Here’s my Tuesday morning challenge to you – please point me to a video on YouTube that is under four minutes long that offers a compelling sense of optimism about climate change.

Mainstream media has been so very good at balancing (finding a person on either side of an issue to offer contrary views to one abother). So I thought my task yesterday of finding an optimistic video would be straightforward. After all, there are so many sobering reality check and warning videos to choose from.

What I discovered was itself sobering. I couldn’t find any video on optimism that met my criteria, which are as follows:

1. Is under four minutes long (prefereably nearer two minutes).
2. Has a compelling narrative.
3. Would hold an audience’s attention and make them think.

Here are three reality check / warning videos that met my criteria (almost):

Jack Black does the voiceover for ‘Don’t choose extinction’ by the United Nations:

“I know a thing or two about extinction, and let me tell you, and you’d kind of think this would be obvious, going extinct is a bad thing. And driving yourselves extinct? In 70 million years that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard”.

‘Greta Thunberg full speech at UN Climate Change COP24 Conference’:

“we have to speak clearly, no matter how uncomfortable that may be. You only speak of green eternal economic growth because you are too scared of being unpopular. You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess, even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake. You are not mature enough to tell it like is. Even that burden you leave to us children”

‘David Attenborough, People’s Advocate for hashtag#COP26, Address to World Leaders | Climate Action’ (fails my first criterion at 7’25”):

“Is this how our story is due to end? A tale of the smartest species doomed by that all too human characteristic of failing to see the bigger picture in pursuit of short term goals. Perhaps the fact that the people most affected by climate change are no longer some imagined future generation, but young people alive today, perhaps that will give us the impetus we need to rewrite our story, to turn this tragedy into a triumph.”

So please help – where’s the video that says ‘the outlook is challenging but remarkable things are happening that should give us cause for significant optimism’?

P.S. I’ve already looked at the possibility of a Hannah Ritchie video but I’m still to be persuaded by Hannah’s overall narrative (though I’ve only watched videos and read reviews of her book thus far) and cannot in any case find a video that meets the criteria *in my view*. This one comes closest – ‘Hannah Ritchie introduces Not the End of the World’.

#decarbonisation

#greengrowth

#sustainablegrowth