Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never did and it never will.
- Frederick Douglass
1968
This is Apollo 8 coming to you live from the moon
The vast loneliness up here of the moon is awe-inspiring
And it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth
The Earth from here is a grand oasis in the big vastness of space
- Oh my god look at that picture over there - Wow, is that pretty
You got a color film Jim?
Hand me a roll of color film quick. Quick.
Wow, that's a beautiful shot
From the crew of Apollo 8 we close with "Good night, good luck, and God bless all of you...
... all of you on the good Earth"
We no longer live on that Earth
The world hasn't ended
But the world as we know it has
Can you hear me?
I have an emergency
The water is rising very quickly
We're looking at about five feet of water...
... and there's about 17 people on the second floor right now
We're going to need to evacuate - we need to get out of here
We're trying to get you guys out
Are you alright? You OK?!
There is new and dramatic evidence of what's happening to our world
and tonight we'll look at the impact already being felt
The red flags about extreme weather we've all endured
together all across the globe
We are literally engaged in an unprecedented experiment
with the one planet that we know of that can support life.
We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so
would betray our children and future generations
The big question mark is the future, of course, and a new kind of normal
Things are gearing up for the UN-hosted climate change summit in New York
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will host the summit.
I will convene a climate summit for leaders at the highest level.
I urge political leaders of the world to prioritize their political energy on climate change.
We have to get serious about bringing real commitments to the table for that summit.
If things go "business as usual" we will not live, we will die.
DISRUPTION
100 DAYS UNTIL THE MARCH
[Matt Leonard - Organizer - People's Climate March]
On September 23rd the United Nations is holding a historic climate summit where
they've invited world leaders and heads of state from around the world
We're trying to organize the largest-ever climate rally
on the streets New York in response to this, hopefully turning the tide
of what comes out of that summit, and reshaping what the entire climate movement looks like
going forward.
Climate tipping points are scary
but if we stay connected to each other we can build
the largest climate mobilization in history. We all have power to create
the movement tipping point on climate change.
the one that takes our leaders from this place of inaction
and puts them on a journey towards saving the planet.
All the big social movements
in history have had people in the streets.
Women's voting rights, the civil rights movement -- and even more recently
[Keya Chatterjee Dir. of Renewable Energy, WWF]
on climate issues, our big successes have happened when people left their homes
and went out into the streets.
This is a bigger fight than in fact has ever been won.
[Naomi Klein - Author - "This Changes Everything"] It's not that we need to save the Earth.
We need to save the systems that make the Earth compatible
with human existence and the existence of other life forms.
This is the fight of our time, but none of us should exactly have to be activists
about all this. In a rational world, the fact that scientists have said
the worst thing on Earth is happening now and here's what you can do to stop it
[Bill McKibben - Co-Founder, 350.org] that would have been enough to push our
systems into action.
Of all the things that probably get me most upset, it's when people start
presenting climate change as if it's something new.
[Dr. Naomi Oreskes - Professor, History of Science, Harvard.]
The science behind our understanding of man-made climate change
is very old and very well established. So the task we've taken on
is documenting this history to help us understand where we are
how we got here, and how we can change course.
Scientists have known for more than 150 years that carbon dioxide was a greenhouse gas
Fourier came up with this notion that there were gasses in our atmosphere
that allowed sunlight to pass through, like a window, but then when sunlight bounced off
the Earth's surface they trap the heat in.
[Dr. Heidi Cullen - Chief Scientist, Climate Central]
So you had now this establishment of what we now call "the greenhouse effect."
