Saving My Tomorrow (2014) s01e02 Episode Script

Earth is our home.
We only have one home, and if we muss this one up I mean, where do we go next? Space travel hasn't been invented yet.
We can't travel through galaxies and say, "Hmm.
That's a nice planet to live on.
Let's go down.
" We can't do that.
We don't have another Earth right next to us just in case we lose this one.
We have to try to stop ourselves from mussing this one up.
Polar bears are at home in one of the coldest places on earth the Arctic, where temperatures routinely drop to 40 degrees below zero.
They roam the ice that floats on top of the Arctic Ocean, to hunt for seals.
Each summer, some of this ice melts and then returns again in the fall.
But with global warming, there's less sea ice every year.
Without solid ice to walk on, polar bears must swim miles from shore to find ice and food.
On the long journey, some get tired and drown.
Polar bears need to get as fat as possible in order to survive the leaner summer months when they're stuck on land with less to eat.
Studies show that some populations of polar bears weigh dramatically less than they did 30 years ago.
Because of the rate the ice is melting, scientists are worried about their future.
Welcome to the ornithology collections.
This is where we keep all of our research specimens.
Who knows what ornithology is? - What is it? - It means the study of birds.
Very good.
The study of birds.
These are what we call study skins.
These are used by scientists to study what the different species of birds are and where they live, when they breed, when they migrate, and things like that.
Now, how old do you think these are? Um, 15 or 10? Nope.
These birds were actually collected in 1888 in Borneo.
- 1888? - That's older than me.
That's, like, more than two years ago.
It is.
Nowadays we have many problems with birds going extinct in different parts of the world.
So these are really now like a historic document of where birds existed a hundred years ago.
Can you name some bird, at least two, that are already extinct? Sure.
In North America, within the last 100 years, we lost many, many species of birds.
The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, the Passenger Pigeon, the Carolina Parakeet, - and many others have gone extinct.
- Eagles.
Well, the eagle didn't go extinct.
It almost went extinct, but we luckily were able to save the bald eagle.
Whoa! Those are some big birds! The bald eagle is the symbol of the United States, and it was actually threatened with extinction because there was a chemical that people were using called DDT.
It was accumulating in the eagles' bodies, and when they laid their eggs and the eggshells get too thin, and they would break before they could hatch out.
So they were very, very endangered, but fortunately, because of conservation efforts, DDT was banned.
Gradually the chemical came out of the environment, and now they're coming back.
We can see breeding eagles not far from New York City, and that's because of the laws that have banned harmful chemicals from the environment.
What can we do now to help the birds? What can we do now to help the birds? Well, you can ask your parents to choose certain things that are much more what we call "sustainable" than others.
You can join various organizations that help conservation.
You know, if you're really serious, you can study biology at school, and you can get a career that involves conservation.
That would be a great thing.
Well, if you build a parking lot on a forest, you can be destroying the habitat of many animals, like a raccoon or a mouse or like, you can even destroy a river, which would connect to the ocean, which would destroy other things.
We do more damage to the earth than really we think we are doing.
Here in Colorado, people love to come here because of the open space, because of the mountains and the forests and the rivers and the clean air.
I've spent my life playing in the rivers and the creeks and catching frogs and snakes in the fields.
This is my world.
You know, this is where I've grown up.
This is my history.
When people refer to climate change, they always think of something that's far off, something that's not affecting us here, but I assure you that no matter where you are on this planet, we are all being affected by climate change.
Earth Guardians is a group of kids working through environmental activism to do stuff about the issues that are directly affecting our future every day.
We make signs, and we have fun, and we write speeches, and we go to rallies and protests.
I joined Earth Guardians because as the youth, we're the ones inheriting the world, so we should definitely be helping to fix it.
Anybody heard about the wildfires that are happening very bad in Colorado? That's definitely an issue that's really affecting us.
You know, we're losing millions of acres and forests here in Colorado.
We have the forest fires, and we have pine beetles killing off our forests, and, you know, forests create oxygen, so we're all breathing because of the trees and the forests.
What's happening pine beetles, which are a natural part of the ecosystem, they kill trees, and then, you know, they die off in the winter.
But, you know, what is happening now is because of the rising temperatures, we're having warmer winters.
Pine beetles aren't dying off as fast.
They're killing off hundreds of thousands more trees.
We've lost 70% of our lodgepole pine trees here in Colorado.
This tree is dead.
The needles have turned an orange-brown color.
So, what we're looking for in this tree is evidence of mountain pine beetle attack, and he's going to remove a small area of bark to see if we can find evidence of the bark beetles having laid their eggs and the larvae developing and feeding beneath the bark.
If you look closely, we see these small grooves.
We call them galleries, and they're very distinct to the mountain pine beetle.
Pine beetles are a natural part of the ecosystem.
You know, they're a key part to keeping our forests healthy, because, you know, we have to have forests die and fall down so new ones can grow, and it's part of the cycle.
But one thing that is not working is because of climate change, because of rising temperatures, they are going to higher elevations, killing off more trees.
So the pine beetle kills the trees.
The trees are dry then, they're dead, and they burn really easy, so then a forest fire starts on a tree that a pine beetle killed.
And then the forest fire spreads, releases carbon up into the atmosphere from all the dead trees.
Then it gets warmer, so the pine beetle lives longer.
It kills more trees.
The impact just gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
The last 3 summers, you know, I can remember clearly, very, very bad fires that, you know, really affected my friends, really affected my family.
You cannot deny that we are in an environmental crisis that has never happened like this before.
