All language subtitles for Earth.2100.2009.720p.BluRay.H264.AAC-RARBG

(Lucy, Narrator) In my life, I've seen
New York City under full quarantine.

The Midwest, overrun,
devastated by pests.

Plagues sweep across California.

And then what happened next was
something none of us saw coming.

It became a race against time
to save our future,

to even have a future.

It's the year 21 00 and I survived.

(VO) To change the future,
first you have to imagine it.

'Earth 21 00"

starts now.

The idea that within this century,
perhaps in your lifetime,

our civilization could lie in ruins
seems unbelievable.

But according to some of
the world's leading minds,

that's not just a worst-case scenario,
it's a real possibility.

Good evening, I'm Bob Woodruff.

Over the next two hours,
we'll take you on a journey into a world

that could await us and our children .

370,000 babies will be born today.

And we've taken the liberty
of creating one more,

a fictional character we're calling Lucy,
who will be our guide through this century.

Her life story is not a prediction
about what will happen ,

but what might happen.

(Lucy) This once glorious city,
whose lights at night could be seen for miles,

empty now.

Its towering skyscrapers,
once a testament to our ingenuity,

now stand as crumbling monuments
to our demise.

Maybe only artists can grasp what that
kind of future really holds for us.

It's perhaps in the area that we
think of today as science fiction ,

but that could be a very real
future for the planet.

A hundred years from now,
if New York is abandoned,

I can imagine some advanced creatures,

maybe humans, maybe extraterrestrials,

looking at New York and saying,

those ignorant people, how on Earth could
they have ever expected to survive?

(Lucy) I can ask myself what happened,

but where do I begin?

With the droughts,
the famines, the plague?

It began long before all that.

I lived through it all.

My story is everyone's story,

the story of the last century.

(Lucy) I was born June 2nd, 2009.

Civilization was at a crossroads.

We were in a race for our future.

(Barack Obama) Today, I say to you that the
challenges we face are real.

They are serious and they are many.

(VO) The temperature is
expected to keep going up.

(VO)The stock market plunged.

(VO) Douglas County will
run out of drinking water.

(Barack Obama) They will not be met easily
or in a short span of time.

(VO) Sixth grader came down with
suspected swine flu on Wednesday.

Energy, climate, food ,
population , economic pressures,

any one of these challenges might
be very serious in itself.

But because they're happening
all simultaneously,

it's going to be very difficult
for our governments to cope.

When I look at the next century,
I feel it's up for grabs.

- (VO) Raising sea levels. . .
- Catastrophic weather.

- Ten-year drought. . .
- It's scary.

These are things that are happening today.

The time for action is now.

(Lucy) The world had never
known such uncertainty.

We were used to having what we
wanted and doing what we wanted.

The analogy that I would draw is
someone looking at their bank account

and week after week, they're withdrawing
money and they're enjoying the good life.

If they would bother to read the statements,

they would see that the bank account
is dropping $900, $800, $700, $600.

And at that rate you know that
another six months of the good life

is not gonna be a good life anymore.

We've acted as though we were
independent of the environment.

We burned fossil fuels.

We've overused our renewable resources

in the belief that we could do that forever.

People are complaining about the
economic crisis we have right now.

You haven't seen nothing yet.

You know, if we continue down this
suicidal pathway that we're on ,

where we basically turn living stuff into
dead stuff and call that economic growth ,

this will look like the good old days.

(Lucy) Although the world I was born into was
running out of so much, water, oil, land,

I remember a loving family,
a big house, green lawn,

more water than we knew what to do with.

My parents must have
known what was happening.

We had a compact car and recycled.

And it wasn't just us.

Smart, imaginative people everywhere
were working furiously on solutions.

Our government was pouring
money into alternative energy.

It seemed like everyone was
growing their own vegetable garden.

Windmills were sprouting up all over.

People were beginning to understand.

But the clock was running out, and
nature was always one step ahead.

Flowers are blooming earlier

and trees are leafing earlier.

Birds are coming back
from migration much earlier.

If you were to pull back from the Earth ,
what you would see is

sort of a refugee movement, if you will .

And species are moving their ranges
farther north to get to cool,

from south to north, and from the
valleys up to the mountain tops.

(Lucy) Of course, as a child,
I didn't notice these things,

having nothing to compare it to.

I was a little girl
enchanted by my small world.

Until one summer, thousands, maybe millions,
of dragonflies showed up out of nowhere.

They were delicate and beautiful
and I put one in a jar.

My mother was puzzled
and looked them up.

They were supposed to be in Cuba,
not Miami.

It was not until much later that I realized
they were a sign of what was to come.

It's 201 5, six short years from now,

and the best-laid plans are getting underway.

A wave farm off Scotland is
harnessing the ocean's energy.

Vatican City has gone totally solar.

And here in America, cars are
running cleaner and more efficiently.

Still , we cling to that old habit, oil,

and it's getting harder
and more expensive to find .

(VO) From coast to coast,

motorists are searching for relief from
soaring gas prices in California. . .

We could see a doubling or tripling of
real oil prices, that's after inflation .

We're running out of oil and
we've created a society,

the American way of life is what we call it,

based on the assumption that
oil will be plentiful forever.

The large spread out suburbs
that we've grown accustomed to,

the strip malls,

the big box stores with
their enormous parking lots around them,

all of those have been made possible
because we've had cheap gasoline,

and as energy becomes much more expensive,
you'll see that those areas become

less desirable places to live.

(Lucy) The first time I moved, I was six.

A lot of people were
leaving the suburbs for the city.

There were new jobs,
and you didn't need a car for everything.

My dad was going to work on the
new streetcar system in Miami.

And my mother told me we were going to live
on the top floor of an apartment building.

She said we'd see
the palm trees below us.

I was excited,
but also a little sad to leave.

(VO) As the price of oil goes up,

it will ripple through every
part of the global economy.

(Reporter) In Washington today, protesters
demanded an end to rising food prices.

Our agriculture system is almost
wholly dependent on cheap oil .

Tremendous amounts of diesel fuel that
are used in planting and harvesting

and then moving the stuff,
all these vast distances.

By 201 5 in the United States,
add about 20 million people to the population

and then just play out what that
does to consumption patterns.

I mean, the, the number of
people that we've got to feed.

There's just basically this slow,
creeping tension for natural resources.

(VO) As the American way of life
becomes increasingly unsustainable,

the rest of the world
will be trying to catch up.

The Chinese like cars.

And they like big cars.

You have 1 4,000 cars out
onto China's roads daily.

Incomes are rising really rapidly.

They're moving into meat-based diets.

You need 1 0 pounds of grain
to get one pound of meat.

There is simply no way that the rest of the
world can start eating meat the way we do.

(VO) If everyone in the world consumed
as much as the average American,

it would take the resources of four Earths
to support the planet's population,

which raises the question,

should the rest of the world consume less,
or should we?

American habits, though,
are hard to break.

We in the US have gotten used
to the idea that we're somehow

immune to natural limits and it's the
other people who are going to suffer.

