0:00:29.525,0:00:33.779 Like most people, I'm not an activist by nature. 0:00:33.779,0:00:37.325 There's really not that many people whose greatest desire it to go out and fight the system. 0:00:40.061,0:00:43.932 My theory of change was I'll write my book, people will read it and they'll change. 0:00:43.932,0:00:47.289 But that's not how change happens. 0:00:49.739,0:00:57.485 So I've been kind of forced to go against my sense of who I am most comfortable being. 0:00:58.732,0:01:01.006 It seems like it's the things that's required now 0:01:01.006,0:01:06.637 and I think it's probably required that an awful lot of us doing things that are a little hard for us, 0:01:06.667,0:01:10.955 make a little noise, be a little uncomfortable, 0:01:10.955,0:01:14.608 push other people to be a little uncomfortable. 0:01:14.608,0:01:17.946 This is really the fight of our time. 0:01:17.946,0:01:24.703 It's official: 2012 was the hottest year in the United States since weather scientists started keeping records. 0:01:24.703,0:01:30.292 2012 was not only the warmest year on record, but also the second most extreme, 0:01:30.292,0:01:34.598 featuring tornadoes, wild fires, a massive drought. 0:01:34.660,0:01:37.372 Rising seas due to climate change. 0:01:37.372,0:01:40.642 Heat trapping gases from burning oil, coal and gas. 0:01:40.642,0:01:46.548 10.9 billion dollars in profits, people look at this and say that's a world turned upside down. 0:01:46.548,0:01:53.096 Listening to your testimony makes me even more convinced that we need to act to prevent cataclysmic climate change. 0:01:53.096,0:01:57.975 BP cut corner after corner and now the whole gulf coast is paying the price. 0:01:57.975,0:02:00.513 How can you justify the record profits you're making? 0:02:00.513,0:02:03.329 Well our business is one of very large numbers. 0:02:06.980,0:02:12.693 Okay, let's bring out Bill, he's an environmentalism and president and co-founder of 350.org. 0:02:12.693,0:02:16.883 And my guest Bill McKibben, our nation's leading environmentalist. 0:02:16.883,0:02:19.674 We started this thing called 350.org. 0:02:19.674,0:02:23.214 We're going out and building the kind of political movement that will change things. 0:02:30.796,0:02:36.897 We just announced this road show out across the country to really try take it at the fossil fuel industry. 0:02:38.319,0:02:42.540 People are just lining up to try and get involved in this fight. 0:03:15.648,0:03:20.004 Well, thank you all, 0:03:24.219,0:03:27.703 thank you all so much for being here today. 0:03:27.703,0:03:35.418 It is a great pleasure for me to get to be here tonight 0:03:35.418,0:03:39.170 and one of the gifts for me of these last few months was getting, 0:03:39.170,0:03:42.337 tiring as it was in a sense, to travel around the country. 0:03:42.337,0:03:48.045 And one of the things that was great was just being reminded was what an incredibly beautiful place this is. 0:03:48.045,0:03:55.675 You know, we got to Denver and it was gorgeous but the air was full of smoke from fires still burning in December 0:03:55.675,0:03:57.680 after the biggest fire season ever 0:03:57.680,0:04:04.070 and we got through this gorgeous farmland, much of it still-60% of it still in a federally declared drought. 0:04:04.070,0:04:09.469 But it's also worth just saying that it's a terrible thing to take a world this beautiful 0:04:09.469,0:04:16.585 and, for the sake of outsized profits for a few people for a little while, lay it to waste. 0:04:16.585,0:04:20.900 Tonight's the start of the last campaign I may really get to fight. 0:04:20.900,0:04:25.919 Not 'cause I'm getting tired but because the planet's getting tired. 0:04:25.919,0:04:30.299 In the world that we've built where our institutions aren't working the way they should, 0:04:30.299,0:04:34.686 we have to do more than we should. 0:04:34.686,0:04:36.515 That news doesn't depress me. 0:04:36.515,0:04:40.518 In a sense it excites me, because I think we know what we need to do. 0:04:40.518,0:04:42.979 I think we've peeled away the layers of the onion. 0:04:42.979,0:04:44.945 We've got to the very heart of things. 0:04:44.945,0:04:51.447 As of tonight, we're taking on the fossil fuel industry directly. 0:04:54.321,0:04:59.524 The moment has come where we have to take a real stance, we're reaching limits. 0:04:59.950,0:05:09.421 The biggest limit that we're running into may be that we're running our of atmosphere into which to put the waste products of our society, 0:05:09.421,0:05:15.800 particularly the carbon dioxide that is the ubiquitous biproduct of burning fossil fuels. 0:05:15.800,0:05:23.375 You burn coal or oil or gas, you get CO2 and the atmosphere is now filling up with it. 0:05:23.375,0:05:27.378 We know what the solutions for dealing with this trouble are, 0:05:27.378,0:05:32.200 many of the technologies we need to get off fossil fuel and onto something else. 0:05:32.200,0:05:36.898 The thing that is preventing us from doing it is the enormous political power 0:05:36.898,0:05:45.014 wielded by those who have made and are making vast windfall profits off of fossil fuels. 0:05:46.759,0:05:52.679 Well, there have been a lot of efforts by scientists to try to estimate whether we are living sustainably 0:05:52.679,0:05:58.310 in the sense of whether we're consuming planetary resources at a rate that can be continued. 