You're listening to TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hugh. In today's talk, we will consider the overwhelming power we humans have over nature and the planet. The power is double-edged, generative in many ways, but destructive to creatures, resources, and ultimately ourselves.

In his talk from Ted Salon 2020, Sustainability Champion, Akam Steiner, brings clarity to why we need to choose a different path forward.

Our survival depends on it.

I work at the United Nations, and for the past couple of years I have served as the head of the UN's development program.

When I first walked into the UN headquarters in New York City many years ago, the first thing I noticed was a sculpture, standing outside under the flags of the nations of the world.

It's called the knotted gun,

and it still stands there today. To me, that sculpture symbolized exactly what the UN was created to do 75 years ago, to build peace out of the ashes of war, war that had been defined for so much

of human history as the struggle of nations against nations,

or the kind still raging in countries like Syria and Yemen that the United Nations works to end every day.

That's what I imagine that not a gun to represent, but now another kind of war is brewing, one that increasingly defines the 21st

century, where the dominant risk to our own survival is ourselves. A few years or even months ago,

if I had suggested that we're all at war with ourselves, it may have felt strange.

Especially when, according to so many metrics, humans are on average healthier, wealthier,

and more educated than at any time in history. We have more knowledge, more science, more choices

today than the founders of the United Nations could have ever imagined.

But somewhere along the way, we lost our balance.

In fact, think about this.

Scientists are considering whether for the very first time in human history, instead of

the planet-shaping humans, humans are knowingly shaping the planet.

It's called the Anthropocene, and it represents a new geological era.

Today, humans literally have the power to alter the atmosphere and the biosphere in which we live,

the power to destroy and the power to repair.

...