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Known for big, attention-grabbing installations — like his four towering waterfalls in New York's East River — Olafur Eliasson has scaled down his latest project, Earth Speakr: an art platform for kids designed to spur budding climate activists to lead discussions on nature, conservation, pollution and more.
This talk was part of the Countdown Global Launch on 10.10.2020. (Watch the full event here: .) Countdown is TED's global initiative to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. The goal: to build a better future by cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, in the race to a zero-carbon world. Get involved at
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Cool dude
0:14
Am I the only one that hear “I’m a nazist.”? XD
Thank god there are the subtitles. lol
0:14 “I’m an artist!” I thought he was a Mancunian for a second.
Absolute CRINGE
1:40 jeremy clarkson smug face
The Greta indoctrination 2.0 how wonderful that we have to use kids nowadays to send a F…ing message about climate change that everyone already knows it. Leave the kids alone or will end with “you destroyed my childhood” – Greta.
“Such welcomed and unwelcomed things at once. ‘Tis hard to reconcile.” – Macduff, 4.3.140
“let the kids speak” should be: let the kids read what the adults wrote down. This is just using kids to get a message from the grown-ups across. Honestly borderline child abuse.
Nothing “borderline” about it my friend, they are basically molesting them, as they will feel just as used, dirty, and lied to they grow up, just maybe not as extreme.
mmatrainee make me
How you love hearing back your propaganda from the mouth of children. Sickening.
If you’re trying to win an argument, having children speak for you is not a particularly good way to do it.
Using kids as props is incredibly effective. “Think of the children” is a great way to point anyone who disagrees as a monster who hates kids and wants them to suffer or die.
@Don Lachlan If you’re susceptible to the charge of being an actual monster who actually hates kids and wants them to suffer or die, as demonstrable by patent and repeatedly evidenced acts on your part, then dodging behind the trope that kids are being used as props against you is incredibly effective, too.
More let’s not do anything meaningful. Adults as well as these kids need to understand that if they are concerned they need to take true action and make some sacrifices.
Compost, eat more vegetables, stop using water and electricity so flippantly, only buy local and not your favorite brands from China and India, no new plastic and electronic toys for Christmas… Show you are serious with the dollars you spend or in kids case, the ones that are spent for you.
In sure someone will read this and come back with something about individual make changes won’t do anything. I disagree, if everyone who purports to care about the environment make changes in their life government would have to do very little. Don’t you think if 20% of consumers refuse to no longer go to Starbucks, the company wouldn’t take notice? You are wrong. If 15% of kids refused to get gaming systems
and cell phones because of environmental concerns. Manufacturers and phone companies would be worried. They wouldn’t just accept the loss.
This is manipulative and exploitative.
We don’t let those kids vote or smoke or drive or drink, because kids lack the maturity to understand the consequences of their actions, they haven’t developed an adult level of impulse control, and they lack the experience to distinguish when they’re activists and when they’re props for activists.
Most adults are more immature and illogical than children not to forget ignorant
Well it’s just that Scientists, Adults who devoted their life to this topic have not been heard.
They spoke at Summits and Meetings of World Leaders for the past decades since 1980.
And nothing has changed.
What would you do, if the logical, rational, adult way has failed?
@BouXIII no that is the polar opposite of brilliant…
@Fantastic Villainy According to whom? Can you source your outlandish and hyperbolic claim? No just emotions pouring out without sentence structure even.
Correction, kids are BEING TOLD to speak up for the environment. None of these kids have any idea how to interpret or understand the vast complexities of the science of Climate Change or the politics interweaved with climate change. Classic sick trick to use children as your mouth instruments.
How complex exactly is it to understand that having other people’s wastes dumped on you is harmful to you?
Mao used kids in China and destroyed 5000 years of culture with minimum cost. The Mao-kids are now at their dying age, no pension no dignity. Very effective, highly recommended, every artist who hates its own civilization or humanity should definitely try it out.
@Chai Chu So.. are you claiming these children are guilty of acts of genocide?
@Bart Roberts Ja, exactly, and all the puppies, too.
@Bart Roberts What makes you think that Luke doesn’t understand a statement like this one? How complex exactly is it to understand that putting words to other people’s mouths is harmful to the point you try to make?
Kids have been speaking about the evils of broccoli! Let’s listen!
Climate change and environmental protection are extremely complicated, politicized and divisive topics, they are very hard to be fully understood even by adults. These kids are just speaking heads for the adults and that is disgusting: adults must have the bravery to speak by themselves.
I’m not saying that the kids said something right or wrong, but I am saying that adults should not use kids to express their views.
Well said brotha
Never let this freak around kids.
So the artist works with things he controls? Sounds like how religion is forced into kids heads before they develop reasoning skills. Get them while they’re young mentality as easier to manipulate.. Kids are the future. Kids speaking up is great, it depends on how they’re educated about it. Facts matter over having kids just say things they don’t actually understand.
Yea right. There’s a million 12 year olds who think like that. Follow the money, Mr. Gore.
“Today I will listen to another. Practice today listening to another…You will be engaging your whole mind in your conversation. Take time, then, to practice listening without speaking. Allow others to express themselves to you. You will find that they have a greater communication for you than you might at first have anticipated.” (quote from Steps to Knowledge, Marshall Vian Summers, New Message org)