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Happy Earth Day! This year, we’re celebrating climate progress. We spoke to our Climate Curious experts about what keeps them going during challenging times. Tune in to receive six chunks of wisdom on how to keep positive when progress might feel hopeless. Recorded live at TED 2025 in Vancouver.
Featuring:
Vijay Karia
Kelsey Leonard
Jacquelyn Francis
Tasso Azevedo
Theresa Fyffe
Bruce Bekkar
Created by TEDxLondon
Executive produced by Josie Colter
Produced by Ben Beheshty
Curated by Deesha Chandra
Hosted by Maryam Pasha and Ben Hurst
Communications by Tara Cooper and Issey Gladston
00:00 Introduction
00:24 AI Sustainability Insights with Vijay Karia
01:16 Regeneration and Gratitude with Kelsey Leonard
02:20 Inspiration from Jacqueline Francis
02:58 Thinking Big with Tasso Azevedo
04:12 Collaboration for Change with Theresa Fyffe
05:12 Hope and Action with Bruce Bekkar
06:24 Conclusion
[00:00:00] Introduction to Climate Quickies
[00:00:00] Maryam Pasha: Welcome to Climate Quickies Bite-sized nuggets of Climate Goodness. From our TEDx London experts in under five minutes,
[00:00:08] Ben Hurst: Happy Earth Day Week. Whilst out at the TED 2025 Global Conference in Vancouver, we ask our upcoming Climate Curious podcast speakers. For their words of climate resilience on what keeps their climate action tanks topped up.
[00:00:24] AI Sustainability Insights with Vijay Karia
[00:00:24] Ben Hurst: Let’s hear from our speakers now starting with AI sustainability expert, Vijay [00:00:30] Karia on what motivates him to do his best work.
[00:00:35] Vijay Karia: I love surrounding myself with people who wake up in the morning and say, I’m gonna do the hard things, and in the evening, I’m gonna do the impossible things. Like I, I just really believe that who you surround yourself with and the energy that you surround yourself with is so important.
[00:00:56] Vijay Karia: And it’s important to protect your own energy because if you [00:01:00] don’t, you won’t have the strength to do the good work. And really, it’s an army of people like myself and others. Who are gonna have to band together to do the good work, to change the future for a more positive direction.
[00:01:16] Regeneration and Gratitude with Kelsey Leonard
[00:01:16] Ben Hurst: Now we move to Kelsey Leonard, water scientist and policy expert with her thoughts on regeneration and gratitude.
[00:01:26] Kelsey Leonard: So I go back to the grandmothers, the water [00:01:30] walkers, the water protectors I’ve worked with, and they just say, you know, go out and be on this planet. It’s such a beautiful gift to just be able to breathe. And so being able to be out in nature to, you know, touch feet and to dirt and touch your hand and to water and just be thankful.
[00:01:46] Kelsey Leonard: You know, in our nations and communities, we, we really practice an ethic of gratitude and I think. In a hopeless world, gratitude is a really great place to start. And, and I also think about some of my work now is at the intersection of [00:02:00] water and fire, and with some of the immense amount of fire that we’ve seen over our planet this, this past year and the past few years, I, I think about the regenerative capacity of fire.
[00:02:10] Kelsey Leonard: And in a world where it feels like scorched earth. It’s important to recognize that it’s okay to be still and to wait for regeneration.
[00:02:20] Inspiration from Jacqueline Francis
[00:02:20] Ben Hurst: Next we turn to Jacqueline Francis, executive Director of the Global Warming Mitigation Project on why we must not give up on [00:02:30] creating a better world.
[00:02:33] Jacquelyn Francis: Because I see all the solutions every single day and they’re really inspiring and I feel like, um, there’s also a, a business case for it.
[00:02:40] Jacquelyn Francis: You know, I feel like the political winds will shift back at some point soon. And then I think people will understand that we have to do this. It’s not a matter of like, let’s give up and, and wave the white flag. It’s a matter of like rolling up our sleeves and being like, yeah, it is a world where we will be thriving.
[00:02:58] Thinking Big with Tasso Azevedo
[00:02:58] Ben Hurst: Next up is Tasso, a [00:03:00] Azevedo, a Brazilian scientist working on forests and sustainability, on thinking big to get things done.
[00:03:08] Tasso Azevedo: So you have to keep moving. And if you keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. Your body is, is getting warm. You’re getting more and more results going now, and then you, you will survive.
[00:03:18] Tasso Azevedo: So I think that’s where we are right now, like we have to. Multiply ourselves and our efforts and shift the way we are thinking. Well, first it’s not an option to not [00:03:30] act. So just act. But the thing is like thinking exponentially, like the, the problems are growing exponentially. We can’t just have solutions that are scaling up.
[00:03:39] Tasso Azevedo: I think it’s not ambitious enough. We have always to be thinking like, how can we scale up solutions exponentially so you can. Go to the other side. And I think there is so many things that are showing results everywhere. That is just a question of kind of making this the news. Making this the movement so you can get more young [00:04:00] people instead of being like devastated and um, within their phones thinking that nothing can be done, that actually get excited that fixing the world can be something.
[00:04:11] Tasso Azevedo: Incredible.
[00:04:12] Collaboration for Change with Theresa Fyffe
[00:04:12] Ben Hurst: We’ve now got Theresa Fife, executive Director for the Great Barrier Reef Foundation on the importance of working together for change
[00:04:22] Theresa Fyffe: because I’m not working alone, like that’s the end of the day, like bringing 350 scientists and engineers together. [00:04:30] A lot of the scientists in particular been doing this work for a long time.
[00:04:34] Theresa Fyffe: They see the reefs that they love dying. But they’ve all come together and committed, and they’re smart people to solve this problem. So you go, well. How can we not make progress? And we are realistic. We, we won’t have reefs in the same way we have, but if we can just keep them sustained long enough to stabilize climate, we can have something beautiful at the end.
[00:04:57] Theresa Fyffe: But when you see the mines around this and the [00:05:00] number of people. You have, you, you just, you, you, you hang on to hope so much because you see it every day in their little breakthroughs, their big breakthroughs, their triumphs. That’s enough to keep us all going.
[00:05:12] Hope and Action with Bruce Bekkar
[00:05:12] Ben Hurst: And finally, we have Bruce Becker, a doctor and climate advocate.
[00:05:17] Bruce Bekkar: There was a poll done by a non-profit that I worked with called Eco America. They did a poll. Right after the election about people’s level of concern about climate change, and it actually went up mostly among [00:05:30] independents and Republicans. And what that says to me and other people that I’ve spoken to is that there’s an opportunity there because I think even people that voted.
[00:05:40] Bruce Bekkar: What I consider to be the wrong way on so many levels get that we have a problem and we need to address it. And there also has been consistently, um, polling results over the last few years showing that people’s concern has gradually been ratcheting up. So I think people get it. And that gives me hope.
[00:05:56] Bruce Bekkar: The other part of it is that what we’re asking people to do is really not that difficult. [00:06:00] It’s not much of a sacrifice, frankly. I think it’s okay for us to sacrifice because what we’re facing is so dire and important for this generation and those to come. So I, I think this makes people’s lives better to be engaged.
[00:06:14] Bruce Bekkar: I don’t feel bad about asking doctors or really anybody to engage in this work because I think it does make people feel better to be en engaged in solutions. I think that’s where Joy is.
[00:06:24] Conclusion
[00:06:24] Ben Hurst: Thanks for listening to this quickie.
[00:06:26] Maryam Pasha: This episode was created by our superstar podcast team at [00:06:30] TEDxLondon. Until next time,
[00:06:31] Ben Hurst: stay curious.