(Reporter) Good morning, Miami.

The summer of 201 5 is on track to
become one of the hottest in history.

Temperatures are expected
to be in the triple digits.

(Lucy) My mother and I were waiting for gas.

The line went around the block
and then some.

Nothing new.

But this time, the line had
stopped moving altogether.

A man who worked at the gas
station came out holding a sign.

People started yelling
and they got out of their cars

and started moving towards him.

My mother got us out of there fast.

(Vidographer, Male) I've been
staking out an area that's been

hit hard recently by gas snatchers.

Look at him, he gets out,
walks right up to the car.

Wow.

Look at this,
right in the middle of the day.

There's cars going by, and these guys are -

siphoning gas out of someone's car.

(Reporter) In the face of mounting protests
over rising gas and food prices,

Congress today approved a plan
to fund the construction of

40 new coal-fired power plants
over the next five years.

(Lucy)The country took the easy way out.

Coal was once again touted
as our so-called salvation.

But the more coal we burned,
the faster our planet warmed.

You get the picture.

We're spewing more carbon , more methane,

more nitrous oxide into the atmosphere.

All the bad things of
climate change are coming true.

(Lucy) And most people were just going
along with their everyday lives

as if nothing had changed.

And until we have a crisis of some kind ,

I don't think we're going to be motivated to
wake up and say, okay, now we have to change.

Sometimes it takes a big shock to get people,

you know, out of the inertia that,
that, that's built into the system.

(Reporter) They're calling
it the storm of the century,

Hurricane Linda packing Category 5 winds.

(Lucy) Big storms weren't unusual.

But this one was bigger than the others.

And it was headed for Miami.

(Reporter) All coastal regions
are being evacuated.

This storm makes landfall, we're
going to see a tremendous storm surge.

(Lucy) My mother was a nurse

and she wouldn't leave until all the
sick were evacuated from the hospital.

My father was afraid we
wouldn't get out in time.

I was afraid too.

(Reporter) Those who make the decision not to
evacuate face life threatening danger,

between the howling winds
and those giant surging waves.

Miami is a very scary
place to be right now.

(Bob Woodruff) 201 5 is only six years away,

but many experts say that if the
world has not reached an agreement

to massively reduce greenhouse gases by then,

we could pass the point of no return.

If we're still dragging our feet in 201 5,

it really becomes almost
impossible for the world to avert

a degree of climate change that we
simply will not be able to manage.

The longer we wait without addressing
these challenges in an aggressive way,

the more likely it is we're going
to end up with really bad outcomes.

(Repoter) This morning, in the aftermath
of Hurricane Linda,

we are seeing the first images
of what remains of Miami.

(Reporter) Neighboring communities have been
overwhelmed

by hundreds of thousands of
evacuees seeking refuge.

(Lucy) The evacuation center was as
big as an airplane hangar.

Maybe it was an airplane hangar.

And so jammed with people,
it was hard to move.

It was hot.

It was noisy.

We were there three weeks.

There was nowhere for us to go.

Nowhere for anybody to go.

We watched the news on TV.

I was only six, but it looked to me
like the whole world was in trouble.

(Repoter,) Some 250,000 Bangladeshi refugees
fleeing from last month's devastating cyclone

are massing on the Indian border.

(Reporter, Male) Thousands riot as China faces
its worst wheat shortages in a decade,

the result of seemingly endless drought.

(Reporter, Female) World leaders are gathering
in Washington, DC

to attend an emergency global summit meeting.

(Reporter) Hopes are high that the world might
finally reach an historic climate agreement.

This is the first time the whole
planet is in that kind of a crisis

and the whole planet has to join in
meeting a crisis of epical proportions.

(Bob Woodruff) In 2008, the Center for
the New American Security,

a Washington think tank,
staged an elaborate game.

The goal was to simulate a
global summit on climate change.

The year is 201 5.

The context for the
game is Lucy's context.

Miami has been devastated by a hurricane,

and Bangladesh ravaged by a cyclone.

The people who are playing
the roles of global leaders

are in fact high level policymakers
from around the world.

(John Podesta) Let me be very clear,
our time is running out.

(Bob Woodruff) John Podesta,
President Obama's transition chief,

is playing the role of UN Secretary General.

Indeed today, in October of
201 5, no country, no city

is exempt from the ravages of climate
change as we saw so tragically

with the Category 5 hurricane that hit Miami.

(Bob Woodruff) In the game, the Secretary
General has asked for a 30% reduction

in emissions by 2025.

The US team holds a
closed-door strategy session.

It's very important for us to strike
that very positive leadership tone

right out of the box.

We have to be much faster and more
serious about emission reductions.

We need to do 30%.

- By 2025?
- By 2025.

(Woodruff) But there's a strong disagreement
about whether the American public

would be willing to make
that kind of sacrifice.

Basically, the odds of a 30% reduction i n
the Un ited States i n 1 0 years is zero.

The world is goi ng to hel l i n a
hand basket and we're saying ,

gee , can we stretch th is out?

(Woodruff) Even if the United States were
willing to make these reductions,

this is a global crisis
that needs global action .

The US calls a meeting with China.

We have an i nherent responsi bi lity
to our people to take action .

In 201 5, China and India are in fact
projected to account for more than 30%

of the world's carbon emissions.

But in the simulation,
they're unwilling to agree to a treaty

they feel limits their economic growth.

For both countries,
the issue is fairness.

The Western countries went through a very
energy intensive development process,

became rich by burning coal and burning oil.

Can countries like India and China do it

without burning as much
fossil fuel as the West?

We have to go greener.

You have the technology
and you have the capital

and you're prepared to help
us grow on a greener path.

China and India say they will agree
to the cuts in greenhouse gas emissions

only if the West hands over the
technology needed to do so.

China would wish to get the technology for the
third generation of nuclear power plants.

But Europe and the US refuse.

The technology belongs to private companies.

Instead, they offer to help pay the
costs of switching to cleaner energy.

You do the emissions reduction,

and we give the money for the
emissions reduction that you've done.

If - somebody, you know, you have the
money but you do not have the technology,

and then you cannot reduce any emissions.

The whole summit hinges on whether
they can come to an understanding.

So we're not putting any pressures.

We're just offering,
and I think it's a good offer.

We do not accept the offer.

(Repoter) The planet summit broke down today
when China and India refused to agree

to cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

Ultimately, all the teams fell short.

That perhaps is the, the saddest
element coming out of this,

which is the pace of change just
doesn't seem to be in keeping

with the magnitude of the challenge.

(Bob Woodruff) Scientists say that if this is
how our leaders respond in 201 5,

the entire planet will be at risk.

If we continue on the
business-as-usual trajectory,

there will be a tipping
point that we cannot avert.

We will indeed drive
the car over the cliff.

(Lucy) There was a story my
mother once told me I'll never forget.

You put a frog in a pot of
cold water and turn the heat on.

The water warms so gradually
that the frog doesn't notice.

