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This is Gulf Coast 3629, radio 811.
We gotta mobilize that area.
- Responding to incident.
When you look at
the history of humanity...
...it's basically a 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.
When they don't, they're gone.
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
we don't particularly wanna live in.
Our biosphere is sick.
We have a planet that's behaving
like an infected organism.
If you look at it from space,
you see all these lights...
...and it's the lights 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.
We've evolved to be the leaders of our
biological community. We are misleading.
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 conclusion.
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 frontlines...
... 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.
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.
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 lived with water.
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 web of life
that we have here.
Well, Earth is a planet that's
just far enough from the sun...
...and has just enough of that atmosphere
of a certain composition...
...that more heat stays here
than radiates out to space.
And the sun warms the planet
and that heat radiates out.
There's gases in the atmosphere that
have always trapped some of that heat.
So we're not an ice ball. Scientists
have compared the different planets...
...going away from the sun
as being like the Goldilocks effect.
There's one that's too cold,
too warm and just right...
...and we just happen to be there.
Forty million centuries ago,
that a cell formed...
...and that cell had a gene,
and that gene is the password...
...to every single other form of life
there is.
And the amazing thing
about the human body...
...is it has one hundred trillion cells and
90 percent 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 back-story 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 instance...
...within 10 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.
*** sapiens sapiens
is an incredibly young species.
We don't think of that. But we are.
We came very late in the
calendar year of the Earth.
You know, if the Earth calendar...
...you know, where it started in January 1
and now we're December 31 st.
We got here 15 minutes before midnight
on December 31 st...
...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's 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 animals...
...randomly scattered
throughout the planet...
...slowly coalescing in groups...
...that are more powerful, larger.
And very much conditioned
by two essential characters:
One is 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 other animals on the
plains then, we weren't very impressive.
We weren't very many or very big,
we weren't gifted with special senses.
The one thing, the key to our survival...
...and our 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.
If the human mind threw us out of
balance thousands of years ago...
... what changed in recent history?
In the last century, we've 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.
A fundamental illusion in the world is
that people are separate from nature.
When the reality is that we are part of
nature. In fact, we are nature.
That's probably the most fundamental
misunderstanding in the world...
...that's causing all this havoc.
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 ecoliteracy...
...is because 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. Not just the planet.
Beyond the planet.
We're far beyond the planet now.
We're zooming around Mars and all
of that exploration, 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, those are the...
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 into nature...
...and understanding that "Gee, if we do
something to offend the natural world...
...we'll pay a price for that. We have
to treat nature much more gently."
That's the lesson 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.
After the industrial revolution,
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.
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 them.
We were living off of current sunlight.
It was our food supply, our clothing,
we heated with wood...
...it was our heat supply, our light supply.
It was all current sunlight.
The sunlight that fell on Earth in a year
was the maximum amount 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 pockets of ancient sunlight...
...and 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 100,000 years
to go from one billion to two.
Our second billion only took us 130 years.
We hit two billion people in 1930.
Our third billion took only 30 years, 1960.
Amazing. When Kennedy was inaugurated,
there were half as many people as today.
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
3 and 400 million years ago.
And if we had to go back to living off
current sunlight, lacking technology...
...the planet couldn't sustain more than
a half a billion to 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 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,
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 IOU's, treasury bills, whatever...
...to the tune of about a billion dollars
a day, every working day, anyway...
...to finance our oil imports.
Oil does a lot of harm. Economists
would call them "externalities" ...
...because they're external
to the price you pay at the pump.
For example,
the asthma rates among children...
...which are growing
in many parts of the US.
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...
...is clearly a subsidy that goes to oil.
When you started feeding off of
the fossil-fuel cycle...
...we began living with a death-based
cycle. 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
through Greek mythology.
The kind of revenge of the gods
or the revenge of nature.
We're seeing that now already, after
200 years of the industrial revolution.
We didn't know what we were creating,
the damage that was being created.
We're sensing that.
So as we go forward with technology
even more powerful than before...
...we have magnified...
...the presence of the human race
inside the ecology.
Therefore we can do more damage...
...with our technological prowess
than we could before.
We have to be even more cautious.
While we weren 't looking...
... we've created one of the biggest
problems facing all of humanity:
Climate change.
How does it look...
