Leonardo DiCaprio's Call to Action on Climate Change: A Comprehensive Overview

[Music] [Music] my first visual memories are of this

framed poster above my crib [Music] I would stare at it every night before I

went to bed my father was an underground comic distributor he's always been the sort of

Z League of the counterculture as I like to call him having painted in Warhol's studio being roomies with Lou Reed he

knew our crumb and all these great artists of his generation I mean I was brought up on all kinds of wacky visuals

as a kid so I would stare at this painting over and over

the Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch it was painted around 1500 and if you

look at these panels long enough they start to tell a story in the first panel you have Adam and Eve

in the Garden of Eden birds flying off in the distance elephants and giraffes and a lot of

religious iconography the second panel is where it starts to become more interesting

the deadly sins start to infuse their way into the painting there's overpopulation there's debauchery and

excess [Music] in the last panel which is the most

nightmarish one especially from a young child's perspective is this twisted decayed burnt landscape

a paradise that has been degraded and destroyed and maybe unwittingly changing the

world's climate through the waste products of his civilization the burning of coal oil and wood is releasing carbon

dioxide into the atmosphere the greenhouse effect has been detected and it is changing our climate now guess

where the temp index official 2012 with the hottest 2013 this 2040 2050 the warmest year these

activities which serve mankind out of the Garden of Eden to trade fitter to see her

we can this can be well this is for height control for short later like this intolerable

what specific message do you think is the most important climate change is coming much much faster we have seen

such an extraordinarily extreme weather patterns if you consider this a vastness of this

universe this a planet Earth is a just a small boat if this boat is sinking that I think we will have to all sing

together I know that he has been very committed and effective environmentalist that is why I will count on your

leadership and vision Thank You mr. secretary-general your excellency I feel incredibly honored

that they chose me to be the United Nations messenger piece on climate change

I want to do everything I can to learn more about this issue see for myself exactly what's going on and what can be

done but it all kind of seems beyond our control as an actor I pretend for a

living I play fictitious characters often solving fictitious problems I believe that mankind has looked at

climate change in that same way we keep getting inundated with catastrophic news about the environment every single day

and the problem seems to be getting worse and worse and worse try to have a conversation with anyone

about climate change people just to now if the UN really knew how I feel how s amiss Takei am about our future

I mean to be honest they may have picked the wrong guy [Music]

hundreds of thousands took to the streets of New York today demonstrating for action on climate change

secretary-general ban ki-moon called Leo a credible voice in the environmental movement which is like calling Jeffrey

Dahmer a credible voice force to Leonardo DiCaprio has just naively thought into the entire global warming

hoax who better to educate world leaders on made-up climate change in the crisis that doesn't exist that an actor from

Hollywood with zero years of scientific training [Music]

so I just started this new film it's set in the western frontier of the United States in the early 1800s it's basically

the dawn of the Industrial Revolution and has a lot to do with men who are pillaging the natural world wiping

species out and basically destroying cultures in the process there's an ending design you cannot see

if you can put how about this you

I didn't grow up around nature at all I grew up near downtown Los Angeles and my escape every weekend was the Natural

History Museum from a very young age I became fascinated with species that had become

extinct all these different animals from the dodo to the passenger pigeon which was the most plentiful bird on Earth to

the Tasmanian Tiger also known as the thylacine the Great Auk quagga the MOA I remember the anger that I felt reading

all these stories about how explorers and settlers would just wipe out an entire species and in the process

decimate the ecosystem forever [Music] the difference now is

or knowingly doing this it's just on a much larger scale [Music]

if we're gonna fight climate change effectively we have to start by acknowledging that most of our economy

is based on fossil fuels fossil fuels are coal oil and natural gas oil powers most of the transportation sector

coal natural gas power most of the electricity now on the first couple decades of the

21st century in order to sustain our dependence on fossil fuels we're going to very risky very extreme new sources

you see this in things like mountaintop removal coal fracking for natural gas

offshore drilling for oil and tar sands which is the most devastating

form of producing fossil fuels they take away massive forests the water and the streams and rivers is poisoned it has

severe impact on wildlife on Native communities and it requires a huge amount of energy

simply to get it to our fuel tanks there is no such thing as clean fossil fuel

[Music] clear-cut all of this there's a logging company here in town so typically where

people need the trees cut to do any development of any sort here there's a local mill and they process all the wood

this would be all boreal forest all boreal forest here that's what it started as a pretty small

operation back in the in the late 1960s different different images

today we produce about 350,000 barrels a day of fat and crude oil from this facility

there's a couple of other ones Leonardo there six on they have started up a new mine just recently and then there's a

shell so those are all the black is the oil sands yeah you can tell by looking at it and it is oil in it so what

happens in real time is we take this sandy oil and we wash the oil out of the sand

we just bump steam into the ground and then as the ground warms literally the oil drops it just falls out of the sand

and then we're done kind of looks like Mordor like what Warren or from Lord of the Rings

such a massive operations pipeline I know this of course is just our mining operation we'll get to the extraction

operation of the upgrading operation that instant you operation is some 70 kilometers or so away but when the plans

are connected by pipelines the truth is the more I've learned about this issue and everything that contributes to the

problem the more I realize how much I don't know how much I don't know about this issue

