Before the Flood (2016) Movie Script

1
My first
visual memories are of this
framed poster above my crib.
I would stare at it every
night before I went to bed.
My father was an underground
comic distributor.
He's always been this sort of
Zelig of the counterculture
as I like to call him.
Having painted in
Warhol's studio,
being roomies with Lou
Reed, he knew R. Crumb
and all these great
artists of his generation.
I mean, I was brought up on all
kinds of wacky visuals as a kid.
So I would stare at this
painting over and over:
The Garden of Earthly Delights
by Hieronymus Bosch.
It was painted around 1500.
And if you look at these
panels long enough,
they start to tell a story.
In the first panel you have Adam
and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Birds flying off
into the distance,
elephants and giraffe and a
lot of religious iconography.
The second panel is where
it starts to become
more interesting.
The deadly sins start to infuse
their way into the painting.
There's overpopulation,
there's debauchery and excess.
And the last panel, which
is the most nightmarish one,
especially from a young child's
perspective, is this twisted,
decayed, burnt landscape.
A paradise that has been
degraded and destroyed.
Man may be
unwittingly changing the world's
climate through the waste
products of its civilization...
The burning of coal, oil and
wood is releasing carbon dioxide
into the atmosphere.
The greenhouse effect has been
detected and it is changing
our climate now.
Guess where the
temperature goes?
It goes up.
Climate change is
already in our backyards.
It's official. 2012 was the
hottest year in the...
warmest year around the globe
warmest year on record.
It is these activities
that drove mankind
out of the Garden of Eden.
- Hi, how are you?
- Ah, Mr. DiCaprio.
Pleasure, pleasure.
Great to, great
pleasure to see you.
Here.
We can move this.
This can be adjusted.
Oh wow, this
is for height control.
Yeah.
- Like this, like this.
- For shorter leaders
and taller leaders.
What specific message do you
think is the most important?
Climate change is
coming much, much faster.
We have seen such, uh,
extraordinary extreme weather
patterns.
If you consider this
vastness of this universe,
this Planet Earth is
just a small boat.
If this boat is sinking, then
I think we will have to all
sink together.
I know that he has been a
very committed and effective
environmentalist and that is
why I really count on your
leadership and vision.
Please welcome
newly appointed United Nations
Messenger of Peace,
Mr. Leonardo DiCaprio.
Thank you
Mr. Secretary General,
Your Excellencies...
I feel incredibly honored
that they chose me to be
the United Nations Messenger
of Peace on climate change.
I stand before
you, not as an expert,
I want to do everything I can
to learn more about this issue.
See for myself exactly what's
going on and what can be done.
But it all kinda seems
beyond our control.
As an actor,
I pretend for a living.
I play fictitious characters
often solving fictitious
problems.
I believe that mankind has
looked at climate change
in that same way.
We keep getting inundated with
catastrophic news about the
environment every single day,
and the problem seems to be
getting worse and
worse and worse.
Try to have a conversation with
anyone about climate change,
people just tune out.
If the U.N. really knew
how I feel,
how pessimistic I am about our
future, I mean, to be honest,
they may have picked
the wrong guy.
Hundreds of
thousands took to the streets
of New York today demonstrating
for action on climate change.
Secretary General,
Ban Ki-Moon called Leo
a credible voice in the
environmental movement,
which is like calling Jeffrey
Dahmer a credible voice
for stew.
Leonardo DiCaprio
has just naively bought into
the entire global warming hoax.
Who better to
educate world leaders on made up
climate change in a crisis that
doesn't exist than an actor
from Hollywood with zero years
of scientific training?
Hi, how are you?
I'm very good.
How are you doing,
it's a pleasure.
You too.
Hey!
Nice to see you, buddy.
Good to see you.
So I just started this new film,
it's set in the Western Frontier
of the United States
in the early 1800s.
It's basically the dawn of
the Industrial Revolution.
It has a lot to do with men who
are pillaging the natural world,
wiping species out, and
basically destroying cultures
in the process.
Those are like buffalo skulls.
Alejandro!
Crazy, are these fur-trappers?
Are these people
selling the skulls?
No, these are people
selling the skulls, yeah.
What the is this?
Isn't that embarrassing?
Man, that's crazy.
And the fact that
they never even reflected on it,
that there's an ending to these
animals, and we cannot just,
it's insane.
If you can put that
in the movie that would be
unbelievable.
How about this, I dare you!
Ah, okay.
get to the boat. Come on son.
I didn't grow up
around nature at all,
I grew up near
downtown Los Angeles.
And my escape every weekend was
the Natural History Museum.
And from a very young age, I
became fascinated with species
that had become extinct.
All these different animals,
from the dodo to the
passenger pigeon,
which was the most
plentiful bird on earth,
to the Tasmanian tiger, also
known as the thilacene
to the great auk, the
quagga, the moa.
I remember the
anger that I felt,
reading all these stories about
how explorers and settlers
would just wipe out an entire
species, and in the process,
decimate the ecosystem forever.
The difference now is we're
knowingly doing this;
it's just on a
much larger scale.
If we're gonna fight
climate change effectively,
we have to start by
acknowledging that
most of our economy is
based on fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels are coal,
oil, and natural gas.
Oil powers most of the
transportation sector,
coal and natural gas power
most of the electricity.
Now, in the first couple decades
of the twenty-first century,
in order to sustain our
dependence on fossil fuels,
we're going to very risky,
very extreme new sources.
You see this in things like
mountain top removal for coal,
fracking for natural gas,
offshore drilling for oil,
and the tar sands, which is
the most devastating form
of producing fossil fuels.
They take away massive forests,
the water in the streams
and rivers is poisoned.
It has severe impacts on the
wildlife, on native communities,
and it requires a huge amount of
energy simply to get it to
our fuel tanks.
There is no such thing
as clean fossil fuel.
Headsets are
hung up at the back,
but the volume control's right
above the microphone so...
The truth is, the more
I've learned about this issue
and everything that
contributes to the problem,
the more I realize
how much I don't know.
How much I don't know
about this issue.
The first time I ever heard
the term global warming,
which was what it
was called back then,
I was in my early twenties.
I had the opportunity to sit
down one on one with then
Vice President, Al Gore
in the White House.
And he drew a picture of
our planet on a chalkboard,
and then he drew the atmosphere
around it, and he said,
this is the most important
issue of our time.
I had absolutely no idea
what he was talking about.
He said all our modes of
transportation, boats, trains,
planes, cars, the way
we produce our food,
the way we build our cities,
almost everything we do releases
carbon dioxide, CO2, and that
leads to climate change.
The polar ice caps will melt,
the seas will start to rise,
there will be more dangerous
weather patterns, floods,
droughts, wildfires.
It sounded like some nightmarish
science fiction film.
Except everything
he said is real
and it's happening right now.
Wow.
Wow.
Beautiful.
I just want to know
how far we've gone,
how much damage we've done, and
if there's anything we can do
to stop it.
You all set, mate?!
So it's the 4th of July,
and we're here in the
middle of the Arctic.
