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Break the system, don’t just tweak it. That’s what sociologist and professor Dana R. Fisher says on this week’s Climate Curious. Tune in with co-host Maryam Pasha to learn about incrementalists: people who think cleaning up a broken system leads to a sanitised version of the status quo –not real systemic change. From how institutions have used and jaded the youth movement for optics, whilst leaving them disconnected after crackdowns on college campus protests, this apocalyptic optimist shares the most likely path forward. Recorded at TED 2026.
Dana’s book is here: Saving Ourselves,
Check out her TED Talk and her new pod Apocalyptic Optimist Podcast!
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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 Welcome and Setup
01:02 Systemic Change Explained
01:50 Incrementalism vs Justice
02:28 Youth Strikes Shift Movement
03:04 Big Greens and Co-Opting
03:34 Biden Era Compromises
04:53 Repression and Backlash
06:31 Solidarity and Lost Trust
07:26 Whitewashed Protest History
08:53 Real Costs of Change
09:39 Closing and Credits
Welcome and Setup
[00:00:00] Maryam Pasha: Welcome to Climate Curious Quickies, bite-sized Nuggets of Climate Goodness. From our TEDx experts in under 10 minutes
[00:00:10] Ben Hurst: in this week’s climate, curious, we are getting in our fields and [00:00:15] asking, has the climate movement been playing too nice? Our guest today asked whether playing by the rules is part of the problem.
[00:00:24] Ben Hurst: Sociologists professor and author Dana r Fisher joins us to discuss how the climate [00:00:30] movement interacts with the powers that be and what we can do by looking back at the history of social change to really move the needle in 2026. Dana has spent her life studying activism and the sacrifices [00:00:45] associated with it and ask.
[00:00:46] Ben Hurst: If the game is broken, should we change the game on why we need a revolution, not a revamp. Here’s Dana r Fisher, recorded live at TED 2026. Stay curious. [00:01:00]
Systemic Change Explained
[00:01:02] Dana R. Fisher: I believe in systemic change, right? Okay, so talk to us
[00:01:05] Maryam Pasha: about that.
[00:01:05] Dana R. Fisher: So, systemic change means that we need to recognize that a true. True addressing of the climate crisis is breaking up this system that [00:01:15] has captured us.
[00:01:16] Dana R. Fisher: Yeah. Which is fossil fuel driven. Yes. And is incredibly. Unequal. Right. And the problem is we’ve seen a growth in inequality, a growth in political polarization, um, and fossil fuel interests have like a stranglehold on [00:01:30] decision making. Yes. Intentionally. Yes. Right. I mean, they bought it so that they can control it and, you know, and that’s why we’re trying, we’re opening up coal mines again in the United States.
[00:01:38] Dana R. Fisher: Because, you know, ’cause that’s a winning move. Um,
[00:01:42] Maryam Pasha: yeah, like paying for it. Yeah.
[00:01:43] Dana R. Fisher: Yeah. Literally [00:01:45] paying more economics
[00:01:45] Maryam Pasha: don’t work,
[00:01:45] Dana R. Fisher: right. I mean, it doesn’t work at all. Yeah. So there’s, I mean, it, it, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but that’s where we are.
Incrementalism vs Justice
[00:01:50] Dana R. Fisher: So there are people in the world who believe that we can maintain the same status quo, the same social hierarchies and address.
[00:01:59] Dana R. Fisher: [00:02:00] Climate change. Yes. And they are, I like to think of them as what I call incrementalists. Yes. Okay. They believe in this incremental change where we don’t change the system, we don’t become more equal. We just become cleaner.
[00:02:12] Maryam Pasha: Yes.
[00:02:12] Dana R. Fisher: You know, and that’s where you see a lot of this idea [00:02:15] of technological innovation that can solve the problem without doing any of the hard work
[00:02:19] Maryam Pasha: and, and.
[00:02:19] Maryam Pasha: Has not not been where the climate movement was for a very long time. It feels and was changing.
[00:02:25] Dana R. Fisher: Yes. Is changing. Yes. So the climate, so the climate movement was there.
[00:02:28] Maryam Pasha: Yeah.
Youth Strikes Shift Movement
[00:02:28] Dana R. Fisher: The climate movement started to [00:02:30] change. I believe when we saw, um, a lot with the, the school strikes with Fridays for future. I mean, we can thank Greta, but there were young people all over the world who were involved in this.
[00:02:39] Dana R. Fisher: So I don’t wanna say, and I know Greta would herself not say that it’s very clearly
[00:02:43] Maryam Pasha: was, but the idea of like. The youth [00:02:45] voice globally coming in, I think.
[00:02:46] Dana R. Fisher: Right. And they, I mean, and some of the work that I did was actually looking at kind of the main issues there. And while we see that for other movements, there’s a diversity of perspectives, there was a lot of consistency within the climate movement during that period of time that [00:03:00] justice and equity were main themes along with climate change.