It never realizes the
precise moment it's cooked.

The frog will sit there because it's not able
to detect the small changes in temperature

that are making his life
increasingly dangerous.

And we're in the
same sort of situation.

We're so adaptable in our
evolution as a species,

an adaptability that's allowed us to really,

in a sense, conquer nature
and conquer the world.

But at this point, that adaptability is
actually a real threat to our existence.

(Lucy) As I grew up, it became increasingly
clear that we were the frogs.

After our home was destroyed by the hurricane,

my family moved to San Diego.

Maybe because it was as far
away from Miami as we could get.

(Repoter, Female) Finally, this evening,
saving our seas.

The federal government has released
a major assessment on the oceans.

The news is not good.

It's going to be tough
to drive this summer.

Gas prices are
expected to soar even higher.

(Reporter, Male) Increased heat
speeds up evaporation cycles.

In fact, these changes
can be seen worldwide...

Scientists report from the Arctic the
tundra is thawing faster than expected.

(Reporter, Female) The United Nations
announced today

that there are now eight billion people
living on Earth.

(Lucy) It's amazing what you can
come to take for normal.

By the time I was in my 20s,

shortages and higher prices were
just a fact of everyday life.

After high school,
I decided to train as an EMT.

I wanted to be useful, and this
seemed the perfect kind of work.

So what else will be normal in 2030?

One thing, it will be warmer, about one
and a half degrees Fahrenheit warmer.

Enough to dramatically alter the
planet's weather and rainfall.

Canada and Siberia, for example,
will be wetter and hotter.

But for much of the world,
rain will be scarce.

And so will its most basic need, water.

By 2030, two-thirds of the world's
population will be under water stress.

(Bob Woodruff) In Asia, for example,
glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau

act as a giant reservoir
for billions of people.

All over the world, as the climate warms,

mountain glaciers are melting
at faster and faster rates.

By 2030, 80% of
those glaciers may be gone.

If the glaciers disappear, much of the
food supply will disappear, as well.

These glaciers provide stream flow in
the summer during the dry months

that you can use to irrigate your crops.

When those glaciers are gone,
you've got a massive drought situation.

In 2030, Africa could be
facing extreme and widespread drought.

Rainfall levels are gonna continue
to drop over time in Africa,

especially in these fragile
regions, like the Sahel.

When the rains fail and people
don't have enough to eat,

they often turn to desperate means to survive.

(Bob Woodruff) And in the US in 2030,
many of the massive reservoirs

fed by the Colorado River will be drying up.

We talk about the Southwest moving into drought

as, as a way to, to describe
what's gonna happen.

But technically, the Southwest,
it's not gonna be in drought,

it's gonna become a desert.

(Lucy) In San Diego,
they were ahead of the game.

In 2009, they had started
building huge desalination plants.

It took 20 years and cost
billions of dollars, but it worked.

The massive plants on the ocean
turned saltwater into fresh,

and the city's water supply was restored.

400 miles inland, though,
they were running out.

And no one had enough money
to build a pipe that long.

So now, we're here rationing water

I mean, people who are in Las Vegas
are starting to totally panic.

People in Phoenix are
starting to panic, too.

When I turn on my tap this morning,
this is what I get out of my tap.

Something that will catch people's
attention is the first city,

rich city in the world,
that just runs out of water.

(Repoter, Female) Three days
after Tucson's taps ran dry,

its parched residents finally got relief when
a convoy of National Guard tanker trucks

carrying one million gallons
of water finally arrived.

Anxious residents lined
up to get their allotment.

(Lucy) What happened there
scared the whole country.

In San Diego, when the private
companies who desalinated our water

used Tucson as an excuse and
jacked up our water prices,

I decided enough was enough.

I went to a rally.

A man standing next to me
saw me yelling and said,

"I'm glad you're on our side."

To make a short story even shorter,

we fell in love on the spot.

Two months later,
Josh and I were married.

A year later, our daughter, Molly, was born,
with a head full of red hair.

And the desalination companies,
they backed down.

We had won.

Josh and I had friends who, like us,
were determined to reimagine the future.

We were all of us optimists.

Some of us worked on
solar plants in the desert.

Others tinkered with super
efficient cars in their garages.

Still, others designed
fantastical cities on their computers.

It was an exciting time to be young.

But it was becoming clear that the
problems of the world knew no borders.

(Reporter, Male) Global population is
now approaching nine billion.

Seems unlikely to me that we here in America
can sit happily with all of our resources

while the rest of the world simply
goes quietly into that good night.

Very few people lay down and die.

When they recognize that
their lives are threatened,

they do whatever it takes.

(Reporter, Male) Hundreds of thousands
of environmental refugees

fleeing drought and famine
are streaming toward Europe.

They will move across borders by
the droves, by the millions.

And that will be something
we've never seen before.

And that might be the thing that we would
find the most difficult to cope with.

(Reporter, Female) From Laredo to Tijuana,

millions of Latin Americans
are massing along the US border.

You'll see intense pressure for people to
move and be on the move from the Caribbean,

from Latin America, from Mexico in
particular, into the United States.

And that'll put huge stress, I think,

on, on the systems in the United
States to try to cope with that.

I can't imagine the horrors that
will take place on the border

as millions of refugees try to
get into the United States.

(Lucy) I was working the midnight shift when
a call came from the border police.

'Be careful," Josh said.

"This doesn't sound good."

Thousands of refugees had been arriving at
the border desperate for water and food.

Someone had blown a hole through the wall,

and thousands of people were streaming through.

They had called in the border police.

I don't know how it started,
who fired first.

But suddenly, the police
were shooting into the crowd.

There were people falling,
panic everywhere.

Josh heard it on the news.

And how he found me in the midst
of all that chaos I'll never know.

In San Diego, Josh and Molly and I took
long walks on the beach to look for birds.

Over the years,
our favorites started to disappear.

The worst was the
end of the albatross.

These marvelous birds had finally been
done in by fishermen's long lines.

It was a bad omen for the rest of us.

Probably a third of all species will be
on an inexorable path to extinction by 201 5.

They will include familiar species,
like lions and tigers and bears,

but there will also be
huge areas of the planet,

which presently are really lovely
and beautiful and diverse.

Those places will have
essentially disappeared.

(Bob Woodruff) In the history of the Earth,
there have been five mass extinctions,

in which at least half the
species on Earth disappeared.

They were caused by natural disasters,
massive volcanic eruptions,

rapid climate change,
meteors hitting the Earth.

Today, in the 21 st century, we are
in the midst of what scientists
are calling the sixth extinction.

And for the first time, it is
being caused by a single species, us.

When one species proliferates
beyond any other, ultimately,

it sort of knocks out its own life
support systems and it collapses.

And in a way, that's what we're
doing at every level around the world.

(Bob Woodruff) Today in 2009,

the idea that we could do
so much damage to our natural environment

that it could cause our global
civilization to collapse,

may seem farfetched.

Think of all the signs of normalcy.

