The second TED Countdown Summit on Climate Change will be hosted in Detroit next week.
The invitational rally will take place Tuesday through Friday at Michigan Central Station and the Fillmore Detroit. The summit is the only TED conference that focuses on a single topic, with the goal of advancing solutions to climate change.
The 700 attendees at the private event include leaders in science, activism, innovation, business, finance, politics and philanthropy.
It seemed like it was going to be really powerful both to bring Detroit to the global climate conversation and to bring the global climate conversation to Detroit, said Logan McClure Davda, senior director of impact at TED. There was a lot to learn both ways as we brought together a cross section of leaders and Detroiters to really understand how we move with more speed, skill and justice in this business.
Over 40 speakers are expected for TED Talks who will highlight progress in the fight against climate change, explore game-changing solutions and visualize the future. Speakers include former Vice President Al Gore, “Today” meteorologist Al Roker, author Paul Hawken and Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, director of the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
The Countdown TED Talks will also feature prominent Detroit-area personalities, including Ford’s global director of sustainability, Cynthia Williams, who will discuss Ford’s successes and challenges in the electric vehicle industry. Other Detroit-based speakers include Anika Goss, CEO of Detroit Future City, and Laprisha Berry Daniels, executive director of Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice.
TED members will receive a virtual session pass to view the summit’s TED Talks. The TED Talks will be posted online for the public to view in the months following the summit.
In-person attendees will participate in expert-led workshops and conversations revolving around a variety of topics such as climate finance, using AI for climate action, and urban forest restoration. There will also be off-site visits, ranging from visiting the assembly line for the electric Ford F-150 to working on one of The Greening of Detroits urban farms to creating a mural featuring the Detroit Blight Busters.
It’s really a kind of two-way, incredible relationship building and learning that we hope will emerge from this work, because there’s a lot of great work going on in and around Detroit, Davda said.
The summit will also be the inaugural meeting of the TED Future Forum, a group of companies working to identify business-focused initiatives to fight climate change. TED aims to inspire other companies to take action by sharing stories of successes and challenges from forums at events and online. The Future Forum is currently made up of 13 companies including Ford, Google, Nestl and Siemens.
Additionally, TED provides financial and curative support for local weather events through its TEDx Countdown initiative, which this year will support 12 TEDx Countdown events on five continents.
Future TED Countdown Summits will be hosted every two years, with smaller thematic conferences in the intervening years. Davda said TED hopes to continue this work through 2030.
TED is a non-profit multimedia organization that publishes talks online for free distribution with the goal of spreading meaningful ideas.
Our goal is really to shift the narrative from a grim narrative to one that’s really solution-oriented and hopeful and optimistic but rooted in reality, Davda said. One where people see their place in this work, not just as individual actors, but as part of a really important and powerful collective.”
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