All language subtitles for The.11th.Hour.2007.1080p_Eng

(slow, quiet drumbeat)

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(woman singing plaintively)

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(thunder crashes)

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* *

(electronic tone shrieks)

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electronic music plays)

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over wild electronic music)

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(rumbling)

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You know, when you look
at the history of humanity,

it's basically
this great relationship

between the two most complicated
systems on Earth:

human society and...nature,

and whether people have,
in fact,

lived in a good balance
in that regard,

and when they don't,
they're gone.

And, you know,
at the end of the day,

when we all talk
about saving the environment,

in a way, it's misstated,
because the environment

is going to survive--we're
the ones who may not survive,

or we may survive in a world

that we don't particularly
want to live in.

Our biosphere is sick.

We have a...a planet

that's behaving
like an infected organism.

If you look at it
from outer space,

you see all these lights,
and it's the lights of...

of planet Earth,
it's the lights of the people,

but it's also almost like
looking at an organism

that has an infection on it,

that is forming a crust
of some kind.

Well, I don't only think that
the biosphere is in trouble,

I know it is.

I just have to look around
in the environment

in which I live.

What I hear in my dreams

is generations in the future
screaming back to us in time,

saying, "What are you doing?
Don't you see?"

We are at this critical point
in time, and we've evolved

to be the leaders
of our biological community,

and we are misleading.

We are...we are causing
the devastation

to our very foundation
of our life system

that has given us birth.

And we are ultimately
committing suicide.

So as we destroy nature,

we will be destroyed
in the process.

There's no escaping
that, uh, that conclusion.

(distant sirens blaring)
(steady percussive beat)

LEONARDO DiCAPRIO:
Earth's life-support
system's damaged,

the human species at risk.

Could this be true?

In this film, we've reached out
to independent experts

on the front lines

of what could be the greatest
challenge of our time--

the collapse
of our planet's ecosystems,

and our search for solutions
to create a sustainable future.

So...if we look for the cause
of this planetary destruction,

what would we find?

We would find
a global civilization

created by the human mind--

a mind that has evolved
to have the ability

to reflect back on ourselves,

to take stock
of our own existence,

a mind able to discover
quantum physics,

explore outer space,
and peer into our own DNA.

But beyond
our stunning intellectual

and technological advances,
we would also see

our large-scale impact
on our home,

planet Earth.

Now, ecological disasters
are rarely covered,

but when they are, they're
depicted as isolated incidents

by the media.

But if we connect these events,

will we find a larger story
that needs to be told--

a human story?

And more so than that,
a global understanding

that takes into account
who we are

and the state of our
relationship to this planet,

our only home.

STEPHEN HAWKING:
Life on Earth is possible

only because
a number of parameters

lie in certain
very narrow ranges.

Some of these

are clearly environmental,

like the Earth has the right
temperature and pressure

to have liquid water.

OREN LYONS:
Creation is the universe.

Creation is everything
that we can see

and probably a whole lot
that we can't;

probably more
that we can't see.

But it's what's about us,

and it's the...relationship,

this amazing, uh,
web of life that we have here.

ANDY REVKIN:
Well, Earth, um,
is a planet that's...

just far enough from the sun

and has just enough
of an atmosphere

of a certain composition
that, um,

more heat stays here
than radiates out to space,

and the sun warms the planet,
and that heat radiates out,

and there's gasses
in the atmosphere

that have always trapped
some of that heat.

And that's why, uh,
we're not an ice ball.

And there have been scientists
who compared this whole business

of the different planets
going away from the sun

as being, like,
the Goldilocks Effect--

there's one that's too cold,
one that's too warm

and one that's just right,

and we just happen to be there.

PAUL HAWKEN:
40 million centuries ago,

a cell formed,
and that cell had a gene,

and that gene is a password

to every single other form
of life there is.

And the amazing thing
about the human body

is it has 100 trillion cells,
and 90% of them

are not human cells--
they're fungi and bacteria,

microorganisms--and the thing
that makes us human

is not human.

So within us is, basically,
the backstory of life on Earth,

right to that first original
cell 40 million centuries ago.

and if you could,
for a moment, stop and feel

what is happening
in your body,

there are six septillion things
going on at the same time.

That's a six
with 24 zeros after it, okay?

Going on right now,
right this instant,

as you sit in your chair,
and then in the next instant,

within ten seconds, a hundred
more things have happened

than in all the stars
and planets and asteroids

in the known universe
in your body,

and that is called life.

JANINE BENYUS:
Homo sapiens sapiens

is an incredibly young species.

We don't think of that,
but we are.

We're...You know, we...
we came very late

in the calendar year
of the Earth, you know?

If the Earth, uh, calendar,

you know, where it started
in January 1,

and now we're December 31.

We got here 15 minutes
before midnight on December 31,

and all of recorded history

has blinked by
in the last 60 seconds.

Perhaps the best description
of what we are

is, as Jared Diamond puts it,
"the third chimpanzee."

There are two kinds of
chimpanzees, and there are us.

But in some ways,

we are extraordinarily special,
and the most obvious one is

our extraordinary ability
to make tools,

our extraordinary ability
to communicate, to have...

very detailed discussions
with each other.

So we are fundamentally

groups of, uh, animals,

randomly scattered
throughout the planet,

slowly...coalescing
in, uh, groups

that are more,
uh, powerful, larger,

and very much conditioned

by two essential characters.

One is, um, opportunism,

and the other one is greed.

All the animals

and vegetables are
opportunistic creatures.

They do what's necessary

for them to do
in order to survive.

I think it was
the human mind, basically,

that threw us out of balance
with the rest of nature.

The tragedy is that
it was the human mind

that was the key

to our very survival.

Now, when you think that
we evolved in Africa

about 150,000 years ago,

and compared to the other
animals that must have been

on the plains at that time,
we weren't very impressive.

We weren't very many,

we weren't very big, we weren't
gifted with special senses.

Um, the one thing,
the key to our survival

and our-our, uh...

taking over the planet
was the human brain.

But because
the human mind invented

the concept of a future,

we're the only animal
on the planet

that actually
was able to recognize

we could affect the future
by what we do today.

We look ahead,

recognize where
the opportunities are,

where the dangers lay and
choose, accordingly, to survive.

That was a great survival
strategy of our species.

DiCAPRIO: If the human mind
threw us out of balance

thousands of years ago,
what changed in recent history?

In the last century,
we have dramatically increased

our impact on planet Earth.

One element has emerged

that has made us
even more destructive,

accelerating our disconnection

and causing extensive damage
to our climate

and all other natural systems.

There's a fundamental,
um, illusion in the world

that somehow people
are separate from nature,

when the reality is that
we are part of nature;

in fact, we are nature.

And that's probably
the most fundamental,

uh, misunderstanding
in the world

that's causing
all this-this havoc.

THOM HARTMANN:
I think one of the reasons

why it's so difficult
for people to get it,

that we're connected with
nature, and to even understand

the fundamentals of eco-literacy

is because, in many ways,
it flies in the face

of the assumptions
of our culture.

Our culture is built
on the assumption

that we are the superior
life-form on Earth,

that we are separate
from all other life-forms,

that we have been
given dominion

over all other life-forms.

But even to think
that we're separated from nature

is somehow a thinking disorder.

You can't be separated
from nature.

Why we think that way
is the interesting thing.

What happens in the mind
that likes to think

that it's separated
from nature?

Does that mean that
the mind or the human being

thinks he's now more free?

We're totally living

in disharmony with the planet,

and, um, not just the planet--
beyond the planet.