Water is still coming out
of the faucet in my kitchen.

The electricity still turns on.

I buy food at the supermarket.

It seems inconceivable that
our modern world could collapse.

Every society that collapsed
thought it couldn't happen to them.

The Roman Empire
thought it couldn't happen.

The Maya civilization
thought it couldn't happen.

The Byzantine Empire thought
it couldn't happen, but it did.

And it usually creeps
up on you unforeseen.

(Bob Woodruff) At its peak, the Maya
civilization numbered more than 1 0 million.

They had astronomy.

They had the only
writing in the new world.

They had great art.

They were the biggest game in town.

They are the equivalent of us
in their, in their era.

These city centers were
supporting 25,000 to 50,000 people.

So, they were very well adapted to their,

their surroundings they were able to grow.

But they grew too much
and exhausted their resources.

Growing population, meaning
growing the demands on the land,

deforestation and soil erosion,
which tied into warfare.

There was chronic warfare
among the Maya city states.

(Bob Woodruff) And then,
the climate suddenly changed.

There were these series
of extended droughts.

And those droughts just kept
hammering away and hammering away.

You lose your forest.
You lose your soil.

If you lose your soil,
you can't grow anything.

And if it stops raining,
then forget about it.

The endgame for the Maya
must have been horrible indeed.

It's highly likely there were
also periods of starvation.

It's a truly hideous
and ugly way to die.

(Woodruff) The Roman Empire faced many of
the same problems that we face today.

It was kind of a precursor
of our globalized economy.

In just a few short centuries,
Rome built an empire

that stretched across three continents.

As it expanded, the requirements for simply
feeding its cities and feeding its army,

it became so large that the empire
couldn't generate enough food energy,

enough grain, to adequately
meet all its obligations.

So, there was a constant
fiscal crisis and financial crisis.

(Bob Woodruff) As resources ran out,
their empire collapsed.

The city of Rome itself went from a
million people down to perhaps 30,000,

and that was the largest city
in Western Europe at the time.

Civilizations in the past
have lost the fight.

I mean, they, they have collapsed as a
result of the inability to deal with

several different events going on at once.

And so, you know, I think the takeaway is
that, honestly, we're not that special.

(Bob Woodruff) Easter Island, one of the
most remote places in the world.

It's hard to imagine that a civilization
once thrived on such a barren island,

but it didn't always look like this.

Easter Island used to be covered by
a forest of dozens of tree species,

including the biggest
palm tree in the world.

(Woodruff) But as their population grew,
so too did their demand for wood.

As they gradually cut down more and more trees,

the trees didn't grow back rapidly enough to
replace the trees that were being cut down.

So, some time in the 1 600s,
the last tree was cut down.

You saw all of the
classic signatures of collapse.

The population plummeted.
There was starvation.

And essentially,
they turned to cannibalism.

The question is, what was that
person on Easter Island thinking

when they chopped down the last tree?

The pattern is clear.

(Bob Woodruff) Civilizations that grow too
large and consume too much

damage their own life support systems.

As resources run out, they begin to fight
each other over what little is left.

Then, they either starve or leave.

But in our case, where can we go?

I think Easter Island is the perfect metaphor
because it's this small, fragile island

sitting within the Pacific Ocean,
it's very remote, and,

and it no longer was able to sustain
the population that lived there.

It's no different than Earth being
this small planet in a vast galaxy.

Think about that cartoon movie that
was made about the Beatles music,

'Yellow Submarine."

There was a creature in it.

"YELLOW SUBMARINE"
Hey, look who's back.

Full speed ahead.

Its head is a funnel that
functions as a vacuum cleaner.

Suddenly, it's run out of things
to point at, there's nothing left.

So, it's looking around for something.

And finally, it looks down,

sucks itself up.
And then, we have a blank screen.

Here we are.

The moral of that story,
by grabbing everything in sight,

we'll end up destroying ourselves.

And by 2050, the population is exploding,
the rainforests are disappearing,

and nine billion of us competing
for ever scarcer resources.

A bad situation made worse by widespread
drought and huge migrations of people.

Life is changing for everyone,
including Lucy.

(Lucy) My parents both got sick
the winter of 2050.

It was a horrible flu that year.

It seemed the viruses were
getting worse each passing season.

I kept them comfortable.

And I'm glad they were at home
and together when they died.

After that, there was
nothing to keep us in San Diego.

Josh and I decided
it was time to leave.

We were excited.

Josh had been offered an amazing job in
New York working on the sea barriers

designed to protect the
cities from the rising seas.

There wasn't much room in the truck.

We took clothes, a few books,
and 50 gallons of water.

Everything else we left behind.

(VO) GPS 21 00.

Please select your destination.

New York City.

Calculating safest route.

(Lucy) We headed north
across the Mojave Desert.

By dusk, we were on the outskirts of Las Vegas

and greeted by mile after mile
of abandoned suburbs,

and acres of golf courses turned to dust.

The silence was eerie.

Well, by 2050, Lake Mead, one of the
great reservoirs of the Southwest

on the Colorado River has finally gone dry.

There's not enough
water to meet human needs.

(Lucy) People in Las Vegas had
depended on Lake Mead for almost
all their water and power.

Las Vegas, I would imagine, is gone.

With a drought like that,
you've got a city in - in the desert.

And it's gonna be really
difficult to live there.

(Lucy) When we got closer to the Strip, we were
lucky to hook up with a convoy headed east.

Las Vegas was a strange sight.

Most of the hotels dark.

All those neon lights gone dead.

Sin City had pretty much folded.

From there, we drove through Arizona.

Daybreak.

Rising out of the desert,
we saw something wonderful.

These huge, new solar plants.

50 square miles of reflectors.

They hadn't been built soon
enough to help Las Vegas,

but one day, they were supposed
to power the whole West Coast.

It was comforting to know.

There's tremendous possibility
there in the desert Southwest.

There's a capacity to produce solar power and,

and move it to where the great population
centers of the United States are.

(VO) The safest route headed
east today is Route 40.

I think it would be almost
impossible to do this journey

unless you had some form of intelligence as
to what areas are lawless or dangerous.

I don't think strangers
are gonna be very friendly.

(Lucy) By the time we got on to Route 1 5,
we were grimy and tired.

The scene in front of us had
jolted us out of our daze.

Hundreds of people packed the road.

All of them streaming out of
the Southwest heading north.

It felt like the Dust Bowl all over again.

Think what it would be like if we
had millions of neighbors to the south

heading north because of, they don't
have food and they don't have water.

They shouted at us as we drove past.

Molly was half out of the window,
catching everything with her camera.

Suddenly, a man grabbed her arm.

He had a gun and
pointed it at Molly's face.

'Get out of the truck
right now," he yelled.

I'd never been so terrified.

But within seconds, two men from
the convoy pulled their own guns

and the man melted back into the crowd.

We knew now just how dangerous
the border regions had become

and how lucky we were to be headed east.

Just as people were migrating, so
too were the bugs.

In Oklahoma, acres and
acres of corn were threatened.

