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