I mean, we're far beyond
the planet now.

We're zooming around Mars
and all of that exploration,

which is...which is marvelous.

But...it's not really
affecting our attitudes.

I think our attitudes are...

based on selfishness,
based on...

the economic situation
we have...

based on the politics
which we have.

I mean...how many governments

in the world have really
taken the environmental crisis

for what it is?

Very few;
certainly not the United States.

We live in
a human-created environment,

where it's very easy to think

we're different from other
creatures; we're smart;

we create our own habitat;
we don't need nature;

it's the economy that's
the most important thing.

And in focusing on the economy,
I think we've forgotten

these ancient truths,

these ancient wisdoms
that kept us

plugged in to nature,
and understanding that, gee,

if we do something to offend
the natural world,

we're gonna pay
a price for that.

We have to treat nature
much more gently.

That's the lesson, I think,
that, uh, that we've forgotten

and that we're paying
a price for today.

The big rupture came

in the 1800s,
in the 19th century,

with the steam engine,
the fossil fuel age,

the Industrial Revolution.

This was a great rupture
from earlier forms

and rhythms of life, which were
generally regenerative.

What happened
after the Industrial Revolution

was that nature was converted
to a resource,

and that resource was seen as
essentially eternally abundant.

This led to the idea

and the conception
behind progress,

which is limitless growth,
limitless expansion.

HARTMANN:
For all of human history...

the vast majority
of human history,

humans lived
on current sunlight.

Sun fell on the fields,

the fields grew plants,
the plants made cellulose,

plant matter,
animals ate the cellulose,

we ate the plants,
we ate the animals,

we wore clothing made
out of the plants and animals,

we were living
off of current sunlight.

It was our food supply,
it was our clothing,

we heated with wood,
it was our heat supply,

it was our light supply;
it was all current sunlight.

So the sunlight
that fell on the Earth

in a year
was the maximum amount

of sunlight that we could use,
it was the maximum amount

of energy that we could use.

And from the earliest evidence
of human civilization--

150,000, more or less,
years ago

up until
a few thousand years ago--

pretty much,
that's how we lived,

and our population never
surpassed a billion people.

And then we began discovering
that there were

these little pockets of ancient
sunlight, finding coal here

and a little bit of oil there,
and slowly,

between that and
the agricultural revolution,

slowly, our population crept up
until we hit

our first one billion people,
and so it didn't take us

100,000 years to go from
one billion to two billion.

Our second billion
only took us 130 years.

We hit two billion people
in 1930.

Our third billion
took only 30 years--1960.

It's amazing
when you think about it.

When John Kennedy
was inaugurated, there were

half as many people on
the planet as there are today.

And the reason
that we've been able to have

this exponential growth
of population

is because we're creating food

and clothing
and everything else--

transportation--
we're doing it all with this

ancient sunlight
that was stored in the Earth

300 and 400 million years ago.

And if we were to have
to go back to simply living

off current sunlight,
lacking technology,

the planet couldn't sustain
more than a half a billion

to, at the most,
a billion people.

So we live in the most
unusual period

in the history of the planet,

in terms of a species getting
access to energy-rich carbon.

What we have done
is become good alchemists--

the ability
to take fossil carbon

and turn it into
human biomass--

and we have used
the supermarket,

the transportation system,
to make that happen.

So the cornerstones
of this system that we have

are all resting
upon nonrenewable,

energy-rich carbon
we call fossil fuels.

The real problem is that
there are too many of us

using too many resources
too fast.

Now, oil has enabled us
to do that.

We use oil to increase the rate

at which we extract
all other resources--

everything from topsoil
to fresh water to...

from aluminum to zinc.

Oil is really the basis

with which we sustain complexity

and with which
we solve our problems.

In a sense, all of our lives
are subsidized.

We are subsidized by oil.

Because we're subsidized by oil,

when we shop for anything
at a store,

we don't pay the full price.

We don't pay
the full cost

of what it took
to produce that.

We borrow about
$800 billion a year

from the world to finance
the excess of our consumption

over what we produce,

and about a third of that,
about $250 billion a year,

is for oil imports.

So we borrow from the world--

we issue IOUs,
treasury bills, whatever--

uh, to the tune of about
a billion dollars a day--

every working day, anyway--

to, uh, finance our oil imports.

There's a lot of harm
that oil does.

The economists
would call them externalities,

because they're external to the
price that you pay at the pump.

For example, um, you know,
the asthma rates among children,

which are growing
in many parts of the U.S.;

the acid rain problem
that's caused by burning coal;

if you look at some of the
global warming contributions

from burning fossil fuels;
and at least part of the cost

of keeping our troops
in the Middle East

to safeguard oil assets--

maybe not all of that cost,
but at least some of it

is clearly a subsidy
that goes to oil.

And when you started feeding

off of the fossil fuel cycle,

we began living
with a death-based cycle,

and that death cycle
of dependency

on extraction
of those resources

set in motion
a sequence of events

that has led us
to our modern crisis

of global disturbance

known as "climate change" or
"global warming," if you will.

We don't know the future;
we know the past.

We know the past, in part,
through Greek mythology.

The, kind of,
the "revenge of the gods,"

or the "revenge of nature."

I think we're seeing
that now already,

after 200 years
of Industrial Revolution.

We didn't know
what we were creating.

We didn't know the damage
that was being created.

We're sensing that.

So, as we go forward
with technology

that's even more powerful
than before,

we have magnified...

the presence of the human race
inside the ecology.

Therefore, we can do
vastly more damage

with our technological prowess
than we could before.

We have to be even more
cautious.

(wind whistling)

* *

DiCAPRIO:
While we weren't looking,

we've created one of the biggest
problems facing all of humanity:

climate change.

What does it look like
when we don't pay attention

to the massive amounts of CO2
we dump into the air and water?

What does it look like
when our actions shift

the natural chemical balance
of our atmosphere

into a state
several degrees warmer,

a state that hasn't existed
for millennia?

We have witnessed,
in recent years,

the highest average temperatures
in recorded history.

Now, a couple degrees difference
in today's temperatures

may not sound like much,
but it only took a few degrees

to shift us out
of the last ice age;

and a few degrees may be
all that separates us

from catastrophic change.

Heading into another weekend,
the weather and the climate

are making news
in more than one region.

A terrible drought
has already...

We do not know how much
our climate could

or will change in the future...

BOB SCHIEFFER:
More than a week of severe
flooding has killed

at least 72 people
in Central and Eastern Europe,

and Western Russia...

ANCHORMAN:
The heaviest recorded rainfall

in Indian history has unleashed
the worst flooding

in living memory...

We do not know how fast change
will occur,

or even how some of our actions
could impact it...

ANCHORMAN:
In Chicago,
the heat is a plague.

This morning, they were
collecting bodies...

Thousands of firefighters
in Southern California

are battling a newly formed
super wildfire...

The heat is on, coast-to-coast,
even Arizona is having a heat...

Tennessee was battered
by killer tornadoes...

ANCHORMAN:
New Orleans is no longer
safe to live in.

It is that simple
and that stark.

Hell and high water--
one and the same again today

in a city overwhelmed,
under siege,

in the grip of unmitigated,
unprecedented catastrophe...

ANCHORMAN:
Nowhere is that more apparent,
of course, than New Orleans,

now a city of displaced people,
refugees...

ANCHORWOMAN:
...20 feet of water
from Lake Pontchartrain.

Add to that violence,
deprivation, desperation,

the rising threat of disease...

