TED's 2nd climate change summit is in Detroit next week

The second TED Countdown Summit on climate change will be hosted in Detroit next week.

The invite-only gathering will run from Tuesday through Friday at Michigan Central Station and the Fillmore Detroit. The summit is TED’s only conference that focuses on a single topic, with the goal of advancing solutions to climate change.

The 700 attendees of the private event include leaders in science, activism, innovation, business, finance, policy and philanthropy.

“It felt like it would be really powerful to both bring Detroit to the global climate conversation and bring the global climate conversation to Detroit,” said Logan McClure Davda, the senior director of impact at TED. “There was lots of learning that would happen both directions by bringing a cross section of leaders and Detroiters together to really figure out how we move with more kind of speed, skill and justice in this work.”

Over 40 speakers are scheduled for TED Talks that will highlight progress on combatting climate change, explore breakthrough solutions and visualize the future. Speakers include former vice president Al Gore, "Today" weatherman Al Roker, author Paul Hawken and Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, the director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

The Countdown TED Talks will also feature prominent individuals in the Detroit area, including Ford’s global director of sustainability Cynthia Williams who will be discussing Ford’s successes and challenges in the electric vehicle sector. Other Detroit-based speakers include Anika Goss, CEO of Detroit Future City, and Laprisha Berry Daniels, executive director for Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice.

TED members will receive a virtual session pass to view the summit's TED Talks. The TED Talks will be posted online for the public to view in the months following the summit.

In-person attendees will participate in workshops and conversations led by experts that will revolve around a variety of topics such as climate finance, the use of AI for climate action and urban forest restoration. There will also be off-site visits, which will range from visiting the assembly line for the electric Ford F-150 to working on one of The Greening of Detroit’s urban farms to creating on a mural with Detroit Blight Busters.

“It’s really kind of a bidirectional, incredible relationship-building and learning that we hope emerges from this work, because there’s such great work happening in and around Detroit,” Davda said.

The summit will also be the inaugural gathering of the TED Future Forum, a group of companies who will work to identify business-focused initiatives to combat climate change. TED aims to inspire other businesses to act by sharing the stories of the forum’s successes and challenges at events and online. The Future Forum is currently made up of 13 companies including Ford, Google, Nestlé and Siemens.

In addition, TED is providing financial and curation support for local climate events through its TEDx Countdown initiative, which this year will support 12 TEDx Countdown events across five continents.

Future TED Countdown Summits will be hosted every other year, with smaller thematic conferences in the years in between. Davda said that TED hopes to continue this work through 2030.

TED is a nonprofit media organization that posts talks online for free distribution with the goal of spreading meaningful ideas.

“Our goal is really shifting the narrative from one that is gloom-and-doom to one that is really solutions-oriented and hopeful and optimistic but rooted in reality,” Davda said. “One where people see their role in this work, not just as individual actors, but as part of a really important powerful collective."

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: TED Countdown Summit on climate change will be hosted in Detroit