When it comes to tackling climate change, the size of a country doesn't matter -- it's their ambition that counts, says First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon. In a rousing talk, she shares examples of small nations -- from Bhutan and Fiji to her own Scotland -- whose leadership and climate action are galvanizing change on the international ...

Ola Rosling is the director and co-founder of the Gapminder Foundation. Previously, he was the Google Public Data product manager.

Days before this talk, journalist Naomi Klein was on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico, looking at the catastrophic results of BP's risky pursuit of oil. Our societies have become addicted to extreme risk in finding new energy, new financial instruments and more ... and too often, we're left to clean up a mess afterward. Klein's question: What's the ...

Over the last two decades, the wind power industry has grown at a dizzying pace. (Fun fact: a single rotation from one of the world's most powerful wind turbines can generate enough electricity to charge more than 1,400 cell phones.) Building off this exponential growth, Denmark's climate minister Dan Jørgensen lays out his plan to end the count...

The fossil fuel industry knows how to stop global warming, but they're waiting for someone else to pay, says climate science scholar Myles Allen. Instead of a total ban on carbon-emitting fuels, Allen puts forth a bold plan for oil and gas companies to progressively decarbonize themselves and sequester CO2 deep in the earth, with the aim of reac...

Investing in green energy, holding large corporations accountable for their pollution, stopping pipeline and oil extraction initiatives -- these are non-negotiable actions to protect the planet, but they are still just the bare minimum, say climate activists Xiye Bastida and Shiv Soin. In conversation with radio researcher Latif Nasser, Bastida ...

Let's admit it: aerial photo drones and UAVs are a little creepy, and they come with big regulatory and safety problems. But aerial photos can be a powerful way of telling the truth about the world: the size of a protest, the spread of an oil spill, the wildlife hidden in a delta. Sergei Lupashin demos Fotokite, a nifty new way to see the world ...

Every 24 hours, wind generates enough kinetic energy to produce roughly 35 times more electricity than humanity uses each day. And unlike coal or oil, this resource is totally renewed each day. So how can we harness this incredible amount of energy, and is it possible to create a world powered entirely by wind? Rebecca Barthelmie and Sara Pryor ...

The ocean is a naturally noisy place full of singing whales, grunting fish, snapping shrimp, cracking ice, wind and rain. But human-made sounds -- from ship engines to oil drilling -- have become an acute threat to marine life, says science journalist Nicola Jones. Watch (and listen) as she discusses the strange things that happen to underwater ...

We currently have enough fossil fuels to progressively transition off of them, says climate campaigner Tzeporah Berman, but the industry continues to expand oil, gas and coal production and exploration. With searing passion and unflinching nerve, Berman reveals the delusions keeping true progress from being made -- and offers a realistic path fo...

Daryl Hannah gathers TED Talks that span the globe, from the Black Hills Mountains of the United States to the underwater worlds of Antarctica.

Explore the ingenious designs and intriguingly gorgeous places that people call home.

We can't rely on those who created climate change to fix it, says climate justice organizer Ozawa Bineshi Albert. An Indigenous woman living in the heart of oil and gas country in the US, she's observed an alarming disconnect between empty promises made by corporations and the actual needs of communities on the ground. In this call for urgency a...

Energetic and thriving, cities are the heartbeat of society. These talks offer viable ways to reinvigorate and strengthen the metropolises we love.

Every human and natural system -- from oil extraction to the flight of a flock of starlings -- can be seen as a set of repeating patterns. These patterns can be disrupted for good or for bad, says Nigel Topping, the High Level Climate Action Champion for COP26, the UN's climate change conference set to take place in November 2021 in Glasgow, Sco...

In memory of a great man and the numbers he loved.

Bjørn Otto Sverdrup is the Chair of the Executive Committee of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, whose industry members account for almost 30 percent of global production.

Nemonte Nenquimo is an Indigenous leader of the Waorani peoples, legendary hunter-harvesters of the south-central Ecuadorian Amazon. She is a founder of the Ceibo Alliance and Amazon Frontlines and a board member of Nia Tero.

TED Senior Fellow Cesar Harada aims to harness the forces of nature as he invents innovative remedies for man-made problems like oil spills and radioactive leaks.

From a plant that lives or dies based on stock prices to an oilcan that flows backward, Matt Kenyon creates art that startles, amuses and challenges assumptions.

Strengthen your skills with these informative talks on how to get the most out of your research.

For thousands of years, the Amazon rainforest has provided food, water and spiritual connection for its Indigenous inhabitants and the world. But the endless extraction of its natural resources by oil companies and others is destroying the lives of those who live there, says Waorani leader Nemonte Nenquimo, and threatening the overall stability ...

All our manufacturing currently takes place on Earth and, as a result, all its harmful byproducts and wasteful processes end up wreaking Earthbound havoc. In this forward-thinking talk, James Orsulak argues that the fix is to move manufacturing operations off-planet, using automated labor to mine resources and perform all those ecosystem-destabi...

Rob Hopkins is the founder of the Transition movement, a radically hopeful and community-driven approach to creating societies independent of fossil fuel.

Want a different perspective of the world? Get a better, more friendly grasp of statistics -- one of the most understood and misused tools in modern society.

We all know about the climate crisis. We all want to stay informed — but the information can be overwhelming. Watch these talks to hear what’s at stake and find out what's being done.

Manuel Lima studies how information can be organized -- into elegant and beautiful diagrams that illustrate the many unexpected twists of big data.

Martin Hanczyc explores the path between living and nonliving systems, using chemical droplets to study behavior of the earliest cells.

Richard Sears thinks hard about the post-oil world. He's a visiting scientist at MIT, after a long career as a VP at Shell.

From string theory to geopolitics, neuroscience to tissue engineering, watch these talks that make complex topics more understandable.