In the 1850's, John Tyndall made laboratory measurements of the absorption of heat radiation
by carbon dioxide
[Dr. James Hansen - Former Director, NASA (GISS)]
And he concluded that if you change the CO₂ in the atmosphere
it's going to affect the planetary energy balance
Tyndall was the one who really came along and proved that carbon dioxide
was a natural thermostat that helped set our planet's temperature
In the late 1800's, it was the great Swedish chemist Arrhenius who first did the calculations
about what would happen as we, as he put it, "evaporated our coal mines into the air"
But people didn't pay much attention to that in the 20th century
because we were too busy figuring out cool new ways to burn fossil fuel
It was only in the late 1950's that we even bothered to measure
to see if it was accumulating in the atmosphere
That instrument, which one up on the side of Mauna Loa in Hawaii
is the most important scientific instrument in the world
Beginning in 1959, it found that there was a steadily accumulating amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere
the so-called "Keeling Curve"
The Keeling Curve is one of the most important pieces of scientific work of the 20th century
that shows us that carbon dioxide has been rising continuously
and systematically since the industrial revolution
Keeling didn't just show that there was an increase in carbon dioxide, he also pinpointed the source
And what Keeling showed so incredibly was that roughly one out of
every four CO₂ molecules in our atmosphere today was put there by us
Just a year ago, we passed 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
Now the pre-industrial level was about 280 parts per million
So human society in the industrial era has raised the level of CO₂ in the atmosphere by about 40%,
[Justin Gillis - Journalist, The New York Times]
and many people fear that before we're done we're gonna double it or even triple it
We're pumping CO₂ into the atmosphere
at a speed which we have never seen before in modern human history
We're absolutely racing into unchartered territory
In our lifetimes, human beings left behind the Holocene, this 10,000-year period
of benign climatic stability that coincides with the rise of human civilization
We have crossed a great threshold, and we stand on the edge of others
[Van Jones - Host, CNN Crossfire]
I remember when The Weather Channel was this kind of nice, sleepy little station
Now it's like a horror show where the climate is being disrupted
That's not for next year or a thousand years from now. That's happening right now.
What all climate scientists will agree on is that
the entire atmosphere has changed -- all the atmospheric dynamics have changed
So every event that happens now is in the context of climate change
is different from how it would have been
A typhoon slammed into the Philippines with winds of 195 miles per hour
That's higher than the winds from Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina combined
The world is mobilizing to help the Philippines, but just a trickle of food and water and medicine
has reached the victims of Typhoon Haiyan
A million people were forced to flee their homes. They're now trying to salvage what's left
Hundreds of thousands are thronging relief centers, desperate for life's necessities
Many residents have covered their faces to mask the smell of the dead, while they searched
for relatives in some of the hardest hit areas
This is one of the top storms ever seen on this planet
Mister President, your excellency
What my country is going through as a result of this extreme climate event is madness
[Yeb Saño - Climate Negotiator, Philippines]
Super Typhoon Haiyan made landfall in my own family's hometown
And the devastation . . . is staggering
I struggle to find words to describe how I feel about the losses
To anyone outside who continues to deny and ignore the reality that this climate change
I dare them -- I dare them to get off their ivory towers and away from the comfort of their arm chairs
I dare them to go to the islands of the Pacific
We refuse as a nation to accept a future where super typhoons like Haiyan become a way of life
We refuse to accept that running away from storms, evacuating our families,
counting our dead become a way of life. We simply refuse to.
We can fix this. We can stop this madness.
80 DAYS UNTIL THE MARCH
People's Climate March Coordinating Committee Organizing Meeting
Hello, hello. Alright folks we know why we're here
[Eddie Bautista - Executive Director, NYC-EJA]
We have 80 days starting tomorrow to pull off the largest climate march in history
It's really important for folks to remember that although climate change affects everyone
the impacts are not evenly distributed
We're asking each one of these breakout groups, prioritize people of color, folks
because this is real, it's disproportionate, and it's time to bring it
They need to act on a binding global agreement to reduce greenhouse gases
[Tomas Gardaño - Organizer, People's Climate March]
We can do that and create jobs at the same time
Part of what we're doing is moving people from fossil fuels to the solutions
[Lee Ziesche - Grassroots Coordinator]
and also presenting them with economic opportunities around the solutions
[Armando Chapelliquen - Project Coordinator, NYPIRG] The idea of who's going to be leading this march...
...are the people in this room
[Rev. Clinton Miller - Brown Memorial, Baptist Church] This environmental issue is the singular issue
of our time, of our day, that will determine how we live, where we live, and if we live.
The most important tool that we have is our people power. There are already 325 groups,
and that list is going to grow every single day. Whatever you're thinking about doing
to help build this mobilization, rethink it. And make it bigger. Make it bolder.
Our job is to make sure everybody hears about it. And then they'll get there. They'll get there.
