Welcome to the global archive,
a vast storage structure located 800km north of Norway.
It contains the artwork from every national museum.
There are pickled animals stack up two by two.
Every film, every book, every scientific report,
all stored on banks of servers.
But the conditions we are experiencing now,
were actually cause by our behavior in the period leading up to 2015.
In other words, we could've saved ourselves
We could've saved ourselves.
But we didn't, it's amazing!
What state of mind were we in,
to face extinction, and simply shrug it off?
By nature or by disinterest, there is always an introvert.
For years, you know, the non-business need, need a face
blah, blah, blah, personality.
The year 32-year-old entrepreneur Jeh Wadia,
he started up India's third low-cost airline, in 2005.
Time for India's now, the time for developing business in India is now.
He's got 1200 employees, most of whom have never set foot on an airplane.
What are the different kinds of hijackers that you might have?
Why are you scared of a little smoke? Do want to be scared and run of fire?
It's not a toy, it's not a perfume bottle, you've got to aim it, hold it. That's it.
I was at London at the time, where Stelios Haji-loannou, you know, uh, he created the EZ jet,
and I was fascinated with basically how he did it.
Evacuate, evacuate
Go this way, go this way
We've been offering fares from 600 rupees, ok, all the way down to 1 rupee.
How many people can afford a 1 rupee fare? I would imagine every single Indian can.
That the, a rickshaw driver can, and servants.
You know in year 2005, I mean, you know,
having a elite class who can fly in a country of a billion people, it's ridiculous.
Search: visible impacts of climate change leading up to 2010.
101 degrees Fahrenheit, it's the hottest day ever recorded.
700 people are now feared dead after the strongest ever-recorded days rain fall in India's history.
Now, it's official, the past year has been the driest in Melbourne's history.
The dessert is advancing at the phenomenal rate of 3 miles every year.
Dozens of Antarctic ice shelves collapsing faster than anyone predicted.
18 countries are under water, and one and a half million people are affected.
Fernand Pareau has climbed Europe's highest mountain Mont Blanc over 150 times.
Here he's guiding a family from England.
At 82, Fernand is the oldest guy still working in France.
All his lifetime he witnessed huge changes in the mountains.
Now, there's an elaborate extension on the bottom here.
Extraordinary to think that these are the Alps in December.
Here in Chamonix is across the Alps,
there's a dramatic lack of snow , and exceptionally warm temperatures.
It is a glimpse into the future.
More than half of ski resort in Europe could shut down in the next 50 years because of global warming.
So nobody goes skiing, big deal. The thing is it's not bad, is it? That's the whole point.
The fact you can't get skiing anymore or the glaciers are melting is not really the point,
the point is that signals that basically the earth is destabilizing.
And all the norms that have allowed life to exist are changing.
List: climate change, major events, up to the present day.
This is a couple of days before Katrina struck.
Most people are following the evacuation order in getting out of the city.
But New Orleans-borne Alvin DuVernay had no intention of moving.
I got up at Saturday morning and there's a buzz in the neighborhood,
everybody were running around and I was like what's up, what's up?
You know, the hurricane's coming.
I checked on the web and sure enough all of the models had it, aiming right for us. Bulls eye.
This is a monster, and it's coming.
Walk through the house a few times, putting things up, you know.
My silk rug from Nepal up on the top shelf, and my guitar,
I mean, you know, you just do these things, you know.
I mean another way to do that is get all you stuff and go, that's option 1,
probably the best option. I didn't grow up in that option.
Alvin collected his 84-year-old father
than barricaded the two of them inside this house as the hurricane approached.
You stare Mother Nature in the eye, usually she's fairly benign.
And she comes along, methodically, ruthlessly.
And then she stands toe to toe, and dares you, dares you.
Go ahead and get your best equipment, now, go ahead, do it, let's dance.
I think ones got to be very careful about attaching a particular event to global warming.
But nevertheless the intensity of hurricanes is related to surface sea temperature,
so increased intensity of hurricane is associated with global warming.
By first light, the water in Alvin's house is chest-deep and still rising.
So he helped Alvin Sr. into their boat and headed for dry land.
There's just one boat that's floating, so it's no big deal to launch the boat, it's launched.
There's no landmarks, really, to speak of that's a real different perspective,
driving through your neighborhood at tree level.
