Saving My Tomorrow (2014) s01e04 Episode Script
Part 4
1 Saving My Tomorrow - Part 4 Mother Earth is it's life.
It has, like, all this moving, all this living, all this seeing.
It's very extraordinary.
You know, as you move around the museum, it's magic because there are these little windows on nature that show you some of the most magical places in this room from the oceans and coasts around the world.
Now this one's a coral reef and it shows an incredibly healthy, thriving coral reef.
But reefs like this, really healthy reefs like this are becoming increasingly rare.
I never thought coral was home to so many species of fish.
I never thought, like, so many fish swim around coral and live next to coral.
Yeah, coral really this set of animals, right, is this keystone of animal and plant communities along coasts and out in the oceans of the world.
Coral is always growing.
And when coral grows, it builds these stone bodies, right, these shells as it grows out, and that provides homes for animals that really rely on those coral.
Have you guys ever heard of an anemonefish? - People call them clown fishes.
- Oh, yeah.
Those fish have to have anemones that grow on top of corals to be able to live through their life.
Those anemones protect those fish, and that's one of hundreds of different relationships between different kinds of animals on a coral reef like this.
You know, it's pretty remarkable what corals can do.
But this gorgeous thing is becoming rare because of actual things, like climate change, that we're doing.
What are we doing that causes climate change to destroy the coral? A lot of what we do in the world requires resources oil, gas, and we need trees, we need timber.
When we burn that stuff, when we remove trees from the environment, we put a lot of carbon up into the atmosphere.
What people believe is that's warming the Earth.
And those chemicals in the air is actually also changing the chemistry of really what the world is mostly covered in, which is salt water, or ocean.
You guys have heard of ocean acidification? The acid content in the ocean is actually increasing.
And that acid can cause problems for coral.
Also, parts of the oceans are getting a lot warmer.
And what that does is it can cause what's called bleaching in coral, where they die and turn white.
The other thing that's sort of troubling is that does anybody here eat fish? I love fish.
And in some places, the easiest way to get fish is to drop bombs in the water because it stuns fish, they all float up to the surface, and you can pick them.
But what do you think those bombs do to the coral? Destroy them.
It can destroy them.
So all of those things together can really cause problems.
But you know what? Reefs can recover, if we let them.
It's sort of a matter of us giving things like coral a chance to do what they've always done, which is persist and diversify and provide the world with beauty and everything we need to live.
I love it under the water.
It's so beautiful, and you just get to see all this stuff that no one else gets to see.
It just, like, relaxes me.
Both my parents love the water and everything, so they decided to name me Coral.
Coral is just amazing.
It's not just rock, it's actually a living organism.
It's really important, though.
We need to protect them.
The coral reef is one of the most sensitive ecosystems out there and it's one of the first ones that's feeling the impacts of all the abuses that we've put on our planet.
What we're gonna be doing there's a long run of coral trees.
We're gonna run up that way, probably on the outside, pick a tree or two, maybe pull it down, clean it So we have a coral farm.
It's offshore.
It's in 30 feet of water and it's three miles out.
Our goal is to try to reestablish those thickets of coral, trying to teach other people how to do it and teach them the importance of coral reefs.
What we want to do is plant them on the ground with two or three places holding on.
So I'll get epoxy, put a little bit there, and I'll smoosh it down into the hole, then kind of squish the epoxy around each of those things and I should be done.
Is that clear? Mm-hmm.
- You think you can do that? We're planting coral and cleaning off some of the stuff that he uses to plant the coral on.
Planting that one piece of coral, it's going to survive.
Like, you know you made a difference in that animal's life.
I hope that all the kids after me are going to be able to still experience all the beautiful reefs and everything.
So, no matter where you are, you just need to try to help the environment.
One person can make a change, you know? Oh, yeah.
Get funky.
Here we go.
What is gonna happen then? Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Save something for our children! Dig ont! A lot of people think that climate change is something that isn't happening yet, like that we're saying it's going to happen, but it already is happening.
CO2 levels are already rising and making the Earth warmer and it's already a degree warmer than it used to be, and then that could turn into two degrees and that could then turn into three degrees, and then it could end up just causing more and more disasters 'cause when the temperature gets when the average temperature gets messed up, then just everything goes out of whack.
Related to the rabbit, the North American pika lives on mountain peaks high above the tree line in the Western United States and Canada.
It's known for its high-pitched squeaks.
During summ, pikas collect grasses and dry them in the sun, creating haystacks which they store for food for the winter.
The pika's round shape, thick fur coat, and high metabolism all make it sy for them to conserve heat, but also make them very vulnerable to warm weather.
