Ideas worth spreading

Let's make the world wild again

2,265,869 views |

Kristine Tompkins |

TED2020

• April 2020

Earth, humanity and nature are inextricably interconnected. To restore us all back to health, we need to "rewild" the world, says environmental activist Kristine Tompkins. Tracing her life from Patagonia CEO to passionate conservationist, she shares how she has helped to establish national parks across millions of acres of land (and sea) in South America -- and discusses the critical role we all have to play to heal the planet. "We have a common destiny," she says. "We can flourish or we can suffer, but we're going to be doing it together."

Earth, humanity and nature are inextricably interconnected. To restore us all back to health, we need to "rewild" the world, says environmental activist Kristine Tompkins. Tracing her life from Patagonia CEO to passionate conservationist, she shares how she has helped to establish national parks across millions of acres of land (and sea) in South America -- and discusses the critical role we all have to play to heal the planet. "We have a common destiny," she says. "We can flourish or we can suffer, but we're going to be doing it together."

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Learn more about Tompkins Conservation.

About the speaker

Kristine Tompkins

Kristine Tompkins

Earth activist, conservationist

See speaker profile

After serving at the helm of Patagonia and helping to establish new standards in corporate responsibility, Kristine Tompkins undertook a bigger challenge: establishing 14.7 million acres of national parks in South America.

Sean B. Carroll | Princeton University Press, 2017 | Book

The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters

This book is fundamental to understanding the importance of keystone species in restoring an ecosystem to become healthy and functioning. At Tompkins Conservation, our "rewilding" teams use it to explain why we go to the great effort of reintroducing extinct and extirpated apex predators, such as jaguars and giant river otters. It's also wonderful because it shows the outsized impact that hardworking individuals, scientists in this case, can have on our growing understanding of how the natural world works. The Serengeti Rules was adapted into a documentary by Nicolas Brown in 2018.

William R. Catton | University of Illinois Press, 1982 | Book

Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change

Leaders of today’s youth movement say that my generation will die of old age while theirs will die of the climate crisis. It’s time for us to share that burden. Though Catton wrote Overshoot almost forty years ago, it remains the most insightful work I know about the cliff we are steering this planet toward. In it he writes, "We must learn to relate personally to what may be called 'the ecological facts of life.' We must see that those facts are affecting our lives far more importantly and permanently than the events that make the headlines."

Andrea Wulf | Vintage, 2016 | Book

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World

A beautiful book tracing the journeys and discoveries of naturalist Alexander von Humboldt throughout the Americas and beyond. Von Humboldt started his life at the end of the 18th century and saw myriad changes and leaps of knowledge. If there's one big takeaway, it's that having firsthand experiences in nature — getting your boots muddy — are crucial to understanding it. Exploring all kind of environments and philosophies convinced him about the interconnected nature of all things.

David W. Ehrenfeld | Oxford University Press, 1981 | Book

The Arrogance of Humanism

Over forty years ago, David Ehrenfeld already knew that technology wouldn't save us from our environmental and social crises. This book takes a cold, hard look at the damage humans have done to the natural world and the error in putting ourselves ahead of other kinds of life. It's time that we shift perspective. Progress may mean something entirely different than what we have been taught to envision.

Mary Oliver | Penguin Books, 2020 | Book

Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver's poems are like love letters to the natural world, not in any sappy way, but as another means of exploring it in all its terror and perfection, observing each beautiful detail. She reminds us how important it is to pay attention. "So come to the pond," she writes, "or the river of your imagination, or the harbor of your longing, and put your lips to the world. And live. Your life." (From "Mornings at Blackwater")

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Learn more about Tompkins Conservation.