[00:03:03] Maryam Pasha: Yeah,
[00:03:03] Dana R. Fisher: within the movement.
Big Greens and Co-Opting
[00:03:04] Dana R. Fisher: Now I also observed how a lot of what we call in the United States, the big greens, which are these professionalized Yes. Groups really, um. How do I say this? They, um. I don’t wanna say they exploited the young people, but they, in a lot of that’s
[00:03:20] Maryam Pasha: what is a means to an end maybe.
[00:03:21] Dana R. Fisher: Well, it, no, it was more like they, they, they wanted to take advantage of the popularity.
[00:03:26] Maryam Pasha: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:03:26] Dana R. Fisher: And the notoriety of young people and youth [00:03:30] activists
[00:03:30] Maryam Pasha: without sliding up
[00:03:30] Dana R. Fisher: to it, without actually, without actually embracing the type of change. Right.
Biden Era Compromises
[00:03:34] Dana R. Fisher: I mean, unfortunately, I think we really saw that during the Biden administration, where the Biden administration came into power.
[00:03:41] Dana R. Fisher: They actually were able to take advantage of young people, many of whom were climate [00:03:45] activists. Yes. Who got involved in helping to campaign for Biden. Yeah. And Biden said that he was gonna do a whole bunch of things. And what he ended up doing in the end, and he didn’t have the political capacity to do everything he said he was gonna do.
[00:03:56] Dana R. Fisher: Sure. He ended up with a very weak [00:04:00] policy, which did involve more climate policy than we ever had in the United States before. It also gave away a whole bunch of resources and money to fossil fuel interest. Yes.
[00:04:08] Maryam Pasha: Yes.
[00:04:08] That’s,
[00:04:08] Dana R. Fisher: that was a
[00:04:09] Maryam Pasha: compromise. Right.
[00:04:10] Dana R. Fisher: Super compromise. Super incremental.
[00:04:12] Maryam Pasha: Yeah.
[00:04:12] Dana R. Fisher: And the young people got kind of screwed in the whole process.
[00:04:14] Maryam Pasha: [00:04:15] I mean, yeah, because I think there was like, definitely I could, I remember ’cause I, I’ve not been involved in this movement for very long, but I came in around that time and I remember thinking like, wow, there’s a really big burden that we’re putting on these young people.
[00:04:27] Dana R. Fisher: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Um, they were really.
[00:04:28] Dana R. Fisher: Fetishized, right? Yeah. They [00:04:30] were really like, oh look, we’re holding up this. You know,
[00:04:32] Maryam Pasha: they did the emotional
[00:04:33] Dana R. Fisher: multiracial justice and climate activists, and you should buy our product. Yeah. And obviously then we’re legit with our perspective without actually embracing it and bringing it into the [00:04:45] message of the movement.
[00:04:45] Dana R. Fisher: And it ended up, I think it really backfired for them because a lot of young people got very involved and engaged and motivated by.
Repression and Backlash
[00:04:53] Dana R. Fisher: Uh, protesting the war in Gaza.
[00:04:54] Maryam Pasha: Yes.
[00:04:55] Dana R. Fisher: And they were really, um. [00:05:00] Uh, repressed. Yeah. I mean, if we saw what happened on college campuses across the United States, the repression was outrageous.
[00:05:06] Maryam Pasha: I didn’t the uk
[00:05:07] Dana R. Fisher: I didn’t think the uk UK and in the uk I mean, we saw it in a lot of places. I mean, yeah. So it’s, it’s funny ’cause I used to be on the faculty at Columbia. Okay. And every year we had encampments on. On [00:05:15] campus. I mean, and I, yeah, and I taught activism right on campus. So I always had these activists in my class and I would always walk, you walk across the green to go to teach and there’s always, always, some of my student pops out of a tent and it’s like, Hey Professor Fisher, I’ll see you in class.
[00:05:27] Dana R. Fisher: And I’m like, don’t forget to do the reading. I’m sure you’ve got a battery [00:05:30] light and so you can do your reading at night. Right. And they’re like, see you there. Right. So always
[00:05:34] Maryam Pasha: happened. Yeah. It was part of college life.
[00:05:35] Dana R. Fisher: Part of the college culture. Right. I mean, we had, we in campus when I was in college, I mean, I didn’t go to Columbia, but so.
[00:05:41] Dana R. Fisher: The fact that this one time they were [00:05:45] so repressive, they brought in police and I, I just was on this event in New York City last week where one of the leaders of the movement on Columbia’s campus was talking about the ways that he has felt like he has been, um, surveilled Yes. And [00:06:00] scrutinized. And it’s amazing that he’s been able to graduate.
[00:06:02] Dana R. Fisher: So, so many young people got turned off. So between the incremental policy making, the ways that youth activists were treated. We did not see young people turn out for Harris during the most recent election, and that’s one of the reason that bi, that Biden, not [00:06:15] Biden, oops. That’s one of the reasons why Trump won.
[00:06:17] Maryam Pasha: Yes.
