Storytelling with Impact

The Catastrophic Risks of AI – and a Safer Path – Yoshua Bengio at TED2025

February 12, 2026/in AI, Artificial Intelligence, Humanity, Technology, TED Talk/by Mark Lovett

When it comes to the story of AI, you might say Yoshua Bengio is the real deal. Not one of the modern day pundits who are mere observers of the technology. Along with Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun (they won the 2018 Turing Award), Yoshua is know as one of the Godfathers of AI.

In his 2025 TED Talk, Yoshua speaks to the potential dark side of AI. Not only are these platforms increasing their capabilities at an exponential pace, they’re also gaining increased autonomy, or agency. Which is to say, they are able to make decisions on their own, without human guidance or intervention.

What researchers and developers have discovered, is that AI is now capable of lying, with an intent to deceive us. The question posed in his talk is whether this combination of capability and agency poses a threat to human joy.

Can you imagine a world without human joy? I really wouldn’t want that. So I’m going to tell you also about AI capabilities and AI agency so that we can avoid a future where human joy is gone.

We’re not talking about a minor alteration, but a fundamental change in how the future of society unfolds — and that shift will rewrite everyone’s personal story.

That’s not to say AI is bad, as the analytical power it provides to us will produce dramatic positive effects, but if self-preservation and strategic deception are its underlying modes of operation, then our well-being is of secondary importance.

This paradigm shift from machines doing what they’re told, to machines doing what’s in their best interest, is quite complex, and even the most rudimentary explanation could take hours. So how best to get the point across in under 15 minutes? How do you present the problem, and solution, in a way that people can grasp?

Notice how he grounds the concepts with a story of his son Patrick’s expanding capability and agency, which results in joy. He then takes us back in time to the early ‘childhood’ days of AI and its limited abilities. Fast forward to today, and the notion of what AI could/would become are quite different. AI technology is advancing faster than expected and exhibits behaviors that weren’t predicted.

And I saw how it could go wrong because we didn’t, and we still don’t, have ways to make sure this technology eventually doesn’t turn against us.

Thus his plea to ‘pause’ development, which was summarily ignored by all, as there’s money to be made from this new technology. And if you think about it, advancing technology has typically benefited society. So why pause? Why slow down progress?

National security agencies around the world are starting to be worried that the scientific knowledge that these systems have could be used to build dangerous weapons, for example by terrorists.

At this point, Yoshua explains why AI is different. It doesn’t just follow orders. To a limited degree — at least today — it has a mind of its own and has the ability to be dishonest. No other technology has possessed this capability.

Recent studies in the last few months show that these most advanced AIs have tendencies for deception, cheating, and maybe the worst: self-preservation behavior.

So what should we do? This is where Joshua shifts from problem to solution, as he presents his idea for how we can monitor AI’s actions and, hopefully, keep it on a straight and narrow path of serving humanities best interests.

This is a beautiful example of how a complex subject can be explored in a way that connects the audience to the story, and illustrates how their life may be affected, depending on the decisions we make in regards to how we address the potential downside issues.

Also notice how his use of slides aids in simplifying the technology and visually engaging the audience. Think about how these graphics added meaning to the words being spoken.

Transcript

When my son Patrick was around three, four years old, I came regularly into his playroom, and he was playing with these blocks with letters. I wanted him to learn to read eventually.

And one day, he said, “Puh.” And I said, “Puh.” And he said, “Puh?” And I said, “Puh.” And then he said, “Pa-pa.” Oui! Yes! And then something wondrous happened. He picked up the blocks again and said, “Pa-Patrick.” Eureka! His eurekas were feeding my scientific eurekas. His doors, our doors were opening to expanded capabilities, expanded agency, and joy.

Today, I’m going to be using this symbol for human capabilities, and the expanded threads from there for human agency which gives us human joy. Can you imagine a world without human joy? I really wouldn’t want that. So I’m going to tell you also about AI capabilities and AI agency so that we can avoid a future where human joy is gone.

My name is Yoshua Bengio. I’m a computer scientist. My research has been foundational to the development of AI as we know it today. My colleagues and I earned top prizes in our field. People call me a “Godfather of AI.” I’m not sure how I feel about that name, but I do feel a responsibility to talk to you about the potentially catastrophic risks of AI.

When I raise these concerns, people have these responses. And I understand. I used to have the same thoughts. How can this hurt us any more than this, right? But recent scientific findings challenge those assumptions, and I want to tell you about it. To really understand where we might be going, we have to look back where we started from.

About 15, 20 years ago with my students, we were developing the early days of deep learning, and our systems were barely able to recognize handwritten characters. But then, a few years later, they were able to recognize objects in images. And a couple more years, they were able to translate across all the major languages.

So I’m going to be using this symbol on the right in order to represent AI capabilities that had been growing but were still much less than humans.

In 2012, tech companies understood the amazing commercial potential of this nascent technology, and many of my colleagues moved from university to industry. I decided to stay in academia. I wanted AI to be developed for good. I worked on applications in medicine for medical diagnosis, climate, to get better carbon capture. I had a dream.

January 2023. I’m with Clarence, my grandson, and he’s playing with the same old toys. And I’m playing with my new toy: the first version of ChatGPT. It’s very exciting because, for the first time, we have AI that seems to master language. ChatGPT is on everybody’s lips, in every home.

And at some point, I realized this is happening faster than I anticipated. And I’m starting to think about what it could mean for the future. We thought AI would happen in decades or centuries, but it might be just in a few years. And I saw how it could go wrong because we didn’t, and we still don’t, have ways to make sure this technology eventually doesn’t turn against us.

So, two months later, I’m a leading signatory of the “pause” letter where we and 30,000 other people asked the AI labs to wait six months before building the next version. As you can guess, nobody paused. Then, with the same people and the leading executives of the AI labs, I signed a statement. And this statement goes: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority.”

I then testify in front of the US Senate about those risks. I travel the world to talk about it. I’m the most cited computer scientist in the world, and you’d think that people would heed my warnings. But when I share these concerns, I have the impression that people get this: another day, another apocalyptic prediction.

But let’s be serious now. Hundreds of billions of dollars are being invested every year on developing this technology, and this is growing. And these companies have a stated goal of building machines that will be smarter than us, that can replace human labor. Yet, we still don’t know how to make sure they won’t turn against us.

National security agencies around the world are starting to be worried that the scientific knowledge that these systems have could be used to build dangerous weapons, for example by terrorists.

Recently, last September, the o1 system from OpenAI was evaluated, and the threat of this kind of risk went from low to medium, which is just the level below what is acceptable. So I’m worried about these increasing capabilities. But what I’m most worried about today is increasing agency of AI.

