How to turn climate anxiety into action (with Luisa Neubauer)
How to Be a Better Human
TED
4.1 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 19 April 2021
⏱️ 31 minutes
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Summary
Sometimes it feels like fighting climate change is all about dealing with the many little things we as individuals are doing wrong (hello single-use coffee cups, plastic bags, and eating dairy). While these bad habits are important to address, are we losing focus on the bigger picture? Luisa Neubauer draws on her experience at the front lines of activism to strategically reframe the climate crisis and identify the unique ways we can make systemic change. Luisa Neubauer is a climate activist, author and leader of the "Fridays For Future" school strike movement. In 2018, Luisa Neubauer co-initiated the "Fridays for Future" school strike movement Germany, which was inspired by Swedish teen Greta Thunberg. In fear of growing up in a world of rising global temperatures, Neubauer is organizing mass action to urge governments to comply with the 2015 Paris Agreements. To learn more about "How to Be a Better Human," host Chris Duffy, or find footnotes and additional resources, please visit: go.ted.com/betterhuman
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Ted Audio Collective. You know that old saying about the frog and the pot of boiling water? |
| 0:14.0 | How if you put him in a pot that's already boiling, he's going to hop right back out. |
| 0:18.0 | But if you put him in and warm it up slowly, he'll just be hanging out in his little froggy hot tub relax and having a great time until it's too late. |
| 0:29.2 | Because when it comes to solving big societal problems, we humans we seem to be way better about |
| 0:34.2 | getting upset and demanding change when it is an issue that arises all at once. |
| 0:37.6 | But if an issue creeps in slowly over time well it's really hard to mobilize around those issues. |
| 0:44.2 | And it can be hard to feel like we as individuals really have any control at all. |
| 0:48.5 | So we often just sit back, enjoy the bubbles, |
| 0:52.3 | and watch as we all slowly become frog soup. |
| 0:56.3 | Today on how to be a better human, we're going to talk about the climate crisis and how we can jump |
| 1:00.8 | out of that pot. Today's guest, Louisa Newbower, she helped catalyze a global intergenerational movement demanding systemic solutions to climate change. That movement is called Fridays for future. And personally, one of the things that I find most powerful about Louisa's message and her |
| 1:17.0 | work is that it focuses on systems instead of each tiny individual choice that we make in our day-to-day |
| 1:22.4 | lives. |
| 1:23.4 | Here's what Louisa had to say about that in her 2019 talk at TEDX Youth at Munchen. |
| 1:29.5 | We need to drastically reframe our understanding of a climate activist, |
| 1:33.4 | our understanding of who can be the answer to this? |
| 1:37.9 | A climate activist isn't that one person has read every single study |
| 1:41.4 | and is now spending every afternoon handing out leaflets |
| 1:45.2 | about vegetarianism and shopping halls. |
| 1:47.8 | No, a climate activist can be everyone. |
| 1:52.2 | Everyone who wants to join a movement of those |
| 1:56.2 | who intend to grow old on a planet |
... |
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