Juan brings his brilliant insight and humor to create a powerful first TED talk on what is at stake environmentally and what we need to change to get serious about our climate. Juan says it is human nature to procrastinate and postpone and his timely talk explains why at each COP meeting the goal posts for human activity required seem to slip. Juan says he wants to just change one number—and asks how our whole thought process and scientific field would change if the goal was to cool the planet by one degree. This would represent a shift from just slowing down the pace of the problem to actually thinking about a whole new set of creative solutions required. Juan believes that focusing the end state we need would be an unlock to a whole mind set shift required to come up with new radical solutions (e.g. refreezing tundra, shutting down shipping lanes). Juan is at his most powerful when he describes what is at stake for ice, water, and soil and he takes us to Greenland inside the heart of the library of ice core samples to show us how abrupt changes are part of our history. Juan’s talk changes our focus on what matters and how we should think about climate change—telling us that we have been studying air when we are on a planet that is primarily water. If there is a talk needed to get human thinking about climate on a better track this is the place to start.