Right now we are
standing on the ocean,
we are basically
walking on water.
This is the northern
tip of Baffin Island,
one of the hundreds of islands
in the High Canadian Arctic.
We are way above
the Arctic Circle,
and if you put your
hand in the water,
you would not be able to stand
it for more than 5 minutes,
except you who are a badass.
You hunt and fish here, right?
Yeah.
What do you, what do
you fish and what do you hunt?
In my territory I
hunt fish, seal, narwhal,
and polar bear.
- Is this polar bear?
- Yup.
Oh, well there you go!
And the ice here, since you've
been around has it been
decreasing?
We used to have
a solid ice, blue.
Not light blue like this, blue.
Hard, ice.
Now we usually have a, kind
of ice cream type of ice.
It's ice but it's,
when it starts to melt,
it melts pretty fast.
Much faster than before.
2040, you will be able
to sail over the North Pole.
There's going to be no sea
ice left in the Arctic Ocean
in the summer.
We are burning so many fossil
fuels that the ice is melting.
The Arctic is like
the air conditioning for
the Northern Hemisphere.
If it goes away, that's
going to change currents,
that's going to change
weather patterns,
that's going to make floods and
droughts more catastrophic.
It's the most dramatic
transformation of a large
environment ever.
Look at this.
They're right here!
There are about 10,000
to 12,000 narwhals
in this region.
The numbers are stable here,
in other regions are declining.
Wow.
That's awesome.
Yeah, they are
waiting for the ice to open up,
to swim in, so they
can catch the flounder.
I can't believe what
they sound like, it's amazing.
They're like purring.
You know, I don't
want to be in a planet
without these animals.
He's the
chairman of Earth Day 2000,
Leonardo DiCaprio.
When I was 25 years old,
I remember being asked to
participate in this huge event
in Washington for Earth Day.
Temperatures are rising,
coral reefs are dying,
and not since a meteor hit the
earth 65 million years ago,
have so many species of plant
and animals become extinct
in such a short time.
I even got a chance to
interview the President
of the United States.
Why do you think this issue
is so constantly overlooked?
I think it's
because it takes a long time
for the climate to change in
a way that people feel it,
and because, uh, it seems
sort of abstract now.
At the time, it was
this huge push to get the word
out on global warming.
Now a couple degrees' difference
in today's temperatures
may not seem like an emergency.
Back then everyone was focused
on small, individual actions.
We all have to, you know, bring
environmentalism to the American
consciousness.
And it boiled down to simple
solutions like changing
your light bulb.
It seemed like a positive
thing at the time, you know.
Changing your lightbulb.
But it's pretty clear that we're
way beyond that point now;
things have taken a
massive turn for the worst.
We keep finding things that
aren't in the climate models
that are used to
project the future.
So that, that tells me that the
projections for the future are,
are really conservative.
If climate stays at this
temperature that it's been
in the last decade, Greenland
is, is going away.
Don't walk into the crevasse.
Oh my God!
Don't get too close to the edge.
Look at how violent that is.
These rapids are going
so incredibly fast.
This meltwater is
making its way to the sea.
If that's not balanced by
snowfall then the ice sheet gets
smaller and sea level rises.
This is actually our
proper climate station.
This is a climate station?
I was imagining a massive igloo
with all kinds of scientists
doing experiments.
It really does look like
broken down pool equipment.
How, what does this connect to?
Well, this is all melted up now,
this was a hose that
went down 30 feet,
and now it's melted out.
Wait a minute, so this,
that's lying here used to
be straight down under ice?
Yeah, so we made.
So that's the amount
of ice that has melted.
Yeah.
This is 5 years of melt.
So this entire length
is the thickness of ice that has
melted throughout all of lower
Greenland in the past 5 years.
Right.
That's hundreds of cubic
kilometers of ice that's now
no longer stored on land.
It's gone into
the sea over here.
Miami, New Orleans,
Boston and Long Beach,
California may be doomed
to fall victim
to ever-rising sea levels.
South Florida as we
know it could be washed away
by risings seas.
When you look at
places that are the most
susceptible to sea level rise,
especially in the United States,
Florida is the key one.
And a lot of the, your
campaign was based on um,
giving people an understanding
of what's at risk here.
We don't have
the liberty or the time
to debate climate change.
If you don't believe
in it, I always say
bring your unconverted to
us and we'll make sure you agree
that there is a major problem.
We have this thing called
sunny day flooding.
Picture a beautiful sunny day,
all of a sudden you see water
coming up on the street.
As the sea level rises,
the water's coming up,
backflowing into our
streets through our drains.
If the city is underwater,
there's no future.
How do you combat that?
Exactly what's going on as far
as prevention is concerned?
We started putting in
pumps, take a look at this.
Oh, this is the pump!
Yup!
We're in the process of
building all across the city.
This street right here used
to be fully underwater.
During high tide you
may need a canoe.
And now what we did was we
raised this road and you can see
the difference, see how that
area there kind of goes,
slopes down a little bit.
So the main investment
is in these systems right here,
raising the roads and
the electric pumps.
Yeah, this is a
400-million-dollar project.
City wide.
And of course we're paying
for it by our city revenues.
I had to raise tax revenue,
which you can imagine is not
a very popular thing to
do as a politician.
And this construction
is it going to make
- a major difference.
- Major difference.
And buy you a
significant amount of time.
Absolutely I would
think about 40, 50 years.
That's it?
Yes.
Now one of the things I always
say when people ask me this,
Mayor what about after 50
years, what's going to happen?
Well what we have to do
is come up with solutions,
and unfortunately we have a
governor and we have a cabinet
that doesn't believe that
this is a major issue.
Officials in Florida
were banned from using the words
climate change.
This policy began in 2011 after
Rick Scott came into office.
No one really wants
to talk about climate change,
especially our senator
from Florida, Marco Rubio,
who doesn't believe that
we have climate change
and is not interested in
assisting our state.
I would hope that he would have
gone out and grabbed us federal
funds over the last three years
to help make our cities viable.
I do not believe that
human activity is causing
these dramatic changes to our
climate the way these scientists
are portraying it.
Why do you think there
is such opposition about
the science?
I think it's politics,
I think it so has to do with
lobbying and industry and I
always say one thing, Leo,
I said uh, the ocean
is not Republican
and it's not Democrat,
all it knows how to do is rise.
Satellite data show,
for the last seventeen years,
there has been no significant
recorded warming.
It's supposed
to be 70 degrees today,
it's freezing here!
Speaking of global warming where
is, we need some global warming!
It's freezing.
There's about
as robust a consensus
about human-caused climate
change as there is
for any matter in science.
Be it the theory of gravity.
97 percent of climate scientists
agree, the globe is warming,
our climate is changing, it's
due to fossil fuel burning
and other human activities.
Unfortunately we are fighting
this massive disinformation
campaign to confuse the public.
You look at the
satellite data we actually
have had no significant warming
since 1998 actually no warming.
We have been cooling
in recent years.
If you actually believe
that global warming
is the biggest problem we face,
you're the dumbest son
of a bitch on the planet.