Could it be that man-made
global warming

is the greatest hoax
ever perpetrated

on the American people?

(wind roaring)

* *

STEPHEN HAWKING:
One of the most
serious consequences

of our actions
is global warming,

brought about by rising levels

of carbon dioxide from
the burning of fossil fuels.

The danger is
that the temperature increase

might become self-sustaining,
if it has not done so already.

Drought and deforestation
are reducing

the amount of carbon dioxide
recycled into the atmosphere,

and the warming of the seas
may trigger the release

of large quantities of CO2
trapped on the ocean floor.

In addition, the melting
of the Arctic

and Antarctic ice sheets
will reduce the amount

of solar energy reflected back
into space

and so increase
the temperature further.

We don't know where
the global warming will stop,

but the worst-case scenario

is that Earth would become
like its sister planet Venus,

with a temperature
of 250 centigrade,

and raining sulfuric acid.

The human race could not
survive in those conditions.

(slow, mournful theme plays)

While the Earth has
a natural greenhouse effect--

in fact, we're about 60 degrees
Fahrenheit warmer--

thanks to those good guys--

water vapor and carbon dioxide
and methane,

what we call greenhouse gases--
trapping heat;

that's the good part
of the story.

The problem is that humans are
competing with nature

in that when we use our
tailpipes and our smokestacks

to put our wastes
into the atmosphere,

as if it is some kind
of unpriced sewer,

we're adding to that amount of
greenhouse gases that's natural

unnatural stuff--

mostly carbon dioxide, methane,

chemicals that nobody
has ever seen before--

chlorofluorocarbons,

which also affect ozone--

and when they build up,
they trap extra heat.

And that's not controversial;
that's well understood.

We know we've increased

carbon dioxide by about 30-35%,

methane, 150%; added gases
that never existed before,

and the Earth is warmer.

All of that goes together
and makes global warming

not only a reality
but a concern for the future

because we're continuing doing
what we're doing

at an accelerating rate.

The record shows
that greenhouse gases,

carbon dioxide in particular,

did not go above 280 parts
per million

over the last 650,000 years.

We're now over
400 parts per million,

coming close to what many
scientists are now referring to

as a tipping point...
a tipping point

where we lose control
of climate.

And once we've lost control
of climate,

then things like Katrina,

Katrina-scale events,
will become simply the norm.

BILL McKIBBEN:
Unless we're able

to quickly reduce, very quickly
and very dramatically reduce

our use of fossil fuel,

the computer modeling
is pretty clear.

Having increased the
temperature one degree so far,

will increase it
about another five degrees;

that will make the Earth warmer
than it's been

for tens of millions of years.

Some scientists are amazed
that in the media debate

and in front of Congress,
we hear about people who

"I believe in" or "I don't
believe in global warming,"

as if this were somehow
some object of religion

as opposed to based
in evidence...

and scientists look at evidence.

The scientists have, um...

a tremendous amount of agreement

over some of the basic
principles of global warming.

Is the Earth warming?
Absolutely.

Is some portion of the warming

due to human activity?
Absolutely.

These are things
that there's a consensus

in the international
scientific community.

JIM HANSEN:
There's no doubt
about that.

The natural changes,
the speed of the
natural changes is

now dwarfed by
the changes that
humans are making

to the atmosphere
and to the surface.

Jim Hansen, who's the director

of the NASA
Institute for Space Studies,

recently gave a best estimate,

and that was based on research
done last year,

and the current estimate is
that the Earth has warmed up

by about seven-tenths
of a degree centigrade,

and even if we were to cap CO2,
carbon dioxide emissions,

to the level that they are now,

the Earth should still warm by
an additional...

about a half a degree
centigrade.

McKIBBEN:
It's been enough to melt

20% of the sea ice
in the Arctic.

It's been enough to speed up

the spin and duration
of hurricanes about 50%.

It's been enough to start
the permafrost

beneath the tundra,
across the north melting.

Even at the low range, a couple
of degrees in the average

can really change things
profoundly

in some parts of the world,

where you have more
of an amplifying effect,

like in the Arctic.

(loud rumbling)

You can feel this,
the chunk that we're on

actually starting to fail
a bit more,

probably hairline cracks
up the, um, towards
the helos there.

The human impacts,

and particularly of what's
happening with global warming,

climate changes in the Arctic,

it is happening first
and fastest in the Arctic.

We're starting to see
that things are happening

even faster than what
scientists have indicated.

By the end of the century,

perhaps even in a few decades,
the Arctic will be

quite ice-free.

The climate change
is going to have

a very strong
and fundamental impact

on the global water cycle.

It's going to change
rainfall patterns.

It's going to very likely
increase our experience

with floods and droughts.

It's almost certainly
going to change

the pattern of river flows
throughout the year.

And these are all very,
very fundamental aspects

of how we manage and use water.

What global warming does--

or what the climate changes
linked to global warming--

what those changes do is

they add another dimension
of uncertainty.

It threatens your food
security, for example.

It threatens
your water security.

It threatens your sea level
security.

It threatens your security
against storms and hurricanes

and all these things that are
in the news that we've seen.

It's a national security problem

in the sense that Florida might
be the first affected

as well as other coastal parts
of the United States.

But more importantly than that,

it's an international
security problem.

The U.N. estimates that by
the middle of the century,

there may be 150 million
environmental refugees

at any given time
from climate change.

RAY ANDERSON:
What we saw with Katrina,

to me, is just prologue.

I just think that the worst
is yet to come on that front.

Global warming is real
and it's destructive,

and its impacts defy
the imagination.

So we've got bad things
happening on a lot of fronts,

and Earth is hurting,
and humans

have not figured out
how to change their ways,

and we're the culprit.

(somber theme playing)

Global warming has taken
much of our attention,

as it should,

but as carbon has been
accumulating in the atmosphere,

it has also been accumulating
in the ocean.

And as time has passed,
deforestation, soil erosion,

vanishing wetlands, and a whole
host of other problems

have continued unabated.

We face a convergence of crises,

all of which are
a concern for life.

(screeching)

PAUL HAWKEN: The problem
that confronts us is

that every living system
in the biosphere is in decline,

and the rate of decline
is accelerating.

There isn't one peer-reviewed
scientific article

in the past 20 years,
that's been published,

that contradicts that statement.

Living systems

are coral reefs,

there are climatic stability,
forest cover,

the oceans themselves,
aquifers, water,

the conditions of the soil,
biodiversity,

they go on an on
as they get more specific.

But the fact is, there isn't
one living system

that is stable or is improving;

and those living systems
provide the basis for all life.

(whales vocalizing)

I sat on a United Nations group

called the Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment--

a four-year study,
the biggest study ever done

of ecosystems around the world.

It involved
over 1,300 scientists

from 71 countries in the world.

At the end of that,
in March of 2005,

the final reports came in;

and they documented
the staggering destruction

of ecosystems and the services
they perform for us

around the world.

We better, first of all,
acknowledge

that the planet is seamless.

For instance, the fertilizer
and the pesticides

that are applied in the fields
of the upper Midwest

go down the Mississippi

and 1,100 miles away,
there's a dead zone.

The reality with air pollution
is there's no "away."

Impacts can range from
headaches, drowsiness, lethargy

to much more serious impacts.

Not only aggravating asthma
but actually causing asthma.

People didn't talk
about asthma a few decades ago.

Now I can walk into a classroom
in a public elementary school

and ask the kids,
"How many of you have asthma?"

and you'll see 30% of the kids
in the room

will have their hands raised--
at least 30%.