the first time I ever heard the term global warming which is what it was called back then I was in my early 20s I

had the opportunity to sit down one-on-one with then Vice President Al Gore in the White House they drew a

picture of our planet on a chalkboard then he drew the atmosphere around it and he said this is the most important

issue of our time I'd absolutely no idea what he was talking about he said all our modes of transportation

boats trains planes cars the way we produce our food the way we build our cities almost everything we do releases

carbon dioxide co2 and that leads to climate

the polar ice caps will melt the Seas will start to rise they'll be more dangerous weather patterns and floods

droughts wildfires it sounded like some nightmarish science fiction of fun except everything he said is real and

it's happening right now [Music] Wow beautiful

[Music] I just want to know how far we've gone how much damage we've done

and if there's anything we can do to stop it y'all set my

so it's the 4th of July we're here in the middle of the Arctic right now we are standing on the ocean

we are basically walking on water this is the northern tip of Baffin Island one of the hundreds of islands in the high

Canadian Arctic we are way above the Arctic Circle and if you put your hand in the water you will not be able to

stand it for more than five minutes except you who are badass you hunt and fish here right yeah what do you what

are you fishing what do you hunt in my territory I hunt fish see ya now I am all appear this polar bear yep oh well

there you go yeah and the ice here yes you've been around has it been decreasing for you to have a solid ice

blue not like blue like this blue hide ice now we usually have kind of an ice cream type of her ice

sighs but it's when it starts no big nose but you're fast much faster than before

2040 you will be able to sail over the North Pole there's going to be no sea ice left in the Arctic Ocean in the

summer we are burning so many fossil fuels that the ice is melting the Arctic is like the air-conditioning

for the northern hemisphere if it goes away that's going to change the currents that's going to change weather patterns

that's going to make floods and droughts more catastrophic but it's the most dramatic

transformation of a large environment ever look at this

they're right here there are about 10,000 to 12,000 narwhals on this region

the numbers are stable here in other regions are declining Wow it's awesome and they are waiting for

the eyes to to open app to swim in so they can catch the mother I can't believe what they sound like it's

amazing they're like purring you know I I don't want to be in a

planet without these animals when I was 25 years old I remember being asked to participate in this huge event

in Washington for Earth Day mperatures rising coral reefs are dying and not since the meteor hit the earth 65

million years ago of so many species of plant animals become extinct in such a short I've even got a chance to

interview the President of the United States I think this issue is so constantly overlooked I think it's

because it takes a long time for the climate to change in a way that people feel it and because it seems sort of

abstract now at the time there was this huge push to get the word out on global warming now a couple degrees difference

in today's temperatures may not seem like an emergency back then everyone was focused on small individual actions we

all have to you know bring environmentalism to the American consciousness and it boiled down to

simple solutions like changing your life it seemed like a positive thing at the time you know

changing your light bulb but it's pretty clear that we're way beyond that point now things have taken

a massive turn force we keep finding things that aren't in the climate models they're used to

project the future so that that tells me that the the projections for the future are really conservative if climate stays

at this temperature that it's been in the last decade the Greenland is is going away

don't walk into the crevasse look at how violent that is did smell water is making its way to the

seat if that's not balanced by snowfall then dicey gets smaller and sea level rises

this is actually our proper climate station but this is a climate station I was imagining a massive igloo with all

kinds of scientists doing experiments it really does look like broken down pool equipment

what is this connect to this well this is all melted out now this was a hose that went down 30 feet and now it's

melted out of it so this that's lying here used to be straight down under ice yeah so we made that's the amount of ice

that is melted yeah this is five years of melt so this entire leg is the thickness of

ice that has melted throughout all of lower greenland in the past five years right that's hundreds of cubic

kilometers of ice that's now no longer stored on land it's gone into the sea over here

you always Boston and Long Beach California maybe doomed to fall victim to ever

rising sea-levels South Florida as we know it could be washed away by rising seas

when you look at places that are the most susceptible to sea-level rise especially in the United States Florida

is the key one and a lot of the ear campaign was based on giving people an understanding of what's at risk here we

don't have a Liberty the time to debate climate change if you don't believe in it I always say bring your unconverted

to us and we'll make sure you agree that there is a major problem we have this thing called sunny day

flooding picture on a beautiful sunny day all of a sudden you see water coming up on the street as the sea level rises

so water is coming up back flowing into our streets through our dreams if the city is under water there's no future

how do you combat them exactly what's going on as far as prevention is concerned we started putting in puffs

take a look at this well this is the pump yep we're in the process of building it all

across the city this street right here used to be fully underwater during high tide you may need

a canoe and now what we did is we raised this road and you can see the difference see how that area there slopes down a

little bit so the main investment is in these systems right here raising the roads and the electric pumps yeah this

is a four hundred million dollar project citywide and of course we're paying for it by our city revenues I had to raise

tax revenue which you can imagine is not a very popular thing to do as a politician and this construction is it

gonna make a different agent buy you a significant amount of time absolutely I would think about 40 50 years that's it

yes now one of the things I always say when people ask me they said well mayor what

about after 50 years what's gonna happen what we have to do is come up with solutions and unfortunately we have a

governor and we have a cabinet that doesn't believe that this is a major issue officials in Florida were banned