To the degree that all ecosystems are extremely
stressed by 2050, pests will flourish.

There's an arms race between breeding
crops that are resistant to various pests

and the pests themselves, because to the
degree that we simplified our food system,

we've also made it massively vulnerable.

For decades, this had been predicted.

These giant farms, which supplied so much
of the world's food, were easy prey.

People get their seeds from single
or just a few manufacturers,

and they're genetically very, very similar.

So, if in fact an agent were to come onto the
scene that was capable of infecting one,

it would rapidly spread.

Halfway through Kansas,
we split off from the convoy.

They were headed north to Canada.

We went east to Greensburg, Kansas,
leaving the devastation behind.

(VO) Welcome to the
Greensburg Visitor Center.

In 2007, a tornado destroyed our town.

Out of the rubble came a dream.

(Barack Obama) A town that was completely
destroyed by a tornado

is being rebuilt as a global example of how
clean energy can power an entire community,

how it can bring jobs and businesses...

(Lucy) This was a wonderful place,
completely self-sustaining.

They had been one of the first,
and they knew what they were doing.

They got their power from the wind
and sun, their water from the rain,

and they grew everything they ate.

Feeling a lot better,
we hot seated it the rest of the way.

Compared to the Southwest,
the fields were green and fertile.

We saw some
communities like Greensburg.

We wished there were more.

The closer we get to the end of our journey,
the better we felt.

The next day, we hit the outskirts
of New York City.

(VO) New York City is engaged in the
greatest urban experiment of our time.

Skyscrapers that grow their own food,
to an all-electric vehicle fleet,

to clean and tranquil parks.

Inspired leaders and creative minds are
working together to create an urban paradise.

(Lucy) I looked across the George Washington
Bridge at the skyline and felt a surge of hope,

but underneath ran a trickle of worry.

With all we had seen,
maybe we had seen nothing yet.

(Lucy) By the middle of the century,
I thought I'd seen it all.

Storms, migrations, and droughts
that had destroyed whole cities.

But I had also seen so much more.

Brilliant people everywhere were working
furiously to change our future.

I had a family,

and together, I thought we might be
equal to whatever came out way,

but I had no idea
of what the future would hold.

It's a new world.

And not a better one, as we catch up
with Lucy, our fictional storyteller.

The year is 2060, past mid-century
and into middle age for Lucy.

At 51 , she has grown up in a
world of soaring population,

dwindling resources and intense climate change.

The worst case scenario imagined
by some experts is playing out.

But there are signs of hope.

A growing global movement
led by cities like New York.

New York is probably the most
geographically favored city in America.

Great port.

Rich fisheries around it.

This wonderful river that allows
transport and access to great farmland.

It's a center of the arts.

It's been a center of finance.

I think it will continue to be so.

(Lucy) After what we had been through,
New York was a fresh start.

The city was full of hope
and energy and promise.

You'd walk down the streets and meet each
other's eyes and see a sense of purpose.

It was a great place to
be a part of back then.

The first years we were there
were the best of our lives.

Josh was working as an engineer
on the Great Barrier Project.

I was at Bellevue Hospital, a historic
institution already more than 300 years old.

The building we lived in was
green in every sense of the word.

And Molly worked in the
gardens that grew our food.

They were a part of
the building itself.

You're going to see greenhouses,
multistory greenhouses.

And each floor will be growing,
you know, carrots and potatoes, etcetera.

And that will be
just considered normal.

The building supplied not just our food,
but most of our own energy.

Instead of having solar panels,
big heavy bulky things,

we can just put this thin film on rooftops,

on window panes and
generate electricity that way.

I rode my bike to work every day,
a mere 30 blocks.

We had designated bicycle lanes.

The traffic was manageable,
and you could breathe the air.

All the vehicles were electric.

You hook your car up to
a mega transport system.

It will move you a good bit of the
distance to your final destination.

Kind of a train of cars.

And then you get disconnected from
the mass combination transit

and drive the last little bit yourself.

(Lucy) Molly fell in love as
quickly as her parents had.

She married George, who was
studying to become a botanist.

A year later, my
grandson Daniel was born.

And a lovelier child I had never seen.

It was a happy time.

And when Molly told me they were
moving upstate to work on a real farm,

Josh and I understood.

It had always been their dream.

The city was getting a lot of attention.

And money flowed in,
both private and public.

The biggest and maybe the most important
project was my husband Josh's.

Since without the barriers,
the city was at risk.

It would be the biggest civil
engineering project in US history.

Be comparable to
putting man on the moon.

(Lucy) The project had been under way
for years,

and those who worked on it
had a tremendous sense of pride.

There was three barriers going up.

One at the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge,

one at the top of the East River.

And one in Staten Island at Baton Hills.

You could see them rising a little every day.

Sea level was rising.

And without the barriers,
big storms would flood the city.

I think it would be like in medieval times,

people building a beautiful huge cathedral.

Took generations to build.

And there was a great sense of purpose,

and gave purpose and meaning to life.

(Lucy) The project drew thousands of
people into the city looking for work.

New York City was then, as it
had always been, a beacon of hope.

New York, it will be a magnet
as any viable city will be a magnet.

These cities where people come to flee

become petri dishes for diseases and new
diseases and resistant forms of disease.

There are a number of infectious
diseases that are currently confined

to tropical and subtropical areas.

They're likely to
spread into temperate zones.

And this is something that
I'm very concerned about.

(Lucy) Keeping New York safe
from disease was crucial.

And Bellevue was busy.

I didn't feel as tired at end
of the day as I might have.

We were doing important work.

Keeping a close eye
on any new diseases.

I remember the night I was called
to the worker's camps in Flushing.

A young Ecuadorian family
had just arrived in New York.

And they all had high fevers.

And blisters on their hands and feet.

We sprung into action immediately,
closed off the neighborhood,

and called in the CDC.

They knew right away they
were looking at a new virus.

We set up a mobile clinic at the camps,

where we treated dozens of
workers and their families.

Everyone recovered.

And the disease was contained.

Imagine now the year 2070.

Things are in danger of unraveling.

Sea levels have risen nearly three feet,

redrawing the map of the world.
Island nations have disappeared.

Much of Bangladesh
reclaimed by the sea.

Some of California's
famous beaches gone.

The Florida Everglades, under water.

Now, the richest countries are being
forced to come up with innovative

and expensive solutions.

Lucy's husband, Josh,
is one of the leaders.

(Lucy) Josh was an engineer on
the Great Barrier Project.

After 30 years in the making,
it was nearing completion.

Within a few months,
they would be testing the massive gates.

If I was the engineer in charge,
I would be very nervous.

But you would have practice runs.

And during nice weather, you would say,
all right, let's close the gates today

and make sure everything's working right,
it's not going to jam up.

(Lucy) Josh was worried about
something else, too.

New York City's barriers, like others around
the world, had been built on the assumption

that sea level rise would be gradual.

But it was becoming clear
that might not be the case.

