This TED Talk features computational ecologist Amanda Schockett, recorded live at TED at NAS 2019.

If you told me five years ago that today I'd be delivering a talk about our individual power to make a difference, I would have cringed.

It was my job to study huge global systems.

I was a researcher at NASA using satellite data to study the big picture.

You can see a lot of things from space,

like every ecosystem on Earth being threatened from pretty much every angle, and global inequality in air and water safety.

And these kinds of things would keep me up at night.

And then outside of work, I'd use this bird's eye view while thinking

about our huge social structures, like education and media and health care. And it looked to me

like they were all really struggling too. So I felt like the world was just trapped in this huge

self-amplifying system that was just spiraling towards destruction.

And of course, I wanted to do something about this, and I felt so small and utterly powerless.

But I started to feel a little differently as my perspective shifted from the macro towards the micro.

It began with bumblebees.

I was using satellite imagery and field research

to study these amazing, cute pollinators

and to see how they were doing

in the midst of their own environmental crisis in Southern California.

And from the macro view, I saw 22-lane freeways,

endless suburban sprawl,

and water being diverted from parched rivers to grow lawns in the desert.

It was pretty grim.

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