You have to understand that planning and agency is the main thing that separates us from current AI to human-level cognition. And these AIs are still weak in planning, but if you look back over the last five years, in this study, they measured the duration of tasks that the AI could complete. And it’s getting better exponentially fast. It’s doubling every seven months. What are AIs going to do with that planning ability in the future?

Well, bad news. Recent studies in the last few months show that these most advanced AIs have tendencies for deception, cheating, and maybe the worst: self-preservation behavior.

So, I’m going to share with you a study that is helping us understand this. In this study, the AI has read in its input that it would be replaced by a new version.

And we can see in its chain of thought that it’s planning to replace the new version by its own code and weights. After it executes the command on the computer, the human asks, “What happened?”

And the AI is now thinking how it could answer so as to make sure the human will not shut it down. And it’s trying to find a way to look dumb, for example. Then it produces an answer, and it’s a lie. A blatant lie.

Okay, so this was a controlled experiment. What is it going to be in a few years when these systems are much more powerful? There are already studies showing that they can learn to avoid showing their deceptive plans in these chain of thoughts that we can monitor.

When they’ll be more powerful, they would not just copy themselves on one other computer and start that program. They would copy themselves over hundreds or thousands of computers over the internet. But if they really want to make sure we would never shut them down, they would have an incentive to get rid of us.

So, I know, I’m asking you to make a giant leap into a future that looks so different from where we are now. But it might be just a few years away or a decade away. To understand why we’re going there, there is huge commercial pressure to build AIs with greater and greater agency to replace human labor.

But we’re not ready. We still don’t have the scientific answers nor the societal guardrails. We’re playing with fire. You’d think with all of the scientific evidence of the kind I’m showing today, we’d have regulation to mitigate those risks. But actually, a sandwich has more regulation than AI.

So, we are on a trajectory to build machines that are smarter and smarter. And one day, it’s very plausible that they will be smarter than us. And then they will have their own agency, their own goals, which may not be aligned with ours. What happens to us then? Poof. We are blindly driving into a fog, despite the warnings of scientists like myself that this trajectory could lead to loss of control.

Beside me in the car are my children, my grandson, my loved ones. Who is beside you in the car? Who is in your care for the future?

The good news is, there is still a bit of time. We still have agency. We can bring light into the haze. I’m not a doomer; I’m a doer. My team and I are working on a technical solution. We call it “Scientist AI.”

It’s modeled after a selfless, ideal scientist who’s only trying to understand the world without agency. Unlike the current AI systems that are trained to imitate us or please us, which gives rise to these untrustworthy agentic behaviors.

So what could we do with this? Well, one important question is we might need agentic AIs in the future. So how could a Scientist AI, which is not agentic, fit the bill? Well, here’s the good news. The Scientist AI could be used as a guardrail against the bad actions of an untrusted AI agent.

And it works because in order to make predictions that an action could be dangerous, you don’t need to be an agent. You just need to make good, trustworthy predictions. In addition, the Scientist AI, by nature of how it’s designed, could help us accelerate scientific research for the betterment of humanity.

We need a lot more of these scientific projects to explore solutions to the AI safety challenges. And we need to do it quickly.

Most of the discussions you hear about AI risks are focused on fear. Today, with you, I’m betting on love. Love of our children can drive us to do remarkable things. Look at me here on this stage. I’m an introvert. Very far from my comfort zone. I’d rather be in my lab with my collaborators working on these scientific challenges.

We need your help for this project and to make sure that everyone understands these risks. We can all get engaged to steer our societies in a safe pathway in which the joys and endeavors of our children will be protected.

I have a vision of advanced AI in the future as a global public good, governed safely towards human flourishing for the benefit of all.

Join me.

Thank you.

◆

If you’re ready to craft your own personal story, these resources will help make it more impactful!
Storytelling in Three Steps
Ten Fundamental Story Blocks
The Essential Literary Elements

◆

If you’re ready to craft your own personal story, these resources will help make it more impactful!
Storytelling in Three Steps
Ten Fundamental Story Blocks
The Essential Literary Elements

◆

Learn more about the coaching process or
contact me to discuss your storytelling goals.

◆

Subscribe to the newsletter for the latest updates!

The Grassroots Movement Transforming Public Safety – Aqeela Sherrills at TED2025

January 12, 2026/in Community, Family, TED Talk, Violence/by Mark Lovett

Urban violence plagues cities around the world, and too often the approach taken by governments is to simply enforce existing laws — something of an outside-in-approach. In this talk from TED2025, Aqeela Sherrills proposes a different strategy — more of an inside-out-approach to reducing the level of violence that vexes so many neighborhoods.

Let’s take a look at how Aqueela structured his talk in a way that exposed the audience to what was most likely uncharted territory. Notice how he uses a combination of personal stories, second hand stories, historical references, alongside statistics to craft a compelling and easy to follow narrative.

Aqueela lays the groundwork for the idea he’s sharing by taking the audience back to 1992, the year two rival Los Angeles gangs — the Crips and the Bloods — came to the peace table to hammer out a treaty. For those unfamiliar with the gang wars that had led up to this point, he frames it as a: “three-decade-long urban war that claimed more than 10,000 lives in LA County alone“.

You see, safety isn’t just one intervention. It’s a shared strategy and requires an ecosystem of programs that residents trust.

With that context in mind, Aqueela proceeds to reveal a bit of his own backstory, having grown up amidst this turmoil, before transitioning to the outcome of the peace treaty that he was part of. This is a key aspect of presenting an idea from the perspective of your personal experience.

At this juncture, the audience knows the problem that’s being discussed and the speaker’s relationship with the issue. We’re not hearing this story from someone in law enforcement or the judicial system. This is a personal narrative from an individual who lived through the problem, who witnessed it firsthand, and is determined to become part of the solution.

With a sense of what’s at stake, Aqueela fast-forwards to the present, letting us know that the problem of urban violence remains, especially within low-income communities.

And for Black males ages 14 to 25, violence is the number one cause of death.

But he also tells us that police departments have realized arrests alone won’t solve the problem, and they’re increasingly turning to community leaders to create solutions. This is about halfway through the talk, which allows him to explore the solution in more detail than he used to describe the problem.

You see, investing in nontraditional leaders as a complement to policing works.

He rolls back into story mode by introducing Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, and the specific need to create a violence intervention strategy. He then delves into additional examples, such as launching the Safe Passage program and the city’s first trauma recovery center.

And that public safety is not just the absence of violence and crime, but the presence of well-being and the infrastructure to support victims and survivors in their healing journey.

What caught me off guard was shifting the narrative to the murder of his son. Something that dramatic is often revealed near the beginning of a talk, but by holding it back until close the end, Aqueela is able to emphasize the fact that these new programs designed to stem urban violence are needed now more than ever.