So yeah, maybe you
could just talk a little bit
about your background, the
studies that you've done.
I was the classic
science and math geek
in high school.
Studied physics in graduate
school and a decade and half ago
my co-authors and I started
to look into climate change
in the more distant past.
We published a curve where
there's this long-term cooling
trend and then all of
a sudden this abrupt warming
that has no precedent
as far back as you can go and
it got named the hockey stick
because it looks like the
blade of a hockey stick.
And once we had published
that graph I had set myself up
for a completely different life.
And why is that?
What did they do
specifically to?
I was vilified
on the editorial pages
of the Wall Street
Journal, on Fox News.
That I was a fraud.
Other German
Scientists have called it
statistical rubbish.
He's been called a
statistical charlatan.
I was being
attacked by congressmen.
They threw
spaghetti up on the wall
and wherever it stuck is
what they put in the chart.
I had death threats
that were actionable enough that
the FBI at one point had to come
to my office to investigate
an envelope that had been sent
to me that had a white powder.
I've had threats made
against my family.
These folks know they don't have
to win the legitimate scientific
debate.
They just need to
divide the public,
and all of that hatred and fear
is in fact organized and funded
by a few players.
Fossil fuel interests, folks
like the Koch brothers finance
a very large echo chamber of
climate change denialism.
The reality is a
lot of climatologists believe
that the science is not settled.
Global warming is
illusory were actually going
through a period
of global cooling.
It's easier to
believe in a benevolent god
the baby Jesus than it is in
some kind of theory about
global warming.
Websites and news
outlets and think tanks.
They find people with fairly
impressive credentials
who are willing to sell
those credentials
to fossil fuel interests.
Dr. Fred Singer,
President of the science
and environmental
policy project.
The weather balloons
around the world show no warming
of the atmosphere in
the last 25 years.
You have all of
these organizations with lofty
sounding names like Americans
for Prosperity
or The Heartland Institute.
These are front groups that are
funded by corporate interests.
Americans for Prosperity
is really a front group
for the Koch brothers.
That's an organization
founded by David and Charles
Koch and good
morning to you Tim.
- Good to be here, Bill.
- Welcome here,
what are you going
to get for your money?
We hope to see policies change.
Koch Industries is one
of the largest privately held
fossil fuel interests
in the world.
And they are doing everything
they can to protect that wealth.
Would you give up
all that industrialization,
would you give up all the
productivity that it's brought
us, all the lives that it has
saved over the last 100 years,
so that the temperature
wouldn't rise half a percent
or a milli percent?
They've lobbied Congress.
We keep hearing 2014 has
been the warmest year on record,
oh here Mr. President
catch this. Mhmm.
James Inhofe is
probably the most prominent
congressional climate
change denier.
Global warming is the
greatest hoax ever perpetrated
on the American people.
He's the chair of the
Senate Environment Committee.
There are some people
who are so arrogant to think
that they are so powerful that
they can change a climate.
Man can't change climate.
It might not be
surprising to learn that
James Inhofe is one of
the largest recipients
of fossil fuel money
in the U.S. Senate.
Fossil Fuel interests
have bought our House
of Representatives and Senate
Environment Committee.
We can't get a climate bill
passed through our Congress
because it's controlled
by fossil fuel funded
climate change deniers who
are blocking any bills
that would attempt
to deal with this problem.
How they're able to
discredit scientists who have
devoted their life to this issue
is kind of mind boggling to me.
It sometimes makes
me want to take a drink right.
I'm sure.
If I was a scientist
I would be absolutely pissed
every single day of my life.
These people are, you know,
engaged in an effort to
lead us astray in the name
of short term, you know, fossil
fuel profits so that we end up
leaving behind a
degraded planet.
What could be more
immoral than that?
Even now, man may be
unwittingly changing the world's
climate through the waste
products of this civilization.
Due to our release through
factories and automobiles
every year of more than 6
billion tons of carbon dioxide.
Our atmosphere seems
to be getting warmer.
This is bad?
Well it's been calculated a few
degrees rise in the earth's
temperature would melt
the polar ice caps.
Fact is, we've known
about this problem for decades
and decades, for
over half a century.
Every day I send
you a thousand times more power
than you use in a year.
Anybody working on getting power
direct from old glow hard here?
Oh yes but not nearly enough,
roll 6b! The solar battery.
Imagine the world right now,
if we had taken the science of
climate change seriously
back then.
But our engineers
will have to build efficient
generators that spread out
over acres, even square miles.
To compete with the cheap coal
and oil still available to us.
Since then, our
population has increased
by almost 5 billion
people and counting.
And China has recently surpassed
the United States as the world's
number one polluter.
The problem has become even
more difficult to solve.
Oh now we're on the
opposite side of the street
again. Ok.
Now we're in a bike lane.
Air-pocalypse,
schools have been shut down,
the toxicity has reached
that worst level.
It's absolutely brilliant,
you don't allow these companies
to operate in the dark.
Chinese media
talks about climate change
on a regular basis.
Is there a giant push
towards solar and wind here,
is that the next step?
China's got some of the
biggest wind and solar companies
in the world now.
Even though China has some
of the largest challenges,
like huge population, China's
gonna prioritize wind and solar
rather than coal.
If China can do it, then I think
the rest of the world can.
China is still heavily
relying on fossil fuels,
but they seem to be
transitioning to renewables
much faster than
anyone anticipated.
The question is, can less
developed countries with rapidly
growing populations make
the same transition?
India is the
world's third largest emitter
yet the country is struggling
with massive power shortages
and rolling blackouts.
India has consistently said
that its biggest priority
is development and bringing
people out of poverty.
We care about climate change.
But the fact is we are a country
where energy access is as much
a challenge as climate change.
We need to make sure that every
Indian has access to energy.
From what I understood
there are 300 million people
without power, without
light here in India.
Yes, yes.
That's equivalent to
the entire population here
of the United States.
Today in villages,
Indian villages you will find
people take cow dung and
they make what is known,
called cow dung cakes
or uples in Hindi,
and they burn those.
And that's their only
source of cooking energy.
So they will make
food now over this.
Coal is cheap whether
you and I like it or not,
coal is cheap.
You have to think about this
from this point of view.
If you created the
problem in the past,
we will create it in the future.
We have 700 million households
who cook using biomass today,
700 million households.
If those households move to coal
you have that much more use
of fossil fuels, then the
entire world is fried.
If anyone gives you this very
cute stuff and tells you,
Oh the world's poor
should move to solar, and,
Why do they have to make the
mistakes that we have made?
I hear this all the time
from American engineers.
And I'm like, wow!
You know, I mean, if it was that
easy I would have really liked
the U.S. to move towards solar,
but you haven't.
Let's put our money
where our mouth is.
We have to
practice what we preach.
Absolutely.
I am sorry to say this,
I know you're an American,
and please don't
take this amiss,
but your consumption is going to
really put a hole in the planet.
And I think that's the
conversation we need to have.