They can easily overheat in temperatures above 78 degrees Fahrenheit.
Global warming is forcing the pika to migrate higher up in the mountains to keep cool.
One day, they may have no place to go.
Populations have declined all the way from the Rockies to the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Food for weasels and birds and other mountain animals, they also disperse seeds while building their haystacks.
Without the pika, the alpine ecosystem would not be the same.
One of the things about environmental problems is that they don't show up immediately.
So if you're throwing away tons of trash every year, for example, you don't see the landfills that it goes into and you don't see the oceans that it pollutes, the fish that it kills.
And so since you can't imdiately see the effects of environmental damage, a lot of people don't pay attention to it, I think.
We are going into our home state Kentucky.
Right there.
Virginia, Kentucky.
I consider Kentucky and Virginia fraternal twins because they both have the same state bird.
Virginia has the cardinal, Kentucky has the cardinal.
Hey, watch your step.
Yep, that's a MTR site.
Big one.
That is a MTR site.
MTR stands for mountaintop removal.
That's a coal seam.
Just where that they can get coal, they'll take off the whole mountain.
First they go in and log it and then they bring in explosives and blow up the mountain.
They'll mine it, and then they'll take it to the power plant and burn it, which then produces a whole lot of CO2.
Well, we're at a stream.
The further down we get downstream, you can see this right is polluted.
This is acid mine drainage.
See? It goes from here into this little stream.
Into this little stream, and then it keeps on flowing downstream.
It's not safe, because if I were to drink it, I'd end up being sick or die.
I don't think MTR is good.
Not even one bit.
The reason we're fighting MTR is because the mountains are our home.
All of Appalachia's our home.
There is hope to save to save those mountains that haven't been touched.
But to the coal companies, that MTR site right there is just another paycheck.
Oh, no Oh, whoa Oh, and more.
It's hard to say whether we actually do anything good for the Earth because it seems to me like what we do is we come and we cut down the trees and we blow up the mountains and we, um, pollute the rivers.
I think that if we just change our mind set and we realize that we have no right to take things from the Earth because the Earth takes care of us.
And it's like, don't bite the han that feeds you.
It's a grim time, but, you know, it's still a beautiful world, and if everybody pitches in, we can definitely stop or cushion the changes that'll happen.
Hi, my name's Sienna, and I live in northern New Mexico in the high mountain desert.
Since we live up here, we have to live differently than people do in the city.
Weave to find a different way to get electricity Which means we don't use these things, power lines.
We use these things.
They're called solar panels! We track them to the sun, which means when the sun's over there we point them over there.
We have to recycle our water.
We catch all the rainwater in these rain gutters that flow down into our barrels, and we water our plants with the water.
It's raining.
During the winter, we have to heat our house with wood in a wood stove, but we also have south-facing windows which lets in the winter sun.
To my left is our clothesline because we don't have a dryer.
Ta-da, it's the bathroom! We don't have a toilet.
Instead, we have an outhouse.
When you come outside during the night, you get to look at the stars and you get to kinda hang out with some wildlife out here.
Not only do we recycle plastic, metal, and glass, but we also compost.
We don't throw away all our food and waste it.
Instead we use it by putting it in the composter.
We live the way we live just because it makes sense.
We save money and we also, um, help contribute a little bit to saving the world.
I love living here! It's amazing! The Earth, I know a little bit about it.
It's not too close to the sun, not too far.
We have an atmosphere keeping the air in.
And we have water.
We're the only planet that has water.
That's why we're called the blue planet, because we have so much water.
Life in the ocean is hard because people are polluting it, putting all this acid in there, and we need to make sure it doesn't happen again.
- Hello.
- Hi.
Come on in.
So, today we're gonna talk about these snails.
There's three kinds on the table.
One is the cone snail, the one over there is terebrid, and the one on the other end is a turrid.
When you think of snails, what do you think of? - Slimy.
- Slimy, uh-huh.
- Slow.
- Slow.
Well, these snails that I work with are neither slimy they are a little bit slow when they're moving, but they can be very fast when they're hunting.
So I'm gonna show you a video of how they hunt.
The snail is hidden under the sand.
That orange thing is like a tongue.
On the tip of its tongue, it has a harpoon which is filled with venom and it's gonna harpoon the fish.
Whoa! And then now the snail is gonna rise up out of the sand and it's gonna swallow the fish whole.
Are there a lot of these around the world? There are a lot of them all around the world.
Are they born with the shell? Most of the snails are born with shells.
Not all of them.
When they start off, they're just a little tiny, tiny, tiny top of the shell.
And then as the shell starts to grow, it starts to build more and more and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.
One other thing we've found that this snail venom does is that it prevents the fish from feeling pain.