0:05:58.310,0:06:06.063 The threat that this combination that climate change, water shortages, food shortages and rising energy prices 0:06:06.063,0:06:11.867 is enormously troubling to anyone who's aware of the data and the way these issues could play out. 0:06:11.867,0:06:17.371 You can't keep increasing your economy infinitely on a finite planet. 0:06:17.371,0:06:20.512 One of the things that humanity is facing is the need 0:06:20.512,0:06:26.180 to dramatically reduce its carbon footprint over the next 40 years. 0:06:26.180,0:06:32.177 And we're talking in the wealthy countries about 80 to 90% reductions. 0:06:32.177,0:06:37.109 We're no longer at the point of trying to stop global warming. 0:06:37.109,0:06:39.832 Too late for that. 0:06:39.832,0:06:45.710 We're at the point of trying to keep it from becoming a complete and utter calamity. 0:06:45.710,0:06:47.214 We shouldn't have to be here tonight. 0:06:47.214,0:06:51.383 If the world worked in a kind of rational way, we shouldn't have to be here. 0:06:51.383,0:06:57.214 25 years ago our scientists started telling us about climate change. 0:06:58.015,0:07:05.065 I played my small role in that by writing the first book about all this in 1989 for a general audience, 0:07:05.065,0:07:08.033 a book called The End of Nature. 0:07:09.131,0:07:14.491 If the world worked as it should, our leaders would have heeded those warning, gone to work, 0:07:14.491,0:07:20.880 done the sensible things that at the time would have been enough to get us a long way to where we needed to go. 0:07:20.880,0:07:26.032 They didn't. And that's why we're in the fix we're in. 0:07:26.541,0:07:32.987 This is the biggest emergency the human family has faced since it came out of the caves. 0:07:32.987,0:07:34.571 There is nothing bigger. 0:07:34.571,0:07:38.732 All these issues matter: immigration and health care and education. 0:07:38.732,0:07:42.746 But this one is really about the physical change of the planet. 0:07:42.746,0:07:46.417 We all have been saying we need to save the planet. 0:07:46.417,0:07:52.672 But as I think about it, the planet's going to be around for some time to come. 0:07:52.672,0:07:57.215 What's at stake now is civilization itself. 0:08:02.365,0:08:05.016 Our most important climatologist, Jim Hansen, 0:08:05.016,0:08:12.355 has his team at NASA do a study to figure out how much carbon in the atmosphere was too much. 0:08:12.355,0:08:17.282 The paper they published may be the most important scientific paper of the millenium to date, 0:08:17.282,0:08:20.453 said we now know enough to know how much is too much. 0:08:20.453,0:08:24.994 Any value for carbon in the atmosphere greater than 350 parts per million 0:08:24.994,0:08:33.920 is not compatible with the planet on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted. 0:08:33.920,0:08:36.927 That's pretty strong language for scientists to use. 0:08:36.927,0:08:45.603 Stronger still if you know that outside today, the atmosphere is 395 parts per million CO2. 0:08:45.603,0:08:48.907 And rising at about 2 parts per million per year. 0:08:50.397,0:08:53.191 Everything frozen on earth is melting. 0:08:53.191,0:08:57.718 The great ice sheet of the arctic is reduced by more than half, 0:08:57.718,0:09:02.196 the oceans are about 30% more acidic than they were 30 years ago 0:09:02.196,0:09:07.619 because the chemistry of sea water changes as it absorbs carbon from the atmosphere. 0:09:07.619,0:09:10.940 And because warm air holds more water vapor than cold, 0:09:10.940,0:09:16.049 the atmosphere is about 5% wetter than it was 40 years ago. 0:09:16.049,0:09:19.588 That's an astonishingly large change. 0:09:22.512,0:09:29.524 There's more energy coming in and being absorbed by the earth than there is heat being radiated to space, 0:09:29.524,0:09:36.530 which is exactly what we expected because as we add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, it traps heat. 0:09:36.530,0:09:43.404 Now we can measure that and that's the basis by which we can prove that the human made impacts 0:09:43.404,0:09:49.443 on atmospheric composition are the primary cause of the climate change that we're observing. 0:09:51.899,0:09:53.549 So let's get to work. 0:09:53.549,0:09:56.995 We're calling this Do the Math and we're gonna do some math for a moment. 0:09:56.995,0:09:59.620 Just three numbers, okay? 0:09:59.620,0:10:02.888 I wrote about them in a piece last summer for Rolling Stone. 0:10:02.888,0:10:05.332 A piece that went oddly viral. 0:10:05.332,0:10:12.164 It was the issue with Justin Bieber on the cover, 0:10:12.164,0:10:14.022 but here's the strange thing: 0:10:14.022,0:10:17.114 The next day I got a call from the editor saying, 0:10:17.114,0:10:24.120 "Your piece has gotten ten times more likes on Facebook than Justin Bieber's." 0:10:24.120,0:10:30.272 Some of that is doubtless the result of my sort of soulful stare, you know. 0:10:30.272,0:10:34.669 But mostly it's because we managed to just kind of lay out this math 0:10:34.669,0:10:38.842 in a very straight forward way that people needed to understand 0:10:38.842,0:10:44.767 as we were going through what turned out to be the hottest year that America has ever experienced. 