Saving My Tomorrow (2014) s01e01 Episode Script
Part 1
1 MAN: The earth is our one home The earth is so fragile It seems It's warmer And warmer And things have gone from strange to extreme And then the kids took over! That's when the future began And then the kids took over! They had an unsecret plan And then the kids took over! They didn't walk no, they ran And then the kids took over! It was the future! Hello.
My name's Nassir Ward.
I'm 14, and I love the earth.
Global warming is a really bad issue in our country.
We have to stop it.
CROWD: Yeah! Our way of life involves so much pollution that we are quickly destroying this planet, because we rely so much on fossil fuels.
CROWD: As the temperature rises, so do we! As the temperature rises, so do we! BOY, VOICE-OVER: The fact is we're going in the wrong direction.
I'm here to draw the line, because my future is on that line.
I am worried about the environment, because someday your children and great-grandchildren and stuff are gonna live here, and it's just gonna be a trash hole.
KIDS: I don't know what I've been told ADULTS: All this garbage is getting old! All this garbage is getting old! GIRL: I care about my future.
I care about all the animals on the earth.
DIFFERENT GIRL: We need to be concerned, because if we don't act now and stop the climate change, then we, the children, will inherit a badly-damaged planet.
Each and every species plays its part in the circle of life.
And we were put on this earth for a reason: so we could be the caretakers and the healers and the speakers and the warriors for mother earth.
And we were given a voice for a reason: to speak out for those who have no voice.
My name is Ta'Kaiya Blaney.
I'm 12 years old, and I am from the Sliammon Nation.
First Nations is another word for "indigenous," or maybe you're more familiar with Native American.
My Kook pah my grandfather and my Chi Chia my grandmother, they would always tell me stories of how they grew up, about how they were able to go down to our traditional beaches and how the salmon were so plentiful at that time.
And today there are barely any salmon, and you can't go down to the beaches and eat the mussels and the clams because of the poisoning and the chemicals that have gotten into the water.
The reason I became an activist is I saw an article about the Northern Gateway pipeline.
They take crude oil from the tar sands of Alberta.
They transport the oil through a pipeline, and then the oil goes on supertankers that are going to California and to China.
The sea around that area the oceans and the bays they're home to orcas and humpback whales.
The supertankers, being the loudest ships in the world, they would completely destroy those whale populations.
And if the oil tanker spills, that can't be cleaned up.
The land, the water, the air we're intertwined with those elements and with those resources and those gifts.
I just feel so, so terrible about how things have turned out for the environment, and how, you know, I want to do something, and I really can't walk away from something like that.
A land filled with pipelines! CROWD: A land filled with pipelines! An ocean empty of life! An ocean empty of life! Well, that's not the future that we want and that I want.
TA'KAIYA BLANEY, VOICE-OVER: I used to think that no one would listen to you unless you were a grownup.
I used to think, "Well, I can do this when I'm 18.
In ten years I'll try and be an activist.
" But then I realized, well, I really don't have time to "grow up.
" And so I decided I'm gonna try and fight for my future just as I am and just as the age that I am.
We're the ancestors of the many generations to come, and, you know, we have a chance to do something, and to change the world for the better.
And I think we should use that time and use this opportunity that we have, because it can make a huge difference on the future.
(lyrics on screen) WOMAN: So here we are.
Who likes fish? Me.
WOMAN: All of you? What do you see? CHILD: A lot of fish.
DIFFERENT CHILD: Preserved fish in jars.
WOMAN: Preserved fish in jars.
A lot of them! So how many do you think we have? - 4,000.
- "4,000.
" Ehh Let's go a little higher.
- 20,000? - More.
We've got over 2 million fish specimens in the collection.
They kind of give us a time capsule.
So you could go to one of these jars, and you could pick it up and you could read it, and you could say, "Oh, my! This fish was caught in Africa in 1890.
" Now, things are changing, and it's because temperature's changing.
And that's very, very clear when you look at fishes.