I'll show you charts
from this perspective,
electricity consumed by one
American at home is equivalent
to 1.5 citizens of France,
2.2 citizens of Japan,
and 10 citizens of China,
34 of India, 61 of Nigeria.
Why?
Because you're building
bigger, you're building more
and using much more than before.
The fact is that we need to
put the issue of lifestyle
and consumption at the center
of climate negotiations.
Look I, there is no
way I don't agree with you,
how can you argue that?
You're absolutely
correct and I think yes,
it's a very difficult argument
to present to Americans
that we need to change our
lifestyle and I would also
argue that it's probably
not going to happen.
So we are dependent, if we want
to solve the climate crisis,
on the fact that hopefully
renewables like solar and wind
will become cheaper and cheaper
and cheaper the more money
we funnel into them, the more we
invest into them and ultimately
it will solve that problem.
But I, you're shaking
your head obviously.
I'm shaking my head
Indian style which means no.
Right.
Who will invest, Leo?
Let's be real about this,
who will invest and how
will you invest in it?
We are doing more
investment in solar today,
China is doing much more
investment in solar today
than the U.S. is.
What is the U.S. doing
which the rest of the world
can learn from?
You're a fossil-addicted
country,
but if you are seriously
disengaging it's something
for us to learn from.
And it will be leadership
that we can all hold up
to our government and say
listen if the U.S. can do it
and the U.S. is doing it,
in spite of all their pressures,
we can do it as well.
The sad part of it is,
it's just not happening.
And people like me, we are
rich enough to withstand
the first hit of climate change
but it's the poor of India,
it's the poor of Africa,
it's the poor of Bangladesh,
who are impacted today by what
I believe is the first signs
of climate change.
So February and March,
which is when the crops
are standing, they got
half the year's rainfall
in just five hours.
Half the year's
rainfall in five hours?
So these crops
are all destroyed?
Yeah destroyed.
Your back is breaking doing this
and then you get one unseasonal
rainfall, it's absolutely
like the last straw
on the camel's back.
And we need countries to believe
that climate change is real
and urgent.
It's not a figment
of their imagination.
The U.S. has been the
biggest emitter of greenhouse
gases in history, and there's no
doubt that we've all benefited
from fossil fuels.
I know I have.
My footprint is probably a lot
bigger than most people's,
and there are times
when I question,
what is the right thing to do?
What actions should
we be taking?
There are over a billion people
out there without electricity,
and they want lights,
they want heat,
they want the lifestyle that
we've had in the United States
for the last hundred years.
If we're gonna
solve this problem,
we all have a responsibility
to set an example,
and more than that, help the
developing world transition
before it's too late.
We are seeing events that
we did not see in the past.
It's not about when the entire
islands are underwater.
It's well before then is
going to be the crisis.
And it's already happening.
What we are facing at the
moment is severe flooding.
It's gone into the fresh water
ponds and that's how people
get their drinking water.
Have you spoken
with people in the scientific
community that have given you
some sort of a time frame?
Given the scenarios and
the projections put forward
by the science, our
islands will be underwater,
and so the question is,
what do we do about it?
At the moment, internally, we
are relocating our communities
from certain parts of the
island to where the water
has not come up.
But our long-term strategy
is something that I've been
discussing internationally,
because we,
we have to come to accept the
reality that we may not be able
to accommodate
all of our people.
We have adopted a policy
of migration with dignity.
We bought a piece
of land in Fiji,
so that if our people choose to
migrate today, they can do it.
Hmm.
They must do it
as a matter of choice.
I've got grandchildren.
I've got 12 grandchildren.
I'd like to be able to,
to go away knowing that
they will continue
to have a home.
Islands in the Pacific,
we're a paradise in peril.
Throughout Palau we have
sea level rise coming
into the farmlands,
coming into the homes.
This is unbelievable.
When was this an intact
island with homes on it?
How long ago?
12 years ago, when you came,
there were people living here.
So, within the 12-year
period this is the result.
It's just a small
picture of one place.
The small island nations
who contribute the least
to the causes of climate change,
are actually going to feel
the worst uh, impacts.
The worst scenarios
because of global warming.
What we've done to
the rest of the world is just,
it's criminal.
It's not just sea level rise.
We've taken these coastal
ecosystems that used to be
dominated by incredibly
abundant fish,
and we've knocked the whole
system down reversing
half a billion
years of evolution.
One billion people depend on
fisheries from coral reefs
for virtually all of
their protein.
One billion people.
Here we are, we're on what was
a pretty healthy coral reef.
What's missing?
You see almost nothing
swimming around.
Is this a dying coral reef?
I think this reef has had it.
We're pushing the system really
hard and that is a serious enemy
to the health of corals
and their ability to grow.
Mhm.
It's causing loss
of people's livelihoods.
It's causing starvation.
This is happening all over.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
I think reefs as we know them
are gonna virtually disappear.
The oceans are like this big
buffer because they absorb
carbon dioxide.
They take up about a third
of the CO2 that we dump
into the atmosphere.
So because of that, they are a
stabilizing force in climate.
The problem is the ocean can't
do its job fast enough
with this absurd rate of
carbon dioxide emissions.
You know, life isn't gonna
disappear in the ocean.
There will always be
life in the ocean,
but it's not gonna be
necessarily the kind of life
we want.
We could go back to 3 billion
years ago and have just
a whole lot of slime.
We're taking away the
ecosystems that normally help us
to restabilize the climate.
Like oceans, rainforests absorb
carbon from our atmosphere.
Decades and decades of the
forests breathing in the carbon,
storing it in the trunks and the
leaves and the organic matter.
Those carbon emissions are
being held safe for us.
Until we clear them,
and light them on fire.
It acts like a carbon bomb
and releases massive carbon
emissions back into
the atmosphere.
Wow, this haze
is intense isn't it?
You can't see anything here!
This is scary.
This isn't natural?
This is all fire?
This is not natural at all.
I've never
seen anything like this.
There are three big
tropical rainforest areas
left in the world.
The Amazon in South America,
the Congo Basin in Africa,
and the South East Asian
rainforest which spans
Indonesia.
In Indonesia, we're seeing
fires being intentionally set
in order to create palm
oil plantations,
which grow the cheapest
vegetable oil in the world.
It's in cooking oils,
in processed foods,
in your cosmetics,
in your detergents.
This really cheap commodity is
making companies tremendous
profits.
Just as far as you can see.
Rows of palm oil.
They have destroyed so much of
this forest, it's unbelievable.
What a beauty!
I can't even
comprehend what these forests
must have looked like.
Forests where rhino and elephant
and orangutan would be populated
into the thousands.
These guys are
a byproduct of the forest lost
because of the
palm oil industry.
You know, they're effectively
refugees from forests
that no longer exist.
Wow, that's a good grip.
Yeah!
Strong.
Hey, I'm gonna get you some
fruit, don't be scared.
The carrot or the fruit?
Definitely the fruit, that's
what you guys are after, huh?
There you go.
Do you like carrots?
Or, not so much?
Oh my God.
These are amazing.
Aw.
I always
remind people when they go,
Aw, the poor thing, you know,
these are the lucky survivors.
