How do you convince a room full of influential people to care about climate change… in 6 minutes?
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson gives a TED talk in 2019. Photo by TED Conference, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson won the 2025 TIME Earth Award. Her acceptance speech was a 6-minute opportunity to speak directly to many influential people about climate change, why it’s important to everyone and what they could do with their power and influence to make a difference.
She shared a recording and transcript of her speech “in the hopes that hearing the way I speak about climate issues in rooms of power will encourage you to also speak up. Because the truth is that every one of us has a sphere of influence we should be activating,” according to her Substack.
Here is the first paragraph, read the entire speech in her story.
“I was asked to talk about hope. But I work on climate change and last year was the hottest year on Earth in human history. And Hurricane Melissa, supercharged by a Caribbean Sea that’s way hotter than it should be, just smashed into Jamaica, the island my family is from, with record-breaking winds. So what I have to say is: F*** hope. What’s the strategy? What are we going to do so that we don’t need hope?”