Then, all of a sudden you realize there is a lot of people who stayed behind.
There's no coastguard or police or.
Most of our national guards were elsewhere in the world, Iraq, Afghanistan.
Alvin rescued 200 people, and their pets, over 2 long days,
including a 95-year-old man and a six-week-old baby.
that little basket came out of the window, that was a pretty special time.
And just as peaceful eyes-closed, it just stops you, in your tracks, dead stop,
take a breath, you know, there's nothing more precious than that.
Alvin's neighbors were the lucky ones,
hurricane Katrina was America's worst weather related event to that date.
And it was just a taste of what was to come.
"It is our fault," after years of debate, some of the world's top scientists.
"Unequivocable," this the word they used, human activity is.
Contributing to changes in our earth climate, and that issue is no longer up to debate.
In Andermatt,
they've covered the glacier with a special protective sheet reduce its summer melt.
One way I do my bit for the environment is turning to 30 with Ariel.
This is offsetting all those flights that I take that I have to for my job.
David Cameron even wears recycled shoes made from old fireman's trousers.
Despite all the efforts to control pollution and its effect in our climate,
the level of greenhouse gas emission has reached a record high and shows no signs of being reversed.
Despite the Kyoto treaty, and all the talk of reducing emissions of carbon dioxide,
levels of this key greenhouse gas are rising faster than ever.
06:30 am on a cool autumn morning, and Alvin's heading up to work, searching for more oil.
Ironically, the oil infrastructure off the coast of New Orleans suffered major damage during the hurricane,
but Shell moved fast to carry out repair and just 9 months later,
the rigs are online, and everyone's back at work.
Oil was formed when ancient plant life in the ocean absorbed energy from the ancient sun.
When these plants died, they settled in the ocean floor along with the dead bodies of tons and tons of ocean creatures.
Over millennia, temperature increased and the organic matter was gradually cooked
until the sun's energy was stored inside oil.
150 million years later, Shell's geologists analyzed where the oil might be,
and then drilled 3 miles down into the seabed to collect samples.
Hey you go Al, get yourself. Thank you.
We get the samples and analyze them for the fossil contents. The microscopic fossils.
And it's just another geo-scientific tool in order to improve your possibility of finding oil.
In my opinion, probably arrogantly so,
but it's pretty high calling actually to try to do that,
to try to figure out or maybe take apart, you know, time itself.
Go back a few thousand years,
and the energy available to grow our crops or feed animals was limited by the daily sunlight falling on the earth.
But now,
we gorge ourselves on hundreds of years worth of sunlight every single year.
Every part of modern life is now literally made of oil.
From CDs to plastic bags, to medicines and computers.
From clothes and carpets to hair gel and cell phones.
It's a fantastically useful substance.
Then there's our food,
each calorie we eat used about 80 oil calories to produce, package, refrigerate and transport.
And fossil fuel produce fertilizers now feed about 2 billion people who could not otherwise stay alive.
It would be wise for humanity to use the remaining oil to build the new society which could run without it.
But we are, instead, indiscriminately burning tens of millions of barrels every day.
It'll all be gone in about 40 years, leaving pretty much none for future generations.
And then you see it, and you smell it, and, you know,
it's greasy and ugly and smell so much like money, it's just beautiful, you know.
13 billion pounds in 2005, that's 1.5 million pounds an hour, 400 pounds a second.
And a hefty chunk of those profits came from here, Nigeria,
where most of the population lives on less than 1 dollar a day.
This is the water we drink.
22-year-old Layefa Malin has an ambition to be trained as a doctor
and then work in a home village called Cojabanee,
where Shell started building this medical center.
Like hundreds of other community projects across Niger delta, construction has been abandoned.
Shell maintains that's because of the risk of kidnapping.
13% of the oil revenue is supposed to be spent on community development.
But the local people share is almost all lost to the corrupt political system.
So despite being in the most profitable oil region in West Africa,
Layefa's village has no health service, no secondary school, no electricity, and no drinking water.
Layefa is describing a phenomenon known as"the resource curse".
Paradoxically, finding oil usually increases a country's poverty.
As the oil wealth is concentrated in hands of a few,
so the agriculture, education, and health system of the country become neglected and often collapsed.