That's our job
[Nuclear Disarmament Movement - New York City]
In 1982, the UN convened a first special section on nuclear disarmament
and we came together and said when the representatives
of governments all around the world gather in New York City at the UN
we need to be on the streets making our voice heard
New York City's anti-nuclear demonstration turned out to be the biggest
political demonstration in US history
It was, and still to this day, is the largest single gathering, if you will, of people in this country
I think there was one computer in the office. Everything else was by phone
And this thing we called "the mail" -- we now call it "snail mail"
But there was something about that reality that we didn't have the
technology that we now have that actually forced people
to talk directly to each other.
Until we have real peace, with real justice
we will not go home and be quiet, we will go home and organize!
One of the really interesting things about that demonstration is that some 600 local groups
were formed, and many of those groups lasted for years afterwards
To me, the real power of that day was the organizing experience that led
up to it and then the organizing that came out of it
Some experts are now saying that the whole world is heating up
because of a "global greenhouse effect"
[Dr. Naomi Oreskes - Professor, History of Science, Harvard]
Scientists had been saying for a long time that climate change might occur
but 1988 is the year when Jim Hansen and his team at NASA
say both in the scientific peer-reviewed literature, and in public, that it's actually happening
[Dr. James Hansen - Former Director, NASA (GISS)] The changes in atmospheric composition
that humans were making was going to have a big impact on the Earth's climate
The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now
Hansen's testimony was reported on the front page of The New York Times
and there was actually a bill introduced into Congress -- the National Energy Policy Act
to immediately begin to phase out the use of fossil fuels in order to prevent disruptive climate change
And of course that was supported by the creation of the IPCC --
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- that year
So there was political momentum, there was some scientific momentum
there was strong scientific evidence, there was media attention
and then the whole thing kinda fell apart
The Earth Summit, a 12-day, 178-nation conference on the environment
began today in Rio de Janeiro
Battle lines are already drawn between the haves and the have-nots
So far, all the agreements are non-binding -- requiring no specific action on the environment
As time has gone on, the scientific warnings keep intensifying
and yet there has been no effective political response
All political efforts to get a handle on this issue
have essentially failed
I am the one that is burdened with finding the balance between
sound environmental practice on the one hand
and jobs for American families on the other
The agreement hammered out in Kyoto, Japan requires industrialized nations
to make substantial cuts in greenhouse gas emissions
[Justin Gillis - Journalist, The New York Times]
The United States actually never ratified the Kyoto Protocol which is one reason it didn't work
President Bush ignited a storm of controversy
when he decided to abandon the Kyoto Protocol
which sets caps on the emissions of greenhouse gases in developed nations
For nearly two weeks, the US delegation had blocked proposal after proposal
draft after draft
refusing to even discuss mandatory cuts in greenhouse emissions
Now we switch to the big climate conference going on in Copenhagen
Today developing countries made themselves heard
Led by Africa, 135 nations, including India and China
staged a five-hour boycott
angry over what they say are insufficient carbon cuts proposed by the world's rich countries
If Hollywood had been writing a story, it all would have come right in the end
and all the nations would have pledged their best effort
And nothing like that happened -- the thing was a fiasco, a failure
The frustrations of the last 10 days explode on the streets of Copenhagen
Outside the Bella Center where negotiators still haven't reached a climate agreement
2500 protesters tried to storm the hall to make an impact
[Bill McKibben - Co-founder, 350.org] Nothing happened because
the fossil fuel industry was still strong enough to scare nations into avoiding the issue
[Naomi Klein - Author, "The Shock Doctrine"] What happened in Copenhagen, for a lot of people
was this realization "no leader was going to save us"
We have to be strong enough to scare our national leaders
into doing the right thing in New York City in September
If we can demonstrate that
then better things will happen in Paris than happened in Copenhagen
These things are not separate moments in time
This is a all part of one string, and what we're fighting towards in Paris
is highly dependent on what happens in September
This is going to have to be the fight our lives
[Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - Berlin, Germany]
Welcome to this press conference to present the report of IPCC Working Group 3
on mitigation of climate change
[Dr. Rajendra Pachauri - Chairman, IPCC] If we really want to bring about a limitation