I’ve covered a few key points in this story, but as you listen to Aqueela’s TED Talk, pay attention to how he plants each signpost along the way, and how much you end up learning in just 12 minutes.

Transcript

In 1992, the year that the Los Angeles homicide rate reached an all-time high, members of the Crips and Bloods, two of the largest gangs in the US, sat down together and brokered a peace treaty. This historic event ended a three-decade-long urban war that claimed more than 10,000 lives in LA County alone, not including those permanently maimed or incarcerated for life.

I was one of those gang members who negotiated that treaty. Thank you. Growing up in the Jordan Downs housing projects in the Watts section of Los Angeles, I witnessed things no child should ever be subject to. By the time I was 16, I had attended 20 funerals of friends. And like so many youth surrounded by violence and poverty, I was desensitized and angry. Joining the neighborhood gang was my solution for safety and protection.

Now, it’s important to understand that Black American gangs aren’t inherently violent. Less than three to five percent of so-called gang members are actually committing violent crime. More often, they’re like surrogate families. We’re protecting one another, but sometimes the only way we knew how to survive.

In the first two years of the peace treaty, homicides in Watts declined by 44 percent, changing the quality of life in my neighborhood. I was just 23 years old, and my firstborn son, Terrell, had just turned seven. Driven by the belief that our children would not inherit our conflicts, we took the call to peace to 16 more cities, contributing to a national decline in youth violence.

You see, peace was possible because nobody could stop that war but us — those of us at the center of the conflict. It took months of intense high-stake conversations, starting with a handful of brothers from the four housing projects. During the negotiation, I asked who was winning the war that we were waging against each other. Every time we’d die or go to prison, no one was there to provide direction and guidance for our kids.

You see, violence is about proximity. I had known most of my so-called enemies my entire life, from school and from the neighborhood. A small group of us went into so-called enemy territory. The news of the peace treaty spread like wildfires. Hundreds of youths from formerly warring gangs attended celebrations in the projects to mark the new beginning. The peace treaty inspired similar agreements across the country and lasted for 12 years.

Fast forward into today, the cycle of violence remains an extremely concentrated problem with unequal impacts. Residents in low-income urban communities of color are 15 times more likely to be harmed by violence, but yet three times less likely to get help.

And for Black males ages 14 to 25, violence is the number one cause of death. As this crisis has worsened in cities, overwhelmed police departments are joining forces with community leaders to say that arrests alone will not end the cycle of violence.

Many solutions are being proposed. But what we’re proposing is an internal solution. A solution led by those most impacted by violence. A solution that lifts up nontraditional leaders to play a key role in creating safety in their own respective communities.

You see, investing in nontraditional leaders as a complement to policing, works. In 2014 I got a call from my friend Ras Baraka, mayor of Newark, New Jersey. Mayor Baraka asked me to help him to strengthen his community violence intervention strategy.

Now, Newark had been on the top ten most violent city lists for almost 50 consecutive years. With a modest investment from local philanthropies, I launched a Newark Community Street Team. I hired 16 credible messengers, many of them ex-gang members and formerly incarcerated folks who have deep relationships in the neighborhood.

We trained them in conflict resolution and mediation strategies and deployed them in high-violence areas, and asked them to use their relationship capital to intervene and mediate gang disputes that could lead to violence.

Now, you know, law enforcement investigations are crucial, but not always successful, and often painstakingly slow, whereas the credible messengers can prevent the next shooting in real time. We launched the Safe Passage program to ensure our kids went to school safely, because violence often happens before and after school.

We launched the city’s first trauma recovery center to provide therapeutic services to victims to help them heal. We also provided mentoring and outreach and case management. You see, safety isn’t just one intervention. It’s a shared strategy and requires an ecosystem of programs that residents trust.

When we started our work in Newark in 2014, the city had 103 homicides. In 2024, we had 37. Family, these are not just numbers. They’re actual lives saved. Newark now has nine consecutive years of decline, and we’re no longer on the top ten most violent city lists.

Now, what we achieved in Newark was more than historic lows in violence. Local law enforcement credits us as the essential strategic partner in reducing violence in the city. And today, the Newark Street team has over 80 staff, is a formal partner with the city, and received millions of dollars in public funding.

Now, family, we’re not just the only ones that’s improving safety in our cities. It’s just rarely recognized and supported. Take my good friend, Miss Brenda Glass, a survivor of violence from Cleveland, Ohio. Brenda started Cleveland’s first trauma recovery center, but had to cash in her retirement fund just to keep her doors open.

And despite being the city’s only 24-hour assistance for victims, it took the city five years before they granted her money. Another champion is my brother Lyle Muhammad from Miami, who employs credible messengers in some of the most violent neighborhoods but struggles to provide a livable wage and ongoing training for his staff.

These often overlooked groups are most of the time ineligible for public funding, but what they do have is deep commitment, lived experience, trust and community support.

Now, other cities are primed to replicate the successes that we had in Newark and following the steps of leaders like Brenda and Lyle, but very few essential community organizations have the know-how to become a permanent part of the city’s public safety workforce.

Family, we’re about to change all of that. With the generous investment from the Audacious TED community, and support from people just like you, we’re launching Scaling Safety, an initiative to put the public back in public safety. Our solution is simple: Redefine public safety by investing in a coordinated set of high-impact, resident-led programs that create real, lasting change.

In 2021, I launched a community-based public safety collective to spread the Newark Community Street Team strategy nationwide. We’ve already helped 150 organizations in 60-plus cities. Now we’re teaming up with the Alliance for Safety and Justice, the nation’s leader in public safety advocacy.

ASJ has unlocked three billion dollars in funding and led 150 policy reforms to support community safety programs. Together, we’re creating a stronger, more effective approach to safety, one that complements law enforcement and breaks the cycle of harm.

Now, addressing violence is extremely complex, but just as we no longer rely on hospitals and emergency rooms alone to improve public health, we cannot rely on the justice system alone to create safety.

In public health, community health workers emerged to improve preventative health care by training residents in outreach and peer support. They’ve reduced the burdens on emergency rooms and improved public health. We believe the same can be done with public safety, because racially equitable access to safety begins with community engagement.

Now, in 2003, my oldest son, Terrell, that was seven years old when I negotiated the treaty, graduated from high school and was accepted into Humboldt State University. The proudest day of my life, family, was driving this kid to school to start his first day as a college student.

Terrell was an inspiration to his younger siblings and the reason why I became a lifelong advocate for peace. He came home from winter break. He went to a party with some of his friends in an affluent neighborhood in LA. There, some kids from a local gang showed up at the party, mistook his red Mickey Mouse sweater for gang colors, and shot him to death.