Why is that important? 'Cause then if the fish would be feeling pain, it would probably get like, it would shake a lot and act really crazy.
Exactly.
So in shutting down the pain really quickly, the fish doesn't realize how much danger its in.
The snail's venom is really fast-acting, and so we use the snail's venom to help us find new kinds of medicines.
For example, the drug that's being used to treat chronic pain in HIV and cancer patients comes from the venom of this snail.
Couldn't you use it for anesthesia? Yes, that's one of the uses, too.
So we're looking for novel anesthetics.
And so it's important for us that the coral reefs stay alive because if we want to keep studying these shells, then we have to keep their habitat alive, right? Basically, if we do not stop burning fossil fuels, the planet's going to be impossible to save for us.
And we don't really have another planet to go to.
This is our planet.
We have to protect it.
So if we start not only recycling, but doing big changes we need bigger changes than recycling.
There's hope, but only if people would want to change their ways of energy.
That is the only hope.
Nonrenewable energy is energy that you can't use again.
Like once you burn coal, it's gone.
Renewable energy is like solar power, wind power, hydropower.
Well, there's the solar cells, and they absorb the sun's energy and then they make it into electricity.
The same with wind power, except they use the wind turbines and the wind blows the wind turbines to make energy.
Let's say there's a running river and you put a dam there.
If you, like, cut a hole in it or put a turbine there, the water will rush through and spin the turbine.
If you attach the turbine to a generator, it will make electricity.
So what we should do is use science to make solar power more powerful and wind energy more powerful, so eventually we can create electricity easier, faster, and cheaper.
And I think if enough people learn to think like that, we could change the world.
Shine, shine, shine, shine, shine Shine, shine, shine, shine, shine Shine, shine, shine I like planet Earth because it's our home planet and it's the only planet that has water, oxygen, and air.
Please keep our planet clean and green.
Tip one.
Recycle more.
You never know what you can't reuse.
I think that grown-ups should replace buildings with big trees.
Batteries have acid inside.
Lemons and limes and potatoes have them, too.
These lemons are lighting up the LED light that's inside there.
This is the biodigester that we'd be incorporating in this school.
The food goes in, the bacteria break it down and create methane, and the methane goes up through the pipe, gets brushed and is burned in the kitchen, which then produces food, which is put back into the biodigester.
If we don't take care of the Earth, the Earth might not be able to take care of us.
It has, like, all this moving, all this living, all this seeing.
It's very extraordinary.
You know, as you move around the museum, it's magic because there are these little windows on nature that show you some of the most magical places in this room from the oceans and coasts around the world.
Now this one's a coral reef and it shows an incredibly healthy, thriving coral reef.
But reefs like this, really healthy reefs like this are becoming increasingly rare.
I never thought coral was home to so many species of fish.
I never thought, like, so many fish swim around coral and live next to coral.
Yeah, coral really this set of animals, right, is this keystone of animal and plant communities along coasts and out in the oceans of the world.
Coral is always growing.
And when coral grows, it builds these stone bodies, right, these shells as it grows out, and that provides homes for animals that really rely on those coral.
Have you guys ever heard of an anemonefish? - People call them clown fishes.
- Oh, yeah.
Those fish have to have anemones that grow on top of corals to be able to live through their life.
Those anemones protect those fish, and that's one of hundreds of different relationships between different kinds of animals on a coral reef like this.
You know, it's pretty remarkable what corals can do.
But this gorgeous thing is becoming rare because of actual things, like climate change, that we're doing.
What are we doing that causes climate change to destroy the coral? A lot of what we do in the world requires resources oil, gas, and we need trees, we need timber.
When we burn that stuff, when we remove trees from the environment, we put a lot of carbon up into the atmosphere.
What people believe is that's warming the Earth.
And those chemicals in the air is actually also changing the chemistry of really what the world is mostly covered in, which is salt water, or ocean.
You guys have heard of ocean acidification? The acid content in the ocean is actually increasing.
And that acid can cause problems for coral.
Also, parts of the oceans are getting a lot warmer.
And what that does is it can cause what's called bleaching in coral, where they die and turn white.
The other thing that's sort of troubling is that does anybody here eat fish? I love fish.
And in some places, the easiest way to get fish is to drop bombs in the water because it stuns fish, they all float up to the surface, and you can pick them.
But what do you think those bombs do to the coral? Destroy them.
It can destroy them.
So all of those things together can really cause problems.
But you know what? Reefs can recover, if we let them.
It's sort of a matter of us giving things like coral a chance to do what they've always done, which is persist and diversify and provide the world with beauty and everything we need to live.
I love it under the water.
