It's TED Talks Daily. I'm your host, Elise Hu.

We know climate change is happening and that it's the biggest threat to humanity we have faced.

But so many of us feel confusion and hopelessness about it, so we're not doing enough to stop polluting.

In today's talk from Countdown 2021, marketing expert John Marshall offers

ways to get people to care and act. The changes are small, but mighty, you'll see. And we invite you

to get involved with Countdown, TED's global initiative to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis

at countdown. ted.com.

I often have this strange thought that aliens come down to Earth to check us out.

They beam up 100 scientists and they ask them, what's going on on your planet?

And the aliens quickly learn something, that all of these scientists have concluded

that pollution from our industrial activity is irreversibly heating the Earth in a way that'll make it very hard for us to live here safely.

Then they do the same thing, but this time they beam up another hundred people, and they're not scientists, the regular people, like us.

They could count on one hand how many of those people would even mention climate change.

Two or three dozen of them may never have even heard the term,

and among the Americans in the group,

only one in four would be highly concerned about the issue.

The aliens, I think, would be shocked.

Why don't people know what's happening or how bad it is?

Someone should tell them.

The absurdity of this situation is so clear and so real.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

My job is to educate people about climate change. So I look at the concepts, the messages,

...