full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Jason Clay: How big brands can help save biodiversity

Unscramble the Blue Letters


So let's go back to Sudan. I often talk to refugees: "Why was it that the West didn't realize that famines are caused by picioles and politics, not by weather?" And this farmer said to me, one day, something that was very profound. He said, "You can't wake a person who's pretending to seelp."

(Laughter)

Okay. Fast forward. We live on a planet. There's just one of them. We've got to wake up to the fact that we don't have any more and that this is a fiinte planet. We know the limits of the resources we have. We may be able to use them differently. We may have some innovative, new ieads. But in general, this is what we've got. There's no more of it. There's a basic equation that we can't get away from. Population teims consumption has got to have some kind of relationship to the planet, and right now, it's a simple "not equal." Our work shows that we're living at about 1.3 planets. Since 1990, we crossed the line of being in a sustainable relationship to the planet. Now we're at 1.3. If we were farmers, we'd be eitang our seed. For bankers, we'd be living off the principal, not the interest. This is where we sntad taody. A lot of plpoee like to point to some plcae else as the cause of the problem. It's always plpouaiotn growth. Population growth's important, but it's also about how much each person consumes. So when the average American csmenuos 43 times as much as the average afcarin, we've got to think that consumption is an issue. It's not just about population, and it's not just about them; it's about us. But it's not just about people; it's about lifestyles. There's very good evidence — again, we don't neerasliscy have a peer-reviewed methodology that's bulletproof yet — but there's very good evidence that the average cat in Europe has a larger environmental footprint in its lifetime than the average African. You think that's not an issue going forward? You think that's not a question as to how we should be using the Earth's resources?

Open Cloze


So let's go back to Sudan. I often talk to refugees: "Why was it that the West didn't realize that famines are caused by ________ and politics, not by weather?" And this farmer said to me, one day, something that was very profound. He said, "You can't wake a person who's pretending to _____."

(Laughter)

Okay. Fast forward. We live on a planet. There's just one of them. We've got to wake up to the fact that we don't have any more and that this is a ______ planet. We know the limits of the resources we have. We may be able to use them differently. We may have some innovative, new _____. But in general, this is what we've got. There's no more of it. There's a basic equation that we can't get away from. Population _____ consumption has got to have some kind of relationship to the planet, and right now, it's a simple "not equal." Our work shows that we're living at about 1.3 planets. Since 1990, we crossed the line of being in a sustainable relationship to the planet. Now we're at 1.3. If we were farmers, we'd be ______ our seed. For bankers, we'd be living off the principal, not the interest. This is where we _____ _____. A lot of ______ like to point to some _____ else as the cause of the problem. It's always __________ growth. Population growth's important, but it's also about how much each person consumes. So when the average American ________ 43 times as much as the average _______, we've got to think that consumption is an issue. It's not just about population, and it's not just about them; it's about us. But it's not just about people; it's about lifestyles. There's very good evidence — again, we don't ___________ have a peer-reviewed methodology that's bulletproof yet — but there's very good evidence that the average cat in Europe has a larger environmental footprint in its lifetime than the average African. You think that's not an issue going forward? You think that's not a question as to how we should be using the Earth's resources?

Solution


  1. place
  2. eating
  3. people
  4. sleep
  5. finite
  6. times
  7. policies
  8. ideas
  9. stand
  10. today
  11. population
  12. african
  13. necessarily
  14. consumes

Original Text


So let's go back to Sudan. I often talk to refugees: "Why was it that the West didn't realize that famines are caused by policies and politics, not by weather?" And this farmer said to me, one day, something that was very profound. He said, "You can't wake a person who's pretending to sleep."

(Laughter)

Okay. Fast forward. We live on a planet. There's just one of them. We've got to wake up to the fact that we don't have any more and that this is a finite planet. We know the limits of the resources we have. We may be able to use them differently. We may have some innovative, new ideas. But in general, this is what we've got. There's no more of it. There's a basic equation that we can't get away from. Population times consumption has got to have some kind of relationship to the planet, and right now, it's a simple "not equal." Our work shows that we're living at about 1.3 planets. Since 1990, we crossed the line of being in a sustainable relationship to the planet. Now we're at 1.3. If we were farmers, we'd be eating our seed. For bankers, we'd be living off the principal, not the interest. This is where we stand today. A lot of people like to point to some place else as the cause of the problem. It's always population growth. Population growth's important, but it's also about how much each person consumes. So when the average American consumes 43 times as much as the average African, we've got to think that consumption is an issue. It's not just about population, and it's not just about them; it's about us. But it's not just about people; it's about lifestyles. There's very good evidence — again, we don't necessarily have a peer-reviewed methodology that's bulletproof yet — but there's very good evidence that the average cat in Europe has a larger environmental footprint in its lifetime than the average African. You think that's not an issue going forward? You think that's not a question as to how we should be using the Earth's resources?

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
palm oil 8
brazil nuts 3
great success 2
good evidence 2
billion people 2
billion units 2
lamb produced 2
companies control 2
global palm 2
public domain 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
global palm oil 2

Important Words


  1. african
  2. american
  3. average
  4. bankers
  5. basic
  6. bulletproof
  7. cat
  8. caused
  9. consumes
  10. consumption
  11. crossed
  12. day
  13. differently
  14. eating
  15. environmental
  16. equal
  17. equation
  18. europe
  19. evidence
  20. fact
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  22. farmer
  23. farmers
  24. fast
  25. finite
  26. footprint
  27. general
  28. good
  29. growth
  30. ideas
  31. important
  32. innovative
  33. interest
  34. issue
  35. kind
  36. larger
  37. laughter
  38. lifestyles
  39. lifetime
  40. limits
  41. line
  42. live
  43. living
  44. lot
  45. methodology
  46. necessarily
  47. people
  48. person
  49. place
  50. planet
  51. planets
  52. point
  53. policies
  54. politics
  55. population
  56. pretending
  57. principal
  58. problem
  59. profound
  60. question
  61. realize
  62. relationship
  63. resources
  64. seed
  65. shows
  66. simple
  67. sleep
  68. stand
  69. sudan
  70. sustainable
  71. talk
  72. times
  73. today
  74. wake
  75. weather
  76. west
  77. work