It's so beautiful, and you just get to see all this stuff that no one else gets to see.
It just, like, relaxes me.
Both my parents love the water and everything, so they decided to name me Coral.
Coral is just amazing.
It's not just rock, it's actually a living organism.
It's really important, though.
We need to protect them.
The coral reef is one of the most sensitive ecosystems out there and it's one of the first ones that's feeling the impacts of all the abuses that we've put on our planet.
What we're gonna be doing there's a long run of coral trees.
We're gonna run up that way, probably on the outside, pick a tree or two, maybe pull it down, clean it So we have a coral farm.
It's offshore.
It's in 30 feet of water and it's three miles out.
Our goal is to try to reestablish those thickets of coral, trying to teach other people how to do it and teach them the importance of coral reefs.
What we want to do is plant them on the ground with two or three places holding on.
So I'll get epoxy, put a little bit there, and I'll smoosh it down into the hole, then kind of squish the epoxy around each of those things and I should be done.
Is that clear? Mm-hmm.
- You think you can do that? We're planting coral and cleaning off some of the stuff that he uses to plant the coral on.
Planting that one piece of coral, it's going to survive.
Like, you know you made a difference in that animal's life.
I hope that all the kids after me are going to be able to still experience all the beautiful reefs and everything.
So, no matter where you are, you just need to try to help the environment.
One person can make a change, you know? Oh, yeah.
Get funky.
Here we go.
What is gonna happen then? Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh Save something for our children! Dig ont! A lot of people think that climate change is something that isn't happening yet, like that we're saying it's going to happen, but it already is happening.
CO2 levels are already rising and making the Earth warmer and it's already a degree warmer than it used to be, and then that could turn into two degrees and that could then turn into three degrees, and then it could end up just causing more and more disasters 'cause when the temperature gets when the average temperature gets messed up, then just everything goes out of whack.
Related to the rabbit, the North American pika lives on mountain peaks high above the tree line in the Western United States and Canada.
It's known for its high-pitched squeaks.
During summ, pikas collect grasses and dry them in the sun, creating haystacks which they store for food for the winter.
The pika's round shape, thick fur coat, and high metabolism all make it sy for them to conserve heat, but also make them very vulnerable to warm weather.
They can easily overheat in temperatures above 78 degrees Fahrenheit.
Global warming is forcing the pika to migrate higher up in the mountains to keep cool.
One day, they may have no place to go.
Populations have declined all the way from the Rockies to the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Food for weasels and birds and other mountain animals, they also disperse seeds while building their haystacks.
Without the pika, the alpine ecosystem would not be the same.
One of the things about environmental problems is that they don't show up immediately.
So if you're throwing away tons of trash every year, for example, you don't see the landfills that it goes into and you don't see the oceans that it pollutes, the fish that it kills.
And so since you can't imdiately see the effects of environmental damage, a lot of people don't pay attention to it, I think.
We are going into our home state Kentucky.
Right there.
Virginia, Kentucky.
I consider Kentucky and Virginia fraternal twins because they both have the same state bird.
Virginia has the cardinal, Kentucky has the cardinal.
Hey, watch your step.
Yep, that's a MTR site.
Big one.
That is a MTR site.
MTR stands for mountaintop removal.
That's a coal seam.
Just where that they can get coal, they'll take off the whole mountain.
First they go in and log it and then they bring in explosives and blow up the mountain.
They'll mine it, and then they'll take it to the power plant and burn it, which then produces a whole lot of CO2.
Well, we're at a stream.
The further down we get downstream, you can see this right is polluted.
This is acid mine drainage.
See? It goes from here into this little stream.
Into this little stream, and then it keeps on flowing downstream.
It's not safe, because if I were to drink it, I'd end up being sick or die.
I don't think MTR is good.
Not even one bit.
The reason we're fighting MTR is because the mountains are our home.
All of Appalachia's our home.
There is hope to save to save those mountains that haven't been touched.
But to the coal companies, that MTR site right there is just another paycheck.
Oh, no Oh, whoa Oh, and more.
It's hard to say whether we actually do anything good for the Earth because it seems to me like what we do is we come and we cut down the trees and we blow up the mountains and we, um, pollute the rivers.
I think that if we just change our mind set and we realize that we have no right to take things from the Earth because the Earth takes care of us.
And it's like, don't bite the han that feeds you.
It's a grim time, but, you know, it's still a beautiful world, and if everybody pitches in, we can definitely stop or cushion the changes that'll happen.
Hi, my name's Sienna, and I live in northern New Mexico in the high mountain desert.
Since we live up here, we have to live differently than people do in the city.