The local people health problems are compounded by gas flare,
burning nights and days throughout the Niger delta,
asthma, bronchitis, skin diseases, and cancer have all been linked.
That gas is found alongside oil, but, as it's dangerous to transport,
it can't easily be sold to over sea markets. It could be use for cooking and heating within Nigeria,
but building infrastructure is expensive so the oil company just burn it off.
Its flares emit about 70 million tons of carbon dioxide every year
more than the annual emissions from 10 million British homes.
they just do whatever they like.
Why are American cities designed so it's almost impossible not to have a car?
Why were a hundred railways in cities like New York,
Philadelphia, and Los Angles bought up and then deliberately destroyed?
Why do the electric cars get scrapped?
Why were we, along with Australia,
the only two countries not to sign the original Kyoto climate treaty.
Why was an oil company lobbyist allowed to change official government reports on global warming?
Why was the same PR firm employed by the tobacco industry to persuade the public that smoking is healthy,
then employed by the oil industry to convince us there was still doubt about climate change?
Alternative energy has been available for 50 years, why have we barely used it?
Why were solar panels taking off the white house?
Because right from the early days of the industry,
the oil men and their unseen profit have had an unhealthy influence on the people running our country.
And now, they all are the people running our country.
And they're providing the cash, too.
Oil business isn't just in bed with the government,
it is the government.
Here, Layefa is going to a nearby village,
Oiama, that was massacred by the government.
The village was involved in a dispute about ownership of a piece of land,
on which Shell planed to drill for oil.
The government claimed that the village was harboring terrorists,
and when they sent the military in to find those terrorists,
the villagers opened fire on the soldiers.
Layefa has gone to hear the villagers' side of the story, from Omiekma Wekid.
Amnesty international investigated the massacre and concluded that,
although the government was responsible for the killings,
Shell Nigeria should have made sure that their activities did not contribute to the conflict.
they burned them off.
Human history is littered, with the corpses of people who had stuff worth stealing.
Animals,
water,
shinny things,
fertile land,
spices.
Hmm! Nutmeg slice, tea?
But when it came to stuff worth pinching one continent had it all,
ivory, copper, cotton, rubber, wood, tin, gold, diamonds, and people.
As cheap energy, slaves were unbeatable,
until the less troublesome energy source was discovered,
and the new era began.
Human numbers increased 5 times over.
And with each person wanting more and more stuff,
oil became"the resource" worth fighting for all around the world.
Well, you want to know the real reason why to warn Iraq?
According to the former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, it's a simple, 3 letter answer.
Not WMD, it's O-I-L.
You might read the ex-chairman of Shell
that said over weekend that oil can hit over 150 dollars a barrel as world production begins to peak,
not really good news for a country whose entire economy,
not to mention its entire way of life,
is based on cheap oil.
Throughout our history, the deal was we left the world in a better place
than we found it, that was progress,
the wheel, rule of law, penicillin.
It was our covenant to our children, grandchildren;
my children went angry with me for breaking the covenant,
they were too busy trying to stay alive to waste energy on blame,
trying to negotiate their way through food riots, refugee camps, and the collapse of society.
But I think my grandchildren would have been angry,
had they survived into adulthood.
Skiing in desserts,
heating the air,
lighting empty offices,
energy is so ridiculously cheap it makes perfect economic sense to just piss it away.
China is new bad guy, because they're building a new power station every 4 days.
But the quarter of that energy makes stuffs for us.
Western company pay Chinese workers crap wages to make crap plastic toys,
then ship them to Europe, and wrap them in more plastic.
Punters drive to the out-of-town megastore in their gas-guzzlers.
Plastic toy and plastic box goes into plastic bag.
2 days later, toy broken,
and back it goes to a Chinese landfill where it stays for about, hmm, 50 thousand years?
Water from the bottle's much better than the tap.
...Mountain spring spot.
800 times more energy wasted
and 10,000 times more expensive for you.
It's a tricky decision.
Lots of ideas have tried to take over the world,
but there's only one winner.
3000 adverts bombard us every day.
Telling us we'll be happier, more atracttive with better skin,
if only we buy their product.
To get there,
they create incentives and insatiable desire to buy more and more stuff.
Americans have been advertised that longest,
and they now each consumed twice as much energy as an European,
9 times more than a Chinese person,
15 times more than an Indian,
and 50 times more than someone from Kenya.
