Nigel Topping

Having built TMD Friction into the world’s largest manufacturer of brake pads, Nigel serves as CEO of We Mean Business - a coalition of organisations working on climate change with some of the world’s most influential businesses. In this talk, Nigel talks about how businesses can work together in an effort to combat climate change.

Nigel Topping has a cool job: he's the UK's High Level Climate Action Champion for COP26, the UN's climate change conference taking place in 2021. In this wide-ranging interview, Topping discusses his work with scientists, businesses and cities to drive action on climate change and get the world committed to net zero emissions by 2050. He also explains why he thinks the COVID-19 pandemic could accelerate the transition to a green economy, creating jobs that will last and building a cleaner world for us all. (This virtual conversation, hosted by TED global curator Bruno Giussani and current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers, was recorded May 26, 2020.)

In this rousing call to action, three participants of the Race To Zero -- a global campaign for cities, businesses, investors and individuals to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 -- discuss how we can move forward with speed and urgency to create a more fair, healthy and sustainable world. Watch as Miao Wang, United Nations Young Champion of the Earth; Alok Sharma, president of COP26; and Nigel Topping, UK High Level Climate Action Champion, COP26, show how people across the world are stepping up their climate ambition. Can we count you in? (With introductions from Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Chris Hemsworth)

Every human and natural system -- from oil extraction to the flight of a flock of starlings -- can be seen as a set of repeating patterns. These patterns can be disrupted for good or for bad, says Nigel Topping, the High Level Climate Action Champion for COP26, the UN's climate change conference set to take place in November 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland. He shares three rules of radical collaboration that could positively disrupt the patterns of the global economy and help humanity tackle the world's greatest threat: climate change.