By 2030, global greenhouse gas emissions will have to be reduced by 50%(based on 1990) if we want to keep global warming at + 1.5 degrees compared topre-industrial levels.

The year 2020 will have fulfilled the objective of -7% per year with theforced reduction of many human activities, at the cost of an economic andsocial situation that is on a scale commensurate with the stimulus plansannounced by the various States of the European Union (750 billion euros),including France (100 billion) or by the United States of America (1,900billion dollars).

The solution does not lie in slowing down our economic activity as it iscurrently organized, but in a "software change", a change in our wayof functioning as humans, in our way of housing ourselves, of producing goodsand services, of moving around, of feeding ourselves... Our way of life,locally and globally, emits too much carbon into the atmosphere compared to theabsorption capacity of this same carbon.

Ideas for rethinking our future in light of these challenges are on thetable. The success of the TED conference, established in California in 1984,professionalized in the early 2000s before going to scale with the TEDx programin 2009, is precisely based on the detection of ideas that can change the worldthrough videos of talks translated into up to 106 languages. But we need toevolve, and as Chris Anderson says, “We are facing a climate crisis thatthreatens us all, and while TED has never before addressed a specific issue, wehave concluded that it is no longer enough to spread ideas. There are issuesthat require urgent action, which is why we decided to take what will be themost ambitious initiative ever attempted by our organization”.

Locally,TEDxCannes, an independent event organized under a TED license since 2014 atthe Palais des Festivals et des Congrès, is in line with this logic: we want tocontinue to look far, to inspire the audience of the conference, on site andthen on the web where the videos have already been seen 3.5 million times whilebeing translated into 25 languages, but we also and above all want to highlightthe solutions that will allow us, collectively, to achieve this first goal by2030.

Because the subject is global and will also be played locally thanks to themobilization of all the concerned actors. Cannes as such has the chance to be aglobal village: at the same time an agglomeration of intermediate size with160.000 inhabitants but also a place of influence where the whole world of themedia comes every year on the occasion of events with international reach such as the Film Festival, the CannesLions Advertising Festival or the meetings of the market of the TV programssuch as the MIPCOM, without forgetting the world meeting of the real estate, MIPIM. Of course, 2020 and partially2021 will have seen thedeprogramming of these events, which will inevitably call into question theirdevelopment model, including in relation to the environment.

We are part of this global village context and welaunched the COUNTDOWN initiative on 10/10/2020 in Cannes, at the same timethat TED was doing it online from NYC. We gathered 120 citizens publiclyinvited via social networks, who had not necessarily come to TEDxCannes before,in a theater designed to accommodate 400 people, with all the sanitary measuresvalidated in the framework of the CANNESERIES Festival (complete individualbody disinfection portal, systematic temperature taking, use of one chair outof two, one way of walking, distribution of automatic gel without contact...).

On the program: short and dynamic interventions with theintroduction of the president of the agglomeration of Cannes Pays de Lérins,David Lisnard, the viewing of 12 videos selected from the COUNTDOWN program ofTED interspersed with the interventions of Françoise Bruneteaux, deputy mayorof Cannes in charge of sustainable development and vice-president of the SouthRegion, Yves Mathieu, the main animator of the Citizen's Convention on Climateand Benoît Louvet, the director of CANNESERIES. The evening ended with a citizendialogue in groups of 6 people (at a recommended physical distance and wearingmasks), very motivating for all.

TEDxCannes is a platform for the promotion anddissemination of solutions for a more sustainable world. We aspire to play ourpart " in the major evolutions to be undertaken in the next 10 years.