(Reporter) Scientists say they
are detecting a massive spike

in the level of methane in the atmosphere.

Climate in general doesn't
change smoothly the way,

you know, we're used to seeing
projections from climate models.

We find that the transitions from
warm to cold or cold to warm,

some of those transitions can
be really, really abrupt.

Abrupt meaning within the
time scale of a decade,

or sometimes even less than a decade.

(Lucy) We knew there were certain things
that could rapidly turn up the heat.

But we didn't know what that tipping
point would be until it happened.

Maybe the tipping point is you heat up
the tundra and the permafrost so much

that there's a huge burp of methane and
carbon dioxide out of those northern soils.

Methane is a big worry in my mind because it's
some 20 to 30 times more potent than CO2.

(Bob Woodruff) An enormous
reservoir of methane,

produced by decomposing plants
and animals,

lies buried beneath the frozen arctic tundra.

It has been there since the Ice Age.

If the tundra thaws and a large
quantity of the gas is released,

global temperatures would soar.

This is a bit like a light switch.

You push the light switch a
little bit and nothing happens.

You push a little bit
more and nothing happens.

Then you push it a little more

and it flips completely to a new state.

(Reporter) The methane emanating from the
arctic could raise temperatures worldwide.

(Reporter, Female) A panel of experts is
convening to recalculate how warm the planet...

(Reporter, Male)
...drastically raise global temperatures...

This is what specialists call a
nonlinear flip or nonlinear change.

When that happens, we don't know
what the consequences will be.

(Reporter, Female) Spiking global temperatures
are wreaking havoc with the Greenland ice sheet.

(Reporter, Male) Some fear that the colossal
sheet is on the verge of collapse.

Unless drastic measures are taken,
low lying coastal cities around the world

could expect to see disastrous flooding.

(Reporter, Female) Citizens are demanding
their governments respond

to the impending temperature...

The Pentagon today held closed door
meetings to discuss climate change.

(Reporter, Male) Our top story tonight,

the President is announcing
the cosmic shield project

which aims to halt the disintegration
of the Greenland ice sheet.

Imagine that you are the
president of the United States,

and you have word that Greenland is going
to collapse in the next ten years,

adding seven meters to sea level.

I'm not saying that is happening today.

I'm saying imagine that were to happen,

and you were told that
technology exists to stop it.

Wouldn't you be tempted to use it?

(Lucy) It didn't take long
for the world to agree.

A technology existed that could
stop the ice sheets from melting.

It should be used.

Hundreds ofjets from all around the world
were spraying a mist of sulfur dioxide

into the atmosphere.

The gas would form particles which would
shade the Earth and temporarily cool it.

This is your solution of last resort.

You say all belts are off,
we are just going to intervene

in this system with reckless abandon.

For a year, there were
these spectacular sunsets.

But what are the other
consequences of those things?

Maybe it would cool the Earth,
maybe it would cool it too much.

That might be a disaster
in the opposite direction.

Maybe it would cause some other environmental
problem that we don't foresee today.

(Lucy) The Earth cooled.

But that was the least of it.

(Reporter) Tonight in Washington, there's debate
on whether to follow China and Great Britain

and cease flying cosmic shield missions.

We've learned that in all
aspects of engineering,

there are unintended consequences.

(Reporter, Female) The Surgeon General
testified before Congress today

on the health effects of further...

(Lucy) The cloud was burning
off the ozone layer.

Once that was gone, every living creature would
be exposed to a massive dose of radiation.

The experiment was halted.

Once they stopped spraying the gas,
the ice sheets continued to melt,

but now at a quicker pace.

Sea level rise would soon be
measured in feet, not inches.

If you end up with several
meters of sea level rise,

you change life as we know it.

(Reporter) In New York, watchdog groups are now
suggesting storm surge barriers may be too low.

(Lucy) Josh and the other engineers
were working around the clock

to try to build the barriers even higher.

But we all knew we were
in a race against time.

Society is not set up to
deal with rapid sea level rise.

It would be a catastrophe of -
a magnitude we've never experienced.

One of our political leaders
said not too long ago

that the American way of
life is non-negotiable.

We're going to discover the
hard way that when you don't

negotiate the circumstances that
are sent to you by the universe,

you automatically get assigned a new
negotiating partner named reality,

and then it will negotiate for you.

You don't even have to be in the room.

(Reporter) A vicious nor'easter is
headed up the East Coast.

It is expected to hit New York
on the high tide this afternoon.

Storm surge could be over 20 feet.

(Lucy) As the storm approached, the engineers
started closing the entire bay wall.

It absolutely had to work or
the city would be devastated.

It was terrifying.

Then the winds picked
up and a gate got stuck.

That's a nightmare scenario,
getting stuck halfway shut.

Because the water will pour in
and flood the city.

(Lucy) A team was assembled to
manually close the gate.

They would have to go out
into the harbor by boat.

I asked Josh not to go.

I begged him to stay safe with me.

But this was his project.

He had to see it through.

(Bob Woodruff) Earth 21 00.

Cities abandoned.

Large parts of America
suffering from drought.

The possible collapse of civilization.

The worst case scenario in
tonight's special broadcast

sounds like something out
a science fiction movie,

but it is based on the work of some of the
world's foremost scientists and thinkers.

If you want to learn more about
how we developed our ideas,

go to abcnews.com and click on Earth 21 00.

There you'll find an annotated
script of the entire program.

For each scenario portrayed in our broadcast,

we have included the expert quotes and facts
on which we base this vision of the future.

All ecosystems are
extremely stressed by 2050.

You will also be able to view
expanded sections of selected interviews.

(Reporter, Female) Preliminary reports that
one of the gates in the Great Barrier

has failed to close.

(Reporter) We're awaiting
confirmation from the mayor's office.

(Lucy) It was high tide when the storm hit.

(Reporter) Flooding in subway
tunnels throughout...

(Reporter, Female)
Four, five, and six trains are affected.

(Lucy) The streets were filling with water.

(Reporter) The mayor has made the
decision to evacuate City Hall.

(Lucy) Something had gone terribly wrong.

(Reporter, Female)
Seeing truly catastrophic flooding.

The tide comes in
and on top of that, the surge.

(Reporter) The Holland and Lincoln Tunnels
are filling with seawater...

When New York began to flood,
it would be total chaos.

(Reporter, Female) There's an evacuation
order in effect for...

The Office of Emergency
Management says we have to evacuate.

We've got a problem.

The subway is full of
seawater and it will shut down.

What do people do?

(Reporter) Authorities are now telling anyone
still in the city

to remain calm and stay inside.

(Lucy) Outside, the storm raged.

All I could do was wait
for Josh to come home.

When I heard the knock on my door, I knew.

He died a hero, they said.

But that was no comfort.

I called Molly and she wept.

She wanted me to come live with her.

But I couldn't leave.

I just couldn't leave.

(Reporter) ...looking at four
or five feet of water.

We could see the worst
of this storm by 3:00 AM.