0:10:44.767,0:10:47.914 Before we get to those three numbers, here's where we are so far: 0:10:47.914,0:10:52.545 We've burned enough coal and gas and oil to raise the temperature of the earth one degree. 0:10:52.545,0:10:53.272 What has that done? 0:10:53.272,0:10:59.068 There was a day last September when the headline in the paper was "Half the Polar Ice Cap is missing." 0:10:59.068,0:11:02.198 Literally. I mean if Neil Armstrong were up on the moon today, 0:11:02.198,0:11:05.868 he'd look down and see half as much area of ice in the arctic. 0:11:05.868,0:11:11.470 We've taken one of the largest physical features on earth and we have broken it. 0:11:14.884,0:11:16.740 Shall we work through the numbers? 0:11:17.019,0:11:19.288 There are three, and they're easy. 0:11:19.619,0:11:21.328 The first one's 2 degrees. 0:11:21.328,0:11:26.757 That's how much the world has said it would be safe to let the planet warm. 0:11:26.757,0:11:30.713 In political terms, it's the only thing that anybody's agreed to. 0:11:30.713,0:11:34.049 Some of you may remember that climate summit in Copenhagen. 0:11:34.049,0:11:40.094 There was only one number in the final two page voluntary accord that people signed. 0:11:40.094,0:11:44.112 Only one number in it: 2 degrees. 0:11:45.267,0:11:49.631 Every signatory pledged to make sure the temperature wouldn't rise about that. 0:11:49.631,0:11:55.293 The EU, Japan, Russia, China, countries that make their money selling oil like the United Arab Emirates, 0:11:55.293,0:11:58.880 the most conservative, recalcitrant, reluctant countries on earth. 0:11:58.880,0:12:00.243 Even the United States. 0:12:01.366,0:12:07.223 If the world officially believes anything about climate changes it's that 2 degrees is too much. 0:12:09.835,0:12:14.353 Second number that scientists have calculated is 0:12:14.353,0:12:20.612 how much carbon we can pour into the atmosphere and have a reasonable chance of staying below two degrees. 0:12:20.612,0:12:24.558 They say about 565 more gigatons. 0:12:24.558,0:12:26.894 A gigaton is a billion tons. 0:12:26.894,0:12:32.203 That's not a perfect chance, that's worse odds than Russian roulette, you know. 0:12:33.983,0:12:38.837 Sounds like is should - it is a lot, 565 billions tons of CO2. 0:12:38.837,0:12:43.704 The problem is we pour 30 billion tons a year now and it goes up 3% a year. 0:12:43.704,0:12:47.755 Do the math and it's about 15 years before go past that threshold. 0:12:47.755,0:12:50.139 So that's sobering news. 0:12:51.375,0:12:54.840 But the scary number is the third number. 0:12:54.840,0:12:57.442 The third number was the important one and the new one 0:12:57.442,0:13:01.900 and it came from a team of financial analysts in the United Kingdom. 0:13:01.900,0:13:07.811 And what they did was sit down with all the annual reports and SEC filings and things 0:13:07.823,0:13:15.546 to figure out how much carbon the world's fossil fuel industry, how much they had already in their reserves 0:13:15.546,0:13:22.315 and that number turned out to be 2795 gigatons worth of carbon. 0:13:22.315,0:13:29.125 Five times as much as the most conservative governments on earth think would be safe to pour into the atmosphere. 0:13:31.249,0:13:32.100 It's not even close. 0:13:32.100,0:13:35.418 I mean, it's five times more. 0:13:35.418,0:13:42.038 Once you know that number, then you understand the essence of this problem. 0:13:48.389,0:13:54.981 What the fossil fuel industry is doing is locking us into a future that we can't survive, that humanity cannot survive. 0:13:54.981,0:13:58.373 And we know this because just at the end of 2012 0:13:58.373,0:14:02.712 we heard this from three different conservative sources simultaneously: 0:14:02.712,0:14:08.704 The World Bank, The International Energy Agency, Price Waterhouse Cooper, hardly a hippy outfit. 0:14:08.704,0:14:14.598 All told us that if we do nothing but more of the same, if we dig up those reserves, 0:14:14.598,0:14:18.988 we are headed toward 4-6 degrees warming celsius. 0:14:20.157,0:14:28.390 These numbers show, and I want to be absolutely clear here, these companies are a rogue force, they're outlaws. 0:14:28.390,0:14:34.146 They're not outlaws against the laws of the state. They get to write those for the most part. 0:14:34.146,0:14:36.899 But they're outlaw against the laws of physics. 0:14:36.899,0:14:41.313 If they carry out their business plan, the planet tanks. 0:14:43.236,0:14:46.630 We have all the engineers and entrepreneurs we need. 0:14:46.630,0:14:55.557 The thing that's hold us back above all else is the simple fact that the fossil fuel industry cheats. 0:14:55.557,0:15:00.775 Alone among industries, they're allowed to pour out their waste for free. 0:15:00.775,0:15:04.413 Nobody should be able to pollute for free. 0:15:04.413,0:15:10.663 You can't, I can't. We can't walk out of here and go litter for free. If you do, you get a fine. 0:15:10.663,0:15:13.994 If you run a small business, you can't just dump the garbage in the road, 0:15:13.994,0:15:16.868 you've got to pay to have it hauled away or you get a fine. 0:15:16.868,0:15:25.079 The only people who can pollute for free are these megapolluters when it comes to carbon: big oil, big coal. 0:15:25.079,0:15:30.091 If you get a $25 fine for littering, you're going to pay $25 more 0:15:30.091,0:15:37.731 than all of the industrial polluters have ever paid in 150 years for the carbon they've been dumping. 