Source: Christiana Figueres: The inside story of the Paris climate agreement, TED Talks, February 2016.

Notes: Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), started off this talk by saying that she is hopeful now that we can solve climate change. However, that was not the case in 2009 after world leaders failed to reach an agreement in Copenhagen.

Six months later, Christiana was called to lead the global negotiations on climate change. After her first press conference as the leader, a reporter asked her, “Do you think a global agreement on climate change is ever possible?” To the horror of her press team and even herself, she responded, “Not in my lifetime!”

She candidly regrets making that statement now. Almost immediately though, she responded to herself:

“Impossible is not a fact, it's an attitude. It's only an attitude. And I decided right then and there that I was going to change my attitude and I was going to help the world change its attitude on climate change.”

Her change of heart, sense of optimism and steel resolve is one of the many factors that lead to the successful COP21 climate agreement in Paris, France in December 2015.

Christiania then spends the rest of this TED talk sharing the international factors that lead to this agreement. The first lesson was optimism.

She stated, “There is no way you can deliver victory without optimism.”

Let that be a lesson for us all in our efforts to reduce the threat of climate change.

Image Source: blog.ted.com

Additional Notes: On February 2, 2016, Christiana_Figueres announced in a letter that she would step down after her term ends on July 6, 2016.