design-minded artist Doris Mitsch invites us into the wonder and awe of nature’s everyday feats — the ones that surpass humanity’s five senses — through her dazzling photography. Starlings in flight and formation, trout tracking their way by waves of light, bats that shriek louder than we can hear. Hidden, invisible intelligence that redraws the maps of our own understanding of the world when we stumble upon the truths of our fellow earthlings. In that spirit, Mitsch encourages us to embrace their otherness and revel in the experience. In the words of the poet and naturalist Jarod K. Anderson: “Bats can hear shapes. Plants can eat light. Bees can dance maps. We can hold all these ideas at once and feel both heavy and weightless with the absurd beauty of it all.”

In 2018, bird truther Peter McIndoe founded a movement behind a fake conspiracy theory claiming that birds aren’t real but are instead robots created by the government in the middle of the 20th century to spy on all of us. As he fed the lie — hiring actors to play retired CIA agents speaking out, holding rallies populated by thousands of “bird truthers” — McIndoe learned about the power behind a conspiracy theory and why people will go so far for a story others find completely, ridiculously false. He explores the loneliness and polarization that he believes leads people to find community wherever they can (even in movements defined by outrageous claims) and offers steps we can take as a society to increase our collective empathy, build constructive community and combat the growth of harmful conspiracies. “Let’s direct our attention to the crisis of belonging, and then maybe we’ll understand the crisis of belief,” he says.

TED Blog

Open: The talks of TED@DestinationCanada

When we come together with open hearts and open minds, anything is possible. It was in this spirit that TED partnered with Destination Canada for a day of talks and performances featuring new ideas on living, seeing the world and reimagining our shared future.

The event: TED@DestinationCanada: Open is the first event TED and Destination Canada have co-hosted to spotlight leading minds who embody the incredible breadth and depth of Canadian culture. The event was hosted by TED senior curator Cyndi Stivers.

When and where: Thursday, February 23, 2023, at the TED Theater in New York City

Opening and closing remarks: From the Honourable Randy Boissonnault, Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance for Canada, and Gloria Loree, chief marketing officer of Destination Canada

Speakers: Alysa McCall, Azim Shariff, Normand Voyer, Matricia Bauer, Lori McCarthy, Paul Bloom, Cohen Bradley, Alona Fyshe, Rebecca Darwent, Michael Green, Cameron Davis, Jiaying Zhao, Kevin Smith and Kris Alexander

Music: In the verbal version of a dance-off, the Inuit duo Silla (made up of Charlotte Qamaniq and Cynthia Pitsiulak) perform the ancient art form of katajjaq, a type of Inuit throat singing found only in the Canadian Arctic. Later in the show, singer-songwriter Mélissa Laveaux delivers a musical treat, performing two mesmerizing songs alongside bassist Sébastien Richelieu.

The talks in brief:

As Arctic sea ice melts, polar bears are being forced on land – and they’re hungry. Biologist and conservationist Alysa McCall shares what to do when you find a polar bear digging through your trash and offers inspiring solutions for protecting both the bear’s shrinking habitat and their human neighbors.

Why do we think people who work hard are “good” — even if they produce little to no results? Social psychologist Azim Shariff calls this “effort moralization”: the intuitive connection we make between hard work and moral worth, regardless of what the work produces. He explores how this mindset plays out in our work environments — leading to things like workaholism — and encourages a shift towards effort that produces something meaningful, rather than just work for work’s sake.

Take a trip to Canada’s Arctic as natural product chemist Normand Voyer explores the mysterious molecular treasures hidden in plants thriving in frigid environments. These scarcely investigated organisms could hold the key to the world’s next wonder drug, he says — so long as we work quickly enough to discover them before their ecosystems are altered by climate change.

Adopted by a white family as a child, Indigenous artist and entrepreneur Matricia Bauer, or Isko-achitaw waciy / ᐃᐢᑯ ᐃᐦᒋᑕ ᐘᒋᕀ (she who moves mountains), lost touch with her Cree heritage. Beat by beat and bead by bead, Bauer reconciled lost parts of herself by exploring the songs, stories and crafts of her culture. On a decades-long journey of re-Indigenizing herself, Bauer recites a moving poem on the ways of eagles and hawks — and illustrates the power of embracing one’s true self.

In a love letter to her native Newfoundland and Labrador, cultural storyteller Lori McCarthy shares the secret magic of this Canadian province: the rich connection between the people, the land and the food. Sharing a glimpse of the tastes, sights and generations-old stories that thrive there, McCarthy invites you to become a part of wherever you go — which could start with something as simple as sitting with a local for a cup of tea.

Have you ever done something just because you knew it was wrong? In an invitation to examine your contrarian streak, psychologist Paul Bloom shares findings from “The Perversity Project”: stories he gathered from the public of harmless (but intentional) everyday misdeeds. From sticking a finger in your friend’s ice cream to a urinal that sparked the birth of conceptual art, Bloom makes the case that, sometimes, freeing yourself from the constraints of rationality and morality can be clever, creative and even beautiful.

Haida storyteller Cohen Bradley, who holds the names of Taaydal (“coming in big”) and Gidin Kuns (“powerful eagle”) in his clan and nation, shares his culture’s perspective on legacy, weaving together stories passed on by his ancestors with his own recent story of raising a memorial pole in his ancestral village. He demonstrates the resilience of his people’s legacy despite the devastating impact of colonialism.

Is AI really as smart as people give it credit for? Researcher Alona Fyshe delves into the inner workings of AI and the human brain, breaking down how talkative tech (like ChatGPT) learns to communicate so convincingly — or not.

Boxhand. Susu. Tontine. Potlatch. These are just some of the names from around the world for philanthropy centered on formal and informal ways of giving back. Philanthropic adviser Rebecca Darwent shares how community-led practices can revolutionize and overcome the systemic racism of the financial industry — and offers lessons from collective giving that could change the ways good is done.

Architect Michael Green — a mass timber pioneer who helped spark a renaissance in constructing tall buildings out of wood — introduces a new material called “FIVE,” which is derived from natural materials and based on the structure of trees and vascular plants. FIVE could revolutionize the way we build buildings, providing a strong and organic alternative to the traditional materials of concrete, steel, masonry and wood.

In a quick, inspiring talk, youth activist Cameron Davis explains why his generation — Gen Z, with its exposure to differing viewpoints online from an early age — is uniquely positioned to create meaningful change in the world by using their voices to challenge systemic biases, advocate for inclusivity and promote justice.

Is it possible for climate action to make you feel happy? Behavioral scientist Jiaying Zhao believes that’s the only way we’ll create lasting, sustainable change. From treat meals to feng shui fridges, she offers eight tricks to lower your carbon emissions while increasing your happiness.

Coastal explorer Kevin Smith tells the story of how a group of eco-tourism businesses in the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia collaborated to create one of the biggest marine debris cleanups in history. The initiative was born during the COVID-19 pandemic, when tours were temporarily shut down, resulting in these once-competitive businesses coming together to propose a solution to clean up the coast and protect their livelihoods.

Where academia fails, video games often succeed, says professor of game design Kris Alexander. With high-quality audio, text and video focused with clear objectives, video games swiftly captivate minds and drive motivation — unlike a lecture hall. In an engaging display of the merits of digital play, Alexander calls for us to rethink the foundations of education and embrace the qualities of video games that can level up our learning.