When temperature goes up and you're a cold-blooded animal, what do you think what do you think happens? Their body temperature goes up.
STIASSNY: Right.
Their metabolism speeds up.
STIASSNY: Exactly.
There's new research that's recently been done on a very a small, little fish.
We call them mummichogs.
They're just a little fish.
They're at the bottom of the fish food chain, right? It turns out that these guys, with the temperature increasing in the water they're living in, their metabolism is increasing, which means they're eating more.
They're getting hungrier and hungrier.
A negative side-effect of that is that they're eating a lot more of food that has pollutants in it.
You know, we have a mercury problem from coal-fired power stations.
One of the side products is methyl mercury, which gets into the water.
These little guys, it turns out, because they're eating more food they're getting more mercury into them.
It kind of stores it in its fat.
And then the next fish comes along and eats it.
And it gets all that mercury.
And then a bigger fish is gonna come along and eat that.
And then some birds are going to eat it.
And then we're going to eat it.
Who would have thought, you know, a little cold-blooded fish, the temperature gets a bit warmer, and it ends up having a huge effect on the food chain? So that's another thing you guys should think about when you try to start thinking about how you can help change the world.
We are losing some animals and at least we still have a little bit left.
We need to have that much left.
We need that.
I think we should just try to save all the animals really.
[Birds calling.]
FEY: Every fall, a remarkable journey begins.
Leaving their homes in the Eastern U.
S.
and Canada, up to a hundred million monarch butterflies head south to the mountains of Mexico to wait out the winter.
Flying up to 3,000 miles, they arrive and settle in trees, clustering together to preserve their heat and energy over the long winter.
Come spring, each monarch awakens and goes north to find milkweed.
She lays her eggs on a milkweed leaf and then dies.
Her children and grandchildren make their way back north, pollinating plants all along the way, like sunflowers, marigolds, and clover.
Monarch Butterflies are not an endangered species yet, but biologists are worried that this amazing migration could very well soon disappear.
Because of land development, pesticides, rising temperatures and drought, the milkweed is disappearing.
CHILD: Red flowers FEY: Kids across the country are joining the effort to plant milkweed and create butterfly gardens to make sure that monarchs will be around for generations to come.
My name is Daniel Bravo, and I live in Miami, Florida.
I started to learn about butterflies when I was five years old.
Me and my mom, we raise caterpillars.
After a couple weeks, they turn into a chrysalis.
And then they become a butterfly.
I've given all of them names, like Ricardo, Martha, Tony, Jen, Freedom.
My favorite butterfly is Hope.
He lived for a long time, even though he was hurt.
Without monarchs, we would probably have very little food because think about it they're the ones that pollinate.
And it's sad because they are poisoned by pesticides.
We try to tell people to plant milkweed in their own garden so the population of monarch butterflies can increase.
MAN: A million trillion bugs Are fluttering through the air And wriggling underground And slithering everywhere And yet we need them all For medicines and food And keeping other bugs From eating all the wood Biodiversity A moth for you A sloth for me Biodiversity A goose for you A moose for me Biodiversity Don't let it fade away Don't let it fade away Don't let it fade away There are animals here.
And if we take out that animal bad things could happen.
If we lose the spider, for instance, the world could be overrun with insects because spiders actually eat insects.
So they actually help to keep the population down.
But if we lose the spider, the species of insects go up.
Everything usually has a connection.
WRIGHT: More than 160 years ago in the town of Concord, Massachusetts, a man named Henry David Thoreau fell in love with the wilderness.
[Bird calling.]
He spent his free hours walking in the woods, watching the trees and flowers change as the seasons came and departed.
When winter ended and spring arrived, he kept close watch over the meadows, and recorded in his journal the day the wildflowers first appeared.
Because of Thoreau's notes, we know that in 1852 the birdfoot violets bloomed on May 10th in Concord.
The pink lady slippers appeared on May 28th.
And the golden ragworts arrived on May 31st.
Thoreau couldn't have known that by now, springtime in Concord would be six degrees warmer.
