Denial or despair How to rewrite your climate change story

[Music]

[Applause]

i grew up in australia’s tropical

north queensland fishing frogs from the

toilet

and dodging snakes that hung from the

ceiling

wetting down old sea turtles stranded at

low tide

outside our house i spent more time

outside than in delighting in the

wonders of nature

by age 11 i wasn’t allowed to watch

horror films

so i turned to documentaries instead

the cove food inc

and inconvenient truth the first time

i experienced heartbreak was when i sat

glued

to my computer screen staring

at mass dolphin hunts that turned the

shoreline red

staring as million-year-old forests

were bulldozed to produce big macs

staring

as al gore projected graphs that showed

how quickly

we were devouring the earth and how good

we were

at pretending otherwise

the second time i experienced heartbreak

was in november of 2019

as i watched my country go up in flames

as one billion animals were incinerated

by the inferno as

friends tried to rescue their homes

poised on tin roofs armed with hoses

until the smoke and embers clung to

their clothes

i felt despair grief

frustration fury

and staring at that wool of fire higher

and more ferocious than any i’d seen

before

i felt helpless small

powerless to stop the flames powerless

to protect the place i love

australia’s black summer was soon

followed by the firestorm in california

as their summer rolled around as well as

flooding in jakarta that displaced a

hundred

thousand people more violent hurricanes

along the east coast of america

and biblical plagues of locusts that

threaten the food supply for millions of

people in east africa

young people today have not created this

reality

we’ve inherited it yet we’re told we’re

the last generation

with a chance to save the fate of

humanity

is it any wonder that there is an

epidemic

of mental health problems

eco anxiety is on the rise and young

people seem to be some of the worst

affected

research from 2019 showed that in the uk

70 of 18 to 24 year olds

were feeling eco anxious feeling

helpless grief panic insomnia

even guilt around climate change

environmental disaster is the biggest

mental health issue of our lifetimes

and in our war against nature young

minds

are the collateral damage at my own

organization

force of nature we’ve witnessed the same

on a global scale

we’ve been talking to students in over

50 countries

from tel aviv through jakarta new york

to managua

all of them have shared this existential

dread that keeps them

up at night dread not only fueled by

doom scrolling but by the belief

that adults especially adults in power

do not care when i first discovered

documentaries

i decided the world was run by people

who were selfish

and greedy that the rest of society

didn’t care

that we humans were a plague on our own

planet

i’ve since spent the past 10 years

lobbying decision makers

across business policy and civil society

working with students in the classroom

and chief executives in the boardroom

and i can tell you that my bleak outlook

while in some ways right was in more

ways

very very wrong

picture yourself as a senior executive

at a big multinational

in the 25 years you’ve been climbing

that corporate ladder

you’ve been told your job is to make

money and maintain the status quo

to deliver value to shareholders to

avoid the kind of risks that could cost

you your job

you recycle you share climate change

articles on linkedin

you even went vegetarian two years ago

after watching a documentary on mass

farming

yet when you come home at the end of the

day

you get the sense that your kids see you

as the problem

they wish you were the climate change

protestor gluing themselves to the glass

tower

not the person sat inside the building

when i first started working with people

in power

i was surprised to realize that they

often felt the least

powerful of all and most of these

leaders perform mental gymnastics to get

away from those

uncomfortable feelings young people

today

are falling into despair while the

adults in our lives

are making sense of the situation

through denial

when i ask leaders to describe the

future they envision

it’s something of a techno utopia

flying cars in a world where deadly

diseases are eradicated

yet when i ask eight and nine-year-olds

in the classroom the same question

the future they describe is a dystopian

blockbuster

empty supermarket shelves

cities underwater

the kind of place no one wants to find

waiting for them

when they grow up

you might find comfort in denial

numbing yourself to our

hyper-consumptive culture sleepwalking

even though the science tells us that

we’re hurtling toward the cliff

you might feel despair like so many of

my generation

because while feelings of anxiety

frustration

anger can wake us up to the issues

they can crush us if we carry the weight

of the world

on our shoulders

neither despair nor denial

help anyone they cause us to shut down

to remove ourselves from the picture

denial erases our responsibility

despair lumps us with all of it

the story of denial sounds something

like it’s not up to me because someone

else will fix it

the story of despair sounds like it’s

not

up to me because it’s too big to fix

do you hear the similarity despair

and denial might appear to exist on

polar ends of the generational spectrum

yet they stem from the same place

how powerless we feel all of us

i believe that the threat even greater

than climate change is how

powerless we feel in the face of it

concerned moms and dads cautious

corporate leaders

anxious 11 year olds and i don’t believe

we will solve this crisis or act on the

many

opportunities it presents us with

until we mobilize mindsets

so how do we shift out of despair

out of denial towards something

radically

different there’s a quote

in spider-man with great power comes

great responsibility

yet what if the opposite is true what if

it’s really

with great responsibility comes great

power this is something that

all of the world’s movers and shakers

have known to be true

they weren’t born leaders they simply

decided to make themselves

personally responsible

now solving climate change is not your

responsibility

because it’s outside of your control

what you are responsible for is the

thing

inside your control indeed the only

thing that has ever been

inside your control your mindset

we all have stories running on repeat

stories that immobilize our stories the

world impresses

upon us in boardrooms and classrooms

alike

i’m just one in 7.8 billion people i’m

too small to make a difference

i’m not smart enough i don’t have the

experience i’m not the expert

the system is too broken our leader is

too short-sighted

our society too shackled to the status

quo

these stories paralyze us

rewriting them is the single most

powerful thing any one of us can do

for the planet and for ourselves

now ask yourself

which story gets in the way of you

taking action

then think of the one thing

you could do to challenge that story

if your story is that you’re not smart

enough

you could challenge it by focusing on

the skills and talents and gifts that

you bring to the table

if fashion is your passion how do we

reimagine our relationship with clothes

to be fully circular

if you love making food how do we stop

a third of it from being wasted every

single day

if you’re a talented musician how do we

communicate

the urgency of climate action through a

universal

language if your story is that the

system

is too broken the problems too big to

fix

visualize what it would look like for

you to focus

on a single problem the climate crisis

is the symptom of many interconnected

problems

from food waste to fast fashion social

inequality to how we’ve divorced

ourselves from nature

every problem requires a solution

a solution delivered by a someone

like you if your story

is that it’s not up to you i simply

remind you of the saying

if not us who if not now

when i’ve been on this planet 21 years

and i’ve spent the past 10 trying to

save it

at least that’s the story i told myself

the story i wanted to start this talk

with

yet i realized it was untrue

i wanted to save the world and i ended

up saving myself

because as much as i have a great

responsibility to my planet

i have an even greater responsibility to

myself

to be able to look back on my life and

know

i did everything in my power

i wielded every shred of privilege

energy

knowledge and resource to help

others step up rather than shut down

when you look back on your own life

what do you want to see will you have

chosen despair

denial or something different

will you have been a spectator to our

planet’s problems

or the person who did something to fix

them

what will your story be

you