You know, in some classrooms,
it'll be 60%.

There's an ocean crisis
that is occurring right now,

and the upshot is

that we've taken too much
out of the ocean;

we've put too much into the
ocean--too much pollution--

and we're wrecking
the edge of the ocean.

We've lost 90% of most
of the big fish in the sea

in half a century,
so we're turning

to deeper areas,
further areas offshore.

NICHOLS: So between over-fishing
and bycatch,

we're really removing

millions...billions of animals
from the ocean every year.

Uh, many of them
don't even become, um,

food for humans;
they just are wasted.

What we put into the ocean--

millions of tons of things
that aren't natural to the sea

that come back to us
in perverse ways.

Some fish concentrate

these substances--
things like mercury,

heavy metals of various sorts,

the pesticides, the herbicides.

DIANE WILSON:
Corporations,

they dump an equivalent...

you know, at the...
at the smallest,

they do five million gallons
per day of toxins into the bay.

It's everything from benzene

to acrylnitril
to mercury to copper to...

you name it, they've got it.

A lot of the chemicals
that have become

very common in our world today--
things in plastics,

uh, artificial colors,
pesticides--

are really high on the list
of suspect agents

that promote cancer,

that promote premature aging,
that increase risks

of chronic
degenerative diseases.

THEO COLBORN:
Why don't we

think about some
of these disorders,

such as autism,

ADHD, childhood cancers,

childhood diabetes,

childhood behavioral problems,

Parkinson's disorders.

This has now even been linked
with Alzheimer's disorders.

And then, of course, we've got

the early onsets
of testicular cancers in males,

the epidemic of,
uh, prostate cancer

and breast cancers.

The list just keeps growing,

and exposure to chemicals
while in the womb,

prior to birth,
could be contributing

to these disturbing findings.

The communities that
are most impacted by pollution,

in fact, have the most
toxic sources of pollution,

are often low-income
communities of color.

They're the dumping grounds
for power plants,

they're the dumping grounds
for bus depots,

for oil refineries,
for any number

of waste facilities,
and everything

that no one else wants,

whether it's the South Bronx,

whether it's Louisiana,
in Cancer Alley.

Our food is becoming poisoned

to the point that
we should worry about it.

There's less and less of it.

Uh, the water, it's becoming
more and more unhealthy

to just swim in the ocean.

And all of these are...

are simple to understand--

um, canaries in the coal mine

of much more subtle and scary
disasters on the horizon.

TZEPORAH BERMAN:
70 countries in the world

no longer have any intact

or original forests.

And here in the United States,
95% of our old-growth forests

are already gone.

GLORIA FLORA:
In many cases, the forests
will not grow back,

and that land is then converted
to grassland.

But in the case of rain forests,

we have seen firsthand that
when those trees are removed,

no, they do not come back,
the land becomes

extremely dry,
and the nutrient cycling

that those trees used to do
is no longer functioning.

What that leads to next:
deserts.

We've seen them,
and we've watched them grow

around the world.

As we have removed trees

from along the edges
of very dry areas,

that desertification

has spread where
there used to be forests.

In my own part of the world,

I keep telling people, let us
not cut trees irresponsibly.

Let us not destroy, especially,
the forested mountains.

Because if you destroy
the forests

on these mountains,
the rivers will stop flowing,

and the rains
will become irregular,

and the crops will fail,
and you will die

of hunger and starvation.

Now, the problem is, people
don't make those linkages.

Well over 30%
of the soils of the planet

have been put into the category

of...I think,

serious degradation.

And the practices
of agriculture

is eroding
that ecological capital

that is as much,
for all practical purposes,

a nonrenewable resource as oil.

One of the things
we don't see or think about

when we look at a tree is:
what's the volume?

How much water
could be contained there?

It turns out
to be 57,000 gallons

of water in
a ten- to 12-inch flash flood.

It can grab that much water,
prevent it from running off.

Captures it in that sponge,
cleans it,

puts it back in the aquifer.

Take that one tree away,

and you've got a flood,

you've got soil erosion,

you've lost
those 57,000 gallons

from the local water supply,
and then, that water is rushing

on downstream, hurting people,
hurting communities,

ultimately polluting the ocean.

We really could tip the ocean
into a different state.

The health of the ocean
as we know it depends on the...

the water turning over,
of the surface water

sinking to the bottom,

and the bottom water
coming up to the top.

It's conceivable that we could
turn that conveyor belt off

by warming of the surface of
the ocean a little bit too much,

and if we do that, we...
with all of our dead zones,

we could make the surface,

the whole damn
surface ocean stagnant,

and that's a...
that's a terrifying thought.

The last time
that happened, uh,

was the end-Permian
mass extinction,

and more than 95%

of all the species
on the Earth went extinct.

(slow, somber theme plays)

* *

(man singing slow,
mournful ballad)

* *

* *

* *

* *

(song ends)

DiCAPRIO:
The simple fact is,

ecosystems that sustain life
are unraveling--

systems that have evolved for
hundreds of millions of years.

The evidence is now clear.

Industrial civilization
has caused irreparable damage,

and our impact
is only accelerating.

We have lost the last 30 years

in the war
against global warming.

The questions then arise:

Why aren't we responding?

But more important, what are the
forces that are blocking change?

AUSUBEL: Probably the greatest
weapon of mass destruction

is corporate economic
globalization,

and there's always been,
um, a greed factor

in human civilization,

and, uh, what has happened with
the creation of corporations,

which are the dominant
institution of our age, is that

they have perfected that
as a system.

And, um, what we literally
face today is that this

is going to kill off our host,
the planet.

Today, ecosystems--

forests, streams,
lakes, rivers--

they have no rights,
they're property,

which means they can be bought,
sold, destroyed,

traded, carved up.

Under this structure of law,

you're either property
or you're a person,

and it's very clear
that nature is property.

And so, the reason why we have
these reams of documents

in the libraries
about solutions, about solar,

about how to produce food
in a sustainable way,

about transportation,

about changing
the production methods

and putting in place

a sustainable economy
that respects the planet

is that we've lacked
the authority

to drive those things into law.

Because, in reality,
we have a constitution

that empowers the corporate few
to make decisions

that trump the majority,

and it has been our failure
to drive real law into place

because we don't have
the authority.

The reality is,

we have very responsive
political leaders,

they're just responsive
to wealth and to money,

uh, and to corporate power.

Um, ExxonMobil,
one oil company,

is worth more than the sum

of the value
of all the auto companies

in the whole wide world.

That is a big company.

People say, gee, why aren't
politicians responding

to the global climate crisis?
Why aren't they...

Because they're
responsive to some...

to a higher power,
unfortunately.

And right now, that higher power
is the fossil fuel industry.

MAN: You're responsible for
editing "Our Changing Planet,"

and you send a review draft
to the White House.

What happens?

Uh, it comes back, uh,

with a large number
of edits,

hand-written
on the hard copy

by the chief of staff

of the Counsel
on Environmental
Quality.

And the chief of staff
is whom?

Phil Cooney.

He is a scientist?

No, he's a lawyer

who was a lobbyist
for the American
Petroleum Institute

before going
into the White House.

Our people have
a growing suspicion

that the oil companies
are taking unfair advantage

of the current
market conditions

to line their coffers
with excess profits.

ORR:
On the issues

of climate change
and environment,

the political system
has failed us.

It's not first and foremost
a crisis of technology.

It isn't even a crisis
of public opinion.

If you ask the public, uh,
do you want solar energy,

do you want
efficient appliances,

do you want efficient cars,

the answers come back
overwhelmingly: Yes, we do.