What happens to
all the other orangutan?
You know,
all the others are dead.
And the reason people are
chopping down the forest
to plant palm oil plantations
is because people keep buying
the stuff.
People have to realize that what
they do in their supermarket,
the decisions they make
in their daily lives,
are affecting places like
the Leuser ecosystem.
If palm oil is in
almost everything we buy,
how are consumers
supposed to avoid this?
If these products have
such a devastating impact,
why aren't governments setting
restrictions to prevent
these big corporations
from destroying the planet
just so they can save money?
If you want something
that you can do without
appealing to any
higher authorities,
such as government or whatever,
I can't think of an easier, um,
out, than changing your diet.
You can start tonight.
So you're a scientist
who studies the effects
of agriculture on climate, but
you grew up raising cattle
and taking them to
slaughter, right?
I'm a scientist, that's
the most important thing.
So, of all the reasons for
tropical deforestation,
the foremost is beef.
And beef is one of the most
inefficient uses of resources
on the planet.
In the U.S., 47 percent of land
is used for food production,
and of that, the lion's share is
just to grow feed for cattle.
The things that we actually eat,
like fruit, vegetable, nuts,
it's a percent.
Most importantly,
cows produce methane,
and methane is a
powerful greenhouse gas.
The way cows produce methane is
they eat as much as they can,
and when they are chewing, a
whole bunch of methane is burped
through the mouth uh,
into the atmosphere.
The atmosphere has
much more CO2 in it.
But Methane is far
more impactful.
Every molecule of methane is
equivalent to 23 molecules
of CO2.
And of the methane
in the atmosphere,
nearly all of it is
due to livestock.
In comparison to
emissions from other sources,
what kind of percentage
are we talking about come from
the consumption of beef?
About 10, 12
percent of the total U.S.
emissions is due to beef.
It's staggering.
But it's very easy to
envision a dietary shift,
even as minor as
switching, let's say,
from beef to an alternative.
Let's say even chicken.
The chicken will require
20 percent of the land,
and 10 percent of the
greenhouse gas emissions.
And if you compare, rice,
or potato, or wheat,
beef requires 50
times as much land.
So even cutting the
amount of beef that you eat
in half, or by a quarter, could
make a significant difference.
It, very significant.
Do you, do you at
all think that that's even
a possibility considering
that beef is so a part
of our culture?
Maybe not everybody's
ready to eat tofu, you know,
24/7.
I get that.
But even if you just have to
have some flesh between
your teeth, if you
switch to chicken,
you will have eliminated 80
percent of you what you emit,
depending on where
you are coming from.
Let's face it, it's fairly
easy to switch your diet
from one choice to another.
While working on the Revenant,
which is about man's
struggle with the elements,
we shot on location in
the Canadian snow belt.
The irony was we were hit
in with record temperatures
that completely melted our set.
In order to finish
making the movie,
we had to relocate halfway
around the world just to find
snow.
The fact that we have to come,
200 people in the
middle of the summer,
to the winter in
Southern Ushuaia,
9000 miles from where we're
supposed to be shooting
this three months ago, chasing
ice, is because it's melting.
It was a very, very warm winter.
We came down to the
southern tip of our continent
besides the South Pole, to
film this, cause this is where
this, this, the last
snow is left.
I think that, my
point of view I was saying
to my, to my son, I said,
you know, it's funny that,
it's very sad but
probably for you kids,
to see snow will be a
super eccentric adventure.
A few people will be able
to see snow in the future.
I feel like I'm in
some weird, surreal movie.
I honestly look around, and I
think, when I have children,
everything that we
now take for granted,
our planet and all of its
biodiversity and beauty.
Everything in the future
is gonna be different.
Every single light that you see
has to be completely different.
It has to come from a
different power source.
We need to build all
those things differently,
all the cars that are on the
road need to be different.
And this is one city, and
if you zoom out onto a large map
of planet earth at night,
you see electrification
all over the world.
And we're fighting powerful
fossil fuel interests
that basically want to keep
doing business as usual.
How can we possibly
turn this all around?
The fossil fuel industry
is the biggest industry
in the world.
They have more money and more
influence than any other sector,
so I mean, the more that there
can be sort of popular uprising
against that, the better.
But I think the scientific
fact of the matter is,
we are unavoidably headed
towards some level of, of harm.
So, the sooner we
can take action,
the less harm will result.
Wow. Holy crap.
That's a good robot.
Whoa!
What is your grand
vision for all of this?
The point of the
Gigafactory is to get the cost
of batteries down to the
point where it's affordable.
Right.
Batteries are critical to
the sustainable energy future.
The sun doesn't shine
all the time, so,
you've got to store
it in a battery.
How is this gonna
help developing nations that
have massive populations
that need to have power?
So, the advantage of
solar and batteries is that
you can avoid building
electricity plants at all.
So you could be in a remote
village and have solar panels
that charge a battery pack, that
then supplies power to the,
to the whole village,
without ever having to run
thousands of miles of high
voltage cable over the place.
It's like, what happened with
landline phones versus
cellular phones,
in a lot of developed
countries they just didn't do
the landline phones, they just
went straight to cellular.
And we actually did the
calculations today, like,
what would it take to transition
the whole world to, uh,
sustainable energy.
What kind of throughput
would you actually need?
Um, and you'd need
100 gigafactories. So.
100 of these?
100 of these, yes.
That would
make the United States.
No, the whole world.
The whole world?
The whole world.
All energy.
- That's it?!
- Yeah.
That sounds, that doesn't sound.
It's manageable.
That sounds manageable.
Yeah.
The Gigafactory,
when it's complete,
will have the largest footprint
of any building in the world.
Counting multiple levels, it
could be as much as 15 million
square feet.
So, Tesla can't build
100 gigafactories.
The thing that's really gonna
make a difference is if
companies that are much bigger
than Tesla do the same thing.
If the big industrial companies
in China, and U.S., and Europe,
the big car companies,
if they also do this,
then collectively we can
accelerate the transition
to sustainable energy.
And if government sets the rules
to favor sustainable energy,
we can get there really quickly.
But it's really fundamental.
Unless there's a
price put on carbon.
We're never gonna be
able to make the transition
that we need to in time.
Correct?
Yeah.
And the only way to do that is
basically with a carbon tax.
Okay, now walk
me through a carbon tax,
which is what you're saying,
is the silver bullet
for climate change.
Well the carbon tax
would be basically a tax on
any kind of activity that put
carbon into the atmosphere.
So when you tax something,
you raise the price,
people are gonna tend
to consume less of it.
In fact that's sort of lesson
number one of economics.
So you're teaching
economics at Harvard,
and you literally wrote the
book on contemporary economics,
right?
Well if I'm teaching
the course for many years,
I might as well write the
textbook to go with it.
So just to be clear,
you've worked with a lot of
Republican heavyweights,
John McCain, Mitt Romney,
and you worked for George Bush
when he became president.
I was chairman of the
council of economic advisors.
So how come we don't
have a carbon tax already?