from using the words climate change this policy began in 2011 after rick scott came to office

know one of the only ones talking about climate change especially our senator from florida Marco Rubio who who doesn't

believe that we have climate change is not interested in assisting our state I would hope that he would have gone out

and grabbed US federal funds in the last three years to help make our cities viable I do not believe that human

activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it why do you

think there is such opposition about the science I think it's politics I think it so has to do with lobbying and industry

and I always say one thing Lee always said the ocean is not Republican and it's not Democrat all it knows how to do

is rise satellite data show for the last 17 years there has been no significant

recorded warming it's supposed to be 70 degrees today it's freezing yeah speaking of global warming where is we

need some global warming it's freezing there's about as robust a consensus about human caused climate

change as there is for any matter in science be it the theory of gravity 97% of climate scientists agree the

globe is warming our climate is changing it's due to fossil fuel burning and other human activities unfortunately we

are fighting this massive disinformation campaign to confuse the public do you look at the satellite data we actually

have had no significant warming since 1998 actually no warming we've been cooling in recent years if you actually

believe that global warming is the biggest problem we face you're the dumbest son of a on the planet so

yeah maybe you could just talk a little bit about your background the studies that you've done I was the classic

science and math geek in high school study physics and graduate school in a decade and a half my co-authors and I

started to look into climate change in the more distant past we published a curve where there's this long term

cooling trend and then all of a sudden this abrupt warming that has no precedent as far back as you can go and

it got named the hockey stick cuz it looks like the blade of a hockey stick and once we had published that graph I

had set myself up for a completely different life why is that what did they do specifically I was vilified on the

editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal on Fox News that I was a fraud other German scientists have called a

statistical rubbish he's been called a statistical charlatan I was being attacked by Congress men they threw

spaghetti up on the wall and where we're stuck is what they put in the church had death threats that were actionable

enough that the FBI at one point had to come to my office to investigate an envelope that had been sent to me that

had a white powder I've had threats made against my family these folks know they don't have to win the legitimate

scientific debate they just need to divide the public and all of that hatred and fear is in fact organized and funded

by a few players fossil fuel interests folks like the Koch brothers

financed a very large echo chamber of climate change denial ISM the reality is a lot of climatologists believe that the

science is not settled global warming is illusory we're actually going through a period of global cooling it's easier to

believe in a benevolent God the baby Jesus than it is in some kind of theory about global warming websites and news

outlets and think tanks they find people with fairly impressive credentials who are willing to sell those credentials to

fossil fuel interests dr. Fred singer president of science and Environmental Policy Project the weather balloons

around the world shall know of the atmosphere in the last 25 years you have all of these organizations with lofty

sounding names like Americans for Prosperity or the Heartland Institute these are front groups that are funded

by corporate interests Americans for Prosperity is really just a front group for the Koch brothers that's an

organization founded by David and Charles Koch and good morning to you Tim be welcome here what are you gonna get

for your money we hope to see policies change Koch Industries is one of the largest privately held fossil fuel

interest in the world they're doing everything they can to protect that wealth would you give up all that

industrialization would you give up although the productivity that's brought us are the lives that is saved over the

last hundred years so that's the temperature would arrives on half a percent or a Miller percent they've

lobbied Congress we keep Harry 2014 has been the warmest year on record so mr. president catch this mm-hmm James Inhofe

is probably the most prominent congressional climate change denier global warming is the greatest hoax ever

perpetrated on the American people he's the chair of the Senate Environment Committee there are some people who are

so arrogant to think that they are so powerful they can change climate man can't change climate it might not be

surprising to learn that James Inhofe is one of the largest recipients of fossil fuel money in the US Senate

fossil fuel interests have bought our House of Representatives and Senate Environment Committee

we can't get the climate bill passed through Congress because it's controlled by fossil fuel funded climate change

deniers who are blocking any bills that would attempt to deal with this problem how they're able to discredit scientists

have devoted their life to this issue is kind of mind-boggling to me sometimes it makes me wonder if I was a scientist I

would be absolutely pissed every single day of my life these people are you know engaged in an effort to lead us astray

in the name of short-term you know fossil fuel profits so that we end up leaving behind a

degraded planet or what could be more immoral than that [Music]

even now man may be unwittingly changing the world's climate through the waste products of his civilization due to our

release through factories and automobiles every year of more than 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide our

atmosphere seems to be getting warmer this is bad well it's been calculated a few degrees

rise in the earth's temperature would melt the polar ice caps fact is we've known about this problem

for decades and decades for over half a century every day I send you a thousand times more power than you use in a year

anybody working on getting power direct from old blowhard here oh yes but not nearly enough roll six feet imagine the

world right now if we had taken the science of climate change seriously back then

our engineers they'll have to build efficient generators that spread out over acres even square miles to compete

with the cheap coal and oil still available to it since then our population is increased

by almost five billion people and Counting and China has recently surpassed the United

States as the world's number one polluter the problem has become even more

difficult to solve meow hello

at this reunion now we're in a bike lane [Music]

in disaster 35 years and has been through a massive industrialization and urbanization and it's growing