If all the 6 billion here on earth consumed like European or Japanese,
we need two more planets worth of resources.
If everyone consumed like American or Australian and Canadian,
we need another four.
And in 2040 or so when there are about 9 billion of us,
we need two more again.
Capitalism's only goal is ever expanding growth,
but ever expading growth on just one not expanding planet
it's impossible.
The current economic system is disastrous,
not just for the planet, but for most people, too.
400 years of capitalism has allowed the richest one 1% to take 40% for themselves,
leaving just 1% for the poorest to have.
But anyone wanting to live differently, to travel by train or generate their own power is fooled every time.
With profit, the only measuring step,
destroying the planet is written into the system,
and run away climate change is not very surprising result.
The logo effectively is color, you know, light grey, you know,
orange telecom, they are orangey black.
Our logo is fluorescent color.
Where everything changes in economy in minute, you have an airline moving in.
Because people can basically do business alot faster,
if businesses grow a lot faster, people have more disposable income,
then, you know, consumerism sets in,
and you know where the verge where base consumerism is setting in,
just moving a lot like America.
Here, Jeh travels to Airbus headquarter in France,
as they'll be supplying him with 26 planes in his first 3 years.
We have only 200 aircrafts commercially flying in India, China has 800.
Ultimately, you know, we have a very long way to go,
playing catch up with China catch up with Europe,
or, you know, say, America one airline South West, has 417 aircrafts.
That's double the amount of aircrafts we have as a country.
You know, we simple sentence for me, summarizes it all.
Thing is gonna get better.
In my main house, is has 10 feet of water in it,
marinated in that sludge for 3 weeks, almost.
So it's current state of my house, it's been demolished.
It's flat piece of a property waiting for another house to go on that.
I lost everything, everything that I owned,
I mean everything from family heirlooms to the paper towels sitting on your kitchen counter,
in everything in between, it goes on and on.
Two beautiful, beautiful oak trees I did not lose,
you know, local, indigenous, quikes, virginianas, live oaks
that sprawl all over the place, beautiful, beautiful things.
That's what I have left, two old oak trees and an empty lawn, everything else is gone.
That sucks.
Losing everything you have, it's so overwhelming.
And the grief that comes with that, it is just profound.
We have an unspoken collected pact to pretend climate change wasn't happening,
as though as long we ignore it hard enough, It wouldn't be true.
Not absolutely everyone, a few were shouting fire.
Hello, come on in.
One of the greatest difficulties with climate change
is that the effects of our emissions today are not actually realized in terms of the temperature
for 30 or 40 years so there is this time-lag system.
Which makes it difficult for us, humans, to respond
because we're evolutionary equipped to deal with the very immediate threats
like advancing armies or dangerous animals.
We're not so well-equipped with dealing rationally with very long term problems like climate change.
So we have to act now to stop something happening in the future,
if we wait until the full temperature effects are already upon us,
then it's far too late to stop.
If you remember one single number above all else,
make it two degrees,
now everyone in the world pretty much,
the European Union, big multi-national corporations, Greenpeace, political parties,
all agreed that we have to stabilize global temperatures within 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels,
and the reason for that is because, if you cross that threshold, the narrow tipping point in the earth system,
which could drive the warming process essentially out of control.
Huge amount of carbon could be coming out of the world,
trees and soils, methane could be coming out of the perma-frost in Siberia
and it's that extra input of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,
which then leads us up to the worst case scenario to 6 or more degrees
and the eventual wipeout of most of the life on earth.
So power emission has been going up, between, let's says, 1950,
and now they need to level out, stabilize, and then decline
just as rapidly to sustainable levels about an 80% cut by 2050.
But crucially, to keep the temperature rise within 2 degrees,
this point of stabilization need to be at around 2015.
And so that means, really, the time, timeline we've got, ticking clock,
is that we have to stabilize global emission within just 7 years from now as we speak 2008.
And scale of this task to achieve a transformation to a low carbon economy
of the entire, entirety of human civilization,
is obviously, is huge, monumental task, probably the greatest humanity ever faced.
Remember the English family who went to see the glacier?
They're back home in Cornwall, south west England,
inspired to start tackling their own energy wasting.