... when we don 't pay attention
to the massive amounts of CO 2...
...we dump into the air and water?
How does it look 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.
A couple of 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.
- Severe flooding has killed
at least 72 people...
...in Central and Eastern Europe
and Western Russia.
The heaviest recorded rainfall
in Indian history...
...has unleashed the worst flooding
in memory.
We do not know how fast
change will occur...
...or even how some of our actions
could impact it.
In Chicago, the heat is a plague. This
morning, they were collecting bodies.
- Firefighters in Southern California are
battling a newly-formed super wildfire.
The heat is on.
Even Arizona is having a heat wave.
Tennessee was battered
by killer tornados...
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.
Nowhere is that more apparent
than New Orleans...
...now a city of displaced people,
refugees.
- Twenty feet of water
from Lake Pontchartrain.
Add to that violence, deprivation,
desperation, the threat of disease...
Could it be that man-made
global warming...
...is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated
on the American people?
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
would 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.
Earth has a natural greenhouse effect.
We're 60 degrees Fahrenheit warmer...
...thanks to the good guys, water vapor,
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.
When we use tail pipes and smokestacks
to put our waste into the atmosphere...
...as if it's some kind of unpriced sewer...
...we're adding to the greenhouse
gases that's natural, unnatural stuff.
Mostly carbon dioxide, methane,
chemicals that nobody's seen before...
...chlorofluorocarbons,
which also affect ozone.
And when they build up,
they trap extra heat.
That's not controversial,
that's well-understood.
We know we've increased carbon dioxide
by about 30, 35 percent...
...methane, 150 percent...
...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...
...mainly CO2, 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-scale events
will become simply the norm.
Unless we're able to quickly reduce...
...very quickly and very dramatically
reduce our use of fossil fuel...
...the computer modeling's clear. Having
increased the temperature one degree...
...we'll increase it
about another 5 degrees.
That'll make the Earth warmer than
it's been for tens of millions of years.
Some scientists are amazed that
in the media 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
a tremendous amount of agreement...
...over some of the basic principals
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.
There's no doubt about that.
The natural changes...
The speed of the natural changes
is now dwarfed by human changes...
...to the atmosphere and surface.
Jim Hansen, who is the director of
the NASA Institute for Space Studies...
...recently gave a best estimate 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 they are now...
...the Earth should still warm by an
additional half a degree centigrade.
That's been enough to melt
20 percent of the sea ice in the Arctic.
It's been enough to speed up the spin and
duration of hurricanes about 50 percent.
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...
...really changes things in places. There's
an amplifying effect, like in the Arctic.
You can feel this, the chunk that we're
on, actually starting to fail a bit more.
There's probably hairline cracks
up towards the helos there.
The human impacts...
...what's happening with
global warming, climate changes...
...it is happening first and fastest
in the Arctic.
We're starting to see that things
are happening even faster...
...than what scientists indicated.
By the end of the century,
perhaps even in a few decades...
...the Arctic will be quite ice-free.
Well, climate change...
...is going to have a strong, 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 through the year.
These are all very fundamental aspects
of how we manage and use water.
What global warming does...
...or the climate changes
linked to global warming do...
...is add another dimension
of uncertainty.
It threatens your food security,
for example, your water security...
...your sea-level security and your
security against storms and hurricanes.
All these things we've seen in the news.
It's a national security problem
in the sense...
...FIorida may be the first affected,
as well as other coastal parts.
More importantly than that,
it's an international security problem.
The UN estimates
by the middle of the century...
...there may be 150 million
environmental refugees...
...at any given time from climate change.
What we saw with Katrina
is just prologue.
I just think that worse is yet to come
on that front.
Global warming's 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.
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.
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,
they're our climatic stability...
...forest cover, the oceans themselves,
aquifers...
...water, the conditions of the soil,
biodiversity...
They go on and 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.
I sat on a United Nations group called
the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment...
...a four-year study, biggest study ever
done of ecosystems around the world.
It involved over 1300 scientists
from 71 countries in the world.
At the end of that, in March of 2005,
the final reports came in...
...and they documented this
staggering destruction of ecosystems...
...and the services they perform for us
around the world.
We better 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 1100 miles away, there's a deadzone.
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 causing it.
People didn't talk about asthma
decades ago.
I can walk into a classroom
in an elementary school...