(Reporter, Female) New Yorkers are going to
wake up in a very different city tomorrow.

(Lucy) As the sun rose the next day,

it was clear that both my city
and my life had been destroyed.

Battery Park fills up with seawater.

Lower west side - lower east side.

Brooklyn, Queens is flooded.

Kennedy Airport's flooded.

Newark Airport's flooded.

It's all gonna be under water.

(Lucy) In the coming days,
when the waters receded,

the city was filthy and everything
that could rot was rotting.

People wanted to leave.

But for many of them,
there was nowhere to go.

How welcoming will people be when
New York or Boston sink under water

and all those people, in their millions,
come to New England or to Pennsylvania?

How welcoming will people be?

(Lucy) I packed my things and
set them at the door.

But I didn't leave.

I suppose you could
say I was stubborn.

And I was needed at
Bellevue more than ever.

There were millions who
needed someone to care for them.

As the seas rose, the wealthy
moved uptown to higher ground

and hired private companies
to pick up the trash.

But in the low-lying slums,
tap water was contaminated.

People were so poor they ate only
once a day, if they ate at all.

When people are hungry and
people are malnourished,

as you continue to have
displacement with floods,

there's no doubt that's a perfect setup
for certain types of infections.

(Lucy) I was working the late shift
when the first case came in.

A young man with a
cough and a high fever.

And then I noticed the
blisters all over his body.

Was this the virus
I had seen years ago?

(Reporter) Another case of Caspian fever...

(Reporter, Female) Health officials have issued
a statement, asking people to avoid public...

All New York City
schools have been shut down.

Representatives from the CDC...

(Reporter) This virus is cause for concern.

(Lucy) Within a week, over 20 were dead.

People on the streets wore masks,
avoided each other.

The air was ripe with panic.

(Reporter, Female) ...reminding citizens to wash
their hands and cover their mouths.

You would shut down factories.
You would shut down trade.

You would shut down commerce.

Everything would shut down.

(Reporter) Death toll from
Caspian Fever has now reached 1 07.

(Lucy) The virus continued
to mutate and spread.

So some long incubating
virus that kills very fast,

that's the kind of thing
that's going to get us.

(Lucy) It only took an few people on a few
planes to spread it around the world.

(Reporter, Female) Cases of the fever have
been confirmed in over 1 00 countries...

(Reporter) Now estimated that
1 0,000 have died in Mexico...

(Reporter, Female) Temporary morgues
have been set up in the streets of Shanghai.

(Reporter) The Vatican conducted a
national funeral mass today.

(Lucy) From Singapore to Sydney,
the globe shut down.

Farmers wouldn't bring food into cities.

Cargo ships wouldn't dock,
let alone unload.

Billions were on the verge of starvation.

I saw hundreds of people die every day.

I was immune.

One of the lucky ones.

It was hard to feel anything.

There was too much to feel.

You think about the effect that
this kind of disaster would have.

Everybody's depressed.

What do you do with all the bodies?

People just gonna, you know, take their loved
ones to the local park and leave them there?

At that point, cities will be unbearable.

(Lucy) You could see it on
people's faces on the street.

They had given up.

As more and more people died,
all services broke down.

There were frequent blackouts.

And now connections to the
internet were intermittent at best.

(Reporter) Around the world, deaths from
the Caspian Fever show no signs...

(Lucy) And then one day,
the power just went out.

The phones, the internet, the
whole data network went down.

Some said it was a terrorist.

Others thought it was the flooding.

Suddenly no one knew anything for sure.

If communication breaks down, rumor
becomes the communication system

and a mob psychology takes over.

Collapse is not something
that actually happens overnight.

It's the result of an accumulation of stresses,

an erosion of the internal strength of society,
so that it just becomes like an eggshell.

And one last shock breaks it.

(Lucy) Looting was rampant.

Most of the police force deserted.

The mayor was nowhere to be found.

We waited for the President or
the National Guard to appear.

But no one came.

That's when it dawned on
us that the government,

like so much else, had failed.

If the world breaks down,
if globalization breaks down,

then even the capacity of the United States to
kind of manage a degraded global environment

I think will come into question.

What we'll see is the federal
government being viewed as

something not to be taken seriously anymore.

(Lucy) Reports were sketchy, but
here's what I know for sure.

The virus continued to spread.

India and China had gone to war
over water and who knew what else.

Millions were dying from famine.

The human race was
collapsing under its own weight.

By that time, I will guess that we
will be seeing a substantial die off

of the human population.

Most of civil society
will have degenerated.

(Lucy) I was 75 when I walked across
that George Washington Bridge.

There were no check points anymore.

I left with a couple of friends
and a dog who had adopted me.

Rosy, I called her.

She never left my side.

But where was I going?

I didn't know if Molly was still alive.

Let alone still on the farm up north.

I didn't know
if I had a grandson anymore.

But that was my hope, that I
could somehow find them or they me.

A few hundred years down the line,

they'll look back and say
the Dark Ages began in the 21 st century.

Our city, beautiful city, was abandoned.

And nature took over quickly.

As it always has.

The breakdown would be rather rapid.

The flooding of Manhattan would
have a real destabilizing effect.

The subway tunnels would flood
and they would stay flooded.

The columns that hold up the streets, they're
steel, they will rust, they will corrode.

The streets above them start
caving in, and low and behold,

we have surface rivers once again in Manhattan.

Nature has that momentum, you see.

Take the thing back.

Practically become like a jungle.

From the asphalt jungle to the real jungle.

Your big skyscrapers here are well
anchored into Manhattan schist.

On the other hand,
they weren't designed to be water logged.

It just takes one hurricane to hit New York.

Buildings are going to start to get taken out.

(Lucy) And it wasn't just the city.

Our whole way of life had crumbled.

But I found my daughter Molly,
and Daniel, my grandson.

He was a young man now.

Molly's husband George had been killed.

Both of us were widows now.

It is a hard life.

The United States is
fragmented into a million chards.

We're all cut off from each other.

Each protecting what little we have.

It would be a wrenching transition,
it would be a catastrophic transition.

It's something we
don't want to experience.

The Dark Ages were called
the Dark Ages for a reason.

I fear that we'll see a world
like medieval Europe

where you have feudal states

fighting for what remains of a
source of water, a source of energy.

(Lucy) We managed to produce our own power
and communicate over radio waves.

The cities that have endured
are now walled fortresses.

Jealously guarding whatever
remains of the computer age.

I'm picturing enclaves of affluence and wealth,

but surrounded by vast masses of
people who will be barely surviving.

In effect, humanity could very well be in hell.

Where hell is defined as
truth realized too late.

We have had to re-learn what we
had unlearned centuries before.

How to live off the land.

How to make do.

I think we'll see a world in which
literature, the arts, democracy,

those will disappear, largely disappear.

How much of the wonderful scientific
breakthroughs of the 20th and 21 st century

will still be retained?

If it's some electronic-based thing,
it could all be lost.

(Lucy) My grandson Daniel might never
hear a symphony, go to college,

or read the books I read.