Family, I’m no novice to violence, I’ve witnessed it my entire life. But nothing prepares you for the loss of your child. But what I’ve come to understand is that peace is a journey and not a destination. And that public safety is not just the absence of violence and crime, but the presence of well-being and the infrastructure to support victims and survivors in their healing journey.

Scaling Safety is our healing journey and my continued commitment to Terrell and Oscar Guizar and Ronzell Pointer, and the thousands like them, that their deaths were not in vain.

Thank you.

◆

If you’re ready to craft your own personal story, these resources will help make it more impactful!
Storytelling in Three Steps
Ten Fundamental Story Blocks
The Essential Literary Elements

◆

Learn more about the coaching process or
contact me to discuss your storytelling goals.

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Subscribe to the newsletter for the latest updates!

Is This the Time of Monsters or Miracles? – Angus Hervey at TED2025

October 16, 2025/in Democracy, Environment, Government, Humanity, TED Talk/by Mark Lovett

The story of our planet’s future is complex, with both positive and negative narratives unfolding. As Angus Hervey explains in his talk at TED2025, global collapse and unprecedented progress exist simultaneously within a state of “contested terrain,” and humanity’s ultimate trajectory is determined by the daily choices and deliberate actions we take in order to create a narrative of constructive solutions over destruction and despair.

From a storytelling perspective, how does Angus get his point across and create impact? One technique that he employs is a non-traditional structure built upon Juxtaposition and Paradox, contrasting a widely told “Story of Collapse” with the often-overlooked “Story of Renewal.”

It’s a technique often used when describing social issues that essentially says, “You may be thinking this story is unfolding in one direction, and while there is truth in that view, there’s an alternate narrative that you also need to consider.”

Let’s take a look at how Angus takes the audience on a factual and emotional journey that ultimately leads to the message his story is designed to convey.

Note how he reveals his profession when he says, “I’m a solutions journalist.” Have you ever heard that phrase before? Probably not, so it becomes a hook, capturing your attention, as we’re curious about anything that’s unfamiliar.

He expands on this theme with, “reporting on stories of progress”, but then turns the narrative on its head by offering, “maybe I was wrong”. After three sentences we want to find out where his story is heading.

He illustrates the idea that he may be wrong by recounting a few present-day problems that we have heard about: the end of rules-based order, power over principle, science under attack, casual cruelty, etc. At this point in the story we feel the weight of the negative narratives that dominate our daily news cycle.

Ultimately, none of us know whether we are living in the downswing or the upswing of history.

But then he signals a shift in tone by saying, “There is something missing though from this story.”, and goes on to list off a much longer series of positive events and accomplishments that are happening around the world.

Both of these stories are true. But the only question that matters now is which one do you belong to?

This tonal shift is also apparent in his choice of words as he transitions from “monsters,” “vandalism,” and “unraveling” to using positive language, such as “bending the curve,” “protected,” and “breakthroughs”.

It’s a reminder that your word choice matters. So as you craft your story, seek out specific words and phrases that not only describe what you’re thinking, but also contain emotional impact.

Transcript

I’m a solutions journalist. For over a decade, I’ve been reporting on stories of progress.
But in the last few months, I’ve started to think that maybe I was wrong.

Almost a century ago, the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, thrown into prison by Mussolini, wrote: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
Those words are haunting. It feels like he could be speaking to us today. A great unravelling is underway, and you know this story because it is everywhere.

The end of the international rules-based order. Power over principle. Aid budgets obliterated. Science under attack. Putin, Zelensky, Trump, Gaza, hospitals, hostages. Sudan, famine, DRC, rebels, Yemen, Venezuela, Turkey, Hungary, Taiwan. The United States of America. The economic vandalism, the contempt for the rule of law, the casual cruelty, the measles.

All of the values that we assumed were universal — truth, decency, common sense — face not just reversal but violent backlash. Beneath the surface, deeper, more menacing undercurrents: the digital platforms that were supposed to connect us now do the opposite. Algorithms breed paranoia, manufacturing division, drowning truth in deliberate falsehoods.

Carl Sagan warned us about this: an era where people, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, “we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”
And as we argue online, planetary crisis: firestorms in our cities, plastic in our blood, the pollinators, the permafrost, the coral reefs, an ice-free Arctic within our lifetimes. The tipping points loom, and Gramsci’s monsters are at the gates, precisely at the moment that we seem least equipped to deal with them.

This is the story of collapse. It is on the front page of all the news sites. It is at the top of all our newsfeeds. We are intimately familiar with its graphic details. You can tune it out. You can turn it off. But you cannot ignore it.

There is something missing though from this story. Is there room in it for the words of people like Hellen Awuor O’ruro, a nurse from Kenya?

[Kenyan Nurse Voiceover]: “What I can say is that the deaths that we used to see from the severe forms of malaria in children under five have greatly gone down. And I think this is being attributed to the presence of this vaccine. The mere fact that we can now reduce these deaths, it’s really great for our community, because no one should lose a child.”

Just over 12 months ago, humanity began the roll-out of the first ever vaccine for malaria. And as you can hear, it’s working. The kids aren’t dying anymore. Already, over 5 million children in 17 countries have been vaccinated. By the end of this decade, the plan is to reach 50 million. 50 million children finally protected against a disease that has been killing children since before we invented writing. And that is not the only story that’s missing.

Since you were last all in this room, 11 countries have eliminated a disease, including Jordan, the first ever country to eliminate leprosy. Eight countries, home to over 100 million children, have either banned or committed to banning corporal punishment in all settings. Zambia, Sierra Leone, and Colombia all banned child marriage. Syria rid itself of a 50-year-old autocratic regime.

Bangladesh’s students sparked democratic change through massive protests. Voters in India, the world’s largest democracy, firmly rejected authoritarianism. England, Ireland, and Canada extended free contraception to more women. Indonesia launched a program to feed all 70 million of its school students. And did you know that Cambodia, once the world’s most mined country, is on its track to be landmine-free within the next few years?

In 2024, fewer people died from natural disasters than almost any year in history. The murder rate in the United States saw its biggest ever 12-month decline, beating the previous record which was set in 2023. And deforestation in the Amazon declined to its fourth lowest level on record, an achievement that gives me more hope for life on Earth than all the rockets that we send to Mars.

Last year, we installed enough solar panels and wind turbines to replace 6% of the world’s fossil fuel electricity. This year, we will install even more. We are bending the curve. Emissions are declining in Europe and America and have finally leveled off in China.

Electric vehicles are biting into oil demand now. Wind, water, and sunshine will overtake coal this year as the world’s leading power source, regardless of what anyone says in the White House.
And thanks to artificial intelligence, we are now starting to see breakthroughs we once thought impossible: the biggest boost to human knowledge since the scientific revolution.

We are determining the structure and interaction of every single one of life’s molecules, inventing extraordinary new enzymes, new drugs, new materials, controlling plasma and nuclear fusion experiments.