His journals are now helping scientists find out how plants are responding to a warmer world.
And what are they discovering? The plants are flowering almost two weeks earlier than they did in Thoreau's time.
The warmer climate is shifting the spring.
Some flowers have not adjusted, and they've been left behind.
The lovely Canada Lily used to be very common in Concord, but now it's extremely rare.
In fact, more than one out of four of the plants Thoreau observed have seemingly disappeared.
Thoreau's records have helped us understand how we are changing our environment.
They are a letter from the past, a message that carries a warning.
I don't want everything to die and be gray and turn all this beautiful scenery into gray clouds, brown grass, gray stumps.
I don't want that to happen.
I think it's gotten to the point where you need to know the truth, because the adults clearly aren't doing enough to stop this, so we have to take it into our own hands.
FIRST GROUP: If they build it SECOND GROUP: We will block it! If they ship it We will stop it! If they build it We will block it! I don't know about you, but I love hiking on the trails around here.
I love picking the local berries.
And I love eating them even more.
If we don't say no to exploding oil trains coming through our cities, then all the tiny, tiny things that we take for granted won't be there anymore.
BOY, VOICE-OVER: Our biggest problem of my generation is trying to figure out how to live on this planet with everything else without destroying the planet.
One of the things I'm worried about here in Seattle is the oil trains being sent to the city and exploding, possibly.
Yes, it's theoretical that they could explode, except these trains have exploded in the past.
MAN: Oh, mon dieu! Oh, mon dieu! Oh, my God! ZOE, VOICE-OVER: There was a huge fire in Canada.
I saw the video.
There were, like, fireballs going a hundred feet in the air.
AJI: In a small town in Quebec, the oil train actually actually blew up, and it vaporized part of the downtown.
The thing is, like, a lot of people aren't aware of the danger.
Now they're gonna ship a total of 24 trains a week through Seattle.
You know, the train station goes right under the West Seattle bridge, and it goes right past the stadium.
ZOE: These companies are still allowed to send these exact same cars through this area.
It's terrible.
We need to stop this because it's the worst possible thing that could happen to Seattle right now.
When these oil trains explode, they can release a lot of carbon, for one, and the oil can destroy a lot of habitat and kill a lot of wildlife.
BOY: Our orca population is decreasing ridiculously fast.
Our salmon are dying, and oil spills are a big part of it.
Pollution is a big part of it.
BOY: But that's not just the only danger.
Even if it doesn't explode, it would be sent to Europe or Asia, and the oil there will be burned anyway.
And it's going to be sent straight up into the atmosphere to hurt climate change even more.
The only solution is that oil and gas should not be used as much.
This is going to eventually rip up our planet, and we've gotta stop.
MAN: Right now we're gonna have Aji and Adonis play their oil train song.
BOTH: Please don't send exploding trains Through our city, we don't AJI, VOICE-OVER: I wrote a song, and if you get one person to write a song and a lot of people hear about that song and then other people hear about that song and write a song, eventually you have a lot of people joining hands together, walking together, singing together.
AJI AND ADONIS: Think about the future generations AJI, VOICE-OVER: And I think if everybody found that place where they can do something for the planet, then we can change the world.
(lyrics on screen) MAN: Good morning! KIDS: Good morning.
Good morning.
We're gonna talk about climate change.
A lot of people think it's just about weather, but it turns out that climate change also means that different species of animals and plants are going to move around.
You know what this is, right? Do you know what that is? KIDS: Mosquito! Now, how many of you have been bitten by a mosquito? When I came back from Florida, like, ten mosquitoes bit me.
And I was like, itching.
Aughh! SIDDALL: Oh, my goodness.
- It was so Itchy! - Exactly.
It turns out, though, different species of mosquitoes like different kinds of temperatures.
And mosquitoes don't like it when it's too dry and they don't like it when it's CHILD: When it's wet.
Oh, they like the wet.
They love it when it's wet, because they lay their eggs - CHILD: In water.