Weave to find a different way to get electricity Which means we don't use these things, power lines.
We use these things.
They're called solar panels! We track them to the sun, which means when the sun's over there we point them over there.
We have to recycle our water.
We catch all the rainwater in these rain gutters that flow down into our barrels, and we water our plants with the water.
It's raining.
During the winter, we have to heat our house with wood in a wood stove, but we also have south-facing windows which lets in the winter sun.
To my left is our clothesline because we don't have a dryer.
Ta-da, it's the bathroom! We don't have a toilet.
Instead, we have an outhouse.
When you come outside during the night, you get to look at the stars and you get to kinda hang out with some wildlife out here.
Not only do we recycle plastic, metal, and glass, but we also compost.
We don't throw away all our food and waste it.
Instead we use it by putting it in the composter.
We live the way we live just because it makes sense.
We save money and we also, um, help contribute a little bit to saving the world.
I love living here! It's amazing! The Earth, I know a little bit about it.
It's not too close to the sun, not too far.
We have an atmosphere keeping the air in.
And we have water.
We're the only planet that has water.
That's why we're called the blue planet, because we have so much water.
Life in the ocean is hard because people are polluting it, putting all this acid in there, and we need to make sure it doesn't happen again.
- Hello.
- Hi.
Come on in.
So, today we're gonna talk about these snails.
There's three kinds on the table.
One is the cone snail, the one over there is terebrid, and the one on the other end is a turrid.
When you think of snails, what do you think of? - Slimy.
- Slimy, uh-huh.
- Slow.
- Slow.
Well, these snails that I work with are neither slimy they are a little bit slow when they're moving, but they can be very fast when they're hunting.
So I'm gonna show you a video of how they hunt.
The snail is hidden under the sand.
That orange thing is like a tongue.
On the tip of its tongue, it has a harpoon which is filled with venom and it's gonna harpoon the fish.
Whoa! And then now the snail is gonna rise up out of the sand and it's gonna swallow the fish whole.
Are there a lot of these around the world? There are a lot of them all around the world.
Are they born with the shell? Most of the snails are born with shells.
Not all of them.
When they start off, they're just a little tiny, tiny, tiny top of the shell.
And then as the shell starts to grow, it starts to build more and more and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.
One other thing we've found that this snail venom does is that it prevents the fish from feeling pain.
Why is that important? 'Cause then if the fish would be feeling pain, it would probably get like, it would shake a lot and act really crazy.
Exactly.
So in shutting down the pain really quickly, the fish doesn't realize how much danger its in.
The snail's venom is really fast-acting, and so we use the snail's venom to help us find new kinds of medicines.
For example, the drug that's being used to treat chronic pain in HIV and cancer patients comes from the venom of this snail.
Couldn't you use it for anesthesia? Yes, that's one of the uses, too.
So we're looking for novel anesthetics.
And so it's important for us that the coral reefs stay alive because if we want to keep studying these shells, then we have to keep their habitat alive, right? Basically, if we do not stop burning fossil fuels, the planet's going to be impossible to save for us.
And we don't really have another planet to go to.
This is our planet.
We have to protect it.
So if we start not only recycling, but doing big changes we need bigger changes than recycling.
There's hope, but only if people would want to change their ways of energy.
That is the only hope.
Nonrenewable energy is energy that you can't use again.
Like once you burn coal, it's gone.
Renewable energy is like solar power, wind power, hydropower.
Well, there's the solar cells, and they absorb the sun's energy and then they make it into electricity.
The same with wind power, except they use the wind turbines and the wind blows the wind turbines to make energy.
Let's say there's a running river and you put a dam there.
If you, like, cut a hole in it or put a turbine there, the water will rush through and spin the turbine.
If you attach the turbine to a generator, it will make electricity.
So what we should do is use science to make solar power more powerful and wind energy more powerful, so eventually we can create electricity easier, faster, and cheaper.
And I think if enough people learn to think like that, we could change the world.
Shine, shine, shine, shine, shine Shine, shine, shine, shine, shine Shine, shine, shine I like planet Earth because it's our home planet and it's the only planet that has water, oxygen, and air.
Please keep our planet clean and green.
Tip one.
Recycle more.
You never know what you can't reuse.
I think that grown-ups should replace buildings with big trees.
Batteries have acid inside.
Lemons and limes and potatoes have them, too.
These lemons are lighting up the LED light that's inside there.
This is the biodigester that we'd be incorporating in this school.
The food goes in, the bacteria break it down and create methane, and the methane goes up through the pipe, gets brushed and is burned in the kitchen, which then produces food, which is put back into the biodigester.
If we don't take care of the Earth, the Earth might not be able to take care of us.