[00:06:17] Dana R. Fisher: And why Harris lost. And we are no longer seeing young people in the streets protesting in the United States. We’re not seeing them protesting on college campuses.
[00:06:26] Maryam Pasha: No,
[00:06:26] Dana R. Fisher: because they’re terrified and they feel [00:06:30] completely disconnected.
Solidarity and Lost Trust
[00:06:31] Maryam Pasha: It comes back to solidarity in my mind. Oh
[00:06:33] Dana R. Fisher: yeah.
[00:06:33] Maryam Pasha: Mm-hmm. Like you. You took, like you used these people for what you wanted, you did not stand up for them.
[00:06:41] Maryam Pasha: What eye on earth would you think that they would come back [00:06:45] out for you?
[00:06:45] Dana R. Fisher: And if you’re going to let police. Am I allowed to say beat the shit out of you? Yes. Okay. If you’re, if you’re gonna let the, if
[00:06:50] Maryam Pasha: it’s happened, you can say, okay,
[00:06:52] Dana R. Fisher: if you’re gonna let the police come in, clear young people and beat the shit out of them, which quite frankly happened on a number of college campuses, yes.
[00:06:59] Dana R. Fisher: If you’re [00:07:00] gonna let that happen and not stand up and push back to that. Yeah. Then what do you, what makes you think that? Because that’s what solidarity is about. Yeah. Solidarity is about standing up for and protecting young people. I mean, and the overlap, just so you know, like the overlap between the young people who were [00:07:15] caring about climate and were caring about the waring, Gaza.
[00:07:18] Dana R. Fisher: Was was very, very high. So these were, these were climate activists, many of them.
[00:07:23] Maryam Pasha: I mean, yeah, I, I always find it.
Whitewashed Protest History
[00:07:26] Maryam Pasha: I, I felt, what I found bizarre, I always find bizarre is this idea that we teach these things. Like when I, ’cause I went to high school in New York and, you know, so I have like a deep Oh really?
[00:07:36] Maryam Pasha: Okay. So
[00:07:36] Dana R. Fisher: you were in high school in New York
[00:07:37] Maryam Pasha: and then you were in London and, no, and then I was in Canada for a while, so we have this like deep re like, like embedding in like North American politics. And uh, [00:07:45] you, I remember we learned about Kent State.
[00:07:47] Dana R. Fisher: Uh huh
[00:07:48] Maryam Pasha: You know, we, and, and even before that, you learn about the suffrages, you learn about violent Luther, thinking Junior, you learn about all of these people.
[00:07:55] Maryam Pasha: And then in our higher education institutions [00:08:00] particularly, and there were like, what fucking surprised that the very young people were teaching about like civil disobedience and resistance. I mean, you were teaching activism, employ it.
[00:08:11] Dana R. Fisher: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:08:11] Maryam Pasha: It, it, it just, I could not understand why people were so [00:08:15] shocked it was happening.
[00:08:15] Maryam Pasha: It’s like, you are tea, you are teaching it. Like,
[00:08:18] Dana R. Fisher: well, I mean, I, I, I completely agree, but I also am very. Worried about making, making, I mean, as somebody who teaches activism, I worry about saying, oh, it’s [00:08:30] because they’re being taught that,
[00:08:30] Maryam Pasha: no, it’s not because they’re being taught it, but we hold it up as like a idea, like we,
[00:08:34] Dana R. Fisher: we talk
[00:08:34] Maryam Pasha: about it, we respect it, we think it’s a good thing, but only if it happened historically.
[00:08:38] Dana R. Fisher: But, but what I think is really interesting is when we teach history and there’s some really wonderful work that’s been done about this. Yeah. We [00:08:45] really have whitewashed. Yes. Yes. And, and, and Greenwashed. These movements and the grittiness of what civil disobedience involves.
Real Costs of Change
[00:08:53] Dana R. Fisher: I mean, one of the things that I, I ended up talking a lot with, and I talked a lot with the folks at Extinction Rebellion about this, um, in the past few years because they were like, but we got arrested.
[00:09:02] Dana R. Fisher: And it’s like. Yeah. Do you know what happened during the Civil Rights Movement? During the Civil Rights movement? So many leaders, they were arrested. I mean, and Martin Luther King Jr. Was like, we wanna fill the jails. I mean, that was one of the tactics [00:09:15] employed by the movement. Yeah. Completely. Completely.
[00:09:17] Dana R. Fisher: I mean, but also a lot of people were beaten up and there were people who were murdered. Yeah. And that is the grit, grittiness of social change. And I am not saying that activists should go. You know, get beaten up, [00:09:30] be imprisoned, be murdered. But that is likely the price that we are going to have to pay for the kinds of systemic changes we need.
Closing and Credits
[00:09:39] Ben Hurst: Thanks for listening to this quickie.
[00:09:41] Maryam Pasha: This episode was created by our superstar podcast team [00:09:45] at TEDx London. Until next time,
[00:09:47] Ben Hurst: stay curious.