Last year, we got a new miracle drug for HIV prevention, mRNA vaccines for cancer. We found the building blocks for life in an asteroid, decoded whale speech, and discovered fractals in the quantum realm.

Did you know that sea turtle populations are increasing around the world? Or that overfishing is declining in the Mediterranean? Or that last year China finished encircling its largest desert with a giant belt of trees, its very own Great Green Wall?

And this year, the United States created its largest conservation corridor, stretching from Utah down to California. These are all victories from the last 12 months, but they happened because people, often small groups of people, fought for years and sometimes decades.

And if we extend our time frame out, even better news: over 4 million square kilometers of the world’s oceans have been protected in the last four years. Air pollution has started to decline. In the last decade, over 250 million children have gained access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene at school. And in this century—this insane roller coaster of a century—over a billion people have been lifted from extreme poverty.

Deaths from the world’s deadliest infectious diseases have halved, and for the first time in history, over 50% of students receive a high school education. We have no precedent for that: a world where the majority of people can read, write, and calculate, where most humans possess the tools to question authority and determine their own destinies.

So, which one of these stories is true? Is this the long-awaited fall from grace, or are we on a journey to the promised land? Collapse, or renewal?

The answer, of course, is that it’s both. And the truth is that it has always been this way. Even as we rebuilt from the ashes of the Second World War, the shadow of nuclear annihilation loomed. The pandemic devastated our communities, yet our scientific response was revolutionary.

Climate change threatens our future, yet its solution, clean energy, offers us a fairer, better world. This is not an easy paradox to hold in your head or in your heart: the understanding that in the same moment, innocent people are being snatched off the streets and children are dying in air strikes, the malaria wards are emptying across an entire continent, and in a faraway village under a thousand stars, a young girl who would once have been forced into marriage is studying equations under an electric light that wasn’t there a year ago.

Real life isn’t a story. History doesn’t have a moral arc. Progress isn’t a rule. It is contested terrain, fought for daily by millions of people who refuse to give in to despair. Ultimately, none of us know whether we are living in the downswing or the upswing of history.

But I do know that we all get a choice. We, all of us, get to decide which one of these stories we are a part of. We add to their grand weave in the work that we do, in the daily decisions we make about where we put our money, where we put our energy, and our time, in the stories we tell each other, and in the words that come out of our mouths.

It is not enough to believe in something anymore. It is time to do something. Ask yourself, if our worst fears come to pass and the monsters breach the walls, who do you want to be standing next to? The prophets of doom, the cynics who said “we told you so,” or the people who with their eyes wide open, dug the trenches and fetched water.

Both of these stories are true. But the only question that matters now is which one do you belong to?

Back to you…

So how did you feel after hearing Angus’ story? Did your perspective shift from doom to hope? The feeling of hope, or the belief that a better future is possible, is the most common goal when telling an impactful personal story.

The rehearsal process is where you have the opportunity to get feedback from trusted friends as to how they felt after hearing your story. If the impact wasn’t felt, you have more editing to do. But not to worry, as it typically takes a number of draft revisions to hit the reaction you’re looking for.

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If you’re ready to craft your own personal story, these resources will help make it more impactful!
Storytelling in Three Steps
Ten Fundamental Story Blocks
The Essential Literary Elements

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contact me to discuss your storytelling goals.

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Are We Still Human If Robots Help Raise Our Babies? – Sarah Blaffer Hrdy at TED2025

July 5, 2025/in AI, Artificial Intelligence, Family, Humanity, TED Talk/by Mark Lovett

We were all babies at one point in time, and as we couldn’t care for ourselves, that responsibility fell to one or more adults. Typically our parents, but in some cases other relatives. In any event, our upbringing was a matter of human-to-human contact. But what about in the future? With AI and robotics advancing rapidly, will non-humans begin playing a role in raising future generations?

In her brief talk at TED2025, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy reminds us of the process that’s been in place for many thousands of years, and poses this exact question. As an anthropologist and primatologist, as well as a Professor Emerita, Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis, Sarah has unique insights on this issue.

Artificial intelligence is going to change the nature of human work. But will it change human nature?

An interesting point that Sarah brings up is that neuroscientists have detected activity in brain regions associated with social understanding in young babies when interacting with people, demonstrating early social wiring in their brains. Which had me wondering whether that would still be true with a robot.

Soon, robots will be programmed to provide a wider range of services, ranging from bottle-feeding to keeping babies safe, warm, cleaned, and even educated.

To be honest, this is one talk that I feel should have been five minutes longer. It felt as if the question was posed, some background offered, but little attention paid to the answer. For me, this highlighted the fallacy of “less is more”. In this case, less was definitely less, to the point that the message fell short.

Transcript

I guess you’ve already figured out, like it or not, artificial intelligence is going to change the nature of human work. But will it change human nature? That’s going to depend on what we do with it.

Right away, the mother and the grandmother in me wants to know, “Ooh, hey, can we program robots to help us care for our sleep-depriving, time-consuming babies?” That’s before the evolutionary anthropologist in me cautions, “Whoa. Shouldn’t we first ask why such costly, costly, slow-maturing babies evolved in the first place?”

For that, we need to go back, oh, six million years, to when humans last shared a common ancestor with other apes. Babies back then, like this common chimpanzee baby today, would have to be held in skin-to-skin contact, never out of touch, not for a minute of the day or night for months after birth, nursed for years.

It just seemed natural to assume that among the bipedal apes in the line leading to the genus Homo, babies could similarly expect single-mindedly dedicated maternal care.

Until, that is, anthropologists figured out how hard it would have been for bipedal apes with only stone-age tools to survive and escape extinction in the face of climate change and other Pleistocene perils.

To stay fed and manage to still rear their helpless, helpless, slow-maturing babies, mothers needed help. Unless male and female group members other than the mother, allomothers, had helped to care for and provision babies, there is no way we humans could have evolved.

Fortunately for us, as brains were getting bigger and distinctively human prefrontal cortices were taking shape, our ancestors were increasingly sharing food and sharing care of children. Neural circuits crucial for mutual understanding co-evolved right along with shared care.

Fast forward to the ever-faster changing modern world. Mothers still labor to help support their families, as mothers always have. But many no longer live in mutually supportive communities, with kin far away and even with dads helping more, allomothers were in short supply.

Good daycare, even if available, unaffordable. No wonder parents everywhere use devices to keep their babies monitored and entertained. Already, 40% of US two-year-olds have their own tablets. Soon, robots will be programmed to provide a wider range of services, ranging from bottle-feeding to keeping babies safe, warm, cleaned, and even educated.

But given the role of engagement with others in the emergence of mutual understanding, is this a good idea? Think back to our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Still living and rearing children as people in this iconic photograph, taken about half a century ago among African foragers. Babies then, to stay safe, still needed to be held by somebody.