0:15:37.731,0:15:40.137 That's how whack this whole thing is. 0:15:40.137,0:15:42.718 It's almost how we define civilization. 0:15:42.718,0:15:46.607 You pick up after yourself unless you're the fossil fuel industry. 0:15:46.607,0:15:50.154 Then you pour that carbon into the atmosphere for free 0:15:50.154,0:15:56.659 and that is the advantage that keeps us from getting renewable energy at the pace that we need. 0:15:56.659,0:15:59.884 We should internalize that externality. 0:15:59.884,0:16:07.167 The only reason we haven't is because it would impair somewhat the record profitability of the fossil fuel industry 0:16:07.167,0:16:11.034 and so they have battled at every turn to keep it from happening. 0:16:11.034,0:16:13.632 These are rogue companies now. 0:16:13.632,0:16:17.469 Once upon a time, they performed a useful social function. 0:16:17.684,0:16:25.155 For a long time, the US's engine was fossil fuels like oil and coal to power trains, to power cars, to power industry. 0:16:25.155,0:16:28.102 In the mid 1900's we realized there were consequences. 0:16:28.102,0:16:32.171 If you look at industries like coal now, we just did a report with Harvard Medical School 0:16:32.171,0:16:35.531 that showed that if they actually paid for what they're doing to us, 0:16:35.531,0:16:42.705 what we're paying indirectly for that electricity, coal would cost anywhere from 3 to far more times their current cost. 0:16:42.705,0:16:48.633 They would be out of business and that is just, financially and morally, bankrupt. 0:16:48.633,0:16:55.807 When a utility burns coal, it is the cheapest source of fuel, but they're not paying the full price. 0:16:55.807,0:17:02.379 The externalities, the additional costs to society, to human health, to the environment, 0:17:02.379,0:17:06.645 are not factored in as a cost of doing business. 0:17:06.645,0:17:10.731 We subsidize the fossil fuel industries. 0:17:10.855,0:17:14.795 We are paying them to continue to keep polluting and this means all kinds of things: 0:17:14.795,0:17:23.077 it's tax breaks, it's loans, it's the fact that armies protect their pipelines and protect their trade routes. 0:17:23.077,0:17:31.385 You're helping them stay on top and preventing their competitors like renewable fuels from competing. 0:17:31.385,0:17:33.562 What we need is a level playing field. 0:17:33.562,0:17:39.865 We could be using that public money, tax-payer money, to make the shift to green energy. 0:17:41.177,0:17:44.581 Occasionally they will pretend to be seeing the light. 0:17:44.581,0:17:53.356 Ten years ago, BP announced that their initials now stand for Beyond Petroleum and they got a new logo 0:17:53.356,0:18:02.582 and put some solar panels on some gas stations and they invested a tiny bit of money, a pittance in solar and wind research. 0:18:02.582,0:18:06.789 Even that proved too much, three years ago they sold off those divisions 0:18:06.789,0:18:11.252 and said that from now on they were going to concentrate on their core business. 0:18:11.252,0:18:15.134 Which turned out to be basically wrecking the Gulf of Mexico. 0:18:16.255,0:18:19.841 Why are they so fixated on hydrocarbons? 0:18:19.841,0:18:23.678 Because these are the most profitable enterprises in human history. 0:18:23.678,0:18:29.645 The top five oil companies last year made 137 billion dollars. 0:18:29.645,0:18:33.872 That's 375 million dollars every day. 0:18:33.872,0:18:37.136 That's a lot of money. 0:18:37.136,0:18:42.117 They got 6.6 million dollars in federal tax breaks daily. 0:18:42.117,0:18:46.916 They spent $440,000 a day lobbying congress. 0:18:46.916,0:18:51.959 Rex Tillerson, the head of Exxon, made $100,000 a day. 0:18:52.706,0:18:56.338 Which, by the way, one of my favorite talking points 0:18:56.338,0:19:02.928 is that climate scientists make up their findings because they're in it for the grant money, okay. 0:19:07.697,0:19:11.187 The only problem that these companies have now 0:19:11.187,0:19:17.066 is that the scientists are watching in real time while they pull off this heist and it's getting harder to deny. 0:19:17.066,0:19:20.527 In fact, they're being to kind of admit what's going on. 0:19:20.527,0:19:27.410 Last summer, for the very first time, the CEO of Exxon, Mr. Tillerson gave a speech in which he said, yes, it's true. 0:19:27.410,0:19:28.953 Global warming exists. 0:19:28.953,0:19:36.749 Clearly there's gonna be an impact so I'm not disputing that increasing CO2 emissions is going to have an impact. 0:19:36.749,0:19:38.506 It'll have a warming impact. 0:19:38.506,0:19:42.303 But since the only way to stop that would be to take a hit to the company's profitability, 0:19:42.303,0:19:44.849 he immediately tried to change the subject. 0:19:44.849,0:19:48.097 It's an engineering problem and it has engineering solutions. 0:19:48.097,0:19:51.267 Really? What kind of engineering solutions were you thinking? 