of temperature increase to no more than 2 degrees Celsius
there is then the need for an unprecedented level of international cooperation
The way we've approached climate change
is the scientific community builds the case, it synthesizes the evidence,
it presents that evidence then to the policymakers
We've proven beyond a doubt that climate change is real
that the Earth's temperature is warming
[Dr. Heidi Cullen - Author, "Weather of the Future"] that that warming is predominantly caused by
the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities, and that that additional warming poses
a significant threat
What the policy-making community did was they came up with the definition
of what they called "dangerous human interference"
In 2009, the nations in the world agreed on
a target of 2 degrees Centigrade or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit of maximum warming
above the pre-industrial level
That would require emissions worldwide almost entirely stopping
within a matter of decades
[Dr. John Sterman - Director, MIT System Dynamics Group]
A lot of people talk about two degrees as a safe level, well there is no safe level
two degrees is a round number that would be safer
but we'll still have substantial climate impacts
One degree is melting the Arctic and Antarctic. We'd be crazy to find out what two degrees will do
but we're probably going to find out
Even if we do everything right at this point, that's about as good an outcome as
we can hope for
The other thing the IPCC did was they tied that 2 degrees Celsius, 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit threshold
to the amount of fossil fuels that we can actually burn
And they came up with this red line in the sand which was a trillion tons of carbon
The problem is we're already more than halfway there
We're approaching 600 million tons already
and at the rate things are going
we will have completely exhausted that carbon budget within thirty years
The same leaders who say they
want the temperature to go up no more than 2 degrees have put forward
a series of proposals that when you add them up, leads to the temperature rising 6 degrees
the point past which most sane scientists think
civilization on the scale that we now know it will not be possible
It's almost a kind of refusal to come to grips with reality
There's just this enormous gap between what country say they want to do and what
they're actually on track to do
People call this the emissions gap
Much of this is about mathematics. We've got to leave 80 percent of fossil fuels in
the ground
The fossil fuel industry wants to burn all its reserves, if they do then we get that
six degrees
Each day of inaction, of business as usual, puts us closer and closer on this crash course
58 DAYS UNTIL THE MARCH
[People's Climate March - Host Committee Meeting, NYC]
We're two months out from this demo, obviously we all know in this room, a tremendous amount
of work has happened, is happening every day, getting the word out, mobilizing people
[Leslie Cagan - Peace & Justice Organizer] At this point, every day counts. Every day when
we miss an opportunity, it's gone.
It's not just a one-day march, it's our long-term ability to build a strong climate movement
that we need to invest in
[Ananda Lee Tan - Climate Justice Alliance] So being inclusive to us is really about multiple things
but recognizing that we live in a society with there is privilege, there are inequities
and in order to address the climate crisis, we have to first address those inequities
That will allow us to then bring a movement strong enough to address the global ecological crisis
If you think for second about this, there is this just layer of stuff under the ground
Got put their in a specific time in
a specific way
and it just captured millennia of solar energy
[Chris Hayes - Host, All in with Chris Hayes | MSNBC] And we just happened upon it
It's like if you were just walking around, and then put something in the ground
and there's just millions of dollar bills down there, just pulling them out
Everything about what we do and who we are and how we live
is dependent upon the fact that we just found the stuff sitting there
and that stuff said "Oh, you don't have to
have everyone working in the fields all the time -- you can have cities, you can have
cars, you can have iPhones." And the way I view it is, as incredible as that stuff is
we've been paying this price on it the whole time. And there's this clock running
The classic market failure is "negative environmental externalities"
That's just jargon for "you're not paying the full costs for the fossil fuels that you burn"
The racket that the fossil fuel industry has run is to take costs of its products, and
export them to the public
[Keya Chatterjee - Director of Renewable Energy, WWF]
Think about the litany of impacts: from sea level rise, ocean acidification, the collapse
of ecosystems that we rely on for food, water availability. These things are really expensive
-- when you have huge wildfires, it costs a lot of money
All those costs are being dumped onto us as a society, and not being paid by people who are polluting
These big massive polluters
get to dump megatons of carbon in the atmosphere, for free
You can't pollute for free. If you litter you get a fine.
