Take action on climate change. Tune in on Saturday, October 30, 2021 at 12pm ET for the TED Countdown Global Livestream: an empowering virtual event laying out a credible and realistic pathway to a net-zero future. Presented in collaboration with YouTube Originals and COP26. Watch on TED’s YouTube channel on October 30 @ 12pm ET […]
Two years ago, former president of Ireland Mary Robinson graced the TEDWomen stage with a moving talk about why climate change is not only a threat to our environment, but also a threat to the human rights of many poor and marginalized people around the world. Mary is an incredible person who inspires me greatly. […]
This post first appeared at BillMoyers.com. In the summer of 2014, one of the world’s top nature photographers was on an expedition in the far north to document the changing Arctic. Paul Nicklen was sailing around Svalbard, an archipelago halfway between Scandinavia and the North Pole. The largely uninhabited land sees 24 hours of sunlight […]
10 years of TED Talks show how the conversation around climate change has developed, from awareness-raising to dire warnings to a growing sense that we can actually do something about it.
In 2009, six months after a spectacularly failed climate change summit in Copenhagen, Costa Rican diplomat Christiana Figueres was appointed executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Her job: Leading the next round of international climate change negotiations. At that time, no one believed that we could ever get a global climate change agreement. “In fact,” Figueres says, […]
In agricultural entrepreneur Trang Tran’s native Vietnam, farmers traditionally burn the straw and husks that remain after the rice harvest. This practice happens at least twice a year for two months at a time, releasing noxious smoke and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Tran’s solution: using rice straw to cultivate mushrooms. Her social enterprise Fargreen is […]
Gavin Schmidt is the author of Climate Change: Picturing the Science, described by Popular Mechanics as “the first book anyone seeking a layman’s understanding of the science of global warming should read.” He’s here to talk about the environment and the models we’ve built to understand this astonishingly complex issue. Because, for one thing, you can’t just […]
TED Fellow Lars Jan, the director of the multi-disciplinary art lab Early Morning Opera, is seeking everyday personal rituals from collaborators — perhaps, you? — for a work-in-progress called HOLOSCENES. This public-performance installation — inspired by humanity’s relationship with climate change and flooding — will be made up of three aquariums, each enclosing a performer […]
Photographer James Balog grew up skeptical about climate change. But in 2005, he headed to Iceland on assignment for National Geographic and found himself captivated by the spectacular beauty of the icy landscape and devastated by how it was quickly changing before his eyes. Balog had an idea: the Extreme Ice Survey, a network of […]
For anyone watching the three presidential debates between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, two words were surprisingly absent: “climate change.” It’s a strange omission given that 73 percent of Americans shared in a recent poll that dealing with environmental concerns, particularly global warming, was “extremely important” or “very important” to them. Not to mention that […]
With just three weeks to go before the 2012 presidential election in the US, eyes around the world are on the contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. As shown in last night’s debate, the election may well come down to a few key issues. So what matters most to Americans? The TED Blog read this […]
Vicki Arroyo knows a thing or two about climate change. A lawyer by training, she is the executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center, which works on policies to help government leaders (and the world) deal with climate change’s inevitable disruptions. But that’s not the only reason she’s familiar with climate change. As she tells us, she also […]
Photo: James Duncan Davidson Drawn into controversy Wearing his wide-brimmed hat, climate scientist James Hansen starts his TEDTalk by asking, “What do I know that would cause me, a reticent midwestern scientist, to get arrested in front of the White House, protesting?” Hansen studied under professor James Van Allen, who told him about observations of Venus […]
Today, photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand launched his movie Home, an environmentally conscious tour of our planet through panoramic vistas that focuses on human impact — our mistakes and possibilities for improvement. Yann took some time out of this busy day to answer a few questions for the TEDBlog by email, going beyond his recent TEDTalk to […]
In Al Gore’s brand-new slideshow (premiering exclusively on TED.com), he presents evidence that the pace of climate change may be even worse than scientists were recently predicting, and challenges us to act with a sense of “generational mission” — the kind of feeling that brought forth the civil rights movement — to set it right. […]
Environmental scientist David Keith talks about a cheap, effective, shocking solution to climate change: What if we injected a huge cloud of particles into the atmosphere, to deflect sunlight and heat? As an emergency measure to slow a melting ice cap, it could work. Keith discusses why geo-engineering like this is a good idea, why […]