China is the factory of the world manufacturing for all the Western countries and much of the pollution of

that industry is getting dumped in our backyards and in this area surrounding Beijing

faster Shandong Peninsula coal consumption is equal the total coal consumption of the United States in a

not very big area people are so worried about this when they especially when they get better

understanding about how much of this gonna hurt their health the health of their children and their family

apocalypse schools have been shut down the toxicity has reached that worst level you don't want woman so either

dad's out of the world who you general want you what really will you told you that I don't

die - do you enjoy that she couldn't be who season with high school or not all I mean she

[Music] in China people have concerns about climate change but first and foremost

because their everyday life which is affected people really want to be part of the

solution now environmental issues mass demonstrations

what we want to do is to hold them accountable to have all their power plants and their

emissions go totally transparent with the public and bring them under public scrutiny

so with the honking might had started a national pollution map database so this is all the major factories in

China nearly 9,000 have done those who are in red are not in compliance with the standards every hour they need to

give people their monitoring data people can check this on their cell phone and push for polluting factories to address

their violations it's absolutely brilliant you don't allow these companies to operate in the dark and the

media is very helpful Chinese media talks about climate change on a regular basis on the constant basis you give

people the data you empower the people and this popular support have motivated China's policy of great growth

the government changed his plan for renewable energy is there a giant push towards solar and wind Peter is that the

next step China's got some of the biggest wind and solar companies in the world now

even though China has some of the largest challenges but huge population China's gonna prioritize wind and solar

rather than coal but China can do it and I think the rest of the world can

[Music] China is still heavily relying on fossil fuels but they seem to be transitioning

to renewables much faster than anyone anticipated question is can let's develop countries

with rapidly growing populations make the same transition [Music]

India is the world's third largest emitter yet the country are struggling with massive power shortages and rolling

blackouts India has consistently servers biggest priority is development and bringing people out of poverty

[Music] we care about climate change but the fact is we are a country where energy

access is as much a challenge as climate change we need to make sure that every Indian has access to to energy hmm what

I understood there are 300 million people without power without light here that's equivalent to the entire

population of the United States today in villages Indian villages you will find people take cow dung and they

make what is known cow dung cakes or applause in Hindi and they burn those and that's their only source of cooking

energy about 30% households in India are yet to have access to Alexa tea

if you want to provide Alexa tea to everybody we have to ensure that our electricity is affordable India has a

vast reservoir of pool we are probably the third or fourth largest reservoir of coal in the world

coal is cheap whether you and I like it or not coal is cheap you have to think about this from this point of view if

you created the problem in the past we will create it in the future we have 700 million households who cook using

biomass today 700 million households if those households move to gold you have that much more use of fossil fuel then

the entire world is fried if anyone gives you this very cute stuff and tells you all the world's poor should move to

solar and why do they have to make the mistakes that we have made I hear this all the time from American NGOs Wow

you know I mean if it was that easy I would have really liked the u.s. to move towards solar but you haven't let's put

our money where our mouth is we have to practice what we preach absolutely I'm sorry to say this I know you're in

America and please don't take this amiss but your consumption is gonna really put a hole in the planet and I think that's

the conversation we need to have I'll show you charts from this perspective electricity consumed by one American at

home is equivalent to 1.5 citizen of France 2.2 citizen of Japan and 10 citizen of China 34 of India 61 of

Nigeria why because you're building bigger you're building more and using much more than before the fact is that

we need to put the issue of lifestyle and consumption at the center of climate negotiations look I there's no way I

don't agree with you how can you argue that you're absolutely correct and I think yes it's a very difficult argument

to present to Americans that we need to change their lifestyle and I would also argue that it's probably not gonna

happen so we are dependent if we want to solve the climate crisis on the fact that hopefully renewables like solar and

wind will become cheaper and cheaper and cheaper the more money we funnel into them the more we invest into them and

ultimately it will solve that problem but I do you're shaking your head obviously it

was her Indian style which means no right who will invest let's be real about this who will invest and how will

you invest in it we are doing more investment in solar today China is doing much more investment in solar today than

the US is what is the u.s. doing which the rest of the world can learn from you're a fossil addicted country but if

you are seriously disengaging it's something for us to learn from and it will be leadership that we can all hold

up to our government can say listen if the u.s. can do it and the US is doing it in spite of all their pressures we

can do it as well the sad part of it is it's just not happening

and people like me we are rich enough to withstand the first hit of climate change

but it's the core of India it's the poor of Africa it's the poor of Bangladesh who are impacted today by what I believe

is the first signs of climate change Ellicott City has it really low value would be outcrop so Feb really

much which is when the crops are standing they got half the year's rainfall in just five hours

half the years rainfall in five rise so these crops are all destroyed destroyed your back is breaking doing this and

then you get one unseasonal rain fall it's absolutely like the last straw on the camel's back

and we need countries to believe that climate change is real and urgent it's not a figment of their imagination

[Music] the US has been the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in history and there's

no doubt that we've all benefited from fossil fuels I know I have

my footprint is probably a lot bigger than most people's and there are times when I question

what is the right thing to do what actions should we be taking there are over a billion people out

there without electricity they want lights they want heat they want the lifestyle that we've had in the United