That makes coal and oil and other fossil fuels more competitive
against solar and wind and other sources
than they deserve to be
[Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D - RI) Co-Chair, Task Force on Climate Change]
Behind the environmental problems that carbon pollution causes
and behind the economic problems is a political problem
that a very small group of very powerful special interests
have exerted very rough control over the political establishment
We're up against the fossil fuel lobby that has complete access to the
political class and the ability
to bribe through legal means
and blackmail through the use of attack ads and so on
even people who oppose them have trouble opposing them too strongly
because they are in some ways economically dependent on them
Right now we have a monopoly controlled by the big carbon polluters
They grant themselves subsidy after subsidy
Think about this: how much money does the Pentagon spend
helping big private oil companies get their for-profit products in the Middle East here?
About half of the Pentagon's budget is just
helping Chevron and Shell and Exxon get their for-profit product here
What if they had to pay for that service -- how how much would gas cost then?
Plus, they also get all kinds of tax breaks and other kinds of loopholes
They are a system based on a grow or die ethic, but rather than respond to the climate crisis
by scaling back
they're doubling down through fracking, through tar sands oil
through coal exports, mountain top removal. They have become more brazen.
It's a rogue industry, it's an industry if whose business plan is followed to the letter will wreck the planet
Once you know that, then you know that these are now illegitimate business plans
We have to figure out how to disassociate ourselves with them
And that is beginning to happen all over the world
On the Great Lawn of Central Park
I was up on a stage probably 70 feet in the air looking out
at that sea of people stretching out farther than the eye could see
[Denis Hayes - Founder, Earth Day Network] The crowd estimates were larger than a million people
April 22 1970: the grassroots mobilization which we
recalled as the first Earth Day, 20 million Americans called away from their jobs and
their classes into the streets in their communities
When Nixon was looking at television at these huge crowds in city after city, across the country
he apparently muttered to Ehrlichman, "A lot of those people have got to be Republican"
And Republicans needed him to do something for them on this issue, he felt
And it was Nixon, arguably one of the most anti-environmental presidents in American history
who felt compelled to sign the Clean Air Act
[Denis Hayes - Chairman, Earth Day April 22] I think the things we've been doing to date
are a reason to give us a little bit of hope we've seen a degree of responsiveness on the
part of the House of Representatives and on the part of the US Senate
In a matter of three years, we passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act
the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act
the National Environmental Policy Act, the Environmental Education Act, Superfund
I'd go so far as to say that with the possible exception of the New Deal it was
the most fundamental restructuring
of the ground rules of the American economic system
the nation has experienced
50 DAYS UNTIL THE MARCH
We are 50 days away from the largest climate march in history. Are you all ready?
[People's Climate March Press Conference - Times Square, NYC]
This is not just about the environment. It's about the community
[Eddie Bautista - Executive Director, NYC - EJA] It's about public health, it's about jobs, it's about justice
[LaTonya Crisp-Sauray - TWU Local 100 Recording Secretary]
It was labor that got this city up and moving, and it will be labor that continues to move this city
We are the community. Are we not the community?
Our people, our people who have been at the front line, not being able to breathe
[Elizabeth Yeampierre - Executive Director, Uprose] suffering from asthma, upper respiratory
pulmonary diseases, cancer clusters, because of environmental racism
Climate change exacerbates every kind of social injustice
[Rev. Fletcher Harper - Executive Director, Greenfaith] that faith communities have fought against
for thousands of years
And we will not stop marching and praying and acting until we have a strong climate treaty
We've got a movement, brothers and sisters, and we've got to stay together
So join us on the 21st to march and send that signal to the United Nations
[Crowd chants, "The people united will never be defeated"]
[Bill McKibben - Author, "Eaarth"] It's only by accident that we even think
of climate change as an environmental issue
You could just as easily think about it as another example of what happens in an unequal society
The people who have contributed the least to climate change, and who have benefited the least
from the use of fossil fuel, are the first people to feel the effects
People in the poorest parts of the world suffer enormously already
and will suffer enormously more as the century wears on
Climate disruption is a social justice issue
[Van Jones - Co-Founder, Rebuild the Dream] Who gets hit first and worst every time
there's one of these weather disasters?