...and ask the kids,
"How many of you have asthma?"
Thirty percent of the kids in the room
will have their hands raised. At least 30.
In some classrooms, it'll be 60 percent.
There's an ocean crisis 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 percent
of most of the big fish...
...in half a century, so we're turning
to deeper areas, further areas offshore.
So between overfishing and by-catch,
we're really removing millions...
...if not billions, of animals
from the ocean every year.
Many of them don't even become
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...
...they come back to us in perverse ways.
Some fish concentrate these substances...
...things like mercury,
heavy metals of various sorts...
...the pesticides, the herbicides.
Corporations dump on equivalent...
...at the smallest, they do five million
gallons per day of toxins into the bay.
It's everything from benzene to
acrylonitrile to mercury to copper to...
You name it, they've got it.
A lot of the chemicals
very common in today's world:
Plastics, 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.
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 is 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 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 most impacted
by pollution...
...and in fact, have the most toxic sources
of pollution...
...are often low-income communities
of color.
They're the dumping grounds
for power plants...
...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 we should worry about it.
There's less and less.
The water... It's becoming more and more
unhealthy to just swim in the ocean.
And all of these are simple
to understand...
...canaries in the coalmine...
...of much more subtle and scary disasters
on the horizon.
Seventy countries in the world no longer
have any intact or original forests.
Here in the United States, 95 percent
of our old growth forests...
...are already gone.
In many cases,
the forest will not grow back.
That land is 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 percent
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.
What we don't see or think about
when we look at a tree is:
What's the volume? How much water
is contained there?
Turns out to be 57,000 gallons of water...
...in a 10- 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 got a flood,
you got soil erosion.
You've lost those 57,000 gallons
from the local water supply.
Then that water is rushing 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 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...
...with all of our deadzones, we could
make the whole surface ocean stagnant.
And that's a terrifying thought.
The last time that happened was
the end-Permian mass extinction...
...and more than 95 percent of all
the species on the Earth went extinct.
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?
The greatest weapon of mass destruction
is corporate economic globalization.
There's always been a greed factor
in human civilization...
...and what has happened
with the creation of corporations...
...which are the dominant institutions
of our age...
...is that they have perfected that
as a system.
And 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 libraries...
...about solutions, about solar, about how
to produce food in a sustainable way...
...about transportation, about
changing production methods...
...and putting in place a sustainable
economy that respects the planet is...
...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.
We have very responsive political leaders.
They're responsive to wealth,
money and corporate power.
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?"
Because they respond to a higher power,
unfortunately.
Right now, that higher power
is the fossil-fuel industry.
You're responsible for editing
Our Changing Planet...
...and you send a review draft to
the White House. What happens?
It comes back...
...with a large number of edits...
...handwritten on the hard copy...
...by the chief of staff of
the Council on Environmental Quality.
And the chief of staff is whom?
Phil Cooney.
He is a scientist?
No, he's a lawyer.
He was a lobbyist for
the American Petroleum Institute...
...before going into the White House.
Our people have a growing suspicion...
...that oil companies are taking unfair
advantage of current market conditions...
...to line their coffers with excess profits.
On the issues of climate change
and environment...
...the political system 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,
"Do you want solar energy?
Do you want efficient appliances?
Do you want efficient cars?"
The answer is overwhelmingly,
"Yes, we do."
It's the bridge across this chasm...
...of public opinion to public policy.
It'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.
The National Environmental Policy Act,
Clean Air Act, 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,
as everybody knows...
...its that there is money,
too much money in the political system.
Even Jefferson said...
...we have to rewrite the Constitution
every generation to meet our need.
Do we think that the Founding Fathers
understood global warming?
Or deforestation?
Or the massive amounts...
...of toxic chemicals that are pumped
into our atmosphere...
...and into our air, water, land
and soil every day?
What we need to do is find a harmony
between people and nature.
One of the only ways to do that is
to recognize that nature has rights too.
I think the most 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, 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.
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.
To put that in perspective...
...if you added up all of the annual
economies 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 M.B.A. S 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.
We flipped the ends and means. If we
can get the end back, quality of life...
...we 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 mining 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 is 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.
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
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.
We're now products of $500 billion
of advertising each year.
By the time a child comes to college
or grows up through school...