- In water.
But if the climate changes, then you would expect the mosquitoes would move to stay where they like the temperature and where they like the wet.
Does that make sense? KIDS: Yeah.
SIDDALL: If the northern United States like where we are now become as warm as Louisiana and Georgia, what do you think is gonna happen? - KIDS: Mosquitoes! - SIDDALL: That's right.
Lots and lots of mosquitoes.
Come follow me.
I want to show you a very, very, very big animal.
How big are insects? Use your fingers and show me how big insects are.
- Small.
- Like, really small.
Right, right, right.
Now, how big are crabs, do you think? Uh, about that big.
Did you know that in very, very cold places in the ocean, arthropods like crabs can get really, really big? You guys want to look up? KIDS: Whoa! SIDDALL: It's allowed to get that big because the water is very cold, and cold water carries more oxygen.
Everybody take a deep breath.
[All inhale and exhale.]
You need oxygen.
What do you think is going to happen to these giant crabs if their water gets warm? They're going to get tiny, tiny, tiny.
Well, if they get tiny, that would be because they - KIDS: Adapted.
- Right.
What if they can't adapt? - Then they die.
- They go extinct.
SIDDALL: Right.
If the water gets warm, they could go extinct.
And so climate change is not just about the weather the way we think about it, but it's about all kinds of different things, including ocean temperatures and animals, and it's a very complicated issue.
It affects everything and everyone in the entire planet.
NEESON: Sea butterflies are tiny swimming snails about the size of a lentil.
They are found all over the planet, floating in the top layer of the sea.
Food for fish, birds, and whales, they help form the base of the ocean's food chain.
To build their shells, sea butterflies need calcium carbonate in the water around them.
But the burning of fossil fuels is making the oceans more acidic and reducing the amount of calcium in the water.
Scientists have observed sea butterfly shells dissolving in the southern oceans.
The loss of sea butterflies could threaten the ocean's entire food chain.
At this moment in time, the millions of years that it's taken for a species to rise up that are here today, for the mountains to look as they do, for ecosystems to become as balanced and in harmony as they are today we're unraveling that work of millions of years in mere seconds.
We need to make that change to turn around while we still can.
(lyrics on screen)
My name's Nassir Ward.
I'm 14, and I love the earth.
Global warming is a really bad issue in our country.
We have to stop it.
CROWD: Yeah! Our way of life involves so much pollution that we are quickly destroying this planet, because we rely so much on fossil fuels.
CROWD: As the temperature rises, so do we! As the temperature rises, so do we! BOY, VOICE-OVER: The fact is we're going in the wrong direction.
I'm here to draw the line, because my future is on that line.
I am worried about the environment, because someday your children and great-grandchildren and stuff are gonna live here, and it's just gonna be a trash hole.
KIDS: I don't know what I've been told ADULTS: All this garbage is getting old! All this garbage is getting old! GIRL: I care about my future.
I care about all the animals on the earth.
DIFFERENT GIRL: We need to be concerned, because if we don't act now and stop the climate change, then we, the children, will inherit a badly-damaged planet.
Each and every species plays its part in the circle of life.
And we were put on this earth for a reason: so we could be the caretakers and the healers and the speakers and the warriors for mother earth.
And we were given a voice for a reason: to speak out for those who have no voice.
My name is Ta'Kaiya Blaney.
I'm 12 years old, and I am from the Sliammon Nation.
First Nations is another word for "indigenous," or maybe you're more familiar with Native American.
My Kook pah my grandfather and my Chi Chia my grandmother, they would always tell me stories of how they grew up, about how they were able to go down to our traditional beaches and how the salmon were so plentiful at that time.
And today there are barely any salmon, and you can't go down to the beaches and eat the mussels and the clams because of the poisoning and the chemicals that have gotten into the water.
The reason I became an activist is I saw an article about the Northern Gateway pipeline.
They take crude oil from the tar sands of Alberta.
They transport the oil through a pipeline, and then the oil goes on supertankers that are going to California and to China.
