To celebrate the recent launch of the third-annual TIME100 Climate list, business leaders, politicians, and advocates from around the world gathered in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for a TIME100 Impact Dinner on Tuesday, Nov. 4. On the heels of a devastating hurricane in the Caribbean and just before the start of this year’s UN Climate Change Conference, the event—like the list—recognized the work of those creating innovative and actionable change in the face of a warming planet.
As the world fails to meet its 2025 Paris Agreement target, climate leaders from across industries are working overtime to make up for the lack of global governmental action. A handful of those leaders gave toasts during the dinner: some called for action, some spoke about the future, and others offered hopeful reminders amid overwhelming uncertainty.
Here is what they had to say:
A call for “equitable” financial action
The first toast of the night came from Jennifer Geerlings-Simons, President of Suriname, a small country on the northeastern coast of South America covered almost entirely by rainforest. Despite Suriname’s “natural wealth” of rich forests, Geerlings-Simons said it is also “among the nations most vulnerable to climate change,” citing coastal areas already experiencing the impacts of a rising sea level.
Since she was elected in July, the President has prioritized the protection of Indigenous and tribal lands, economic diversification, and responsible forest management. “At this very moment, the forests of Suriname and around the world are quietly providing vital ecosystem services—clean air, water, biodiversity, and climate regulation—that help sustain all of humanity,” Geerlings-Simons said. It is worth noting that Suriname is one of only three countries in the world that absorbs more carbon dioxide than it releases.
At the TIME100 Impact Dinner, she used her speaking moment to call for “timely, fair, and equitable climate finance” and a commitment from others to do their part by taking urgent action against the climate change impacts that “threaten us all.”
Climate action is “rational”
As the co-founder of Mombak, a carbon-removal company in the Brazilian Amazon, Peter Fernandez has seen first hand just how much work needs to be done in order to avoid the Amazon tipping point, or “the moment in which the Amazon biome becomes unstable and unable to naturally regenerate due to excessive deforestation.”
“The climate challenge is just so mind-bogglingly enormous and huge that it’s easy to feel helpless. It’s easy to lose hope,” Fernandez said during the evening’s second toast. But, despite the headwinds and the long way still to go, he sees both “macro” and “micro” reasons to maintain hope.
On a macro level, he sees climate action as economically rational for society. “It is true that it’s going to cost us trillions of dollars to prevent the world from heating up out of control,” Fernandez said. “But allowing the world to heat up out of control will cost us tens of trillions of dollars in damages. So if we think that human society is rational in the long run, then we should be optimistic that we’re going to figure this out.”
On a micro level, he talked about something that he’s seen in his work with Mombak, which is that “when you give local communities an alternative to deforesting the Amazon, they take it.”
Before raising his glass, Fernandez ended his toast by explaining, “I think that hope is what gives us the energy to solve problems. I think it’s what prevents us from getting burned out, and I think it’s what gives us the resilience to bounce back from the inevitable failures.”
The best time to make a difference is now
At 90 years old, famed marine biologist, ocean explorer, and conservationist Sylvia Earle has seen a lot throughout her career. So much so that she started her toast with a salute to the past. “If we did not have those in the past who learned things and passed them along [from] one generation to the next, where would we be?”
Because of the explorers who came before us, we know more about the extent of life on our planet than ever before. Earle, who leads Mission Blue, an organization that inspires action to explore and protect the ocean, says that today’s youth “are the luckiest children ever to arrive on Earth,” because they have access to so much information and knowledge.
“I wish that I could be around 15 years from now, 100 years, 1,000 years, to look back on this time,” she said. “Because it’s right now [that] we have the best chance, the best opportunity … to make a difference.”
Change requires cross-generational partnership
Elizabeth Wathuti, the 30-year-old founder of Green Generation Initiative (GGI), reminisced on her childhood in Kenya, “where rivers ran clear and fast, and the air smelled of rain and life.” Farmlands back then “were generous and also full of promise and full of produce, because nature was very well protected and taken care of.” Now, as she travels across Africa as an adult, she sees mostly dry riverbeds and tree-less landscapes.
But despite “the pain of nature’s destruction,” she still feels hopeful about the future of our planet—because she believes in the youth. “Restoring our planet will definitely take time, but it’s going to require a generation of global citizens who are conscious and who are also committed to seeing that change through,” she said. “It’s also going to require a partnership of the senior and the young generation.”
Through her work at GGI, an organization that aims to raise a socially and environmentally responsible generation of children, Wathuti is actively nurturing the next cohort of climate leaders. Earlier this year, the Scottish government awarded funding to GGI that will be used to mentor 25 young African climate leaders through a year-long fellowship program. She ended her toast by encouraging attendees “to act with youthful courage and childlike hope.”
Climate change is a nonpartisan issue
Before he became executive director of E2, a national and nonpartisan group of business leaders that advocates for “smart” economic and environmental policies, Bob Keefe spent over two decades as a tech journalist. During his toast, he admitted to being “skeptical” when he first heard Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos ideate years ago about the futures of their businesses. “But think about how much that technology has changed the world in a relatively short amount of time,” he said on Tuesday. “That’s where we are with clean energy. That’s where we are with solar, wind, batteries, energy efficiency. Technology has finally caught up with the problem of climate change.”
Now, through his work at E2, Keefe has put business at the forefront of his fight against the climate crisis. By working with leaders across various industries in every U.S. state, he’s been able to shepherd legislative change, like with the passage of the Clean Car Standards in California. “Climate change is not a political issue,” Keefe said. “[It] is not just a social issue … Climate change is also an economic issue.”
Keefe ended his time on stage by raising a glass to “the innovators, catalysts, financiers, titans of industry, world leaders, [and] local leaders” in the room, and thanking them for all that they do to enact climate action.
Health and climate are inextricable
Alaa Murabit, a 2024 TIME100 Health honoree, gave the penultimate toast of the night. The physician and global strategist has spent years working in the health sector. From founding a frontline organization during a war to shaping policies for immigrants and displaced populations, Murabit’s work has always been guided by her belief “that every person should have the opportunity to live a life of dignity and equity, regardless of where they are born.”
Despite having a background predominately in health, all of her experiences taught her “that the climate crisis is fundamentally a human crisis,” she said. “Long before [something] becomes a policy or financing challenge, it is a health challenge.” And even though sometimes “every step forward feels like 100 steps back,” Murabit shared some advice that her father once gave her: “It is not your job to believe that you can do everything. It is your job to do something.”
Hope, to Murabit, “is a discipline. It is a strategy. It is an active choice we make, to make decisions that leave the world better than we found it.” With that in mind, she urged everyone in the room to “change reality for people on the ground” by “funding locally led solutions; strengthening frontline health systems, first response and early warning tools; and ensuring women and girls are centered in every climate decision and in every dollar of climate finance.”
Local leadership is imperative in the climate fight
For the final toast of the evening, Eduardo Paes, the Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, honored his fellow local leaders. Raising a glass to mayors and governors around the world, he recognized “those who turn global promises into local action.”
Since being elected in 2008, Paes has led numerous ambitious climate efforts in the name of making Rio de Janeiro a more sustainable city. He’s created multiple new parks, made all municipal buildings clean-energy-run, and even launched Brazil’s first Extreme Heat Response Protocol. And he’s not done yet. His goal over the next year is to replace 100% of the city’s buses with low-emission and zero-emission vehicles.
“Cities are where life happens, and where the battle against the climate crisis will be won or lost,” he said. “So I toast to those leading the fight on the ground, often without the resources or the recognition they deserve.”
TIME100 Impact Dinner: Leaders Creating Climate Action was presented by official timepiece Rolex.