It's the bridge across
this chasm of public opinion

to public policy,
that's called government--

that's where
the failure has been.

That bridge has fallen
into disrepair.

There was a time
in the 1960s and 1970s

when Republicans and Democrats
in the United States

joined to pass the major
environmental laws of the time--

the National
Environmental Policy Act,

the Clean Air Act,

the Clean Water Act,
the Endangered Species Act.

Those were done by Republicans
and Democrats coming together,

and that system is now broken.

And part of the crisis is,
uh, as everybody knows,

it's that there is money--
too much money--

in the political system.

TOM LINZEY:
We need to understand that

even folks like Jefferson said,

we have to remake and rewrite
the Constitution

every generation
to meet our need.

Do we think that the Founding
Fathers understood anything

about global warming
or deforestation or, uh,

the massive amounts
of toxic chemicals

that are pumped into
our atmosphere and into our air

and water, land and soil
every day.

What we need to do
is find a harmony

between people and nature.

And one of the only ways
to do that

is to drive and recognize
that nature has rights, too.

(explosion thunders)

HERMAN DALY:
I think the most, uh,

basic thing to understand
about our global economic system

is that it's a subsystem,

and it's a subsystem
of a larger system.

The larger system
is the biosphere,

and the subsystem
is the economy.

The problem, of course,

is that our subsystem,
the economy, is geared

for growth--it's all set up
to grow, to expand--

whereas the parent system
doesn't grow,

it remains the same size.

So as the economy grows,
it displaces,

it encroaches upon

the biosphere,
and this is a fundamental cost,

this is the fundamental
opportunity cost

of economic growth.

That's what you give up
when you expand.

You give up
what used to be there.

So economists don't include

all of the things that nature
does for us for nothing.

Some technologies

would never be able to do
what nature does.

For example, pollinating all
of the flowering plants.

What would it cost us

to take carbon dioxide
out of the air

and put oxygen back in it,

which all the green things
do for us for nothing?

It's possible
to do a crude estimate

of what it would cost us
to replace nature.

Well, it turns out,
Constanza--

this is several years ago--
estimated it would cost us

$35 trillion a year

to do what nature
is doing for us for nothing.

Now, to put that in perspective,
if you added up

all of the annual economies

of all the countries
in the world at that time,

it came to $18 trillion.

So nature was doing
twice as much service for us

as the economies of the world,

and in the madness
of conventional economics,

this isn't in the equation.

Somehow, in the last few decades
in business school,

and the MBAs
that these CEOs have,

they were trained that
the object of their business

is growth,
as if that were an end.

It's not an end; it's a means.

And we've flipped
the ends and the means,

and if we can get the end back--
quality of life--

then we have to look
at the contradictions,

because the wrong kind of growth
reduces our quality of life,

and we have to retake that back.

I think the industrial system
has to be reinvented.

Today,

the throughput
of the industrial system,

from mine and wellhead

through to finished product
that ends up

in a landfill
or an incinerator,

for every truckload of product
with lasting value,

32 truckloads of waste
are produced.

And that, you know, it's
mind-boggling, but it's true.

So we have a system
that is a waste-making system.

Clearly, we cannot continue
to dig up the Earth

and turn it to waste.

DiCAPRIO: In our modern,
globalized world,

growth continues
to be the focus

of many corporations
and governments

who deplete our environment
for economic gain.

But what about us--
as individuals, as consumers?

To what extent
are we participants

in the destruction
of our biosphere?

The problem is not
a problem of technology;

the problem is not
a problem of...of, uh,

too much carbon dioxide;

the problem is not
a problem of global warming;

the problem is not
a problem of waste.

All of those things
are symptoms of the problem.

The problem is the way
that we are thinking.

The problem is fundamentally
a cultural problem.

It's at the level
of our culture

that this illness is happening.

ORR:
We're now products

of $500 billion of advertising,
uh, each year.

By the time a child comes
to college or grows up through,

uh...school

and is a first-year student
in college,

they'll have seen thousands
of hours of television--

on average, four hours
and some minutes per day.

And as a result,
as one study showed,

they could identify
a thousand corporate logos

but fewer than
ten plants and animals

native to their own place.

And so we become
not only consumers

but hugely ignorant of the terms
by which we live on the Earth.

Well, Americans are spending
their time working and spending.

That's where most
of our time is going.

BETSY TAYLOR:
An average American
goes shopping,

in one way or another,
five times a week.

During the day, we spend
most of our time working

to make the money
so that we can shop.

And there's
a growing weariness

of having to hold up
the global economy,

having to sort of
keep up with the Joneses.

So while everything's
getting bigger--

our bathtubs, our houses,
our vehicles, our waistlines--

we're running out of time.

We have less of the things
we really care about.

In America,
people are so insulated

by our astonishing
concentration of wealth.

I mean, Americans
spend more money

maintaining our lawns

than India collects
in federal tax revenue.

Our defense budget, which is
a trivial percentage of GDP,

is larger than the entire
economy of Australia.

So, kind of anesthetized
by our own wealth,

we forget how the majority
of the world lives

and, indeed, how the majority
of the world looks.

NATHAN GARDELS:
So where we are now

as a civilization is...
I wouldn't...I would call...

consumerism is
the leading ideology,

even consumer democracy.

Consumer democracy in the sense
that...any regime,

whether it's the Chinese regime,
the U.S. regime,

has to give people what they
want and when they want it,

which is now,

and people want consumer goods.

Once commodities become

cultural symbols,

whether it's a cell phone
in rural China

or a Lamborghini
in, uh, Malibu,

there's no stopping that.

You have to change
the object of desire

in order to get to the root
of the problem.

People believe in choice,

and choice means consumerism
for most people.

There is no mileage,
uh, in trying

to save the planet
by telling people

they're making the wrong choice.

It's not gonna work.

SHOPPERS:
Four, three, two, one!

You have to change the idea
behind limitless expansion,

uh, in a phrase,
from well-having to well-being.

It's a cultural transformation.

BETSY TAYLOR:
We've always, as humans,

had material desires.

Material things are part
of how we do define who we are.

So it's not that
consumption is bad,

it's that it's gotten
totally out of balance.

JERRY MANDER:
Media really is the instrument

by which knowledge is passed
in our society.

We no longer get knowledge
directly from the Earth,

we're no longer in touch with
the sources of our survival,

we no longer, for the most part,
in Western industrial society,

we're no longer
growing our food

or taking care
of our own sustenance

or learning directly
from our own experience

or having our family
be the root of our choices.

Basically, we're like the
astronaut in space, you know?

We're floating around

in a metallic,
re-created universe,

disconnected, really,
from sources on the Earth

and...and we depend completely
upon the information

that is sent to us
from very, very far away.

We're psychically numbed.

I mean, we numb our senses
from morning till night,

whether it's with noise
or loud music

or light at night.

So nobody sees the beauty.

And if we've lost the feeling

of the beauty of the world,

then we are looking
for substitutes.

Eric Hofer said,

"You can never get enough
of what you don't really want."

Meaning we rush around,

permanently needy, but the
loss, the feeling of loss

is that we don't know
what it is we've lost.

What we've lost is
the beauty of the world,

and we make up for it

with attempting
to conquer the world,

or own the world,
possess the world.

(slow, somber theme plays)

HAWKING:
One can see from space

how the human race
has changed the Earth.

Nearly all of the available
land has been cleared of forest

and is now used for agriculture
or urban development.