The sea around that area the oceans and the bays they're home to orcas and humpback whales.
The supertankers, being the loudest ships in the world, they would completely destroy those whale populations.
And if the oil tanker spills, that can't be cleaned up.
The land, the water, the air we're intertwined with those elements and with those resources and those gifts.
I just feel so, so terrible about how things have turned out for the environment, and how, you know, I want to do something, and I really can't walk away from something like that.
A land filled with pipelines! CROWD: A land filled with pipelines! An ocean empty of life! An ocean empty of life! Well, that's not the future that we want and that I want.
TA'KAIYA BLANEY, VOICE-OVER: I used to think that no one would listen to you unless you were a grownup.
I used to think, "Well, I can do this when I'm 18.
In ten years I'll try and be an activist.
" But then I realized, well, I really don't have time to "grow up.
" And so I decided I'm gonna try and fight for my future just as I am and just as the age that I am.
We're the ancestors of the many generations to come, and, you know, we have a chance to do something, and to change the world for the better.
And I think we should use that time and use this opportunity that we have, because it can make a huge difference on the future.
(lyrics on screen) WOMAN: So here we are.
Who likes fish? Me.
WOMAN: All of you? What do you see? CHILD: A lot of fish.
DIFFERENT CHILD: Preserved fish in jars.
WOMAN: Preserved fish in jars.
A lot of them! So how many do you think we have? - 4,000.
- "4,000.
" Ehh Let's go a little higher.
- 20,000? - More.
We've got over 2 million fish specimens in the collection.
They kind of give us a time capsule.
So you could go to one of these jars, and you could pick it up and you could read it, and you could say, "Oh, my! This fish was caught in Africa in 1890.
" Now, things are changing, and it's because temperature's changing.
And that's very, very clear when you look at fishes.
When temperature goes up and you're a cold-blooded animal, what do you think what do you think happens? Their body temperature goes up.
STIASSNY: Right.
Their metabolism speeds up.
STIASSNY: Exactly.
There's new research that's recently been done on a very a small, little fish.
We call them mummichogs.
They're just a little fish.
They're at the bottom of the fish food chain, right? It turns out that these guys, with the temperature increasing in the water they're living in, their metabolism is increasing, which means they're eating more.
They're getting hungrier and hungrier.
A negative side-effect of that is that they're eating a lot more of food that has pollutants in it.
You know, we have a mercury problem from coal-fired power stations.
One of the side products is methyl mercury, which gets into the water.
These little guys, it turns out, because they're eating more food they're getting more mercury into them.
It kind of stores it in its fat.
And then the next fish comes along and eats it.
And it gets all that mercury.
And then a bigger fish is gonna come along and eat that.
And then some birds are going to eat it.
And then we're going to eat it.
Who would have thought, you know, a little cold-blooded fish, the temperature gets a bit warmer, and it ends up having a huge effect on the food chain? So that's another thing you guys should think about when you try to start thinking about how you can help change the world.
We are losing some animals and at least we still have a little bit left.
We need to have that much left.
We need that.
I think we should just try to save all the animals really.
[Birds calling.]
FEY: Every fall, a remarkable journey begins.
Leaving their homes in the Eastern U.
S.
and Canada, up to a hundred million monarch butterflies head south to the mountains of Mexico to wait out the winter.
Flying up to 3,000 miles, they arrive and settle in trees, clustering together to preserve their heat and energy over the long winter.
Come spring, each monarch awakens and goes north to find milkweed.
She lays her eggs on a milkweed leaf and then dies.
Her children and grandchildren make their way back north, pollinating plants all along the way, like sunflowers, marigolds, and clover.
Monarch Butterflies are not an endangered species yet, but biologists are worried that this amazing migration could very well soon disappear.
Because of land development, pesticides, rising temperatures and drought, the milkweed is disappearing.
CHILD: Red flowers FEY: Kids across the country are joining the effort to plant milkweed and create butterfly gardens to make sure that monarchs will be around for generations to come.