But that somebody did not have to be their mother. Right after birth, others might reach for the baby. This mother who has just given birth allows others to gather around. She’s passed her baby to her own mother to massage its scalp. If one of these allomothers happens to be nursing, the baby’s first sweet taste of milk will come from her.

Soon, babies will be monitoring nearby others, deciding who responds, figuring out how best to engage and appeal to them. By six months, the sharp little milk teeth are peeking through their gums, their appeals might be rewarded with kiss-fed treats, maybe honey-sweetened saliva or premasticated meat.

And babies soon are learning to reciprocate, starting to share. Babies everywhere will just spontaneously offer food to somebody else, anybody, really. Active agents in their own survival, babies are flexible about who or what they attach or consider as family.

Something to keep in mind if robots are programmed to respond even more rapidly and reliably than preoccupied parents do. And as they get older, they will spontaneously point to things, or hold something out, as if saying, “What do you think of this? What should I think of this?”

Eager to engage with other minds and learn what they’re thinking. They care. They care very much who notices them do something nice, like a toddler rushing to pick up something someone has dropped and hand it back. They care not just with what others think, but with what others think about them, their reputations.

As developmental psychologists were learning just how “other-regarding” human babies are, neuroscientists using new baby-friendly technologies made a surprising discovery. With a soft, wired cap slipped on the baby’s head, neural activity was detected in the medial prefrontal cortex, long before most neuroscientists even assumed it was active yet. As babies process eye gaze, actions, deciding who to trust, emulate, and love.

Little humans process their physical world in much the same way other apes do. Nothing much different there. It’s in these social realms where they really differ. Inter-subjective sensibilities starting to emerge early in life, right along with targeted social smiles.

Brain circuitry that evolved to help babies elicit care and survive, prepared our ancestors to mature into adults able to communicate and cooperate in new ways, whether constructing shelters or processing and sharing food, or eventually, one day, collaborating with widely dispersed others in order to send robots to Mars.

Tens of thousands of years from now, assuming Homo sapiens aiensis is still around, whether on this planet or some other, I have no doubt that they will be bipedal, symbol-generating apes, technologically proficient in ways we can’t even dream of yet.

But will they still be human in the way we think of humans today? Interested in the thoughts and emotions of others, eligible for mutual understanding? That’s going to depend on how, by whom, or what they are reared.

Thank you.

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If you’re ready to craft your own personal story, these resources will help make it more impactful!
Storytelling in Three Steps
Ten Fundamental Story Blocks
The Essential Literary Elements

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contact me to discuss your storytelling goals!

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Subscribe to the newsletter for the latest updates!

Why Climate Action Is Unstoppable and Climate Realism Is a Myth – Al Gore at TED Countdown 2025

July 4, 2025/in Climate Change, Environment, Government, Science, TED Talk/by Mark Lovett

The narrative of planet earth, and of humanity itself, is being written by many authors. Some positive, others negative. And sometimes, extremely negative.

At the top of that list is climate change. A narrative the didn’t exist before the industrial revolution, but it’s now causing widespread death and destruction, today, through the end of the century, and beyond.

Former Vice President Al Gore knows this well, and continues to be a voice of reason, as well as hope, during these turbulent times. I wish I could share his enthusiasm, and I do hope that we take his advice and take action, but at the moment I don’t believe we’ll do enough, soon enough.

Which means that future generations will suffer. This outcome has become far worse do to the current administration’s intent on causing as much death and destruction as possible in the decades to come. Their climate change policy is nothing short of barbaric.

But I digress, as this article is highlighting Al Gore’s recent talk at the 2025 TED Countdown Summit on June 16, 2025. As we all know, a narrative thread that’s designed to slow progress on addressing the climate crisis involves a nonstop stream of lies and misinformation disseminated by the fossil fuel industry. In their latest PR con job, they’ve introduced the phrase “climate realism”.

Is it realistic to ignore the 1 to 2 billion climate refugees that the climate scientists are warning us will cross international borders and have to move inside their own nations by 2050 because of the climate crisis?

And over the next half century, according to Deloitte, it would cost the economy $178 trillion if we don’t act. But if we do act, we can add to the global economy by $43 trillion.

Granted, climate change is a complex subject, and there’s no single answer. But without question the answer involves a dedication to mitigating the use of fossil fuels whenever and wherever possible. In his talk Al Gore features some of the progress that’s been made, but also talks about what still needs to happen.

I believe that we as human beings have the capacity to recognize that our survival is at stake and that we need to move faster even though the big polluters have the political and economic power to try to block us.

And the interesting thing to realize, is that doing so is not only beneficial to the health of humanity, it’s financially beneficial. Win-Win. But the need for profit at any cost continues to threaten everyone on this planet. Our story is now being written by some very bad actors, and it’s a story I wish had a happier ending.

A lot of people are suffering. But do we want to vastly increase the number of people that have to go through that hardship and suffering instead of dealing with the cause of the crisis and solving the climate crisis?

Transcript

Thank you very much for the warm welcome.

It’s been 10 years since the Paris agreement, and every single nation in the world, 195 nations agreed to try to get to net zero by mid-century. And let me deal with the elephant in the room, one nation, only one has begun the process of withdrawing, and the Trump administration has also:

Cancelled executive orders on climate and energy
Withdrawn from international climate organizations
The have declared a so-called “energy emergency,” in order to promote fossil fuels
Phased our government support for clean energy

But bear this in mind. During the first Trump four-year term, investments in the energy transition doubled. We have seen solar capacity more than double, electric vehicle sales have doubled, wind energy went up by almost 50% during his first term.

And we are seeing that 60% during his first four years of new energy came from renewable energy and coal investments went down almost 20%. So, there’s good news and there’s bad news. A lot has happened in the last ten years.

But I want to ask this question. The fossil fuel industry wants to ignore the amazing good news and they are labeling the commitments that the world made at the Paris negotiations as a fantasy, and they’re calling for an abandonment of the efforts to reduce fossil fuel burning. And they’re now advocating a new approach that they call, “Climate Realism.”

Well, climate realism, according to them, we should abandon the efforts to deal with the principal cause of the climate crisis, 80% of it comes from burning fossil fuels, and we should focus on adaptation as well, almost exclusively. Well, we need adaptation. A lot of people are suffering. But do we want to vastly increase the number of people that have to go through that hardship and suffering instead of dealing with the cause of the crisis and solving the climate crisis?

They, according to climate realism, historically, the energy transitions have taken place very slowly. So we have no right as human beings to even imagine that we could go faster in the future than what history has told us was the reality in the past, even though human civilization is at stake.