States for the last hundred years if we're gonna solve this problem we all have a responsibility to set an example

and more than that helped the developing world transition

before it's too late [Music] we are seeing events that we did not see

in the past it's not about when the entire islands are under water as well before that is

going to be the crisis and it's already happening what we are facing at the moment is

severe flooding it's gone into the freshwater ponds and that's how people get their drinking

water have you spoken as people in a scientific community that have given you

some sort of a timeframe given the scenarios and the projections put forward by the science our Islands will

be underwater and so the question is what do we do about it at the moment internally we are

relocating communities from certain parts of the island to where the water has not come up

but our long-term strategy is something that I've been discussing internationally because we we have to

come to accept the reality that we may not be able to accommodate all of our people

we have adopted a policy of migration with dignity we bought a piece of land in Fiji so that if now people choose to

migrate today they can do it they must do it as a method of choice rather Rancher I've got 12 grandchildren I'd

like to be able to go away knowing that they will continue driver Islands in the Pacific

we're paradise in Korea throughout blog we have sea-level rise coming into the farmlands coming into

the homes when was this an intact island with homes on it how long 12 years ago when

you can there were people living here so within the 12-year period this is the result

it's just a small picture of one place the small island nations contribute the least to the causes of climate change

are slowly going to feel the worst impacts the worst scenarios because of global warming

[Music] what we've done to the rest of the world is just it's criminal

it's not just sea level rise we've taken these coastal ecosystems that used to be dominated by incredibly

abundant fish and we've knocked the whole system down reversing half a billion years of

evolution 1 billion people depend on fisheries from coral reefs for virtually all of

their proteins 1 billion people here we are we're on what was a pretty healthy Carl Reese

what's missing you see almost nothing swimming around is this a dying coral reef finding this

reef has had it we're pushing the system really hard and that is a serious enemy to the health of

corals and their ability to grow it it's causing loss of people's livelihoods it's causing starvation

this is happening all over them oh yeah absolutely I think reefs as we know them are gonna

virtually disappear the oceans are like this big buffer because they absorb carbon dioxide they

take up about 1/3 of the co2 that were dumped into the atmosphere so because of that they are a stabilizing

force in climate the problem is the ocean can't do its job fast enough with this absurd rate of

carbon dioxide emissions you know life isn't going to disappear in the ocean there will always be life

in the ocean but it's not gonna be necessarily the kind of life we want we could go back to 3 billion years ago and

have just a whole lot of slime [Music] we're taking away the ecosystems that

normally help us to restabilized the climate like oceans rainforests absorb carbon

from our atmosphere decades and decades of the forest breeding in the carbon storing it in the

trunks of the leaves in the organic matter [Music]

so those carbon emissions are being held safe for us until we clear them and light them on

fire it acts like a carbon bomb and releases massive carbon emissions

back into the atmosphere [Music] good

here [Music] there are three big tropical rainforest

areas left in the world the Amazon in South America the Congo Basin in Africa and the South East Asian rainforest

which spans Indonesia in Indonesia we're seeing fires being intentionally set in order to create palm oil

plantations which grow the cheapest vegetable oil in the world it's in cooking oils and processed foods

in your cosmetics in your detergents this really cheap commodity is making companies tremendous profits

[Music] destroyed so much of this horse it's unbelievable

we're standing in the last place on earth they still have elephant rhino orangutan and tiger together in the

world what a beauty the expansion of formal industry in

Indonesia have take over about 80% of our forests Indonesia is one of the most corrupt countries in the world companies

bribe government officials to issue a permit for them to stop burning the land in the forest fires release a copious

amount of carbon last year in 2015 when the forest fire happens in Indonesia it emits more carbon daily than the entire

US economy and forest fires continue to happen what this thing is not only the

livelihood of the people but also the life of these four species I

can't even comprehend what these forests must have looked like forests where rhino and elephant an

orangutan would be populated into the thousands these guys are a byproduct of the forest

loss because of the primal industry you know they're effectively refugees from forests that no longer exist wow that's

a good grip yeah strong yeah I'm gonna get you some fruit don't be scared the carrot or the fruit definitely the fruit

that's what you guys they're after huh there you go you like carrots or not so much oh

my god they're amazing I always remind people that when they go on the for sing you know these are the

lucky survivors what happens all the other orangutan you know all the others are dead

and the reason people are chopping down the forest to plant palm oil plantations cuz people keep buying the stuff

people have to realize that what they do in their supermarket the decisions they make in their daily lives are affecting

places like the Loesser ecosystem if palm oil is in almost everything we buy how are consumers supposed to avoid

this if these products have such a devastating impact

why aren't government setting restrictions to prevent these big corporations from destroying the planet

just so they can save money if you want something that you can do without appealing to any higher

authorities such as government or whatever I can't think of an easier out then changing your diet you can start

tonight so you're a scientist who studies the effects of Agriculture on climate but

you grew up raising cattle and taking them to slaughter right I'm a scientist that's the most important thing so of

all the reasons for tropical deforestation the foremost is beef and beef is one of the most inefficient uses

of resources on the planet in the u.s. forty-seven percent of land is used for food production and of that

the lion's share is just to grow feed for cattle the things that we actually eat like fruit vegetable nuts it's a

percent most importantly cows produce methane and methane is a powerful greenhouse gas

the way cows produce methane they eat as much as they can and when they are chewing a whole bunch of methane is

birth through the mouth into the atmosphere the atmosphere has much more co2 in it but methane is far more

impactful every molecule of methane is equivalent to 23 molecules of co2 and of the methane in the atmosphere nearly all

of it is due to livestock in comparison to emissions from other sources what kind of percentage are we talking about

come from the consumption of be about 10 12 percent of the total u.s. emissions is due to

its staggering but it's very easy to envision a dietary shift even as minor as switching let's say from beef to an

alternative let's say even chicken the chicken will require 20% of the land and 10% of the greenhouse gas emissions and

if you compared rice or potato a week beef requires 50 times as much Lin so even cutting the amount of beef that you

eat in half or by a quarter could make a significant very significant do you do it all think that that's even a

possibility considering that beef is so a part of our culture maybe not everybody is ready to eat tofu you know

