TEDxISSP Sessions

TED Talks

“The defining issue of our time,” is climate change for António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, who tells us why we are also at the most defining moment to avert climate catastrophe. “If we don’t act now, this century may be one of humanity’s last”. Between toxic air pollution choking major cities and harming our health, biodiversity on land and at sea under growing pressure, and the poorest countries being the hardest hit by climate impacts, it may be easy to succumb to fatalism. However, the Secretary-General has a six-point plan for tackling the crisis in a way that delivers long-term resilience.

“Becoming a stubborn optimist” is what has kept Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change when the Paris Agreement was signed, going when the future can seem bleak. It is the mindset that transforms the reality we are given into the reality we want. Participants will discuss this decade as a moment of choice and how to move beyond despair to one of conviction that we must and can rise to the challenge.

Facilitated Discussion with

Bob Willard

John Elkington

Mathis Wackernagle

Joel Makower

TED Talks

“Decarbonizing fossil fuels,” presents a conundrum for Myles Allen, an authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report on limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius: The fossil fuel industry knows how to stop causing climate change, but it is waiting for someone else to pay and not enough people are calling them out on it. Given that there are so many uses for fossil fuels—from aviation to plastics—rather than decarbonize the economy or end dirty energy, can we instead decarbonize the fuels themselves?

“Industrialising India without coal” would eliminate the now-familiar coating of ash that coats homes in India’s coal-powered regions. It would also go a long way at reducing the 1.7 million air pollution deaths in the country every year. Varun Sivaram, Chief Technology Officer of ReNew Power, breaks down why India is home to 22 of the 30 most-polluted places on the planet—and what a better way might be. With a population trajectory on track to make the country the world’s most populated, and with a mass migration from rural areas to cities underway, can India pull off a transition to clean energy that is also just?

Facilitated Discussion with

Bob Willard

John Elkington

Mathis Wackernagle

Joel Makower

TED Talks

“Technology and policy to accelerate change” will both be needed in order to drop carbon pollution to zero by mid-Century—getting halfway there by 2030. This works out to reducing greenhouse gas emissions globally by 10 percent per year. John Doerr and Hal Harvey recount which solutions exist today—and which will need to be invented—in order to get us there.

“The Race to Zero” is the most ambitious climate campaign the world has seen. Representing 454 cities, 23 regions, 1,397 businesses, 74 of the biggest investors, and 569 universities, the campaign rallies "real economy" actors in the largest-ever alliance committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Led by the High-Level Climate Champions for Climate Action, including Nigel Topping and Alok Sharma, will the Race to Zero achieve its goal of building momentum around the shift to a decarbonized economy by COP26, when nations must strengthen their contributions to the Paris Agreement?

Facilitated Discussion with

Bob Willard

John Elkington

Joel Makower

Hazel Henderson