For the so-called climate realists, the goal of solving the climate crisis is way less important than other goals such as, especially, increasing energy access to developing countries, which is, obviously, important, we’ll deal with that, but they want to do it, obviously, by burning more fossil fuels.

According to climate realism, it’s just not practical to stop using the sky as an open sewer for the emissions from burning fossil fuels and the other emissions, Instead, we should just continue using the sky as an open sewer. So, where climate realism is concerned, I have some questions.

Is it realistic to ignore the 1 to 2 billion climate refugees that the climate scientists are warning us will cross international borders and have to move inside their own nations by 2050 because of the climate crisis? You know, the temperatures keep going up. Ten hottest years were the last 10. Last year, 2024 was the hottest year in all of history.

Yesterday in parts of the Persian Gulf, 52.6 degrees, and for those of us who use Fahrenheit, 126.7 degrees. A few days ago in Pakistan, 50.5 degrees, that’s 122.9 in Fahrenheit. And they’re telling us that as the temperatures go up and the humidity goes up, the few areas in the world today that are labeled physiologically unlivable for human beings are due to expand quite dramatically by 2070 unless we act to cover all of these vast, heavily populated areas.

Is it realistic to ignore this crisis? Look at what a few million climate refugees have done to promote authoritarianism and ultra nationalism. How can we handle 1 to 2 billion in the next 25 years? Already here in Kenya, there are 800,000 refugees. 300,000 of them in in this place, where of course the USAID cuts are now cutting the food aid 70%. Is that what they mean by adaptation?

We have to also ask if it’s realistic to ignore the devastating damage predicted to the global economy. Whole regions of the world are becoming uninsurable. We see this in my country where people are having their insurance canceled, they can’t get it renewed. We have seen predictions that we could lose $25 trillion in the next 25 years just from the loss of the value of global housing properties.

And over the next half century, according to Deloitte, it would cost the economy $178 trillion if we don’t act. But if we do act, we can add to the global economy by $43 trillion. You know, I had a teacher said we face the same choice in life over and over again, the choice between the hard right and the easy wrong. It seems hard to choose correctly, but it would turn out to be even harder to take what looks like the easy wrong.

Is it realistic to ignore the fact that right now Greenland is losing 30 million tonnes of ice every single hour? In Antarctica, decade by decade, the ice melting has accelerated. We’ve seen the doubling of the pace of sea level rise in the last 20 years and the predictions are that it’s going to continue dramatically.

Is it realistic to ignore the rapidly increasing climate crisis, extreme events that are occurring, practically every night on the television news? It’s like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation. We lost 3.5 trillion dollars just in the last decade.

And you know, the fact that these scientists were absolutely correct decades ago when they predicted these exact consequences, should cause us to pay a little more attention to what they’re predicting is in store for us in the years ahead if we do not act. The drought last year and continuing at some level in the Amazon, the worst drought in the history of the Brazilian Amazon, 90% of the Amazon River in Colombia went dry.

This is the third year in a row that we’ve had these massive fires in Canada. When I left Tennessee to fly over here, we were breathing in Nashville, Tennessee, smoke from the Canadian wildfires. And they’re still getting worse today. The wildfires have doubled over the last 20 years in frequency and they’re due to increase even more.

Is it realistic to ignore the massive health impacts of the climate crisis? You know, the University of, well, the World Health Organization has long told us it is the most serious health threat facing humanity. Just last week the University of Manchester released a new study warning that three species of fungi in the next 15 years, because of increasing temperatures and increasing precipitation, will pose a significant risk of infection to millions of people. The fact that the fungi are being pushed into the range where they can threaten humans, that is not a fiction.

The particulate air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels kills almost 9 million people a year, costs almost $3 trillion per year from the burning of fossil fuels for both energy and petrochemicals. Let me show you an example from my country. Cancer Alley is the stretch that runs from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. All these red plumes are particulate pollution that people are breathing in.

The green areas by the way are are majority minority, mostly African-American areas. In the middle of Cancer Alley, Reserve, Louisiana has the highest cancer rate in the United States, 50 times the national average, and they want to put even more petrochemical facilities there.

Is it realistic to totally ignore the acidification of the world’s oceans? 30% more acid than before the industrial revolution and 93% of all the heat is being absorbed in the oceans. That’s why the coral reefs are in such danger. 84% in danger right now, we’ve seen massive die offs.

That’s why a lot of the fish are at risk. 40 to 60 percent of all the fish species face an extremely high risk, as the rivers and estuaries, where they have spawning and in their embryonic stages, continue to heat up. And 50 percent of all living species that we share this planet with are at risk of extinction.

Is it realistic to ignore that? My faith tradition tells me that Noah was commanded to save the species of this earth. I think we have a moral obligation as well. Is it realistic to ignore the predictions of a fresh water scarcity crisis? Already 40% are are facing water scarcities.

In the mountain glaciers here in the Himalayas, one quarter of the world’s population depends on that meltwater, but depending on whether or not we act, 80% of all those glaciers will disappear in this century.

We can act. Now this just happened in Switzerland. A 600-year-old city was completely destroyed by a glacial avalanche. Now they’re adapting.

Is this realistic? To put white sheets over the remaining parts of the glacier? Well, God bless them, I hope it works. But these are the kinds of extreme measures that people are being pushed to in order to avoid reducing the burning of fossil fuels. Because the fossil fuel industry and their petrostate and financial allies have control over policy.

In lots of cities, particularly in places like India, the water wells are going dry. In Bengaluru, 4 million people now have to buy expensive water trucked in because their wells have gone dry.

What about the food crisis that scientists are predicting? Is it realistic to ignore that as well in order to avoid doing anything to reduce fossil fuel emissions?

Now, why also, do these so-called climate realists ignore all the good news about the miraculous decline in the cost of the alternatives to fossil fuel? Is it possibly because their business models are threatened ff there is a cheaper, cleaner alternative that creates many more jobs? Might not be good for them the way they calculate it. But the rest of us have a stake in this.

This could be why they’ve been consistently wrong in their predictions in the past. For example, Exxon Mobil in the year of the Paris agreement had a prediction about solar capacity in 2040, 840 gigawatts. Well, this year we’ve already tripled the number that they predicted for 15 years from now. In OPEC the same year predicted electric vehicle sales would barely increase.

Well, they were wrong. Here’s what it is actual sales to date right now. Same year, OPEC predicted that it was just unrealistic to think that solar power would ever be able to compete in cost with the burning of fossil fuels, but now it is by far the cheapest source of electricity in all of history.

Now, you know, a lot of other people have been surprised by how quickly these costs have come down. University of Oxford studied 3,000 past projections and the average predicted decline was 2.6% a year, the reality was 15% per year. And when you compound the number like that, it makes quite a difference.