The polar ice caps
are shrinking,

and the desert areas
are increasing.

At night,
the Earth is no longer dark,

but large areas are lit up.

All of this is evidence

that human exploitation
of the planet

is reaching a critical limit,

but human demands
and expectations

are ever increasing.

We cannot continue
to pollute the atmosphere,

poison the ocean
and exhaust the land.

There isn't
any more available.

STUART PIMM:
We are living

in an enormously
challenging time.

If we don't change
what we're doing,

we are facing

losing perhaps a third,
maybe a half,

of all the variety
of life on Earth.

PAUL STAMETS:
What we don't know is

at one point that,
when we lose biodiversity,

that the system will start
to fall apart.

Now, I believe
in the resilience of nature,

so I think that once the
human species becomes extinct--

and many species
have become extinct before us,

many species will
become extinct after us--

that the Earth may well
spin on its axis

happily without humans,
and the microbes

and the insects
will inherit the world,

unless we cause
such a dramatic climate shift

that we become
an arid, cold planet like Mars.

I don't believe for a minute
that life will be extinguished.

Even though we've
radically altered the air,

the water and the soil
of the Earth, life has been

incredibly tenacious
and adaptable.

But as a species

at the very top
of the food chain,

I know that
we're the most vulnerable.

Life has existed on Earth
for 3.8 to four billion years.

Over that time, there have been
a lot of species.

But you know what?

99.9999--four decimal points--
percent of all species

that have ever existed
are extinct.

So extinction is
a natural part of life.

Extinction is what
has enabled life

to flourish
and evolve and change

with the conditions
of the changing planet.

The planet hasn't been stuck

in one condition
over four billion years.

The tragedy of our existence is
that we're an infant species.

Not only are we hastening
the conditions

for our own demise,
we're taking down--

according to the United Nations
Environment Program--

50,000 to 55,000 species a year

are going extinct
because of us.

The tragedy is not the imminent

or potential extinction
of humankind

but the enormous
extinction crisis

that we're causing right now.

JOSEPH TAINTER: And I
think there is potential
for a dark age.

One of the problems that I see
is that so many people

who have to individually accept
the cost of the transition

are unaware that it's coming.

Most of our citizens
wake up in the morning and...

worry about the morning commute

and getting the kids to school
and paying the mortgage

and thinking about a new car
or a vacation or whatever,

and this is simply too narrow
a scale of thinking

to address the problems
that we have.

We need people to be aware

of the global forces
that affect their lives

and that will increasingly
affect their lives

in the future.

If this awareness
doesn't develop,

then I'm afraid the transition
will probably be wrenching.

What we risk is
the destruction of civilization,

everything we fought for;

this fragile little craft

that's navigated the centuries
and the millennia

to come to this
particular point.

It will have been undone
in a flash of consumption

and bad judgment
and violence and injustice.

Is the caring capacity
for a human population

that's happy and healthy
in a future going away?

Absolutely.

And it's not about
saving the planet,

it's about saving
a caring capacity,

a system upon which
humans can live

in the pursuit of happiness.

That's what's at stake.

PETER WARSHALL:
So if you step back

and you take
an Earth perspective,

rather than a human perspective,

it can't be an 11th hour
for the Earth.

It can be...

an extinction crisis
for the Earth,

and it can be a harmony crisis
for the Earth,

because we now see
that one species

is taking over so much
of the resources

of the Earth that it's leaving

very little for other creatures
to live with it.

(somber theme playing)

So, we find ourselves
on the brink.

It is clear humans have had
a devastating impact

on our planet's
ecological web of life.

Because we have waited,

because we've turned our backs
on nature's warning signs,

and because our political
and corporate leaders

have consistently ignored

the overwhelming
scientific evidence,

the challenges we face
are that much more difficult.

We are in the environmental age
whether we like it or not.

So what does
the future look like?

We know the United States,

the world's greatest consumer
and source of waste

needs to make a transition
to a greener future,

but will our pivotal generation

create a sustainable world
in time?

What will guide
this massive change?

And does nature hold
the answers we need

to help restore
our planet's resources,

protect our atmosphere,

and therefore,
help all life survive?

DAVIS: All of these forces
sweeping over the planet

are the forces created
by human beings,

and if human beings
are the source of the problem,

we can be the foundation
of the solution.

Some people suggest that
in order to live sustainably

we have to, uh,
go out in the woods

and put on animal skins
and live on roots and berries.

And the simple reality is
that we do have technology.

The question is, how can we use
our understanding of science

and our understanding
of technology,

along with our understanding
of culture

and how culture changes,
to create a culture

that will interact with science

and with the world around us

in a sustainable fashion?

The great thing about the
dilemma we're in is that...

we get to...re-imagine
every single thing we do.

In other words, there isn't...
uh, one single thing

that we make
or systems that we have

that doesn't require
a complete remake.

And so there's two ways
of looking at that.

One is, like, oh, my gosh,
you know, what a big burden.

The other way to look at it,
which is the way I prefer, is:

what a great time to be born,

what a great time to be alive,
because this generation

gets to, essentially,
completely change this world.

We're at a point in our history,
with 6.4 billion of us,

that we have to imagine
what it would be like

to redesign design itself,

and see design
as the first signal

of human intention,

and realize that we need
new intentions for our future

where materials
are seen as things

that are highly valuable
and need to go

in closed cycles--
what we call cradle-to-cradle

instead of cradle to grave--

and that energy needs to come
from renewable sources,

principally the sun,

and that water needs
to be clean and healthy

as it comes in and out
of a system,

and that we have
to treat each other

with justice and fairness.

So, uh,
the design itself changes,

from mass production of things

that are
essentially destructive to, uh,

mass utilization of things

that are inherently assets
instead of liabilities.

Our project today,

for a new generation
of designers,

is the welfare of all of life
as a practical objective.

It goes beyond ourselves

to include the entire
ecological realm,

that all of life is actually

a design project today;
that we have to...

we have to design the capacity

to sustain it in the long run.

Whether we're talking
about the design of a factory

or a building or a road
or even a town,

it's much easier to design
in isolation

and superimpose a design
on what exists.

But if we were to follow
nature's

operating instructions,

it designs in exactly
the opposite way.

It brings onto the palette,
so to speak,

all of the kingdoms of life

and then works symphonically
to create an end result,

which might be a coral reef
or might be a forest.

Well, you know,
the interesting thing

about, uh, sustainable design

is that I don't think it has
to look in any particular way.

One of the things
that we really discovered

in the last few years,

is that the new design
is actually invisible.

The new design is not
about a visual boundary.

The form, in fact, could...

you know, the form
could be anything.

It's the structure
and internal logic

and intelligence
and the performance

that has to be designed.

How we make things...

uh, in, you know,
in our industrial processes, um,

is...it's 180-degree different
from how life makes things.

Look at the way we make,
for instance, Kevlar,

which is our toughest material.

We take petroleum,
we heat it up to about

1,400 degrees Fahrenheit,

and we bubble it
in sulfuric acid,

and then we pull it out

under enormous pressures.

Now, imagine an organism--us--
making our bones or our teeth.

Imagine a, um,
an abalone making a shell.

They can't afford to heat it up
to really high temperatures,

or do pressures
or chemical baths,

so they found
a different way.

Now, take the spider.

This beautiful orb
weaver spider

is basically taking
flies and crickets

into the web and
transforming them, in water--

chemistry in water
in the abdomen--

and out comes this...

material that's
five times stronger,

ounce for ounce, than steel.

Silently, in water,
at room temp.