Politicians don't
always do what professors
want them to do.
So the basic idea is
that we wanna tax bad activities
that have negative side effects
on other people in society.
So we'd raise the price of
cigarettes by putting a tax
on cigarettes, people are
gonna consume fewer cigarettes.
Climate change involves a
variety of negative side effects
and costs.
A carbon tax forces people to
take account of those costs.
I think trying to appeal to
people's social responsibility
is really very, very hard,
because people have complicated
lives and they have lots
of things to worry about,
they don't want to have to
think about climate change
every time they do every
decision. They can't.
And every time you turn on your
car, are you supposed to think,
Uh oh, what am I
doing to the climate?
What the carbon tax does is it
nudges them in the direction
of doing the right thing.
So lemme get this straight.
You're a Republican,
who wants more taxes?
Well, one of the
important things to keep in mind
is that if you
have a carbon tax,
you can turn around and cut
other taxes in response.
For example, payroll taxes.
This is a tax shift rather
than a tax increase.
So is it possible to
ever pass a carbon tax now,
given the current
political situation?
I mean, half the people in
office still don't believe
in climate change.
Yes we can!
During the campaign,
President Obama didn't wanna say
the word carbon tax, because
it would poll terribly.
If we wanna change the
president's view of carbon
taxes, we need to change the
public's view of carbon taxes.
Think of gay marriage.
Remember Barack Obama ran
against gay marriage.
I, uh, am not a
supporter of gay marriage.
When did he switch?
When the polls
started switching.
I think same-sex
couples should be able
to get married.
Politicians, whether we
call them our elected leaders,
are really our
elected followers.
They do what the
people want them to do.
We need to preach to
the American people.
Once the American
people are convinced,
the politicians will fall
in line very quickly.
President Obama
and representatives from nearly
200 other countries are trying
to reach an agreement to keep
global warming in check.
In December, the world
will come together at the U.N.
Climate Conference in Paris,
and we will see whether or not
we can muster the collective
political will to reach
an ambitious, comprehensive
agreement.
This is a critical year.
Leo. How you doing, man?
Thank you for your
time, I really appreciate it.
Last time we had a hug
everybody had a, did you see,
it was all over the thing?
It was pretty dangerous.
Oh, really?
Oh, yes I remember that.
I forgot about that!
Good to see you, Secretary.
So, after decades of
failed negotiations,
what makes this negotiation
different from all the rest?
I remember the footage of
George Bush Sr. saying
we've just learned about this
thing called global warming.
We come to Rio
proud of what we've accomplished
and committed to extending the
record on American leadership
on the environment.
I mean, we had climate
summit after climate summit,
and we've seen so little action.
Well, let me tell
you why this is different,
and it really is different.
Last year President Obama was
able to stand up in Beijing
with the Chinese President Shi
and announce intended reductions
in emissions for Paris.
Well guess what, when
the two largest economies
in the world and the two largest
emitters in the world stand up
and make a statement like that,
that's created a momentum
that never existed before.
A lot of things
are coming together.
Tragically, the full measure
of the negative impact
of climate change is
coming together too.
What's happening now is that
you have mass populations
that are moving as a
result of climate.
Or you have
huge fights over water,
which could erupt into wars.
And any extremist
philosophy could appeal
to people if they have nowhere
to live, no way to live,
and that's when
people are vulnerable.
If anybody thinks
I'm kidding about that,
it's happening today.
And the greatest fear about all
of this is leaving this planet
in better shape than we were
given it and that's not
what we're doing today.
Today I spend
most of my time on understanding
how can we secure a prosperous
future for humanity
in a situation where we're
starting to hit the ceiling
of what the planet
can cope with.
And I have the privilege of
chairing something called
the Earth League, which is a
network of leading earth system
scientists, try and gather
really all the knowledge we have
on understanding our
future on, on earth.
We are on average moving
towards a four degrees warming
this century.
And we haven't been in a
four-degree warmer world, um,
for the past four million years.
So it's not as if it's a
place we know very well.
So give me one, sort
of picture of what the world
may look like if we do
not take action.
To begin with, for
the past twelve thousand years,
temperatures are almost
miraculously stable.
In fact, average temperatures
vary within only plus minus
one degrees Celsius during
this entire period.
This perfect planet
with this perfect atmosphere.
Yeah. Exactly.
And so, let us then move
upwards in temperature.
Where are we right now?
Well, today we're
approaching one degree Celsius.
Already it just, 0.85 degrees,
we're seeing faster
than predicted impacts.
This storm is so big, so vast,
60 million Americans
will feel its power.
We're in a historic drought.
The world's coral
reefs begin to collapse
even before two degrees.
And we're predicted
to hit 1.5, to 2 degrees. So.
Already now. So.
That's already
probably gonna happen.
That's already
probably gonna happen.
At 3, 4 degrees, we will have
heat waves which makes
many regions in the world
not livable any longer.
Agriculture will be collapsing
around the equator.
That would take us beyond
being able to responsibly
feed humanity.
What makes scientists so nervous
is that we can reach a point
where earth takes over and
starts reinforcing warming.
This is what we
call tipping points,
and the most obvious
one is Greenland.
Greenland, for the first time,
is melting on its entire surface
to a point where, instead
of being a white surface,
becomes a dark surface, and
suddenly instead of becoming
a cooler, becomes a self-heater.
Because, because of
the fact the ice can no longer
reflect back.
Just the color change.
Just the
color change of the ice.
Suddenly, all these
feedbacks start kicking in.
Methane stuck under frozen
permafrost thaws to a point
where it starts
getting released.
And that in turn
warms the planet even more,
which releases more methane.
Correct.
That's if we don't
take immediate action.
Yes.
That's business as usual.
But the Paris Climate Summit
that we are soon approaching
in December, if world leaders
come together properly,
the window is open,
but barely open,
to transition back
into a stable planet.
Last time we had
our climate summit,
you couldn't say that we could
go to scale on high tech,
clean energy solutions.
But now in Paris, we can say so.
We actually have the proof.
You know you wake up in
Germany Saturday morning,
you're likely to get 30
percent of your electricity
from solar and wind, and not
from a few energy utilities,
but from over 2 million
citizens delivering to a grid.
Denmark today produces over
100 percent, some days,
of its electricity
needs from wind.
100 percent.
It's totally renewable.
And remember that, once you've
invested in wind and solar,
you actually have
free energy forever.
In countries like
my own, in Sweden,
there was an enormous
uprising among people.
You know, from youth groups to
citizen side organizations,
to the point that the prime
minister announced three weeks
back that Sweden will now
become the world's first
fossil fuel-free nation.
- Congratulations.
- I was shocked
at the way that it propelled
itself from below.
I think we have tipped the world
toward a sustainable future.
The fear is are we
doing it too slowly?
Ladies and gentleman,
you are here today to write
the script for a new future.
The fate of our planet
is in your hands.
I am a small island girl
with big dreams from the Island
of Majuro in the
Marshall Islands.
Back when I was six or seven,
my grandpa told me about how
the ice in the North Pole
and the South Pole
will melt away,
and as they melt, the water will
rise and soon flood our islands.