24/7 I get that but even if you just have to have some flesh between your teeth if you switch to chicken you will

have eliminated 80% of what you emit depending on where you're coming from let's face it it's fairly easy to switch

your diet from one choice to another to step stairs there okay ready while working on the revenant which is

about man's struggle with the elements we shot on location in the Canadian snow belt

the irony was we were hit with record temperatures that completely melted our set

in order to finish making the movie we had to relocate halfway around the world just to find snow

the fact that we have to come 200 people in the middle of the summer to the winter in the south and fryer

9,000 miles from where we're supposed to be shooting these three months of the chasey nice because it's nothing it was

very very warm which we condemned the southern tip of our continents besides South although the

film is because this is where is this blast snow is left i I think that my point of view I was saying to my book to

my son I said you know it's funny that it's very sad but probably for your kids to see a snow will be any super

accentuated mentally it was like a few people will be able to see snow in the future

I [Music] feel like I'm in some weird surreal

movie I honestly look around and I think when I

have children everything that we now take for granted our planet and all its biodiversity and

beauty everything in the future is gonna be different

[Music] every single light that you see has to be completely different has to come from

a different power source we need to build all those things differently all the cars that are on the road need to be

different and this is one city and if you zoom out onto a large map of planet Earth at night you see electrification

all over the world [Music] and we're fighting powerful fossil fuel

interests that basically want to keep doing business as usual how can we possibly turn this all around

I mean that fossil fuel industry is the biggest industry in the world if they

have more money and more influence than any other sector so I mean the more that they can be sort of popular uprising

against that the better but I think the scientific fact of the matter is we are unavoidably headed towards some level of

harm so the sooner we can take action the less harm will result [Music]

Wow holy crap that's a good robot what is your grand vision for all of this quite a big factory is to get the

cost of batteries and down to the point where it's affordable batteries and critical to sustainable

energy future the Sun doesn't shine all the time so get a stored in the battery how is this gonna help developing

nations that have massive populations that need to have power so the advantage of solar and batteries is that you can

avoid building electricity plants at all so you could be a remote village and have solar panels that charge a battery

pack that then supplies power to the to the whole village without ever having to run thousands of miles of high-voltage

cable all over the place it's like what happened with landline phones versus cellular phones in a lot of developed

countries they just didn't do the landline phones there's where straight cellulose

and we actually did the calculations say like what would it take to transition the whole world to its sustainable

energy what kind of throughput would you actually need and you need 100 Giga factory so hundred of these 100 of these

yes that would make the United States not the whole world the whole world the whole world all energy that's it yeah

that sounds yeah the Giga factory when it's complete I'll

have the largest footprint of any building in the world counting multiple levels that could be

as much as 15 million square feet so Tesla can't fold 100 Giga factories the thing that's really gonna make

difference is if companies that are much bigger than Tesla do the same thing if the big industrial companies in China

and the US and Europe the big car companies if they also do this then collectively we can accelerate the

transition to sustainable energy and if government sets the rules to favor sustainable energy we can get there

really quickly but it was really fundamental unless there's a price put on carbon we're never gonna be able to

make the transition that we need to in time correct yeah the only way to do that is basically with the carbon tax

okay now walk me through a carbon tax which is what you're saying is the Silver Bullet for climate change you'll

know carbon tax would be basic attacks on any kind of activity that put carbon into the atmosphere

so you tax something to raise the price people are gonna tend to consume less of it that's sort of lesson number one of

economics so you're teaching economics at Harvard and you literally wrote the book on contemporary economics right

well I'm teaching the course for many years I'm I'll write the textbook to go with it so just to be clear you've

worked with a lot of Republican heavyweights John became MIT Romney and you work for George Bush when he became

president I was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers so how come we don't have a carbon tax already

politicians don't always do what professors want them to do [Music]

so the basic idea is that we want to tax bad activities that have negative side effects on other people in society

so we raise the price of cigarettes by putting attacks on cigarettes people I don't assume fewer cigarettes

climate change involves a variety of negative side effects and costs a [Music]

carbon tax forces people to take account of those costs I think trying to appeal to people's social responsibility is

really very very hard because people have complicated lives they have lots of things to worry about they don't want to

have to think about climate change every time they do every decision they can't every time you turn on your car you

supposed to think Oh what am i doing to the climate what carbon tax does is it touches them

the direction of doing the right thing so let me get this straight you're Republican who wants more taxes well one

of the important things to keep in mind is that if you have a carbon tax you can turn around and cut other taxes in

response for example payroll tax this is the tax shift rather than a tax increase so is it possible to ever pass a carbon