You know? I mean, this...

this is...
this is master chemistry.

This is the manufacturing
of the future, hopefully.

And there's actually people
who are now

trying to mimic the recipes
of these organisms.

Fungi are the grand molecular
disassemblers in nature--

the interface organisms
between life and death.

They generate soil.

The entire food web of nature

is based on these fungal
filaments.

The mycelial network

that infuses all land masses
in the world

is a supportive membrane
upon which life proliferates

and...and further diversifies.

Mushrooms also have
a very bizarre property

of hyper-accumulating
heavy metals.

Forests are thousands of acres,
and so fungi,

that produce mushrooms,

grow to thousands
of acres in size.

This gives us
a ready ability to tap in

to this powerful
inherent resource

that mushroom mycelium has

to remediate environments,

prevent downstream pollution
from microbes, from viruses,

you know, including bacteria
and protozoa, and also

for breaking down a wide
assortment of pollutants.

And this is one of the pedestals
of micro-restoration--

using mushroom mycelium
in order to heal environments,

because these are
truly healing membranes.

There's the model.

In nature there is no waste.

One organism's waste
is another's food.

That's the model
for the industrial system

that must eventually evolve:
a waste-free industrial system.

MCDONOUGH:
If we think about
a tree as a design--

it's something
that makes oxygen,

sequesters carbon,
fixes nitrogen, distills water,

provides habitat
for hundreds of species,

accrues solar energy,
makes complex sugars and food,

creates micro-climates,
uh, it self-replicates.

So what would it be like

to design a building
like a tree?

What would it be like
to design a city like a forest?

So what would a building be like
if it were photosynthetic?

What if it took solar energy
and then put it,

converted it to productive
and delightful use?

For example,
if we combine our housing

and our waste treatment

and our food production
and our energy generation,

all integrated,
single, whole systems,

we can live beautifully
on the planet

with one-tenth or less

the resources that
our current civilization uses.

Rebuilding is essentially

the design and construction
of buildings

that are energy-
and resource-efficient.

They produce healthy places
to live and work.

If you take, for example,

the fact that buildings
account for a third

of all energy use,

it's really
the single largest segment

of not only energy use
but greenhouse gas production.

What we can do with buildings

in just the simplest,
off-the-shelf technologies

is really stunning.

KENNY AUSUBEL:
So, with existing technologies

that we basically
already have on the shelf,

or things that
we know we can develop

in a very rapid period of time,

we could literally reduce
the human footprint

on planet Earth by 90%, right?

Which would be a huge shift
in what we're doing right now.

SCHNEIDER: The direction to go
is to start becoming decoupled

from our dependence on oil

through efficient
transportation,

better insulated houses

and the development
of renewable alternatives,

like solar and wind
and biomass,

and getting those to become
the major part of the market

using efficiency
as the transition.

It's not gonna happen
overnight,

but it should've started
30 years ago.

And we have, right now,

in the White House
and in many members of Congress,

people trying
to delay it further,

which, to me,
is ultimately irrational,

both for our
national security

and our
environmental protection.

This country can move
awfully fast, if it wants to.

Keep in mind that, just after
December 7, 1941,

Roosevelt went
to Jimmy Burns and said,

you're my deputy president
for mobilizing the economy.

If anybody crosses you,
they cross me; get to it.

Within six months,

Detroit was completely
retooled,

not making cars anymore,

making, uh,
military trucks, tanks,

fighter aircraft,

and in three years
and eight months,

from the beginning of that war,
we had mobilized,

we had defeated imperial Japan,
fascist Italy,

uh, Nazi Germany,

together with the British
and our other allies,

and begun demobilization.

Three years and eight months.

These are not technical issues

nearly as much
as they are leadership issues.

How much time do we have?

Well, not much.

By my reckoning, we ought
to be about the business

as rapidly as possible.

And this means everybody--
every citizen,

uh, every government level,

every organization,
every corporation.

This is all-hands-on-deck time.

So that, in the future,
500 years out, let's say,

that people look back,
uh, at this time,

that this was our finest hour,

that humans at that time
and that generation,

all across the planet,
began to come together

in a very different vision.

There are on Earth today

over one million
environmental social justice

and indigenous
organizations present.

It is the fastest-growing
movement on Earth.

And you're starting to see them
pull together

and close the loops
and plug the leaks

of energy and water
and food and finance

and those things,

to reimagine what it means
to be, as I say,

a human being
in the 21st century,

when every living system
is in decline,

and learning
how to reverse that.

It's almost as if
we had distributed an ambition

without ever having
written it down,

you know, so that
people all over the world

knew what they ought
to be working on

and were working on it
in their own way,

knowing that
they only had one...

one sort of pixel,
in this incredible mosaic

of a...of a...
of an image of the future,

and that they could contribute
that pixel to that mosaic

knowing that in the end
that incredibly beautiful image

was a sustainable future.

LESTER BROWN:
The exciting thing is
that we can see now

what the new economy
would look like.

Instead of being powered
by fossil fuels,

it's powered largely
by renewable energy.

Instead of having
an automobile-centered

transportation system,
it will have

a much more diversified
transport system.

Instead of
a throwaway economy

it will be a reused economy,
where everything is reused.

Indeed, we see glimpses of it
beginning to emerge

here and there
around the world.

So we have the technologies
to build a new economy

that will sustain
economic progress.

And we can see that new economy
beginning to emerge.

The challenge for our generation

is to build that economy
in the time that's available,

and I don't think we have
a lot of time left.

Virtually all of our major
infrastructure changes

in this country have been
encouraged in one way or another

by the Federal government.

So I would think
the way to deal

with this transition
away from oil is, first of all,

not to pretend
that energy operates today

in an unregulated
free-enterprise market--

it does not--

uh, but to go ahead
and, as affordably as possible,

give incentives to move
toward these other fuels

and these minimal changes
in infrastructure

that make them possible.

Energy is the key
to everything else that we do.

With abundant and affordable
and clean energy,

we can solve
a lot of other problems.

Without it,
we're not gonna be able

to solve
very many problems at all.

And the sun
is the most plentiful,

bountiful substitute
there is out there.

There's more than enough energy

coming from the sun every day

to run every factory,
every home,

every automobile on Earth

13,000 times,
I think, is the number.

We're also finding
that, on the larger scale--

I would call
the utility scale--

wind energy, in particular,
has evolved to the point

where it can compete price-wise

with our traditional
fossil fuels--

that is, coal and oil
and natural gas--

and produce large amounts of
energy that can be distributed

through the grid,
which is the conventional way

that we receive energy.

GELOBTER:
It's important to see,

and it's important,
sort of, as we make...

as we make progress
in the world,

to have an economy
that's flexible and fluid

and ready to make changes.

How do we protect
the atmosphere

that belongs to all of us?

Well, one of the ways we do it

is we make people
who are polluting it

start paying for that pollution

through a polluter pay system
on climate change.

So we lower income taxes

and raise taxes on gasoline,
for example,

taxes on burning coal.

We can probably do it
all with a carbon tax.

We're not changing
the level of taxes.

We're reducing income taxes
and offsetting it

with an increase
in energy taxes,

in fact,
a tax on fossil fuels.

So when we break
our addiction to fossil fuels,

you see a lot of money
flowing to industries that,

in fact, represent the vitality
of the American economy--

media, high-tech services--
taking action

on climate change
is good for jobs

and good for the economy.

