Name: Who really has the power to stop the climate crisis? | RSA Journal Presents
Uploaded: 2026-02-05T18:15:37.000Z
Duration: 9 min 41 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I think today everybody knows that the climate crisis is happening, from fires in LA to heat waves across Europe.

But the old ways of talking about it are not stopping it or changing it.

We've never had more information, we've never had clearer science.

And for a long time the consensus within climate was, well, if people just know what's happening, then we'll be able to galvanize action.

Currently the science establishes that we're essentially on track for about 2.6 degrees of global heating by the end of the century.

It means, by conservative estimates, you know, a billion people being on the move due to climate change.

With that being said, we are in a, a better position than where we were before the Paris agreement.

So pre Paris agreement, we were on track for about 3.6 degrees of global heating.

So we have brought things down and the rate of emissions is slowing and yet it's still on the increase.

Paris was undoubtedly this massive milestone.

The fact that the 1.5 degree threshold was established and agreed upon was a tremendous political feat which many people didn't think was possible.

In the wake of Paris, there was this flurry of commitments.

And I think while, you know, governments were scrambling to appease angry citizens, a lot of corporations were also kind of afraid of missing the boat and so adopted a lot of language around climate, set these commitments, even though they were very far off.

And even, you know, fossil fuel companies, the original architects of climate denial and delay, were suddenly parroting the words that were splashed across our placards.

I think a lot of companies have taken the mask off and that's largely been affected by what's happening geopolitically, especially with the reelection of Trump in the States.

From a kind of political context a few years ago, climate did feel like a top priority for a lot of politicians because there was that pressure coming from the people that since been superseded by, you know, things like immigration, scapegoating the trans community, a lot of kind of identity politics.

So naturally, climate, which is in many ways this kind of abstract, historically slow moving thing, it has slid down the ladder of what people have the capacity to kind of care about.

I think this speaks to the broader challenge that we're up against when it comes to climate.

We've failed to interrogate systems of power, the idea that we can indefinitely grow our economies and yet we can do it in a system sustainable way.

It doesn't match up with a planet that has finite resources.

The Earth is incredibly resilient and has taken everything that we've been throwing at it for decades, and

yet it's finally losing its capacity to replenish itself.

And so much of our economic theory is totally divorced from the material reality that we're living in.

Over the past decade, we've seen the largest power grab in history.

Today we have 26 people who own the same wealth as the poorest, 3.8 billion.

And so that's why we've not seen a meaningful increase in the people being pulled out of poverty for over three decades.

So climate, it's been framed as degrees of heating and carbon and polar bears, which don't mean anything to the average person.

But we've also failed to talk about equity, talk about social justice, and

talk about how in pursuing solutions for climate, we have to be pursuing a more fair and equitable world for everyone.

I think the conversation about climate is caught very often in scientific terms that are real, that are important, not disputing the data or the science.

We know about emissions, we know about carbon, we know all these things.

And I consider myself somebody who does care.

The Herds is a participatory public art piece that is questioning our effects on nature.

It's a 20,000 kilometer journey of a herd of animals that are fleeing their natural habitat.

They're created from cardboard and sustainable materials.

They leave the Congo basin and run north.

They go through West Africa, across the Mediterranean, and

then from South Europe to the edge of Europe to the cliff in Nordkapp, which is the Arctic Circle.

They're fleeing natural disaster, they're fleeing the erosion of their world.

They're reacting before we do, which is very common in animals.

We created big public art events in 27 cities in 11 countries.

And in each city, we worked with hundreds of local participants to co create a very specific show that is right for that community.

And although we worked in many, many different cultures, in many different languages, and

each show is unique, what unites all of these shows is a story about climate crisis.

And each of the city is experiencing a different version of climate crisis.

From floods in Kinshasa in the Congo to heat waves in Northern Europe, my job is to put people in this uncomfortable place where they're asking a question.

And if they're running, are they running because of you?

We have to acknowledge that we're not going to solve the climate crisis with the same types of thinking that created it.

And so we need to remember who the enemy is.

Who benefits from this polarization, from us hating one another, from us being in these political silos and echo chambers where we're incapable of having a conversation with someone who maybe we disagree with.

There's a piece of research that came out this year which found that 89% of people globally want their governments to take stronger action on the climate crisis.

Most people want action, most people believe in the science, and

yet that majority believe that they're the minority.

And that's where community and finding like minded people is such a powerful and important act of resistance and such a critical way to sustain your activism as well.

Because while anxiety or fear or anger might be the emotions that catalyze you, they're very difficult feelings to kind of sustain long term.

So you can touch on those emotions and dip into them.

But ultimately it's the, the feeling of connection and joy that you get from doing something that has purpose, doing something that feels meaningful and getting to do it with people you love and respect.

That's what's going to sustain us through these movements, especially when it gets difficult.

The herds took a very long journey and that journey collected hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of people into collective action.

And it ends very dramatically and poetically at a cliff.

And the cliff is a metaphor, but the cliff is real.

With the journey ending there starts a very interesting question of what is the next phase?

And that's also why it's so important that this conversation is intersectional, so that we're not just talking about, okay, how do we protect nature?

We have to talk about class struggle, we have to talk about racial injustice, we have to talk about how do we actually make the society better for everyone.

That's why I get really excited about climate solutions.

Because when you go to real solutions that have the power to change our societies, they're not just offering to deliver benefits 20 or 30 years down the line.

When we focus on things like moving to renewables in this country, that is a mechanism to lower people's energy bills.

When we talk about growing more food in the UK and having a more resilient agricultural system, that's also how do we create more jobs in this country?

So we have to be able to ground it in the things that people are scared about and worried about for their kids and their futures and their families, but

also the things that are going to meaningfully make people's lives better in the short term.

My role as an artist is not to make sure people take actions.

And what they do then with the feeling, I hope they go back to their community and go, let's think differently.

At the end of the day, it's not a zoology study.

And I hope the cliff, the image of the cliff, the metaphor of the cliff, makes us understand that we will have to jump off that cliff.

How do we mitigate the fact that there is no way back?

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Who really has the power to stop the climate crisis? | RSA Journal Presents

journey

term

crisis

pursue