This agreement is for
those of us whose identity,
whose culture, whose ancestors,
whose whole being is bound
to their lands.
This agreement will
help the world prepare
for the impacts of climate
change that are already here,
and also, for those we know are
now headed our way inevitably.
Nearly a quarter of a
century of global climate talks
have come to this
pivotal moment in Paris.
195 countries saying they'll do
everything in their power
to change.
There's no doubt that
this agreement is a massive step
forward.
But does it go far enough?
The Paris Agreement
calls for keeping climate
warming to well below
two degrees Celsius,
while striving for 1.5.
There's no
mention of a carbon tax,
there's no mention
of any penalties.
There are no
enforcement provisions.
We just have to take
it on faith that all these
countries are gonna follow
through with what they say.
How likely is that?
This is an
unattainable deal that Congress
has already voted to reject.
The fact that we're
going to have a 26-28 percent
reduction in CO2 emissions,
that isn't gonna happen.
I chair the committee
that has jurisdiction
over the Environmental
Protection Agency.
Hey man.
Good to see ya.
- Thank you so much.
- You doing alright?
Absolutely.
Alright. C'mon.
The Paris Agreement ended up
being a historic agreement,
not because it gets us to where
we need to be eventually,
but for the first time, locking
in all countries into verifiable
steps and targets that
they're gonna take.
It creates the architecture
that allows us to finally start
dealing with this
problem in a serious way.
So you were
happy with what came of it?
I, I, I was happy
that we put the architecture
in place.
The, the targets that have been
set in Paris are nowhere near
enough for what the scientists
tell us we have to do eventually
to solve this problem.
But if we can use the next
20 years to apply existing
technologies to reduce
carbon emissions,
and then start slowly turning up
the dials as new technologies
come on line, so that we have
more and more ambitious targets
each year, then, we're not gonna
completely reverse the warming
that now is inevitable, but we
can stop it before it becomes
catastrophic.
And it's no secret
that you've been under great
opposition to try to implement
some of your climate change
initiatives. And.
We've got some
folks on the other side. Yeah.
So someone that comes
into office that does not
believe in the science
of climate change,
do they have the capacity
and the power to dismantle
everything that you've
already worked for?
Even if somebody
came in, campaigning on denying
climate science, reality has
a way of, you know,
hitting you in the nose if
you're not paying attention.
And I think that the public is
starting to realize the science,
in part because
it's indisputable.
Admire your optimism.
- Yeah.
- But
you start to look at
the science,
look at what's going on
in the Antarctic and,
and scientists saying that
there are sections of ice that
guarantee four to six
meters of ocean level rise,
which will be catastrophic
for the future.
You are the leader
of the Free World.
You have access to information
that most people do not.
What makes you terrified
for the future?
Uh, a huge portion
of the world's population
- lives near oceans.
- Mhm.
If they start
moving, then you start seeing,
um, scarce resources.
The subject of competition
between populations.
This is the reason why
the Pentagon has said,
this is a national
security issue.
This isn't just an
environmental issue.
This is a national
security issue.
You know, in addition to just
the sadness that I would feel if
my kids can never see a glacier,
the way I saw when I went up
to Alaska, uh, you know,
that's the romantic side of it.
That's the side that takes
a walk with my daughters
and I wanna be able to, them
to see, or my grandkids,
I want them to see the
same things as I saw
as I was growing up.
Even if you were
unsentimental about that,
in very hard-headed terms,
you've gotta worry about
the national security
implications of this,
and the capacity for the
existing world order
as we understand it to
survive the kinds of strains
that the scientists are
predicting without action.
This is why we have
to take action now.
If we keep pushing keep prodding
and most importantly keep
educating the public
there's no reason why, uh,
we can't solve this
problem in time.
Thank you for
your time, Mr. President.
You bet.
Thanks for the good
work you're doing.
- Thank you so much.
- Alright. Good?
I have realized that as
a science community we have not
done the best job, frankly,
of communicating this threat
to the public.
But when you go up there and
see it with your own eye,
how thin the world's
atmosphere is,
tiny little onion
skin around the earth.
That's all the oxygen that
we breathe, that's the CO2,
everything we burn goes into it.
It's an astonishingly
fragile film.
You know, I knew intellectually
how the earth's system works,
'cause that's what I've
been doing for 20 years.
To see how the
atmosphere and the ocean,
all the elements in the
system work together.
So I understood it
intellectually.
Mhm.
But it's like being
an ant trying to understand
what an elephant looks like by
crawling all over the elephant.
But when you're
up there in orbit,
and you can see 1200 miles
in any direction, I mean,
let me tell you.
It's kind of a revelation.
Seeing all the cities at night,
millions of people all working
away, doing something.
Come around the day
side of the world,
seeing the natural systems.
The hurricanes, huge,
great big wheels, you know,
over the oceans.
Saw the Amazon River
go between my feet.
For like five minutes, you know,
I have a whole green carpet
either side.
Just beautiful, all
the way out to the sea.
And you know there was the sun
coming up over the Amazon,
the whole forest waking up, and
doing what it does every day,
you know. Breathing
in and breathing out.
So I, I, you know, at the end
of all that I became immensely
fond, more fond of
the planet. You know?
Which I never thought about
when I actually just live
on the surface.
I'm also kind of fond of
the people on there, too.
It's like being taken away from
your family and coming back.
And um, you know,
I wish it all well.
I, uh, just before Christmas
I got told I got pancreatic
cancer.
Stage 4, so it's also elsewhere
in me, not just in one place.
So um, you know, the, the odds
are I won't be around
for very long.
You know, it's a very
small chance of survival.
So, uh, that's really
motivated me to think about
what's important to do, and what
can I contribute in the time
I have left.
So this is a model
simulation of the earth, now,
we have about 20 satellites
that are dedicated to looking
at the earth, every day.
One looks at clouds, one looks
at the sea surface temperature,
Oko looks at carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere.
All this information comes in,
and this is the tool we use
to do climate simulation.
Here's an example of one thing
we could see: this is
ocean surface temperature,
as measured from space.
This is the whole world's
surface temperature.
You can see the
poles melting, there.
Wow.
- Yeah.
- It's amazing.
This is the way to do it man.
This is the way to really
see what's going on.
Here's the Gulf
Stream, look at this.
It's like a motion of the ocean.
This is like
a great piece of art.
It is, isn't it?
Biggest impact would be here.
- In the Gulf Stream.
- Yeah.
This current here, see it?
The dumping of ice
off melting Greenland,
would stop this conveyor belt,
and the Gulf Stream would slow
down, stopping the transport
of heat from here, to there.
And then Europe
would get cold toes.
Because there's a lot of heat
transport from the Tropics,
across the North Atlantic,
that keeps Europe warm. I mean.
So Europe would get colder?
Yeah.
Cause that's the
big misconception about
climate change, is that
everything gets warmer.
- Yeah.
- Wow.
And here's the most
advanced precipitation satellite
in the world.
