LAST week, I had the privilege of being part of a TED group discussion on the ever-looming issue of climate change in our country. Corporate trailblazers, nongovernment organizations executives, youth leaders, volunteers, government consultants, academics and environmentalists all put together in one virtual conducive space with the goal of creating an open discussion on the different realities we face on the climate crisis coming from such diverse backgrounds.

We all had different points and insights to share, sometimes disagreeing to some extent on the conflicting ideologies between the ambitions of each representative — profit over planet, socialism over communism, liberalism versus capitalism, and even the inconvenient irony of choosing between the survival of today versus survival of the future — when in reality those are just two points of the same line. But what struck me most in the many hours of this long discussion wasn’t really the content of what we were going to say, but how each one had the open mind to listen to what others would say. It was an ideal situation, corporates were listening to climate scientists, youth leaders sharing their struggles on the threats of bureaucracy of worldly NGOs, and government consultants opening up about the complications of development projects affecting the lives of environmentalists determined to protect these undisturbed lands. Each conversation leading to a possible solution, and each solution leading to a possible reality — a possible utopia. Yet the glaring truth that this space is more the exception than the norm. How, as much as we can dream of such open and productive spaces in solving our world’s most complex issues, the growing polarization of our population has left us dumbfounded.

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