My name is Daniel Bravo, and I live in Miami, Florida.
I started to learn about butterflies when I was five years old.
Me and my mom, we raise caterpillars.
After a couple weeks, they turn into a chrysalis.
And then they become a butterfly.
I've given all of them names, like Ricardo, Martha, Tony, Jen, Freedom.
My favorite butterfly is Hope.
He lived for a long time, even though he was hurt.
Without monarchs, we would probably have very little food because think about it they're the ones that pollinate.
And it's sad because they are poisoned by pesticides.
We try to tell people to plant milkweed in their own garden so the population of monarch butterflies can increase.
MAN: A million trillion bugs Are fluttering through the air And wriggling underground And slithering everywhere And yet we need them all For medicines and food And keeping other bugs From eating all the wood Biodiversity A moth for you A sloth for me Biodiversity A goose for you A moose for me Biodiversity Don't let it fade away Don't let it fade away Don't let it fade away There are animals here.
And if we take out that animal bad things could happen.
If we lose the spider, for instance, the world could be overrun with insects because spiders actually eat insects.
So they actually help to keep the population down.
But if we lose the spider, the species of insects go up.
Everything usually has a connection.
WRIGHT: More than 160 years ago in the town of Concord, Massachusetts, a man named Henry David Thoreau fell in love with the wilderness.
[Bird calling.]
He spent his free hours walking in the woods, watching the trees and flowers change as the seasons came and departed.
When winter ended and spring arrived, he kept close watch over the meadows, and recorded in his journal the day the wildflowers first appeared.
Because of Thoreau's notes, we know that in 1852 the birdfoot violets bloomed on May 10th in Concord.
The pink lady slippers appeared on May 28th.
And the golden ragworts arrived on May 31st.
Thoreau couldn't have known that by now, springtime in Concord would be six degrees warmer.
His journals are now helping scientists find out how plants are responding to a warmer world.
And what are they discovering? The plants are flowering almost two weeks earlier than they did in Thoreau's time.
The warmer climate is shifting the spring.
Some flowers have not adjusted, and they've been left behind.
The lovely Canada Lily used to be very common in Concord, but now it's extremely rare.
In fact, more than one out of four of the plants Thoreau observed have seemingly disappeared.
Thoreau's records have helped us understand how we are changing our environment.
They are a letter from the past, a message that carries a warning.
I don't want everything to die and be gray and turn all this beautiful scenery into gray clouds, brown grass, gray stumps.
I don't want that to happen.
I think it's gotten to the point where you need to know the truth, because the adults clearly aren't doing enough to stop this, so we have to take it into our own hands.
FIRST GROUP: If they build it SECOND GROUP: We will block it! If they ship it We will stop it! If they build it We will block it! I don't know about you, but I love hiking on the trails around here.
I love picking the local berries.
And I love eating them even more.
If we don't say no to exploding oil trains coming through our cities, then all the tiny, tiny things that we take for granted won't be there anymore.
BOY, VOICE-OVER: Our biggest problem of my generation is trying to figure out how to live on this planet with everything else without destroying the planet.
One of the things I'm worried about here in Seattle is the oil trains being sent to the city and exploding, possibly.
Yes, it's theoretical that they could explode, except these trains have exploded in the past.
MAN: Oh, mon dieu! Oh, mon dieu! Oh, my God! ZOE, VOICE-OVER: There was a huge fire in Canada.
I saw the video.
There were, like, fireballs going a hundred feet in the air.
AJI: In a small town in Quebec, the oil train actually actually blew up, and it vaporized part of the downtown.
The thing is, like, a lot of people aren't aware of the danger.
Now they're gonna ship a total of 24 trains a week through Seattle.
You know, the train station goes right under the West Seattle bridge, and it goes right past the stadium.
ZOE: These companies are still allowed to send these exact same cars through this area.
It's terrible.
We need to stop this because it's the worst possible thing that could happen to Seattle right now.
