The Stubborn Optimist’s Guide Revisited with Christiana Figueres

April 22, 2021

[This episode originally aired May 21, 2020]

Internationally-recognized global leader on climate change Christiana Figueres argues that the battle against global threats like climate change begins in our own heads. She became the United Nations’ top climate official after she watched the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit collapse “in blood, in screams, in tears.” In the wake of that debacle, Christiana began performing an act of emotional Aikido on herself, her team, and eventually delegates from 196 nations. She called it “stubborn optimism.” It requires a clear and alluring vision of a future that can supplant the dystopian and discouraging vision of what will happen if the world fails to act. It was stubborn optimism, she says, that convinced those nations to sign the first global climate framework, the Paris Agreement. In this episode, we explore how a similar shift in Silicon Valley’s vision could lead three billion people to take action for the planet.

Major Takeaways

Our beliefs, not our current abilities, determine what we can do as a society. The massive international response to COVID-19 could be what it takes to shake humanity into awareness of our collective power to address climate change.
“Stubborn optimism” means pushing past fear so that we can imagine a better future. Visualize green, clean, efficient cities. What will they look like? What will rural areas look like when we have a green planet again? What will oceans look like, smell like, feel like?
Climate change is like COVID-19 in that it is happening now and has life-or-death consequences. But climate change’s impact horizon is much longer than COVID-19’s, tricking us into thinking we can afford to wait to take drastic action. Once we imagine climate change with more immediacy, we can get to work flattening the long curve of climate change.
In 2020, technology companies developed COVID-19 task forces to deliver lifesaving communication, address misinformation, and assist people to take actions in their community. Tech companies need to use the same tools and urgency to tackle climate change – and it must start now.

Recommended Media

This book by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac outlines two planetary futures. One scenario describes what life on Earth will be like by 2050 if we fall short of the targets set by the Paris Agreement. The other scenario envisions a regenerative world with net-zero emissions – a future we can create if we confront the climate crisis with determination and optimism.

This New York Times article by Maggie Astor outlines the concept of the “Overton Window,” an influential idea Joseph P. Overton developed in the 1990s at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy that explains how policy overhauls fall in and out of mainstream conceivability over time.

The climate change arm of the United Nations produced this video to explain the basics of the 2015 international treaty to tackle climate change on aggressive five-year cycles.

This article in The Washington Post by Tony Romm narrates the formation of coordinated coronavirus task forces at technology companies such as Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and IBM during a two-hour phone call between Trump administration aides, federal health authorities, and reˮ��atives from leading Silicon Valley companies.

Outrage + Optimism is a weekly podcast on climate change hosted by Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac, and Paul Dickinson. The trio speaks with politicians, scientists, artists, and business leaders to explore the mixture of outrage and stubborn optimism we need to build a better future.

ˮ��