0:19:51.267,0:19:56.020 Changes to weather patterns that move crop production areas around, we'll adapt to that. 0:19:56.020,0:19:59.583 Look, I mean all respect, but that's crazy talk. 0:19:59.583,0:20:03.653 We can't move crop production areas around, okay. 0:20:03.653,0:20:08.284 Crop production areas are what people in Vermont refer to as farms, okay. 0:20:08.468,0:20:13.286 We already have farms every where that there is decent soil on earth. 0:20:13.286,0:20:17.003 It is true that Exxon has done all it can to melt the tundra, 0:20:17.003,0:20:22.174 but that does not mean that you can just move Iowa up there and start over again. 0:20:22.174,0:20:24.092 There is no soil. 0:20:24.757,0:20:28.975 If fossil fuel companies want to change, here's how we'd know they're serious: 0:20:28.975,0:20:33.684 One, they'd need to stop lobbying in Washington. 0:20:33.684,0:20:38.814 Two, they'd need to stop exploring for new hydrocarbons. 0:20:38.814,0:20:44.069 The first rule of holes is that when you are in one, stop digging, okay. 0:20:44.069,0:20:48.118 And the third thing they'd need to do is go to work with the rest of us 0:20:48.118,0:20:55.582 to figure out the plan where they turn themselves into energy companies, not fossil fuel companies 0:20:55.582,0:21:00.753 and figure out with the rest of us how to keep 80% of those reserves underground. 0:21:02.536,0:21:06.469 The thing that really does make this almost pathological 0:21:06.469,0:21:12.064 is the fact that when we already have almost five times as much carbon as we can possibly burn, 0:21:12.064,0:21:17.937 I mean Exxon alone: 100 million dollars a day exploring for new hydrocarbons. 0:21:17.937,0:21:23.799 By this point we're scraping the bottom of the barrel. I mean we're in tar sands, we're doing shale oil, 0:21:23.829,0:21:28.863 we're doing fracking, we're doing mountain top removal, we're doing deep sea drilling, 0:21:28.863,0:21:34.114 we're taking apart the earth to look for the last bits of gas and oil and coal. 0:21:49.633,0:21:56.848 I find that when I get depressed, the best antidote by far is action and I think that that's true for most people. 0:21:56.848,0:22:01.227 The problem with climate change is that it seems too big for any of us ourselves to take on. 0:22:01.227,0:22:02.977 And ideed it is. 0:22:02.977,0:22:09.278 It's only when we're working with other people, as many other people as possible, that we have any hope. 0:22:09.278,0:22:14.383 So that's why I spend my time trying to build movements. I think it's the only chance we've got. 0:22:14.383,0:22:22.355 Anybody can get involved. There's always stuff to be done and more of it all the time. That's what movements look like. 0:22:23.167,0:22:30.967 We started 350.org in 2008 and when I say we I mean me and seven undergraduates at Middlebury College. 0:22:30.967,0:22:35.851 We had the deep desire to try and do some global organizing 0:22:35.851,0:22:40.237 about the first really global problem this planet's ever faced. 0:22:40.237,0:22:42.481 And we spread out around the planet 0:22:42.481,0:22:48.069 and for the next year or so we found people all over this earth who wanted to work with us. 0:22:48.069,0:22:54.657 We asked them all to take one day and this was our first big day of action was in the fall of 2009. 0:22:54.657,0:22:57.370 We said, Will you all join us for one day? 0:22:57.370,0:23:01.094 Will you do something on that day to take this most important number, 350, 0:23:01.094,0:23:05.129 and drive it into the information bloodstream of the planet? 0:23:05.129,0:23:10.672 For the next 48 hours, pictures just poured in many a minute. 0:23:10.672,0:23:16.074 Before it was over, there'd been 5200 demonstrations in 181 countries. 0:23:16.074,0:23:20.853 CNN called it the most widespread day of political activity in the planet's history. 0:23:20.853,0:23:24.481 Cities across the globe have gathered today to rally for solutions to climate change. 0:23:27.496,0:23:29.944 Locations around the globe. 0:23:29.944,0:23:34.336 Hundreds of environment campaigners gathered in Edinborgh today. 0:23:38.701,0:23:42.209 So we've gone on since then to do more of these big days of action. 0:23:42.209,0:23:44.808 We work in every country but North Korea. 0:23:44.808,0:23:47.891 We have had about 20,000 rallies or so. 0:23:47.891,0:23:50.141 And we've gone on to do more direct things: 0:23:50.141,0:23:53.010 spearhead the fight against the Keystone Pipeline, 0:23:53.010,0:23:56.887 organize the largest civil disobedience action in thirty years. 0:23:56.887,0:23:59.967 Now the high stakes battle over whether the Obama administration 0:23:59.967,0:24:03.813 should approve a major oil pipeline bisecting the US. 0:24:03.813,0:24:08.324 It would transfer tar sands from Alberta, Canada down to the Gulf of Mexico. 0:24:08.324,0:24:11.776 The type of oil the pipeline would carry is far more toxic. 0:24:11.776,0:24:14.446 Among the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. 0:24:14.446,0:24:17.618 This pipeline has proven to be very controversial. 0:24:17.618,0:24:23.249 To the federal government to decide whether or not to give Keystone XL the green light. 0:24:23.496,0:24:32.178 Tar sands is destructive in and of itself but it's also symbolic of a way of developing, 0:24:32.178,0:24:35.966 a way of growing our economy that just can't be sustained. 