It's low-income people, people of color, people who can't get out of harm's way
And people who can't bounce back easily because they don't have the money, or the social standing
or the political connections
Our communities are disproportionately impacted
[Jeanette "Jet" E. Toomer - Community Organizer, NYC-EJA]
We're all seeing that it's the indigenous people, the people of color
the low-income people who have historically suffered the burden
of so many other politically driven crises
There are so many countries that have been
systematically plundered over hundreds of years
And this is often described as an ecological debt, climate debt
[Naomi Klein - Author, "This Changes Everything"] The whole idea that there are disposable places
was always a racist idea
The idea of sacrifice zones: just treating people and places like garbage
The place where it's hardest for it to sink in is in the suburban United States
We're insulated against the natural world -- that's what the suburbs really are
a way to make you not notice the natural world very much
And we're insulated in those places by wealth
At least we think we are
Scientists are screaming from the rooftops about us avoiding going over
a two degree rise in the temperature of the planet
Why are they so worried about that?
[Ricken Patel - Founder & Executive Director, Avaaz] If we go over that amount of warming
there are feedback loops in our ecosystems
-- tipping points that climate change could spin out of control
And it happens like that
There are switches that can be tripped where suddenly you are in brand new territory
and you don't even begin to know what to do about it
This is not a linear kind of problem that we're dealing with
This is very much an exponential kind of problem
Right now we're on the edge of three major tipping points
The first one is the Arctic ice cap. That ice cap is like a mirror that reflects the sun's light
off the Earth and keeps it from warming us up
But as it melts, you get a smaller mirror
which means a warmer Earth, which means more melting, which means more climate change
Another example is arctic methane -- we've got a gigantic amount of methane gas
frozen into the tundra, and it is 50 times as toxic as CO₂ is. It's CO₂ on steroids.
As it warms, and that methane gets released, it then causes global warming to
get worse, which means it warms more, which means more methane released
which means worse warming, and that process spins out of control
Another example of a tipping point is ocean acidification. As you get more CO₂ in the atmosphere
a lot of it is actually going into our oceans
And a lot of stuff, like plankton, can't live in that kind of acidified water
And plankton is the basis of the food chain -- if the plankton die, we lose the whole ocean ecosystem
These kinds of feedback loops and tipping points are what keep me up at night --
that we will hit one before we're able to turn things around
Even if we went "cold turkey" today, because of the time lags in our climate system
we've already signed up for things that we can't see yet
We live in a razor-thin livable universe
Just a few kilometres below my feet, it's too hot to live
Just a few kilometres above my head, the air is too thin to breathe
It's not about a few more droughts and a few more storms
It's about a catastrophic shift in this fragile balance of our biosphere
that threatens everything we love
37 DAYS UNTIL THE MARCH
What we all need to be focused on is turnout, turnout, turnout
Youth, is there somebody that wants to do an update from youth. Armando?
[Armando Chapelliquen - Project Coordinator, NYPIRG] So just a quick list of things I wanted to go over
Obviously a lot of folks who are working on the youth stuff are working at
the Climate Justice Youth Leadership Summit
There's a lot of organizing going on right now there for the People's Climate March
So a lot of people who may not have been plugged in already
are getting informed about it, and the people who are already informed about it
are getting even more people fired up about it
[Climate Justice Youth Summit - New York City]
There's a lot of things that we pay attention to, that we focus on, that are fun -- but
they are short-lived, and they are not for the betterment of us
We have to re-prioritize what's important to us
Our environment isn't just ice caps melting in Antarctica
We're the ones who face the problems day-to-day --
if you're breathing in smog or your little brother has asthma
that's environmental injustice, and those are things that we have the power to push back on
Imagine being the person who changes the face of climate change
so that we don't have to deal with those impacts every day
[Joaquin Brito Jr. - Climate Justice Organizer, Uprose]
So on September 21st, we're going to march for Climate Justice -- so who's with us? Come on let's hear it!
OK, alright, yes -- we pull the fossil fuels out of the ground, we put them in the
incinerator, we put the carbon in the sky, it warms the Earth, lots of bad stuff is going
to happen -- heat waves, extreme weather, floods. OK, sure. But I mean, really, is that
the thing I care about most. There's all these other issues in my life that are more pressing
For someone who is engaged in a struggle for higher minimum wage
or worries about health care, it's understandable that these molecules
floating around the air seem invisible and abstract
Humans have this thing that we call a finite pool of worry. You've got your mortgage you've
got to pay you've got your kids you've got to take care of -- and they tend to be more immediate
We respond to things that feel incredibly urgent, like a gun to the head,
a stampede a wild elephants. Climate change is a completely
different kind of risk. It plays out over these very long time scales, and it's
really hard to perceive it as a very urgent threat
The other thing that happens is that there's something called a "single action bias"
We have this tendency to see a threat, and we try to fix it with one thing
it's like the silver bullet solution. When we look at climate change we become overwhelmed by it
because there's so many different ways that we're going to need to fix it
25 years we've been talking about climate change. The level of scientific reports becomes higher and higher
[George Marshall - Author, "Don't Even Think About it"] Why has that still not compelled
the majority of people to action?