It says that the average Individual in the UK responsible for emitting 10 tons of greenhouse gas a year.
They're calculating exactly how much climate-change-gases their family currently produces,
and how it can be reduced.
Yeah, but that's the average individual, there are five of us.
Whichever way you look at this, it isn't good.
We produce about half of our food, and we try keep our consumption of meat and dairy down.
My car runs on chick fat and we do cycle when we can.
We just got our wind turbine, which will produce all our own electricity.
We're aiming to cut down to about one ton each per year,
which is apparently the sustainable amount that the world's trees and plants can reabsorb.
But the big problem is flying, just one mid-term flight, say, London to New York,
would blow our entire carbon budget for about 3.5 years.
Apparently, other than setting fire to a forest,
flying is the single worst thing an ordinary individual can do to cause climate change.
So, it's a bit of a dilemma, because we've just been invited to go skiing in France.
Then I am flying from Newquay, which is our nearest airport,
say, 40 minutes from here, to Bergerac,
which is like, you know, an hour and a half or something, from it.
And literally we could leave here in the morning that's we leave like in, Cornwall,
we could leave Cornwall in the morning,
and be in Bergerac by sort of, for lunch, after lunch.
But if you actually think, this is going to cause the death of people, actually in effect
people are make that direct connection, then it's a really scary thought.
Obviously, us not flying to France or not flying, wherever it's hard to guess, will solve the problem.
But it's down to what you think it's the correct thing to do.
Because everyone else's doing it, I mean, that is not a good reason to do anything.
You know, to look at the terrible things in our history that everyone regrets now,
you know, massacres, the holocaust etc., a lot of that
was just going a long way what was the predominant thinking at the time.
I almost jealous at the time,
5 or 10 years ago when I could just jump on a plane with impunity,
I didn't even think about it, it's blissful, no moral dilemma there, whatsoever.
Needless to say, they didn't take that flight.
And joining the climate change protest march
may not be everybody's idea of the 10th wedding anniversary,
but Piers and Lisa have share ideals from the moment they met.
My friend, we went along to the party together,
and she just basically took me straight over to Piers and said,
"Hey, look," you know"Piers, this is Lisa." And, dah dah dah
And that was it, that was it. We just...
and spent the whole evening talking about wind turbines.
Piers has been developing wind farms in Africa, America, and Britain for over 15 years.
But he knows that they only help slow the climate crisis
as a small part of a total reordering of western society.
And there still is an idea that somehow we have to find the solution,
you know, the silver bullet.
No single renewable source is going to be the solution, absolutely not.
And Piers doesn't think much of the other option,
whereby everyone crosses their fingers
and hopes that the miracle technology will be invented in time.
I'm not saying we shouldn't be developing other stuff, absolutely, we should be.
We should be throwing everything after it.
But, you've got to make use of what's available now.
And in the UK, we've got a great wind resource,
and we just got to bite the bullet and go for it.
Piers has purposed a new wind farm as airfield farm at Airfield Farm in Bedfordshire, central England.
He could have 15 turbines installed and generating 13 megawatts of electricity within a year.
Well, the process balloon is now going up, but while that's happening, I'll just explain where we are.
We all have our thumb down as well.
UK-wise surveys point to about 70-80% in favor of wind farm as a concept.
The difficulty is when you got one on your own doorstep,
and then there is the sort of "not-in-my-backyard" syndrome.
Jim, what's the problem?
The problem really is that this is one of the least windy sites in the country.
I hope it's not gonna get too windy tomorrow and it wraps itself around the church.
Well, I live in Coddington, and we're going to be absolutely surrounded by these high moss.
They're going to obliterate the view.
What it normally always comes down to with wind farms is the aesthetics, you know.
Everything else is basically put together to try and back up the ultimate thing,
the ultimate thing is they don't want to spoil their view.
But I'm bit concern about the low level noise as well.
The wind farm site is right next to world famous Santa Pod drag-racing strip.
Anybody you ask it, nobody's against wind energy, that's the point,
it's against inappropriate wind energy use.
Hypnotic, you're driving alone, and you tend to saw this sails revolving,
and you're not concentrating on the driving.
Eurney Braddock will benefit financially having turbine on his farm,
but now he's in conflict with his neighbor, Victoria Reeves.