And so, you know, now when I go to visit some of the places that I love to go and, you know, I see that half of it has been killed off by pine beetles, it's really devastating because, you know, this is where I've grown up.
This is what I love, and when you see it threatened, it not only becomes what you love and what you know, but it becomes what you have to protect.
Global warming is pretty much like natural disasters, and natural disasters tornadoes, hurricanes Floods.
Floods.
Yeah.
The sea levels are rising, and they're starting floods, and if we don't prevent it, we could get serious amounts of floods, and we might not be able to survive after that.
"The wind of Hurricane Sandy shattered the glass windows.
" "Whoosh, whoosh, went the ferocious wind.
" "Hurricane Sandy burst into my house and crawled to my room.
" "It pounded through the windows.
It shook my house.
" "Trees and the power lines were smashed.
We were all in the dark.
" "The boardwalk was torn to shreds.
" "The trees ripped out of the dirt.
" Oh, my God! Our tree! "A lot of people thought that it was the end of Long Beach.
" "Suddenly the rain stopped.
Sandy was no longer a storm.
" "After it left, we had lots of garbage in front of our homes.
" "It destroyed so many houses and lives.
"I wish it was a dream.
I prayed to God that it was a dream, but it wasn't.
" I think that we would never forget about it, because, like, it happened, everybody saw it, and it was a disaster, and it was very emotional for a lot of people.
I know why it was so powerful.
Global warming causes a lot of storms.
The atmosphere is now like a huge, big cloud trapping the Earth in heat.
Like, icebergs are melting, and the sea level is getting higher.
That's also bad for places like Long Beach.
The water will keep rising, so that in a hundred years, Point Lookout might not be there anymore.
It probably will just be water.
And if Long Beach is gonna be flooding, what about the rest of the United States? I hope that we don't have a storm like that again.
In the United States, we've been using a lot of energy, so if we stop using so much, maybe it'll stop global warming.
This is the shifts shifts shifts beat.
What up, y'all? Uh! This G-6 from the Rich Kidzz you know it coming to you with "Weird Weather.
" Scientists say that Earth in the Goldilocks Zone because if this is the sun, this is Mercury, Venus, and this is Earth.
This area is the Goldilocks Zone.
This is Earth, in the Goldilocks Zone.
So it's not too hot, like Mercury or Venus, but it's not too cold, like little Pluto over here.
It makes it possible for everything to live.
Venus also has the runaway greenhouse effect, as we call it.
And if you think about a greenhouse, the glass traps in heat, but then the heat can't get out.
So this is happening to Earth, and it already happened to Venus.
The number 350 is a very important number in life.
350 is the safe level of carbon dioxide, and just recently, the level of carbon dioxide reached 400.
And if this keeps happening to Earth, we could all die.
Maybe we can study Venus and maybe we can find out how it possibly happened to Venus and how maybe we can stop it here on Earth.
Well, I'm really concerned about endangered animals right now, and I really love tigers right now, and I'm trying to save them.
The tiger is just so beautiful, and it's just such an amazing creature.
I'm so astonished by it.
Some animals, like the dodo, became extinct from hunting.
Hunting.
And we did that.
We made these animals become extinct, and if we do worse things, even we might become extinct.
Sea turtles have traveled the oceans for millions of years.
When dinosaurs walked the earth, they swam the sea.
Sea turtles are part of a healthy ocean, keeping in balance their food sources, such as jellyfish and seagrass, and in turn providing food to sharks and other top predators.
Sea turtles spend their entire life at sea with one exception: during nesting season, the female turtles return to the sandy beaches where they were born in order to lay their eggs.
Once they've deposited their eggs in holes they dig, they cover them with sand and go back to the ocean, leaving the eggs unattended.
Turtle hatchlings usually emerge at night and are drawn toward the ocean by the light of the moon.
Many of them don't make it.
Disoriented by manmade lights along the shore, they wander away from the beach onto nearby streets and sidewalks.
On average, only one hatchling in a thousand will make it to adulthood.
STOP was formed in 2007.
Our mission is to protect, preserve, and rescue sea turtles, so once in a while we'll get calls.
Uh, where are you? The turtle is alive or dead? Carefully walk up.
Tell me what you think.
OK.
She's alive.
That's good.
OK, so we'll be down there shortly.
No visible signs of trauma.
She may have ingested something.
Usually when turtles wash up, they are probably sick.
They usually don't survive if they're not rushed immediately to the Center.
OK.
Let's get her over into some light.
Teakahla, can you hand me that shirt? Go ahead and wrap her up.
You got her.
Come here, baby girl.
Let's head over towards the light so we can inspect her.
This is green sea turtle nest 907, and we are here tonight watching and waiting for a nesting hatchout.
100% disorientation so far.
Hatchlings going west-southwest towards 9th Street.
The dangers that hatchlings face are raccoons, foxes, cars, roads, and so we needed to start protecting them.
Got to work faster.
They're getting closer to the road.
We assist them to make sure that some of them won't get disoriented or get eaten by crabs on the way to the ocean.
They're really cute because it's really cool to see their little bodies scurry across the sand, and they look so happy.
My message for kids is get your parents involved.
Get your neighbors involved.
Get your friends involved.
It's not about protecting the whole environment.
It's about chipping in and doing your part about protecting the environment.
That's the most important thing.
Instead of being sad and scared and angry and just sitting there and wishing things were different, I use that I use those feelings to say, "I have to do something about this," and then I go out and do something.
You can't sit back and say, "Oh, other people are gonna take care of that.
I can't do anything.
" No.
Our government is based on the people, and if you are one of the people, you have to help.
Even you watching this right now you might be the one to change the world.