tax now given the current political situation I mean half the people in office still don't believe in climate

change during the campaign President Obama you must say the word carbon tax because if

poll terribly if we want to change the president's view of carbon taxes we need to change

the public's view of carbon taxes think of gay marriage remember Barack Obama ran against gay marriage I am NOT a

supporter of gay marriage when did he switch the poll started switching I think same-sex couples should be able to

get hurt politicians whether we call them our elected leaders are really our elected followers they do what the

people want them to do we need to preach the American people once the American people are convinced the politicians

will fall in line very quickly President Obama and representatives from nearly 200 other countries are trying to

reach an agreement to keep global warming in December the world will come together

at the UN climate conference in Paris and we will see whether or not we can muster the collective political will to

reach an ambitious comprehensive agreement this is a critical year Leo don't man thank you I really

appreciate it last time we had a hug everybody had a oh yes I remember that I forgot about that

good to see you secretary so after decades of failed in negotiations what makes this negotiation different from

all the rest I remember the footage you know George Bush senior's saying we've just learned about this thing called

global warming we come to Rio proud of what we have accomplished and committed to extending the record on American

leadership on the environment I mean we had climate summit after climate summit and we've seen so little action well let

me tell you why this is different and it really is different last year President Obama was able to stand up in Beijing

with Chinese President Xi and announce intended reductions in emissions for Paris well guess what when the two

largest economies in the world and the two largest emitters in the world stand up and make a statement like that that's

created a momentum that never existed before a lot of things are coming together tragically the full measure of

the negative impact of climate change is coming together to what's happened now is that you have mass populations that

are moving as a result of climate climate refugees pouring into the capital

or you have huge fights over water which could erupt into Wars and any extremist philosophy could

appeal to people if they have nowhere to live no way to live and that's when people are vulnerable

if anybody thinks on getting in about that it's happening today and the greatest fear about all of this is

leaving this planet in better shape than we were given it and that's not what we're doing today

[Music] today I spend most of my time understanding how can we secure a

prosperous future for Humanity in a situation where we're starting to hit the ceiling of what the planet can cope

with and I have the privilege of sharing something called the earth League which

is a network of leading our system scientists try and gather really all the knowledge we have on understanding our

future on on earth we are on average moving towards four degrees warming this century and we haven't been in a four

degree warmer world for the past four million years so it's not as if it's a place we know

very well so give me one sort of picture of what the world may look like if we do not take action well to begin with for

the past twelve thousand years temperatures are almost miraculously stable in fact average temperatures vary

with only plus minus one degree Celsius true in this entire period this perfect pant planet with this perfect atmosphere

exactly and so so let's then move upwards in temperature where are we right now well today we're approaching 1

degree Celsius already at just 0.85 degrees we're seeing faster than predicted impact this

storm is so big so vast Americans will feel its power we're in a historic drought the world's coral reefs

begin to collapse even before two degrees that I've predicted to hit one point five to two degrees so already now

so it's already probably gonna happen that's all really probably gonna happen at three four degrees we will have heat

waves which make many regions in the world not livable any longer agriculture will be collapsing around

the equator that would take us beyond being able to responsibly feed humanity what makes scientists so nervous is that

we can reach a point where Earth takes over and start reinforcing warming this is what we call tipping points and and

the most obvious one is Greenland Greenland for the first time is melting on its

entire surface to a point where instead of being a white surface becomes a dark surface and suddenly instead of being a

cooler becomes a self heater because because of the fact that the ice can no longer reflect back just the color

change just the color change of the ice yeah suddenly all these feedbacks start kicking in methane stuck under frozen

permafrost thaws to a point where it starts getting released and that in turn warms the planet even

more which releases more methane correct that's if we don't take immediate access that's business as usual but the Paris

climate summit that we are soon approaching in December if world leaders come together properly the window is

open but barely open to transition back into a stable planet last time we had our climate summit you couldn't say that

we could go to scale on high-tech clean energy solutions but now in Paris we can't say so we actually have the proof

you know you wake up in Germany Saturday morning you likely to get 30% of your electricity from solar and wind and not

from a few energy utilities but from over two million citizens delivering to a grid Denmark today produces over a

hundred percent some days of its electricity needs from wind 100% is totally renewable and remember that once

you've invested wind and solar you actually have free energy forever [Music]

in countries like my own in Sweden it was enormous uprising among people you know from youth groups to civil society

organizations to the point that the Prime Minister announced three weeks back that Sweden will now become the

world's first fossil fuel free nation I was I was shocked at the way that propelled itself from below I

think we have tipped the world towards a sustainable future the fear is are we doing it too slowly

[Music] ladies and gentlemen you are here today to write the script

for a dear future the fate of our planet is in your hands yeah Boylan Kovalev I am a small island

girl with big dreams from the island of Madra in the Marshall Islands back when I was six or seven my grandpa told me

about how the ice in the North Pole and South Pole will melt away and as they melt the water will rise and soon flood

our Islands this agreement is for those of us whose identity whose culture whose ancestors whose whole being is bound to

their lands this agreement will help the world prepare for the impacts of climate change that are already here and

also for those we know are now headed our way inevitably nearly a quarter of a century of global

climate talks have come to this pivotal moment in Paris 195 countries saying they'll do

everything in their power to change sure what good a lecture it was it if you're not bad of sex you

