The Stubborn Optimist’s Guide to Saving the Planet — with Christiana Figueres

How can we feel empowered to take on global threats? The battle
begins in our heads, argues Christiana Figueres. She became the
United Nation’s top climate official, after she had watched the
2009 Copenhagen climate summit collapse “in blood, in screams, in
tears.” In the wake of that debacle, she 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. We explore how a similar shift in
Silicon Valley's vision could lead 3 billion people to take
action.