...as a first-year student in college, they'll
have seen thousands of hours of TV.
On average, four hours
and some minutes per day.
As a result, as one study showed, they
could identify 1000 corporate logos...
...but fewer than 10 plants and animals
native to their own place.
And so we've become
not only consumers...
...but hugely ignorant of the terms
by which we live on the Earth.
Americans are spending their time
working and spending.
That's where our time is going.
An average American goes shopping
in one way or another five times a week.
During the day, we spend 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 concentration of wealth. We
spend more money maintaining 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 anesthetized by our own wealth,
we forget how most of the world lives...
...and how the majority
of the world looks.
So where we are now
as a civilization is...
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 Malibu...
...there's no stopping that.
You have to change the object of desire
in order to get the root of the problem.
People believe in choice, and choice
means consumerism for most people.
There is no mileage
in trying to save the planet...
...by telling people they're making
the wrong choice. It won't work.
Four, three, two, one!
You have to change the idea behind
limitless expansion.
In a phrase, from well-having
to well-being.
It's a cultural transformation.
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.
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 we're dependent completely
upon the information...
...that is sent to us
from very, very far away.
We're psychically numbed.
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 Hoffer 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.
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 icecaps 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.
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.
We don't know at what point
when we lose biodiversity...
...that the system will start to fall apart.
I believe in the resilience of nature.
So I think that once the human species
becomes extinct...
And many species have became extinct
before us, many species will after us.
- That the Earth may well spin on its axis
happily without humans...
...and the microbes and 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 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 4 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 4 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 Programme...
...50 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.
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.
This is 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, I'm
afraid the transition will be wrenching.
What we risk is...
...the destruction of civilization. All that
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 happy
and healthy human population...
...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.
So if you step back and you take an Earth
perspective rather than human...
...it can't be an 11 th 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.
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?
Does nature hold the answers we need
to help restore our planet's resources...
...protect our atmosphere and,
therefore, help all life survive?
All these forces sweeping over the planet
are the forces created by human beings.
If human beings are the source
of the problem...
...we can be the foundation
of the solution.
Some people suggest
that to live sustainably...
...we have to 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 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 reimagine
every single thing we do.
In other words, there isn't
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.
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, with 6.4 billion of us...
...that we have to imagine what it'd
be like to redesign design itself...
...and see design as
the first signal of human intention...
...and see we need new intentions, where
materials are seen as highly valuable...
...and need to go in closed cycles, "cradle
to cradle" instead of "cradle to grave. "
And that energy needs to come from
renewable sources, principally the sun...
...and water needs to be clean and
healthy as it goes through a system...
...and we have to treat each other
with justice and fairness.
So the design itself changes...
...from mass production of things
that are essentially destructive...
...to 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 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...
...than 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 sustainable design...
...is that I don't think it has to look
in any particular way.
One of the things that we discovered
in the last few years...
...is the new design is actually invisible.
It's not about a visual boundary.
The form, in fact, could be anything.
It's the structure and internal logic
and intelligence...
...and the performance
that has to be designed.
How we make things...
...in, you know, our industrial processes...
...it's 180 degrees 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 1400 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 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
taking flies and crickets into the web...
...and transforming them with 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 is master chemistry.
This is the manufacturing of the future,
hopefully.
There's actually people...
...who are now trying to mimic
the recipes of these organisms.
Fungi are the molecular disassemblers,
the 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 further diversifies. Mushrooms
also have a very bizarre property...
...of hyper-accumulating
heavy metals.
Forests are thousands of acres...
...so fungi that produce mushrooms
grow to thousands of acres in size.
This gives us a ready ability...
...to tap into this powerful inherent
resource that mushroom mycelium has...
...to remediate environments,
prevent downstream pollution...
...from microbes, from viruses,
including bacteria and protozoa...
...and also for breaking down
a wide assortment of pollutants.
And this is one of the pedestals
of mycorestoration.
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.
If we think about a tree as a design...
...it makes oxygen, sequesters carbon,
fixes nitrogen, distills water...
...provides habitat for hundreds
of species, accrues solar energy...
...makes complex sugars and food,
creates microclimates and 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 converted it...
...to productive and delightful use?
For example, if we combine
our housing and our waste treatment...
...and our food production
and 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.
Green building 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 the fact that buildings
account for a third of all energy use...
