Christiana Figueres
Costa Rican climate leader who served as Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change from 2010 to 2016, leading the negotiations that p...
“Optimism is not a celebration. Optimism is not the result, even the successful result of some effort. Optimism is the opposite. It is not the result, but the input to any effort.”
Climate One · Climate & Energy · November 2026
Context
The host asked what "stubborn optimism" means when the world is on track for about 2.6 degrees of warming. Figueres, who led the UN climate talks that produced the Paris Agreement, defines optimism as something you bring to a task rather than a reward for finishing it.
Transcript
…I mean, we are awash in solutions. Where we have not gotten to yet is to take most, if not all of those solutions, to scale because they are all still, if you will, mushrooming in a very, very fertile ground, many of them being led by women and young people, which is the most exciting thing to me.
…a very popular term if it isn't already globally. Earlier this year, your podcast, Outrage and Optimism, took on the question: is it over in response to listeners' climate despair? Right now, we're on track for about 2.6 degrees C of warming. So, what does stubborn optimism mean right now to you?
Two things. First, optimism for me is not a celebration. Optimism is not the result, even the successful result of some effort. Optimism is the opposite. It is not the result, but the input to any effort. If I decide, and I have, that I am going to climb a very high mountain next year, if I go at that and say, like, I don't think I can get there. I haven't done any exercise in 300 years. There's no way I'm 70 years old. There's no way I'm going to climb that mountain. Chances are I won't climb it. Now, if I input optimism and go, yep, haven't exercised in 300 years, but I can start now. Then there's no guarantee, but there is a higher likelihood of success if I have a positive mindset with respect to the challenge that is ahead of me. And that is true for our personal challenges and for global challenges and everything in between at all levels of the system. That's optimism. And frankly, we all have the moral responsibility of adopting that mindset because the…
Let me ask you this then, because I talk to a lot of folks in my everyday life who are, and I'm sure you do too, who are just filled with despair. And when I hear you say that optimism is a prerequisite and stubbornness is kind of like almost a moral imperative to keep the fight going, to keep the…
It's a choice that I make every day. It's a choice. It's as simple as that. Here's the important thing, Kosher, to understand. We do not control what happens in the outside world. We do not. But we do have a control over how we react to that which happens in the outside world. If I get a piece of…
Christiana Figueres is a global climate leader and co-host of the podcast Outrage and Optimism. Christiana, thank you so much for joining us on Climate One.
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