0:24:36.647,0:24:42.059 Right now a company called TransCanada has applied to build a new pipeline 0:24:42.059,0:24:48.425 to speed more oil from Cushing to state-of-the-art refineries down in the Gulf Coast 0:24:48.425,0:24:52.444 and today I'm directing my administration to cut through the red tape, 0:24:52.444,0:24:56.758 break through the bureaucratic hurdles and make this project a priority. 0:25:01.957,0:25:07.668 August was the beginning of the people's veto of this whole proposal. 0:25:07.668,0:25:15.776 We will never give up until the very idea of Keystone XL is dead and buried. 0:25:16.329,0:25:20.178 Tar sands are the turning point in our fossil fuel addiction. 0:25:20.178,0:25:28.245 The fundamental fact is that as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy, they will continue to be used. 0:25:28.245,0:25:33.691 The solution is to begin to put a price on carbon emissions. 0:25:33.691,0:25:40.448 We the American people should not have to sacrifice our land and water to meet TransCanada's bottom line. 0:25:40.448,0:25:46.871 We stand here right now because we are at our lunch counter moment for the twenty-first century. 0:25:46.871,0:25:50.001 President Obama, do the right thing. 0:25:50.001,0:25:55.895 We are at a tipping point in America's history for this environmental movement. 0:25:55.895,0:26:01.376 If you are going to be risking arrest, you're going to be lining up on this sidewalk. 0:26:01.842,0:26:06.014 When I saw the acts of civil disobedience in front of the White House, 0:26:06.014,0:26:10.411 people saying I will not let this Keystone pipeline be built, 0:26:10.411,0:26:15.747 I won't let us be committed to an energy plan based on fossil fuels. 0:26:15.747,0:26:18.662 You know the people who got arrested in front of the White House, 0:26:18.662,0:26:22.577 those were not all people who were all self-identified as environmentalists. 0:26:22.577,0:26:28.748 Those were farmers and ranchers, those were people from indigenous communities, those were business leaders, 0:26:28.748,0:26:31.624 those were grandparents and moms and dads. 0:26:31.624,0:26:36.547 We're really starting to see an expansion of the group of people that are fighting this fight, 0:26:36.547,0:26:39.725 but we have a lot further to go on that. 0:26:40.508,0:26:43.898 I've been forced to do things I didn't imagine I'd ever do: 0:26:43.898,0:26:48.268 stand up on a stage in front of thousand of people, go to jail. 0:26:48.268,0:26:54.644 We're probably not going to be able to stop them all one pipeline, one mine at a time. 0:26:54.644,0:26:58.354 We're also going to have to play, you know, offense. 0:27:00.027,0:27:05.333 We think one thing the fossil fuel industry cares about is money so that's what we're going to go after. 0:27:05.333,0:27:09.829 You want to take away our planet and our future? We're going to try and take away your money. 0:27:09.829,0:27:12.794 We're going to try and tarnish your brand. 0:27:12.794,0:27:20.213 This industry has behaved so recklessly that they should lose their social license, their veneer of respectability. 0:27:23.735,0:27:28.599 We need these guys to be understood as those outlaws against the laws of physics. 0:27:28.599,0:27:33.935 We need to take away some of their power and there's a lot of ways we're going to do it. 0:27:33.935,0:27:37.682 One tool, the first tool, is divestment. 0:27:37.682,0:27:45.324 We're going to ask or demand that institutions like colleges or churches sell their stock in these companies. 0:27:45.324,0:27:47.329 The logic could not be simpler: 0:27:47.329,0:27:52.867 If it's wrong to wreck the climate, it's wrong to profit from that wreckage. 0:27:52.867,0:27:57.668 That argument has worked in a big way exactly once in US history. 0:27:57.668,0:28:01.505 There has been scattered violent incidence in the Athlone mixed race neighborhood. 0:28:01.505,0:28:04.364 Authorities returned fire without warning. 0:28:04.364,0:28:11.139 Organized, vocal and committed students urge the university to divest itself of all investments in South Africa. 0:28:11.139,0:28:15.228 That's what happened during the fight against South African Apartheid. 0:28:15.228,0:28:23.194 At 155 colleges and universities, people convinced their boards of trustees to sell their stock. 0:28:23.194,0:28:27.849 And when Nelson Mandela got out of prison, one of his first trips was to the US 0:28:27.849,0:28:34.599 and he didn't go first to the White House, he went to Berkley to say thank you to the University of California students 0:28:34.599,0:28:42.240 who had forced the sale of 3 billion dollars worth of Apartheid tainted stock. 0:28:44.750,0:28:45.799 Here's what we demand: 0:28:45.799,0:28:49.471 One, no new investments in fossil fuel companies. 0:28:49.471,0:28:57.673 Two, a firm pledge over the next five years that they will wind down their current positions. 0:28:57.750,0:29:03.443 It's not unreasonable. It's hard but it's not unreasonable. 0:29:03.443,0:29:05.319 I'll give you a piece of news: 0:29:05.319,0:29:11.126 The first college in the country to divest all its stock from fossil fuel companies 0:29:11.126,0:29:16.751 was a college in Maine called Unity College with a 13 million dollar endowment. 0:29:16.751,0:29:22.230 And none of that 13 million dollars at this point is in fossil fuels any place. 