When these oil trains explode, they can release a lot of carbon, for one, and the oil can destroy a lot of habitat and kill a lot of wildlife.
BOY: Our orca population is decreasing ridiculously fast.
Our salmon are dying, and oil spills are a big part of it.
Pollution is a big part of it.
BOY: But that's not just the only danger.
Even if it doesn't explode, it would be sent to Europe or Asia, and the oil there will be burned anyway.
And it's going to be sent straight up into the atmosphere to hurt climate change even more.
The only solution is that oil and gas should not be used as much.
This is going to eventually rip up our planet, and we've gotta stop.
MAN: Right now we're gonna have Aji and Adonis play their oil train song.
BOTH: Please don't send exploding trains Through our city, we don't AJI, VOICE-OVER: I wrote a song, and if you get one person to write a song and a lot of people hear about that song and then other people hear about that song and write a song, eventually you have a lot of people joining hands together, walking together, singing together.
AJI AND ADONIS: Think about the future generations AJI, VOICE-OVER: And I think if everybody found that place where they can do something for the planet, then we can change the world.
(lyrics on screen) MAN: Good morning! KIDS: Good morning.
Good morning.
We're gonna talk about climate change.
A lot of people think it's just about weather, but it turns out that climate change also means that different species of animals and plants are going to move around.
You know what this is, right? Do you know what that is? KIDS: Mosquito! Now, how many of you have been bitten by a mosquito? When I came back from Florida, like, ten mosquitoes bit me.
And I was like, itching.
Aughh! SIDDALL: Oh, my goodness.
- It was so Itchy! - Exactly.
It turns out, though, different species of mosquitoes like different kinds of temperatures.
And mosquitoes don't like it when it's too dry and they don't like it when it's CHILD: When it's wet.
Oh, they like the wet.
They love it when it's wet, because they lay their eggs - CHILD: In water.
- In water.
But if the climate changes, then you would expect the mosquitoes would move to stay where they like the temperature and where they like the wet.
Does that make sense? KIDS: Yeah.
SIDDALL: If the northern United States like where we are now become as warm as Louisiana and Georgia, what do you think is gonna happen? - KIDS: Mosquitoes! - SIDDALL: That's right.
Lots and lots of mosquitoes.
Come follow me.
I want to show you a very, very, very big animal.
How big are insects? Use your fingers and show me how big insects are.
- Small.
- Like, really small.
Right, right, right.
Now, how big are crabs, do you think? Uh, about that big.
Did you know that in very, very cold places in the ocean, arthropods like crabs can get really, really big? You guys want to look up? KIDS: Whoa! SIDDALL: It's allowed to get that big because the water is very cold, and cold water carries more oxygen.
Everybody take a deep breath.
[All inhale and exhale.]
You need oxygen.
What do you think is going to happen to these giant crabs if their water gets warm? They're going to get tiny, tiny, tiny.
Well, if they get tiny, that would be because they - KIDS: Adapted.
- Right.
What if they can't adapt? - Then they die.
- They go extinct.
SIDDALL: Right.
If the water gets warm, they could go extinct.
And so climate change is not just about the weather the way we think about it, but it's about all kinds of different things, including ocean temperatures and animals, and it's a very complicated issue.
It affects everything and everyone in the entire planet.
NEESON: Sea butterflies are tiny swimming snails about the size of a lentil.
They are found all over the planet, floating in the top layer of the sea.
Food for fish, birds, and whales, they help form the base of the ocean's food chain.
To build their shells, sea butterflies need calcium carbonate in the water around them.
But the burning of fossil fuels is making the oceans more acidic and reducing the amount of calcium in the water.
Scientists have observed sea butterfly shells dissolving in the southern oceans.
The loss of sea butterflies could threaten the ocean's entire food chain.
At this moment in time, the millions of years that it's taken for a species to rise up that are here today, for the mountains to look as they do, for ecosystems to become as balanced and in harmony as they are today we're unraveling that work of millions of years in mere seconds.
We need to make that change to turn around while we still can.
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