[Applause] there's no doubt that this agreement is a massive step forward but does it go

far enough the Paris agreement calls for keeping climate warming to well below two degrees Celsius while striving for

1.5 there's no mention of a carbon tax there's no mention of any penalties there are no enforcement provisions you

just have to take it on faith that all these countries are gonna follow through with what they say

how likely is that this is an unattainable deal that Congress has already voted to reject the

fact that we're gonna have a 26 to 28 percent reduction in co2 emissions that isn't going to happen I chair the

committee that has jurisdiction over the Environmental Protection Agency absolutely all right come on the Paris

agreement ended up being a historic agreement not because it gets us to where we need to be

eventually but for the first time locking in all countries into verifiable steps and targets that they're gonna

take it creates the architecture that allows us to finally start dealing with this problem in a serious way so you

were happy with I was happy that we put the architecture in place big the targets that have been set in Paris are

nowhere near enough for what the scientists tell us we have to do eventually to solve this problem

but if we can use the next 20 years to apply existing technologies to reduce carbon emissions and then start slowly

turning up the dials as new technologies come online so that we have more and more ambitious targets each year then

we're not going to completely reverse the warming that now is inevitable but we can stop it before it becomes

catastrophic it's no secret that you've been under great opposition to try to implement some of your climate change

initiatives and we've got some folks on this so somebody that comes into office it

does not believe in the science of climate change right do they have the capacity and the power to dismantle

everything that you've already worked for even if somebody came in campaigning on denying climate science reality has a

way of yeah hidden in the nose if you're if you're not paying attention and I think

that the public is starting to realize the science in part because it's indisputable

I admire your optimism yeah but you start to look at the science look at what's

going on in the Antarctic uns and scientists saying that there are sections of ice that guarantee four to

six meters of ocean level rise which will be catastrophic for the future you are

the leader of the free world you have access to information that most people do not what makes you terrified for the

future a huge portion of the world's population lives near oceans mm-hmm if they start

moving then you start seeing scarce resources the subject to competition between populations this is

the reason why the Pentagon has said this is a national security issue this isn't just an environmental issue

there's a national security issue you know in addition to just the sadness that I would feel if my

kids can never see a glacier the way I saw when I went up to Alaska yeah that's the romantic side of me that's the side

that takes a walk with my daughters and I want to be able to them to see or my grandkids I want them to see the same

things I saw as I was growing up even if you were unsentimental about that in very hard-headed terms you've got to

worry about the national security implications of this and the capacity for the existing World Order as we

understand it to survive the kinds of strains that the scientists are predicting with that action this is why

we have to take action now if we keep pushing keep prodding and most importantly keep educating the public

there's no reason why we can't solve this problem in time thank you for your time

I realized that the science community we have not done the best job

frankly of communicating this threat to the public but when you go up there and see it with

your own eye how thin the world's atmosphere is tiny little onion skin around the earth

so that's all the oxygen that we breathe that's the co2 everything we burn goes into it it's an astonishingly fragile

film you know I knew intellectually how the earth system works because that's what

I've been doing for 20 years to see how the atmosphere in the ocean all the elements of the system work together so

I understood it intellectually but it's like being an ant trying to understand what an elephant looks like

by crawling all over the other thing bowing be up there in orbit and you can see 1,200 miles in any direction I mean

let me tell you it's kind of a revelation seeing all the cities at night millions

of people all working away doing something come around the dayside the world seeing the natural systems the

hurricanes huge great big wheels you know over the oceans

so the Amazon River go between my feet and for like five minutes you know I'm a whole green carpet either side just

beautiful all the way out to the sea and you know there was a Sun coming up over the Amazon the whole forest waking up

and doing what it does every day you know breathing in and breathing out so I you know at the end of all that I became

immensely fond more fond of the planet you know which I never thought about when I actually just live on the surface

and also kind of follow the people on there too it's like being taken away from your family and coming back and

you know I wish it all well just for Christmas that got told I got pancreatic cancer yeah Stage four so it

elsewhere in me not just in one place so you know the odds are won't be around for very long you know it's very small

chance of survival so that's really motivated me out you know to think about what's important to do you know what can

I contribute in the time I have left so this is a model simulation of the earth now we have about 20 satellites

that are dedicated to looking at the earth every day one looks at clouds one looks at the sea surface temperature OCO

looks at carbon dioxide in the atmosphere all this information comes in and this is the tool we use to do

climate simulation here's an example of one thing we can see this is ocean surface temperature as measured from

space this is the whole world's surface temperature you can see the poles melting

Wow yeah this is the way to do that and this is the way to really see what's going on here's a Gulfstream look at

this it's the motion of the ocean this is like a great piece of art isn't it biggest impact would be here in the Gulf

Stream this current is it the dumping of ice off melting Greenland but stop this conveyor belt and that the Gulf Stream

was slowed down stopping the transport of heat from here to there and then Europe would get cold toes because

there's a lot of heat transport from the tropics across the North Atlantic it keeps your warm I'm the Europe we get

colder yeah that's the big misconception about climate change is that everything gets warmer yeah and here's the most

advanced precipitation satellite in the world it's very important because we think the biggest impact from climate