He will never marvel at a right whale,

the beauty of a coral reef or a spotted owl.

You ever actually get outside and just
kind of look at the wonder of the world,

- it takes your breath away.

And I think to think of a world where
somehow that is taken away, is really sad.

We're going to leave a planet
that is so desperately beaten up

that it will probably take hundreds of thousands
of years to get it back, to restore it.

We will have lost so much
of our natural heritage.

(Lucy) I can teach him poems and songs.

I can tell him what I saw and
what I learned along the way.

I can try to tell him what is precious.

What is precious?

I ought to know that.

They say I am the
oldest woman on Earth.

With age is supposed to come wisdom.

What is precious?

This Earth of ours.

This garden we must tend.

These people we love.

Lucy's story is a worst case scenario
of what could happen

if we continue on our current path.

It's a wakeup call, a challenge
for us to plan a different course.

But our experts say we
must act immediately.

Where did Lucy's world go wrong?

What can we learn from their mistakes?

We turn back the clock now to show you a
vision of a future we can still create.

There's a future out there
that's a much present future

than the present that we're
living in right now, to be sure.

If we took the measures we should take,

21 00 would be at the beginning of an era

that we, today, would regard as paradise.

We have a chance to get it right,

to move from a disconnected inefficient world

of fighting populations,

to a sustainable planet.

The problem we face today is
how do we get from here to there?

(Bob Woodruff) The world that Lucy was
born into is our world today.

There are plenty of signs
that it's in trouble.

But there are hopeful signs as well.

The problems that we face,
water, soil, climate change,

they're all problems caused by humans.

So we're capable of
solving those problems.

It could be overwhelming if we let it.

I just try to take it one brick,
one chunk at a time.

I think that's how you
have to deal with it.

(Bob Woodruff) So what should we do
right now to chart another course?

How do we avoid
ending up in Lucy's world?

Many experts say the first step should
be transforming how we use energy.

Much of what we need
to do we already know.

Plant a garden.

Use compact fluorescent bulbs.

More mass transit for people.

Insulate your homes.

Smaller cars.

There's no simple solution,

but 1 00% of the Earth's population
doing a very small thing

makes a big difference.

(Bob Woodruff) But individuals alone
won't be able to turn things around.

Governments and industries are going
to have to change on a massive scale.

We're going to have to come up with more solar,
more wave power, more geothermal energy.

Beyond the familiar technologies,
amazing new ones are already in the works.

Fields of solar balloons that
could power thousands of homes a day.

A nuclear fusion facility that could
produce the energy of a tiny manmade star.

We can't drill and burn our
way out of our problems,

but we can invent and invest our way out.

(Bob Woodruff) Getting enough of these
projects up and running will take people.

And that means jobs.

And if we can put more people
back to work, then by 201 5,

instead of communities disintegrating,
they could start to rebound.

You could fight pollution and
poverty at the same time.

You can beat global warming and the economic
downturn with the same dollar bill

that you invested in green jobs,
green energy, green technology.

(Bob Woodruff)
If we start those investments today

there wouldn't be gas lines
and fights as in Lucy's world.

Instead, there would be electric cars
that could run 300 miles per charge.

But completely redesigning our energy
system would require rapid change.

It would mean both sacrifice and
hard work for the whole country.

But we have done it before.

The thing I would
compare it to is World War II.

After Pearl Harbor,
FDR turned to Detroit, the automakers,

and said, you will now make tanks.
You will now make Jeeps.

Just like that.

That was like overnight almost,
and they did it.

(Bob Woodruff) And we won that war.

It's going to take that
same level of commitment.

Imagine that all of us did enough things that
it made a real difference in our country.

What effect does that have on China,
on India, on other nations?

Well, if we don't set an example as
the strongest and most important
country in the world,

what do we expect them to do?

They're not going to follow if we don't lead.

(Reporter, Female) World leaders
are gathering in Washington, DC,

to attend an emergency global summit meeting.

(Bob Woodruff) A turning point in
Lucy's world was the global summit of 201 5.

When the world leaders failed to agree
on actions to slow climate change.

We do not accept the offer.

They set in motion all the
disasters that would follow.

But what if they had agreed?

(Reporter, Female) For the first time ever,
China, India, the US and Europe

have reached an agreement that could
avert catastrophic climate change.

By tackling climate change,
you end up tackling energy,

you end up tackling food,
you end up tackling water resources.

You could change this vicious
cycle I think into a virtuous cycle.

Then what we could see is
actually billions of people

coming into far more stable
sustainable prosperous economies.

(Bob Woodruff) As we move forward in the
century, we will see the investments

and hard choices we made
early on begin to pay off.

A positive scenario is fossil
fuels will be disappearing.

We're growing more food with less water.

We've restored ecosystems.

(Bob Woodruff) By the middle of the century,
we would be using water and other resources

much more carefully.

Farmers would be
planting drown resistant crops.

Water would be recycled, and there would
be enough to support the US Southwest.

In 2050, places like Las Vegas could survive.

The hope is that once we figure
out how to solve these problems,

we'll be in a much better position
to help the rest of the world.

If we can actually raise the prospects
of the bottom few billion people,

we actually make global stability possibility.

We reduce mass migration.

Refugee movements.

Desperation.

Actually slow the population growth.

And if we do all those things,

we just bring a sustainable world
prosperity closer to hand.

There's a very good chance by about 2050,

the worst part of the crisis having passed,

doesn't mean there aren't going to
be big problems still to face.

But it means that we will have
avoided sailing right off the cliff.

(Bob Woodruff) By 21 00,
our world could be transformed.

Just imagine a city that is not polluted,

that has a great transportation infrastructure.

Stackable cars or cars that are
folding and then they would charge

and be a shared ownership model

and you would just pull out the one
that's available that's fully charged.

Everything happens inside the city itself.

That means our food production,
our waste and recycling, our energy.

We're going to have joint management of
water resources, of energy resources.

We're going to be living on a
planet where we don't see things

at a national level,
but we see things at a global level.

By the time we get to 21 00, the challenge
of building a global green economy,

where we're sharing technologies,
not fighting wars over water and oil,

that's going to bring out the
best in the human family.

Humanity will be relatively disease free.

Children will be treated as rare treasures.

Most people don't realize not
only can we change, we must change.

And I think that's
how you own the future.

That's how you take control
of your destiny.

I have huge faith in humanity.

We will be able to create a world that will have
a livable planet for our kids and their kids,

that is our opportunity.

That is our obligation.

Kids born today will see us navigate past
the first greatest test of humanity,

which is can we actually be smart enough
to live on a planet without destroying it.

In December this year, nearly 200
countries plan to meet in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Their mission, to draw up a strategy to
finally come up with a global agreement

to slow climate change
and safeguard the planet.

If you'd like to learn more
about "Earth 21 00" or if you want
to get involved in the solutions,

go to our web page at abcnews.com.

I'm Bob Woodruff.

For all of us here at ABC News,
good night.