I'm Elise Hugh. You're listening to TED Talks Daily. I bet a lot of you will relate to today's speaker, who illustrates her feelings of helplessness when she sees wildfires in Australia, horrific hurricanes, threatening coasts, and plagues of locusts in Africa.

In her talk from TEDx London women in 2021, climate activist Clover Hogan takes the

idea of eco-anxiety head on. A bleak outlook, she says, is very wrong. And Hogan explains how

she came around to a different, more actionable way of thinking. 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., an 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 wall of fire

...