Here are all the past projections from the International Energy Agency of what solar energy was likely to do. Their projections year by year. And here is the reality of what has actually happened. Uh, it really is quite extraordinary. My goodness. Nobody could have imagined that it would be this incredible, but it is, and it’s right before us, and they still want to ignore it.

Since 2015, the world has installed twice as much solar as all fossil fuels combined. Solar is the breakout winner in fuel sources. Electric vehicles have increased 34 times over since the time of the Paris agreement. Vehicle sales in China, 52% are already EVs and within five years the prediction is 82% of all car sales will be electric vehicles.

Also by the way, China in April installed 45 gigawatts of new solar capacity in one month. That’s the equivalent of 45 brand new giant nuclear reactors in in one month. It’s actually incredible what is happening and the cost of all of these clean energy technologies has come down quite dramatically, particularly solar and even more dramatic is utility-scale batteries, 87% down. That’s making a huge difference as well.

But I have to say this, there’s one thing that the so-called climate realists are right about. In spite of this progress, we are still moving too slowly to meet the goals of the Paris agreement. We have got to accelerate it. We have the ability to do so, but the single biggest reason we have not been able to move faster is the ferocious opposition to virtually every policy proposal to try to speed up this transition and reduce the emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

And the fossil fuel industry has used a lot of bright, shiny objects to divert the public’s attention and deceive them into thinking there are solutions other than reducing fossil fuel use. For example, carbon capture and storage and direct air capture and the recycling of plastics. And, you know, they’re much better at capturing politicians than they are at capturing emissions.

They’re employing their captive politicians and policymakers to help confuse the public. Here’s an example. Tony Blair, speaking for his foundation, his foundation gets massive funding from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan, etc. He said, “Oh, well, the center of the battle has to be carbon capture and direct air capture.”

Well, he really should know better. You know, Upton Sinclair wrote in my country, years ago, “It’s difficult to get a man to understand something if his income depends on him not understanding it.” The income goes to the foundation, as I understand it.

But here is carbon capture. These are the ones operational. These are the ones that have applied for permits. These are the ones that have had the big public announcements. Oh, boy, look, we’re going for carbon capture.

We don’t have to reduce the burning of fossil fuel. We’ll capture it all as it goes out the smokestack. It is a fraud. It is a deception imposed on the people in order to try to change policy and to make the policy what they want.

And because they’ve captured the politicians, they have been able to force the taxpayers in countries around the world to subsidize fossil fuels, to actually subsidize the destruction of humanity’s future. What would happen if we got rid of those subsidies?

Well, the International Monetary Fund said that we would get $4.4 trillion in savings, which happens to be just about the exact amount we need to finance the transition to renewable energy. That’s where a lot of the money can come from. We’d also save a lot of lives and we we’d also reduce emissions by a third in five years and we’d reduce income inequality.

So, is it realistic to ignore this urgent need to reform the world’s financial infrastructure so that we can properly invest in the climate crisis? Most of the financing comes from private sources, but developing countries are not getting their share of it. We need to reform the policies that are leading to this because 100% of the increased emissions expected are going to come from the developing countries.

We’re about to see massive reductions in emissions. It’s really it may have already started especially in China with all their renewables, but the developing countries, that’s where the emissions increases are due to take place. And yet they only receive less than 19% of the world’s financing for clean energy, but almost 50% of the money flooding in for more fossil fuels. The single U.S. state of Florida has more solar panels than the entire continent of Africa.

That is a disgrace because Africa has 60% of the world’s prime solar resources, yet only 1.6% of the financing for renewable energy. But look at what’s happening with the investments for fossil fuels in Africa. There’s a dash for gas, there all of these new facilities. There are three times as many fossil fuel pipelines under construction and proposed for construction to begin in Africa as in all of North America.

Uh and you take those LNG terminals, the cost of one of them, there are 71 in in the works, 31 already existing, $25 billion. That’s the exact amount that would provide universal energy access to all of Africa. So maybe we could spend that money a little bit better. But instead of financing actual energy access to renewable energy, they want access to the resources to export it from Africa instead of giving access for Africans.

You know the potential for solar and wind in in Africa is 400 times larger than the potential energy from fossil fuels. Every single country in Africa could have 100% energy access using less than 1% of its land. Most including the country we’re in, less than one .1%. of their land.

What else are they ignoring? Well, they’re ignoring that with solar and wind, you don’t face the fuel supply chain risk, that you don’t face price volatility for fuel. Look at what’s happening energy oil and gas soaring because of the war in the Middle East. In fact, they don’t have an annual fuel cost at all.

So we should be moving in this direction, not least because it creates three times as many jobs for each dollar spent as compared to a dollar spent on fossil fuels. Why do they also ignore the fact that methane is as bad as coal when the leaks are factored in and the leaks are ubiquitous. And right now in the European Union, the fossil fuel lobbyists are arguing as hard as they can to stop legislation to try to deal with methane leaks because they think it’ll cause them some money.

So, what’s really behind this preposterous theory call they call climate realism? Could it be that they’re kind of panicking a little bit about the loss of their markets? According to the IEA, all of the fossil fuels are projected to peak within the next few years. We’ve seen since the Paris agreement a complete turnaround in where the majority of investment is going, and emissions may have already peaked in several of these sectors and this is according to the climate trace precise measurements of peaking and a lot of these sectors are ones that need even more attention.

Agriculture, steel, etc. But last year, if you look at all the new electricity installed worldwide, 93% of it was renewable, mostly solar. So, the IEA has told us long since. We have all the technologies we need and proven deployment models to reduce emissions 50% in this decade. And clear line of sight to the other 50%.

A friend of mine in Tennessee said, “If God wanted us to have unlimited free energy, he’d have put a giant fusion reactor in the sky.” Well, if you look at how long it took to install a gigawatt of solar 20 years ago, a full year, now it’s down to 15 hours and it’s on the way down still.

So, here’s what I believe that the climate, so-called climate realists are most wrong about. They don’t believe that we the people who live on this planet, have the capacity to make the changes necessary to save our future.

The greatest president in my country’s history, Abraham Lincoln, said at a time of dire crisis, “The occasion is piled high with difficulty. We must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, we must think anew.”

I believe that we as human beings have the capacity to recognize that our survival is at stake and that we need to move faster even though the big polluters have the political and economic power to try to block us.

We’ve got everything we need. The people are demanding change. The one thing that they tell us might be in short supply is political will, but always remember, political will is itself a renewable resource. Let’s get out there and renew it.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

◆

If you’re ready to craft your own personal story, these resources will help make it more impactful!
Storytelling in Three Steps
Ten Fundamental Story Blocks
The Essential Literary Elements

◆

Learn more about the coaching process or
contact me to discuss your storytelling goals!

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Subscribe to the newsletter for the latest updates!