It takes a good crisis to get us going. When we feel fear and we fear loss we are capable of quite extraordinary things.

Gilding’s remark frames crisis not only as danger but as a catalyst for collective agency. The first sentence suggests that complacency and incrementalism often prevail until disruption forces attention and decision. The second sentence argues that fear—especially fear of losing what we value—can unlock unusual reserves of creativity, solidarity, and political will. In the context of his broader climate-advocacy message, the implication is that societies routinely underestimate their capacity for rapid change, and that the perception of imminent loss can compress timelines, reorder priorities, and make previously “impossible” transformations feasible. The quote thus functions as a call to treat looming threats as mobilizing signals rather than paralyzing doom.