0:29:24.797,0:29:28.216 Divestment really in one sense was a no brainer for us. 0:29:28.216,0:29:34.225 When you look at other institutions and their struggle with whether or not to divest, 0:29:34.225,0:29:38.855 it really boils down to one simple thing: willingness. 0:29:38.855,0:29:43.609 The mayor in Seattle, he said, I spent the afternoon with my treasurer 0:29:43.609,0:29:48.801 and we're figuring out how we're going to get the city's funds out of fossil fuel companies. 0:29:51.831,0:29:55.205 Welcome everyone to our event tonight: Divesting from Fossil Fuels, 0:29:55.205,0:30:00.552 a conversation with students from Barnard, Columbia, the New School, NYU and Hunter College. 0:30:00.552,0:30:02.960 Students are asking for divestment. 0:30:02.960,0:30:08.343 The fact that we have over 250 movements on different campusus around the country 0:30:08.343,0:30:13.433 means that we have severely challenged that veneer of social respectability. 0:30:14.063,0:30:19.146 They understand, like the religious denominations and cities that are also doing this, 0:30:19.146,0:30:23.317 they understand what those numbers mean. 0:30:23.317,0:30:26.987 It's inconsistent with the reason these institutions exist 0:30:26.987,0:30:33.368 for them to continue to invest in something that is dedicated to the destruction of civilization. 0:30:33.368,0:30:39.990 We're asking the administration at NYU to divest the university endowment from the fossil fuel industry. 0:30:39.990,0:30:46.539 We can re-invest in our antiquated infrastructure and make our buildings more energy efficient. 0:30:46.539,0:30:50.393 People are always looking for this silver bullet, instead its the silver buckshot. 0:30:50.393,0:30:53.305 How this campaign fits into the greater scheme of things 0:30:53.305,0:30:58.697 is that this is just one of those ways in which we can take action. 0:30:58.697,0:31:02.096 These are the kind of solutions that the university should be leading on 0:31:02.096,0:31:06.476 and they should be saying, we're going to take the money that's piled up in our endowment 0:31:06.476,0:31:08.964 that right now is either doing nothing or doing harm 0:31:08.964,0:31:13.881 and we're going to take that money away from the problem makers and give it to the problem solvers. 0:31:13.881,0:31:17.538 Once you know what's evil, now if you're ignorant you get a pass, 0:31:17.538,0:31:24.628 but once you know what's evil, you have a moral responsibility to withdraw your energy from it. 0:31:24.628,0:31:28.924 We are participating in the destruction of our own world even if we don't want to 0:31:28.924,0:31:37.506 because the fossil fuel industry is so intertwined in so many aspects in American life. 0:31:37.506,0:31:41.844 They rely on our cooperation to continue what they're doing. But what if we said no? 0:31:41.844,0:31:47.528 The divestment work is a piece of that and what it does is it has the ambition 0:31:47.528,0:31:54.950 of transforming hundreds, thousands of institutions in the US to be allies rather than adversaries. 0:31:54.950,0:31:58.319 We, as everyday people, have so much power. 0:31:58.319,0:32:05.131 If you are a member of a church, you have the ability to work with your fellow congregants 0:32:05.131,0:32:09.037 to make sure your church is not investing in fossil fuel companies. 0:32:09.037,0:32:15.002 If you are a student on a college campus, not only do you have the opportunity, I think you have the responsibility 0:32:15.002,0:32:19.756 to work with your fellow students to make sure that your institution of higher learning 0:32:19.756,0:32:25.723 is not investing its endowment in the companies that are destroying your future and this planet. 0:32:25.723,0:32:30.600 We have to send a message, a very clear message, to big oil, big energy 0:32:30.600,0:32:38.325 that we are going to hold them liable and we are going to divest if they won't themselves being to change. 0:32:40.355,0:32:45.330 There is nothing, and I mean nothing, radical in what we are talking about here. 0:32:45.330,0:32:47.878 All we're asking for when we talk about climate change 0:32:47.878,0:32:52.715 is a planet that works the way that it did for the last 10,000 years, 0:32:52.715,0:32:55.835 a planet that works the way the one we were born onto works. 0:32:55.835,0:33:01.180 That's not a radical demand. That's, if you think about it, a conservative demand. 0:33:01.180,0:33:04.455 Radicals work at oil companies. 0:33:04.455,0:33:07.648 If you wake up in the morning to make your $100,000 a day, 0:33:07.648,0:33:11.485 you're willing to alter the chemical composition of the atmosphere, 0:33:11.485,0:33:15.210 then you're engaged in a more radical act than anyone who ever came before you. 0:33:15.210,0:33:20.945 And our job is to figure out how to check that radicalism, how to bring it to heel, 0:33:20.945,0:33:27.744 how to keep it from overwhelming everything good on this planet. 0:33:28.263,0:33:32.247 And here's the good news, since I've been giving you lots of bad news, here's the good news: 0:33:32.247,0:33:34.999 There's plenty we can do. 0:33:34.999,0:33:37.648 The long-term solution to climate change is very clear. 