Well, everyone is very unhappy about it, we're gonna lose the value of our properties,
we are not going to be able to sleep, it will make a difference, Eurney you have no idea, believe me.
According to Victoria,
they stop to wind farm up in Scotland on the other estate in Scotland.
Back in the mid-90's that was a great victory.
"It can't rely on the wind, it can only deliver". -"It's an additive."
-"Additive? Do you mean additional? Yes, it is additional." -"It's a economics resources, put it that way."
-"No, Eurney, it doesn't." -"It's got to, it's got to." -"It does nothing of the sort, believe me."
It's an emotional campaign, it's about fear mostly based on complete bollocks, frankly.
But never mind, facts are not a problem, you know.
"It's a fair fight, and I hope you lose". -"Alright."
This is August 2005, just after Mumbai's worst ever floods.
And a couple of months before Jeh's first flight.
Show daddy how good you ride this, show daddy how fast you can go, come on.
Wooo... No more pushing, it's battery operated.
- "So, I can't finish either." - "Hey, grandpa..."
Jeh is descended from one of India's richest and most powerful business dynasties.
They pioneered everything from ship building from the 18 centuries to internet services in the 21st.
And around about way, his privileged up bringing sparked the idea for the low cost airline.
What do you want me to do? I'm going to the airport.
Throughout basically my life, at young age,
I mean, I used to hang out with tons of, you know, servants' kids. You know, that sort of stuff.
You know, and when you go home, you say... you suddenly think,
why do I have so much, and these guys have nothing.
And that sort of shit, and that constantly constantly adding up.
You know, everyone is here for a purpose.
The idea is to realize what your higher purpose is, and then realize how you gonna fulfill it.
And eventually I realize what my higher purpose was,
it was to insure that I eradicated poverty.
Jeh volunteers at the charity which helps villagers lift themselves out of poverty.
But even by private jet and jeep,
it's a 5 hour, 900 kilometers journey.
Hiring a private jet is basically in terms of costs as much as the village does,
you know, take a village from below the poverty and put it above the poverty.
So effectively, in terms of it defeats the purpose.
And therefore I decided to, you know.. try the trains, from Bombay takes about 26 hours.
I said to myself, "wow, this is just incredible."
You know, people pay good money and still have to basically put with this rubbish.
15 million people travel by train in India every single day.
Jeh's dream is to get them all off the trains and into the skies.
We're not at war at the moment. It's not a war.
But people actually recognize that full implications of what's in store for us,
they would be treating it like a war.
If anybody takes Airfield Farm for example,
I mean that was the year it was airbase,
people flew out there and died.
Or of course, which was massive at the time, the global problem, and we have ourselves out.
A real global problem that needs that kind of level of commitment.
There are many, many other industries that need to be looked in to first, before aviation.
It's not a question of choosing one industry to target,
the ultimate deal, we all contribute to... to... to greenhouse gases,
we all contribute to the crisis that we have today with the planet.
So ultimately, in terms of, you know...
insuring our planet is safe and healthy is each one's job, task.
Whether you do it in your own way by using less tissue paper,
using less papers, less trees cut buying green cars or not flying.
Obviously, if you're not doing it, and the demand goes down,
the demand goes down, the supply goes down.
Life is about demand and supply or supply and demand.
Strange. Watching this film fragment.
Like looking through binoculars observing people of far of beach.
Running around in circle, fixated on the small area of sand under their feet.
As a tsunami races toward the shore.
Here's Alvin. He's just taken early retirement after thirty years on the oil industry salary.
And he's planning to spend his later years outside enjoying nature.
Oh, certainly I'm ecologist, and an environmentalist.
I really don't have a problem squaring that...
Working for an oil company that I feel... has...
done a pretty good job and in being environmentally friendly.
When I started working in the oil industry, about the mid 70's,
it was clear path for me, as a scientist coming up college.
And I didn't know the detail of what goes on in the oil industry, the goods and the bad.
But indeed every industry has that, goods and bad.
Would I do it again, knowing what I know now, of course I would do it again,
I mean, you need to work, you need to do something
The worst example I've had is a lady,
an old lady came up to me, at the public exhibition.
And gave me a cutting from a newspaper, with a picture of guy being shot.
Local anti-campaign is one of the key factors,
stopping about 80% of the proposed wind energy project in Britain.
