While the rest of the world’s megafauna are still foundering in the anthropocene era, these two big animals have used little animal strategies to bounce back. Way back.

Recently, a group of scientists have declared that the start of the Anthropocene, the time of outsize human influence on Earth, to be Crawford Lake in Canada. But how can a time be a place? We'll explain, and maybe grab some maple...

We tend to think of evolution as a slow, gradual process playing out over millions of years. But evolutionary biologist Shane Campbell-Staton says nature is now changing at breakneck speed to keep up with the world humanity has built....

"For all that's ever been said about climate change, we haven't heard nearly enough about the psychological impacts of living in a warming world," says science writer Britt Wray. In this quick talk, she explores how climate change is...

What if we took out more greenhouse gases than we put into the atmosphere? This hypothetical scenario, known as "drawdown," is our only hope of averting climate disaster, says strategist Chad Frischmann. In a forward-thinking talk, he...

How often do you think about the air you're breathing? Probably not enough, says entrepreneur and TED Fellow Romain Lacombe. He introduces Flow: a personal air-quality tracker that fits in your hand and monitors pollution levels in real...

The wheat, corn and rice we grow today may not thrive in a future threatened by climate change. Cary Fowler takes us inside the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a vast treasury buried within a frozen mountain in Norway, that stores a diverse...

In a talk about how we can build a robust future without wrecking the planet, sustainability expert Johan Rockstrom debuts the Earth3 model -- a new methodology that combines the UN Sustainable Development Goals with the nine planetary...

The climate crisis is too vast and complicated to solve with a silver bullet, says author David Wallace-Wells. What we need is a shift in how we live. Follow along as he lays out some of the dramatic actions we could take to build a...

Oceanographer Kate Stafford lowers us into the sonically rich depths of the Arctic Ocean, where ice groans, whales sing to communicate over vast distances -- and climate change and human noise threaten to alter the environment in ways we...

How do you define "nature?" If we define it as that which is untouched by humans, then we won't have any left, says environmental writer emma Marris. She urges us to consider a new definition of nature -- one that includes not only...

Plants are amazing machines -- for millions of years, they've taken carbon dioxide out of the air and stored it underground, keeping a crucial check on the global climate. Plant geneticist Joanne Chory is working to amplify this special...

How can we begin to address the global, insidious problem of climate change — a problem that's too big for any one country to solve? Economist Nicholas Stern lays out a plan, presented to the UN's Climate Summit in 2014, showing how the...

Humanity now has incredible power to shape nature and the Earth: the power to destroy and the power to repair, says sustainability champion and UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner. In this action-oriented talk, Steiner shows how this power...

North America used to be home to a cat so large, it may have taken down some of the biggest prey of the last Ice Age.

Humans produce 300 million tons of new plastic each year -- yet, despite our best efforts, less than 10 percent of it ends up being recycled. Is there a better way to deal with all this waste? Morgan Vague describes her research with...

emily Parsons-Lord re-creates air from distinct moments in earth's history -- from the clean, fresh-tasting air of the Carboniferous period to the soda-water air of the Great Dying to the heavy, toxic air of the future we're creating. By...

It takes an entire civilization to build a toaster. Designer Thomas Thwaites found out the hard way, by attempting to build one from scratch: mining ore for steel, deriving plastic from oil ... it's frankly amazing he got as far as he...

Human growth has strained the earth's resources, but as Johan Rockström reminds us, our advances also give us the science to recognize this and change behavior. His research has found nine "planetary boundaries" that can guide us in...

When we throw away our plastic trash, where does it go? In this hard-hitting talk, Van Jones shows us how our throwaway culture hits poor people and poor countries "first and worst," with consequences we all share no matter where we...

Product designer Eben Bayer reveals his recipe for a new, fungus-based packaging material that protects fragile stuff like furniture, plasma screens -- and the environment.

The biggest obstacle to dealing with climate disruptions lies between your ears, says psychologist and economist Per espen Stokes. He's spent years studying the defenses we use to avoid thinking about the demise of our planet -- and...

As we recklessly warm the planet by pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, some industrial emissions also produce particles that reflect sunshine back into space, putting a check on global warming that we're only starting to...

We’re in the middle of a rapid, unprecedented, and world-changing increase in the intensity and scale of human activity on this planet.