...it's the single largest segment of energy
use and greenhouse gas production.
What we can do with buildings...
...in just the simplest off-the-shelf
technologies, is really stunning.
With existing technologies that
we basically already have on the shelf...
...or things we know we can develop
in a rapid period of time...
...we could reduce the human footprint
on planet Earth by 90 percent...
...which would be a huge shift
in what we're doing now.
The direction to go is to
decouple from our dependence on oil...
...through efficient transportation,
better-insulated houses...
...and the development of renewable
alternatives like solar, wind and biomass...
...and getting those to become
the major part of the market...
...using efficiency as the transition.
It won't happen overnight,
but it should've started 30 years ago.
We have right now,
in the White House and in Congress...
...people trying to delay it further,
which is irrational...
...both for our national security
and environmental protection.
This country...
...can move awfully fast if it wants to.
Keep in mind that
just after December 7th, 1941...
...Roosevelt went to Jimmy Byrnes
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 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, 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.
This means everybody.
Every citizen, every government level,
every organization, every corporation.
This is "all hands on deck" time.
So that in the future, 500 years out...
...that people look back at this time,
that this was our finest hour.
That humans at that time in that
generation all across the planet...
...came 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 21 st 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.
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 they only had
one sort of pixel...
...in this incredible mosaic
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.
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 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 emerging
here and there around the world.
So we have technologies to build a new
economy to sustain economic progress.
We can see that new economy emerging.
The challenge for our generation is to
build that economy in the available time.
And I don't think we have
a lot of time left.
Virtually all of
our major infrastructure changes...
...have been encouraged in some way
by the government.
So I would think the way to deal...
...with this transition away from oil is...
...not to pretend energy operates
in an unregulated free enterprise market.
It does not. 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
we do.
With abundant, affordable and clean
energy, we can solve a lot of problems.
Without it, we won't be able to solve
very many problems at all.
The sun is the most plentiful, bountiful
substitute there is.
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.
We're also finding
that on the larger scale...
...what we'd call the utility scale,
wind energy 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.
It's important to see,
as we make progress in the world...
...to have an economy that's flexible,
fluid and ready to make changes.
How do we protect the atmosphere
that belongs to us all?
One of the ways
is we make people who are polluting...
...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 could 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 effect.
A tax on fossil fuels.
When we break our addiction
to fossil fuels...
...you see money flowing to industries
that represent the vitality of the economy:
Media, high-tech, services.
Taking action on climate change
is good for jobs and the economy.
If we retrofitted...
...all government buildings
built pre-1950...
...and we created tax environments
to help cities and municipalities...
...and states and the federal government
to retrofit those buildings...
...we could create 3 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
we have now in energy...
...to a level playing field, competition
between dirty and clean fuels...
...I have no doubt the clean fuels will win.
Once we send the right signal
to the marketplace...
...that the two guys in the garage
who created Hewlett-Packard...
Those two guys today,
I want them working on clean energy.
I want them to know
we fixed our public policies...
...so they'll be rewarded when they come
up with a killer app to defeat Big Oil.
That's what we need to do.
Once we do, we'll see a relatively quick
transition to cleaner energy.
People need to realize they can do things
in their everyday lives.
Keeping tire pressure at the right level...
...putting in compact fluorescent light
bulbs. Personal action is important.
This problem of global warming
is huge and tremendous...
...and it may seem inconsequential
to take your personal action...
...but it is important for many 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 leaders that we do care.
That's what we need from individuals...
...as the next step beyond that, is to
build a 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.
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.
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 gonna live our lives mediated
by the marketplace or what's being sold.
We won't make our identities
and 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.
Not only is it the 11 th hour,
it's 11:59 and 59 seconds.
And although prior people's movements...
...have taken 30 to 40 years to 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.
It's not just gonna be a matter
of tweaking a policy here and there.
It'll take a broad societal mobilization.
It's gonna 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:
"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.
People often ask:
"What can I do? I wanna do something."
You made the first choice because
you know you have to do something.
For the rest, it's a matter of looking
deep into your own heart and your soul...
...to understand what your gifts are,
where your passions lie...
...to do some research,
educate yourself...
...to find the people you're 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.
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-dippie, 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.
What 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.
Subtitles by
SDI Media Group
[ENGLISH]