Cognitive psychologists have been mapping the processing systems within our brains
and they have found that there are two parallel and deeply interlocked processing systems
The rational side, the analytic side which deals with information, facts, data
And we have another side which is a much more intuitive and emotionally driven side
It is that emotional system that moves us into action
The challenge for climate change is how do we get something that's so based in the science
to cross over to the side that makes us feel something
People are reluctant to stand up and take action if they don't see many other people around and taking action
And that is why it is absolutely critical that there are people who seem to be doing something
They are creating the breakage
Climate changes is strangely, maybe uniquely, problematic
because not only are we all bystanders, we are also perpetrators actively contributing to the thing
If we recognize a problem, we become morally compelled to take action on it
There is a fundamental tipping point at which that has to happen
25 DAYS UNTIL THE MARCH
[People's Climate Tour - Boston, MA]
Change doesn't happen because people decide to stay home and click "like" on Facebook
[Vanessa Rule - Co-Director, Mothers Out Front] Change happens because people like you and I
decide to get involved
We didn't want to leave it to world leaders -- their track record is not very good in dealing with this question
[Joe Uehlein - Founder, Labor Network for Sustainability]
I am a trade unionist and I am an environmentalist and I see no conflict whatsoever in those two things
It's in our core self-interest as a trade union movement to help build
the path to a sustainable future and get on the right side of the climate change issue
sooner rather than later
Normally it takes a long time to switch energy sources --
50 or 60 years to go from wood to coal, coal to oil and gas
We lack 50 or 60 years
The reason we want to get off of fossil fuels now is because we have to
to protect our way of life
We need vision for what the post-carbon economy looks like
that is inspiring enough and delivers enough
in terms of jobs, in terms of new opportunities
in terms of better health
It has to be exciting
There are many more jobs available to people who are going to be building wind turbines
retrofitting houses so they waste less energy
Solar panels have to be installed by a person -- that person has to go to your home
There's no way to outsource putting that solar panel onto a roof
A 100 percent renewable economy is within our grasp --
it is economically and technologically possible
It's not something that we need to keep researching because it's always off in the distance
No, it's here. It's a question of political will
If you look at the renewable revolution that's happened in Germany, it wasn't about leaving
the renewable sector to the market, it was about creating different incentives --
and there was an explosion of innovation and creativity
Germany is now the number one solar country in the world, even though they had
the same amount of solar incidence as Alaska
Can we do it? Can we take the power that has been highly centralized
and highly focused and controlled by very few hands
and it is not an accident that very few hands controlling power in the sense of electricity
leads to very few hands controlling power in the sense of political power
We are going to try a global experiment that is going to be the most difficult
thing humans have ever done which is to rip those two apart
which means we are democratizing power
in both senses of the word
The real question is, are we gonna scrape the bottom up the barrel for the last polycarbons
on Earth, to burn them too. Or can we actually show some restraint
-- which we ask our children to do ("don't eat the last 17 marshmallows")
could you just show some restraint and choose a wiser course?
A Canadian company called TransCanada wants to build the Keystone XL pipeline
The $13 billion dollar system would carry crude oil
from the so-called tar sands region in Alberta to Houston, Texas for refining
The Keystone XL pipeline has become a huge focus of controversy
Tar sands oil is particularly dirty, it's particularly carbon-intensive
An estimated 2,000 environmental activists from across the continent plan to gather in
Washington, D.C. to launch a two-week protest
It has become a symbol to both sides in this debate where the people who want further
development of fossil fuels see getting Keystone through as core to their strategy
And on the other side, the climate activists see it as a symbolic fight that they have to win
I'm here as a Nebraska citizen and landowner
I'm on the advisory board of the Center for Health and the Global Environment
I'm an Evangelical Christian
I'm a proud member of the Transport Workers Union of America
You know what's so fascinating about this whole Keystone thing is that that was supposed
to be a wedge and instead it's been turned upside down
Now it's actually a base that is lining up
constituency after constituency
Today we act. Today we send a message to them, and everybody else
We are taking back our futures!