GERARD:
As an example,

if we retrofitted

all government buildings
built pre-1950,

and we created tax environments

to help cities
and municipalities

and states
and Federal government

to retrofit those buildings,

we could create
three million industrial jobs,

plus we could import
much less oil

from the Middle East.

But more importantly,

we'd be having
a much cleaner environment.

If we move from the rigged game
that we have now in energy

to a genuine
level playing field,

open competition between
dirty fuels and clean fuels,

I have no doubt that
the clean fuels will win.

Once we send the right signal
from the marketplace,

or to the marketplace,
that the two guys in the garage

who created Hewlitt-Packard,

well, those two guys today,

I want them to be working
on clean energy,

and I want them to know that
we've fixed our public policies

so that they're
gonna get rewarded

when they come up with the
killer app to defeat big oil.

That's what we need to do.

Once we do, we'll see
a relatively quick transition,

I think, to cleaner energy.

(slow, somber theme playing)

People need to realize

there are things they can do
in their everyday lives,

whether it's making
simple things

like keeping their tire pressure
at the right level,

putting in
compact fluorescent light bulbs.

And it--
personal action is important.

This problem with global
warmingis huge and tremendous

and it may seem inconsequential
to take your personal action,

but it is important
for all sorts of reasons:

because everybody making
a change adds up

to something meaningful;

because shifting the way we act
and live

is part
of the solution long-term;

because if we act in that way,

we will demonstrate
to our leaders that we do care.

And that's what we need

from individuals
as the next step beyond that

is to build the political will
for taking action.

You can also vote

and I don't mean voting
at a voting booth.

Anybody of any age can vote

because you vote every day
that you pay for something.

Every time you lay money down
on a counter to buy something,

you are saying
that I approve of this object.

I approve of how it was made,
the materials that are in it,

and what's going to happen to it

when I no longer need it
and throw it away.

Life creates the conditions
that are conducive to life,

so our technology,
our cities, our schools,

what we make, what we wear,
what we eat, all of that--

if it is oriented

around that one principle,
that one life principle,

then we will be here
for a long, long time

in an extraordinary world.

(gentle orchestral theme plays)

ANDERSON:
The question is:

what does it take for humankind
to change its ways?

And I am really encouraged

by Deepak Chopra's statement
that people are really doing

the best they can,
given their level of awareness.

So, to me, winning this battle

that we're in to change
people's minds and hearts

is a matter of lifting levels
of awareness, always raising--

and there's always
a higher level of awareness

for any of us.

GARDELS:
We need to be slower
and we need to be smarter.

Slow movement means disengaging
from consumerism

as the main avenue
of experience.

It doesn't reject
any consumption, but it says

we're not going
to live our lives mediated

by the marketplace
or what's being sold.

We're not going
to make our identities

and our meaning based on that.

Instead of the long commute,
the bigger car,

the bigger house,
let's enjoy the local produce;

have time to ourselves;

understand that things
are thieves of time

because the more things
you have,

the more time you have
to spend working,

the more your life is chained
to a rhythm

to get those things.

The other element is
the smart element,

and there, I think, we have
to reintroduce a term,

an old term before the
Industrial Revolution:

frugality.

Frugality does not mean
poverty.

Frugality means
the wise use of resources.

As I said earlier on,

the meaning of the Industrial
Revolution was

that nature was turned
into a resource

that was considered
endlessly abundant.

It's not true.

(insects chirping)

LINZEY:
Not only is it the 11th hour,

it's 11:59 and 59 seconds,

and although
prior people's movements

have taken 30 to 40 years

to actually build to a point

where they had the power
to drive changes

into the fundamental structure
of governance,

we don't have 30 to 40 years.

And so it's not just going
to be a matter of, you know,

tweaking a policy
here and there.

It's going to take a very, very
broad societal mobilization.

It's going to take involvement
at all levels,

from the government
through industry and on down

to our communities
and a welling up

of involvement of citizens.

Winston Churchill had it right
about us.

He said, "The Americans
always do the right thing,

"but unfortunately it's only
after they've exhausted

all other possibilities."

And we've been exhausting
some fairly bad possibilities

for a long time.

I think maybe we're finally
ready to get it right.

You know, people often ask me,
"What can I do, what can I do?

I want to do something."

Well, the first choice--

you've already made the first
choice if you're saying that

because the first choice is you
know you have to do something,

and for the rest,
it's a matter of looking deep

into your own heart
and your soul

to understand
what your own gifts are,

where your passions lie,
to do some research

and educate yourself
to find the people

that you are comfortable with,
and then get involved.

There are two things
that can perhaps save the world.

One would be the mastery
of one's kindness to oneself

and a big heart,

and the other would be
understanding

your passion for place,
for where you live,

and really loving the place
that you live in.

Environmentalism was once
the project of a passionate few.

Now millions of people
have responded

to ecological destruction
and have created the groundwork

for a sustainable
and just world.

With the onset of global warming
and other catastrophic events,

environmentalism
has become, today,

a broader, unifying human issue.

We as citizens, leaders,
consumers, and voters

have the opportunity
to help integrate ecology

into governmental policy
and everyday living standards.

During this critical period
of human history,

healing the damage
of industrial civilization

is the task of our generation.

Our response depends
on the conscious evolution

of our species and this response
could very well save

this unique blue planet
for future generations.

SUZUKI:
So I see a world in the future

in which we understand
that all life is related to us

and we treat that life
with great humility and respect.

I see us, as well,
as social creatures,

and when I began
to look back and say

"What is
the fundamental bottom line

for us as social creatures?"

I couldn't believe it because
it seemed so hippie-dippy,

but it was love.

Love is the force
that makes us fully human.

Now, to me the value is...

the healing power
that comes from getting

that it's not
just global warming,

it's not just
fossil fuel dependency,

it's not just soil erosion,

it's not just
chemical contamination

of our land and water,

it's not just
the population problem,

and it's not just all of those.

The deterioration of
the environment of our planet

is an outward mirror
of an inner condition.

Like inside, like outside.

And that's a part
of the great work.

So even if we choose
to eradicate ourselves

from this Earth
by whatever means,

the Earth goes nowhere

and in time it will regenerate

and all the lakes
will be pristine;

the rivers, the waters,
the mountains,

everything will be green again.

It'll be peaceful.

There may not be people,
but the Earth will regenerate.

And you know why?

Because the Earth has
all the time in the world.

And we don't.

So I think
that's where we're at right now.

(somber, ominous theme playing)

* *

* *

* *

("Politik" by Coldplay begins)

* *

* Look at Earth
from outer space *

* Everyone must find
their place *

* Give me time
and give me space *

* Give me real,
don't give me fake *

* Give me strength,
reserve, control *

* Give me heart
and give me soul... *

* Give me time, give us a kiss *

* Tell me your own politic *

* And open up your eyes *

* Open up your eyes *

* Open up your eyes *

* Open up your eyes *

* Give me one
'cause one is best *

* In confusion, confidence *

* Give me peace
of mind and trust *

* Don't forget the rest of us *

* Give me strength,
reserve, control *

* Give me heart
and give me soul *

* Wounds that heal
and cracks that fix *

* Tell me your own politic *

* And open up your eyes *

* Open up your eyes *

* Open up
your eyes *

* Open up your eyes *

* Just open up your eyes *

* *

* *

* But give me love over *

* Love over *

* Love over this... *

* And... *

* And give me love over *

* Love over *

* Love over this... *

* And... *

* *

* *

* *

* *

(song fades, ends)

(acoustic guitar playing
soulful, medium-tempo melody)

* *

* *

* *

* *

* *

* *

* *

* *

* *

(music ends)