Had they all been built, 10% of our Electricity would've been non-polluted.
How the heck are we meant to persuade people in India and China
that they should develop in a more sustainable way when we are not prepared to even to accept
you know, the old wind farming landscape.
- "So how's it going?" - "All right, yes."
- "Not too much trouble?" - "Not really, no, nobody's punched me up."
Pierce has come back to the Ernie's farm
with a plan to make the turbine less visible.
Trying to kick start the planning process
that the anti-campaign has now held up for eighteen months.
Another eighteen months of climate change.
Another eighteen months, where I'm able to do nothing about it.
You must be feeling the same as me. It just, I mean how long have we got...
Pierce's compromise reduces the number of turbines from fifteen down to nine.
This is still the equivalent electrical power to fair eleven thousand homes.
So there's still alot power.
Exactly the opposite is happening, to the very thing that needs to happen.
These things need to be speeded up, and actually, they're getting slowed down.
Plenty of politicians are talking about it, but when it comes down to it,
it's just not happening. It's just not happening, folks.
Governments will only go as far as the population demands.
And that means mass protest on unprecedented scale.
Direct action like this is essential,
if you were going to turn an issue around in a short period of time.
We've found that many many times in the past, from the suffragettes onwards.
The very fact that the crisis is taking place in our generations is happening right now,
means we are tremendously powerful people.
So this position of despair, and I can't do anything, there's no point.
It's completely illogical, it's exactly the opposite.
There's no shortage of great matter in the species, we can do some amazing things.
But I don't think we been very smart about how we use our resources.
How we quite literally burn up something as beautiful and useful as all.
We literally burn it up. That's it, it's gone, it's done.
I think most people were becoming disenchanted by this point.
We'd stop believing that this was the golden era of human civilization,
and started questioning our collective values.
All I can hope is, an incredible disasters like Katrina,
and the horrible wars comes out and what not, that are going on around the world
will snap us out of it.
Let's see if it's headed in the right direction for the good of mankind.
Before this disaster, I had a lot of stuff, I was a classic consumer.
Two years later, I've learned lot about happiness and the pursuit thereof.
The happiness is not in the latest gadgets, the latest electric tooth brush or something like that.
All of that stuff. It's just not the stuff of life. Not for me anyway.
Climate scientist can estimate how much of the remaining fossil fuels we can safely burn.
This amount is called the "global cap".
Under this proposal, the world governments will make a binding into international agreement
detailing how to distribute the global cap.
The earlier the start takes,
of greater the chance of not triggering runaway climate change.
The total global emissions for the first year say 2012, will be set for that current level.
Every year following they'll shrink until by about 2065, they're almost zero.
Initially, each country would be allocated an emissions quota,
according to how much they currently consume.
But this would change over time
America would slash its emissions 90% from its current over consuming position.
Europe too would decrease massively, as would China.
But India and Africa would increase until by about 2025.
Each human being on the planet would have equal rights to the earth's resources.
Equity is the only option morally,
and also practically as the developing countries won't sign up to anything less.
But total emissions would then keep decreasing every year
until by 2065 we'll have waned ourselves off of fossil fuels
and prevented the worst impacts of climate change.
As to how each country divvies up its share to the system, there were various options on the table.
The most promising of which individual carbon rationing.
Mr. W.S Morrison is here to explain.
If in the culture of war, we are short for a time of this or that article of food.
Rationing, will give every one, rich and poor alike,
an equal share of all its goods.
Down to the scheme. Everyone in UK would be allocated to annual carbon allowance.
So the electronic loyalty as the supermarket loyalty card,
points will be deducted every time we buy or use non-renewable energy.
For example, using electricity to power appliances in the home,
or traveling somewhere by plane, or even buying petro-fuel for the car
The best way you can help is by rationing yourselves,
I'm sure that all of you will buy your fair share and no more.
Airports were expanding all over the world,
to cope with the exploding number of cheap flights we were all demanding.
And Jeh was doing everything he could to join the party.
Ultimately, the odd is to hug and then kick.
She saying the PS is been payable, you're saying the PS is not been payable. What's wrong with you?
Now!
Yes or no? Did I ask you the question, or did I not ask the question?
You're suspended, you're suspended. Both of you go to my office right now.