Something extraordinary and unexpected has backfired out of the ambition of the fossil fuel companies
They've built a movement by mistake
If you are going to be risking arrest, you're going to be lining up over here
One of the tools that came into play was
peaceful civil disobedience to show the moral urgency of these problems
that this was the crisis of our time
I saw a story in one of the trade publications of the oil industry not long ago
And they said, "We're never going to get to build another pipeline in peace again"
And I hope they're right
As scientists, we study this out of this fascination, and kind of awe -- this whole system that
we call "home"
We are on this planet that is so perfectly built to sustain life
We got so lucky. And then you begin to think
what do you do with this knowledge -- this unbearable, incredibly depressing knowledge that the decision
to burn fossil fuels was a decision that had tremendous downside risks
that we didn't realize immediately
When I read a climate science article that talks about mid-century projections, what I read is what
is going to happen when my kid is 40 -- that's what I see on the page and for me it is absolutely
my responsibility then to do whatever it takes to protect my child
Alice Walker says that resistance is the secret of joy -- and I don't know if it's the secret
of joy, but I know it is definitely the secret of staving off depression
The reality we're facing is very grave, so how do you not get depressed about it
Well one way you don't get depressed is by work
Things change for lots of different reasons
There's all kinds of dynamics -- but one central element is people being in the streets
All of us must stand up together and say, "No more!"
We live in a culture that doesn't tell us our own history
that doesn't tell us the history of social movement wins
and the times in our past when masses of people have taken the wheel of history and turned it
It was only one percent of Americans that ever took part in the civil rights demonstration
but they were able to change our society enough to stand up to those powers that be
I think that this march will go down as one of the greatest, if not the greatest
demonstrations for freedom and human dignity ever held in the United States
Martin Luther King always said that the victories that had been won so far
were the ones that were cheapest to the status quo. Giving legal rights and giving voting rights
doesn't cost the system nearly as much as providing good jobs and infrastructure and good schools
We as a people will get to the promised land
Big victories have been won before, but nothing on the scale
of the economic challenge that really responding to the climate crisis represents
We have a responsibility to rise to our historical moment
We are joining around the world to say the time has come
If we're going to have a movement worthy of the name, solidarity among all these different
causes needs to be the foremost principle
It's this broad and powerful spectrum of allies that has the political weight
to move the dialogue on this
There's a tipping point coming, where the online movements are going to move offline
If we can push this to where there's a social tipping point, we really can move forward on this issue
We will not be stopped
Take action right now
This is the issue that I will vote on, this is the issue I will bid money on
This is the issue I will scream at the top of my lungs into a bullhorn over
That is what moves politics
14 DAYS UNTIL THE MARCH
The People's Climate March is our chance to show the immense power of people in solidarity
Heads of state are gathering. They need us to say, "We demand action"
This is the right thing, at the right time, in the right place
The whole world will be watching
Nothing moves public opinion, more than seeing large numbers of people gathered
A march is not an end in itself. It is a tool. In my heart of hearts I know that this
People's Climate March in September will serve to deepen this movement
I will be there in New York, September 21st
There is no replacement, even in the digital age, for human bodies, next to each other,
standing as one, hearts beating as one, voices raised as one, making a political demand
If you don't fight for what you want, you deserve what you get
September 21st, in some ways, is the beginning
There are teams around the world, organizing marches in Rio, in Delhi, in Berlin, in Paris,
in London
People around the world will get together in the largest climate change mobilization in history
Are you ready to march? Are you ready to march?
HERE IS WHAT YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW
JOIN THE MARCH PEOPLESCLIMATE.ORG
SEND A MESSAGE Text DISRUPT to 97779
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You can't undo the day after something like that happens
There is a line that divides good from evil, and it runs down the middle
of every single person
When we prevail, it won't just be because we defeated the worst instincts in other people
It will be because we overcame the worst instincts and the worst fears, even within ourselves