This is very important, cause we
think the biggest impact from
climate change is the moving of
the precipitation belts.
From the equator
they'll go further out,
so we're already seeing
signs of a system drought.
So that causes more
drought in places
- that are already too hot.
- Yes.
And there's a lot of papers
written in the State Department
and elsewhere, how that
sustained drought has helped
fuel the conflict of the Syrian
civil war, Darfur, Sudan,
all these places that are
short of water, short of food.
Is this throughout the
entire planet or is it just this
- particular region right here?
- Nope.
We expect the whole world.
We expect bits of India we
expect in the U.S., Oklahoma.
You know the dust bowl region,
we expect that to get
much, much drier over the
next few decades.
Oh my God, and
what about my home state
of California here?
Um, not looking
great, I'm afraid.
Now predicted persistent drought
in the dust bowl, and here,
for fifty years from now.
But we're just seeing the
worst drought in 900 years
here right now.
So it's coming a bit
earlier than we thought.
We're talking about this
happening over a period
of a few decades.
It's just
consistent not great news.
No.
But a lot of people now kinda
confused about the issue.
You know, the facts
are crystal clear.
The ice is melting,
the earth is warming,
the sea level is rising.
Those are facts.
Rather than feeling, oh my
God it's hopeless, say, okay,
this is the problem.
Let's be realistic.
Let's find a way out of it.
And there are ways out of it.
You know, if we stopped
burning fossil fuel right now,
the planet would still keep
warming for a little while
before cooling off again.
So you're saying
that if we do the right thing,
we're gonna heat
up, or we're gonna.
It'll turn off,
then it'll start cooling again.
Would that Arctic ice
sheet start to then increase
again?
Once the cooling started, yeah.
So there really is
a possibility to repair
- this trajectory that we're on?
- Absolutely.
- Interesting.
- Yeah. So there's hope.
You seem to have an
incredibly positive attitude,
just about everything though.
It's amazing.
Yeah, I, I do, I'm
actually basically an optimistic
kind of person.
I have faith in people.
I, I really do have
faith in people.
And I think that once people
come out of the fog of confusion
or an issue, or initial
uncertainty on an issue,
and realistically appreciate
it at some level, the threat,
and they're informed of what the
best action is to deal with it,
they got on and did it.
And what seemed like almost
impossible to deal with,
you know, became possible.
I still think a lot
about that picture that used
to hang over above my crib.
The story of The Garden of
Earthly Delights actually begins
on the outside of the painting,
where. Bosch painted a view
of our Earth on the third day
of creation.
It's almost as if he wanted to
show the fragility of our
planet by depicting the earth
and its atmosphere enclosed
in glass.
Pope Francis
has officially released
his encyclical on the
environment.
The document is both a call
for immediate action to stop
global warming, and a
cry for justice for the poor.
Our common home has
fallen into serious disrepair.
Hope would have us recognize
that there is always a way out.
That we can always
redirect our steps,
that we can always do something
to solve our problems.
Still, we can see signs that
things are now reaching
a breaking point.
This is a direct message from
the pope, it's a huge deal.
One of the most important
spiritual leader's
on the planet.
DiCaprio.
He has now called upon
the world community to accept
the modern science
of climate change.
A pope has never done anything
like this in history.
Being able to spend
time and sit with the pope
was a pretty
profound experience.
This is a book,
Hieronymus Bosch's.
Uh, it was hanging above
my crib, as a young boy.
Thank you.
There was definitely an
urgency in his voice.
He said that as far as the Paris
conference is concerned, he,
he felt was a step in
the right direction,
but certainly not enough.
He feels we all need to keep
speaking out about this issue
as loud as we can, and that we
must immediately take action.
But more than anything, he said
to pray for the human race.
After everything I've seen,
it's become pretty obvious
that we're no longer
living in that first,
unspoiled depiction of Eden.
We're in that second panel.
What Bosch called, Human
Kind Before the Flood.
And what haunts me the
most is that last panel.
The one with the charred,
blackened skies.
A planet that we collectively
have left to ruin.
The question is, can we
change our course in time?
Now if this was a movie we could
write the ending of this script,
and we could figure a
way out of this mess.
But real life doesn't
work like that,
and we can't pretend that we
know how this is gonna end.
The only thing that we can do
is control what we do next,
how we live our lives, what we
consume, how we get involved,
and how we use our vote to
tell our leaders that we know
the truth about climate change.
The last speaker for
this signing ceremony is
the Academy Award Best Actor,
and the United Nations Messenger
of Peace, Mr. Leonardo DiCaprio.
Thank you Mr.
Secretary General for
the honor to address this body,
and thanks to the distinguished
climate leaders assembled
here today who are ready
to take action.
As a U.N. Messenger of Peace I
have traveled all over the world
for the last two years, I have
seen cities like Beijing choked
by industrial pollution, ancient
boreal forests in Canada
that have been clear cut, and
rainforests in Indonesia
that have been incinerated.
In India I met farmers whose
crops have been literally
washed away.
In America I've witnessed sea
level rise flooding the streets
of Miami.
In Greenland and in the Arctic
I was astonished to see
that ancient glaciers are
rapidly disappearing,
well ahead of
scientific predictions.
All that I have seen and learned
on my journey has absolutely
terrified me.
Now think about the shame that
each of us will carry when our
children and grandchildren look
back and realize that we had
the means of stopping this
devastation but simply lacked
the political will to do so.
Yes, we have achieved
the Paris Agreement.
More countries have come
together here to sign
this agreement today than for
any other cause in the history
of humankind, and that
is reason for hope.
But unfortunately the evidence
shows us that it will not
be enough.
A massive change is
required right now.
One that leads to a new
collective consciousness.
A new collective evolution
of the human race,
inspired and enabled by a sense
of urgency from all of you.
We can congratulate
each other today,
but it will mean absolutely
nothing if you return
to your countries and fail
to push beyond the promises
of this historic agreement.
After 21 years of
debates and conferences,
it is time to declare no
more talk, no more excuses,
no more ten-year studies, no
more allowing the fossil fuel
companies to manipulate and
dictate the science and policies
that affect our future.
The world is now watching.
You'll either be lauded
by future generations,
or vilified by them.
You are the last
best hope of Earth.
We ask you to protect it,
or we, and all living things
we cherish, are history.
We wait
We pray for the rain
For the rain
For a rain
To wash away
We try
Deny
To believe to believe
to believe
We can't believe
In anything
I don't want to say goodbye
I don't want to say goodbye
Stars falling from the sky
Stars falling from the sky
We will all be judged
By what we leave behind
I don't want to say goodbye
Hey
Too late
To look you in the eye
In your eyes
In your eyes
And realize
We find.
In time we're the same
We're the same
All to blame
I don't want to say goodbye
I don't want to say goodbye
Stars falling from the sky
Stars falling from the sky
We will all be judged
By what we leave behind
I don't want to say goodbye
no, no, no, no...
no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no
no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no
no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no
I just need a
minute to breathe
I just need a
minute to breathe
I just need a
minute to breathe
I just need...
...a minute to breathe