It's all in a day's work, haha...
Maintaining my plane means something to me, OK?
If I see my step ladder like this,
and if I find one piece of dirt, you'll be fired.
OK?
June 11. 2007, in the hotel room in Bedford.
Pierce is polishing his speech for tonight showdown with the local planning committee.
This committee can approve this application.
If you do, you would show courage and leadership.
He has just six minutes to convince them to approve his wind farm.
I'm absolutely confident, that if you approve this project,
you'll look back on the decision and say "Thank goodness we said yes".
But the committee rejected pierce's application,
saying that his wind farm would be conspicuous and out of place in the Bedfordshire landscape,
that it would decrease enjoyment of nearby foot paths
and negatively impact the listed buildings and the nation's monuments.
In other words, it would spoil the view.
Oh we're delighted that it's been refused, yes.
It's a wonderful result.
It just shows if you work hard if you look at all the facts,
if you do with fair and balance, you can get a good outcome.
10 against, one in favor, might even be 11 against one in favor.
But there only one guy who actually, actually votes in favor.
Cheers, man.
Hi, mom. It's Piers. I think it's 10 to one or 11 to one against.
I could have said, to be honest. It wouldn't make any difference.
Of course we're worried about global warming,
I mean, it's got to be something we all concerned about.
I mean, we're doing our bit to try conserve and looking for renewable energy.
Of course, absolutely, yeah, I mean, we're part of the world... haha... yes.
And it is global warming.
For the first time, scientists confirm the link between climate change and our awful weather.
An emergency services scramble and Bedfordshire
and the flood water finally work their way along the great tubes,
other parts of Bedfordshire didn't escape, either.
We've lived at here for forty years, and we've never ever
have anything like this.
80.000 fatality in Burma today after cyclone Nargis...
... Emergency across Western Europe with drinking water strictly rationing in Holland, France...
... Forest fire is still sweep across Spain. Unfortunately...
... 30 million pounds, price worth paying for motorists right to drive, said Lord Clarkson...
... Good news for the UK wine industry, especially...
... New Orleans will not be rebuilt at this time, the Louisiana government...
... Total Destruction of India's dams would end Pakistan's drinking water crisis.
... As U.S president's choices to continue out because of...
... San Francisco extraordinary heat wave continue hit in Los Angeles...
... Extreme weather somewhere around the planet increasing in these days....
... 35 million Chinese refugees
... Skiing in the Alps is over...
... Channel Four documentaries ask is global warming really happening or natural...
... 61 degrees centigrade the highest land temperature...
... More than a hundred million people are homeless tonight...
... Methane emitted in Siberia...
... The last Indonesian tree found, but five fuel crisis...
... European Union today permanently closed all of its borders...
... Must be reserved for food production...
... London is under water again, as last night 30 foot storm surge overcame...
... New Zealand has also now closed its borders leaving 22 million stranded...
... Refugees in middle east and continental Europe...
... Half of the species are now extinct, scientist estimate, and eco systems are collapsing...
... Passing 2 degrees, we cannot now stop runaway climate change...
... There are simply too many people to feed and are remained famine...
... Suicide rates increasing eight hundred percent...
... The Amazon rain forest is still burning...
... And anyone who cannot bear to eat their own cats and dogs...
... We are entering the eighth world food crisis...
... The world temperature today is passing 4 degrees...
... Retaliation nuclear strike...
We wouldn't be the first life form to wipe itself out.
But what would be unique about us is that we did it knowingly.
And what's that say about us?
The question I've been asking is,
why didn't we save ourselves when we had the chance?
Is the answer because on some level, we weren't sure if we were worth saving?
Please proceed near the aircraft, and take care of the responsibility.
You know if all of us stood united, in terms, the world would be different in every way.
Unfortunately, that's not the reality.
If we can not even stand united on eradicating poverty in the world,
what is the health of the planet has any chance?
In my opinion, our use or misuse of resources in the last hundreds years or so,
I probably would rename that, age, something like the...
"The Age of Ignorance".
"The Age of Stupid".
I just find it, surprising.
That after so much effort, the final act of our existence, should be suicide.
So why did I build this archive?
It's a cautionary tale.
Not for us. Too late for us.
But for... well...
for whoever, whatever, eventually finds this recording.
And away you go.