0:33:37.648,0:33:41.899 We need to make the leap to renewable energy and we need to do it quickly, which will be hard. 0:33:41.899,0:33:46.407 It will be the hardest thing we've done since gearing up to fight World War II or something 0:33:46.407,0:33:49.940 but it's by no means impossible. 0:33:49.940,0:33:53.483 When I feel a little overwhelmed with all the things we need to do, 0:33:53.483,0:33:56.991 I go back and re-read the economic history of World War II. 0:33:56.991,0:33:58.363 It was just a matter of months, you know, 0:33:58.363,0:34:03.453 from the US automobile industry producing cars to tanks and planes and ships. 0:34:03.453,0:34:08.156 It didn't take decades to restructure the US industrial economy. It didn't take years. 0:34:08.156,0:34:10.492 It was done in a matter of months. 0:34:10.492,0:34:11.321 And if we could do that now 0:34:11.321,0:34:16.321 then certainly we can restructure the world energy economy over the next decade. 0:34:16.321,0:34:18.585 And it's going to require some hard choices. 0:34:18.585,0:34:24.480 It's going to require a real change in how we get our energy and how we move around. 0:34:24.480,0:34:26.092 But the good news is that we have the solutions. 0:34:26.092,0:34:28.156 You know, we have the ways. 0:34:28.156,0:34:33.691 We know what we need to do to get to a world where we're not buring as many fossil fuels. 0:34:33.691,0:34:38.446 Why would we build a thousand mile pipeline taking almost a million barrels of oil 0:34:38.446,0:34:41.701 from the most carbon intensive fuel source on the planet 0:34:41.701,0:34:45.193 when wind energy is a whole lot cheaper and a whole lot cleaner? 0:34:45.193,0:34:50.656 Why would be drill in the arctic when we know that solar power can meet our energy needs across the country? 0:34:50.656,0:34:54.319 Why would be frack our countrysides and our watersheds 0:34:54.319,0:34:58.842 when we know that energy efficiency would save more energy than natural gas can provide? 0:34:58.842,0:35:02.929 I think that we're coming to that point now where extreme energy sources are so bad 0:35:02.929,0:35:07.600 that the questions and these challenges are going to become easier and easier. 0:35:07.600,0:35:11.930 Our whole economy is going to be dependent on how we respond to this crisis. 0:35:11.930,0:35:18.645 Competition between countries will be between those who will be advanced in developing the technology 0:35:18.645,0:35:25.444 and who will be selling it to others or those who stay back and don't seize the opportunity. 0:35:25.444,0:35:29.531 We should never underestimate our ingenuity and resolve. 0:35:29.531,0:35:36.080 If those people that say we cannot do anything about this do not know who we are, do not know what we can do. 0:35:36.080,0:35:40.833 I think this is the moment where we dig deep and say okay we are ready. 0:35:40.833,0:35:45.922 The solutions are in front of us and no longer in good conscience can any of us, 0:35:45.922,0:35:51.313 everyday citizens, elected officials, religious leaders, stand idly by. 0:35:51.313,0:35:54.606 All the big problems that we have, they all have very local solutions 0:35:54.606,0:35:59.610 and finding what those solutions are actually results in a whole bunch of different benefits 0:35:59.610,0:36:03.273 from an environmental standpoint, economic standpoint and social aspect. 0:36:08.564,0:36:14.325 We are in a situation where we're going to have an ecologically sustainable economy for everybody 0:36:14.325,0:36:16.886 or ultimately we won't have one for anybody. 0:36:16.886,0:36:23.292 It's just the smart thing to do to bet on the future and to being to invest in the future. 0:36:23.292,0:36:30.306 The past has a lobby and it's a well-paid lobby and it comes right out of big oil and big coal. 0:36:30.306,0:36:34.333 The future doesn't have a lobby until now. 0:36:35.471,0:36:40.114 We have to be as sophisticated as the system we're trying to change. 0:36:40.852,0:36:46.617 The legislation that Senator Boxer and I are introducing with the support of the leading environmental organizations 0:36:46.617,0:36:49.535 actually addresses the crisis. 0:36:49.535,0:36:53.739 A major focus is a price on carbon and methane emissions. 0:36:53.739,0:37:00.329 I think a lot of people wondered, maybe still wonder, whether our political system is up to this task. 0:37:02.498,0:37:05.679 In the largest sense, I don't know if we can win this fight. 0:37:05.679,0:37:08.470 There are scientists who think we've waited too long to get started. 0:37:08.470,0:37:11.305 Clearly the power on the other side is enormous. 0:37:11.305,0:37:13.425 Everyone once in awhile I get discouraged. 0:37:13.425,0:37:16.181 There was TV reporter who was sort of grilling me who said, 0:37:16.181,0:37:20.017 Well this just seems impossible. You're up against the richest industry on earth. 0:37:20.017,0:37:23.812 This just seems like one of these David and Goliath stories. What chance do you have? 0:37:23.812,0:37:25.605 And I was thinking, oh, you're right, this is terrible. 0:37:25.605,0:37:30.818 But then I thought, and since we're in church, maybe this is apropos, you know, 0:37:30.818,0:37:37.555 I thought, I know how that David and Goliath story comes out. David wins against the odds, okay. 0:37:37.555,0:37:42.254 I don't know if we're going to win, but we have a real chance. 0:37:43.063,0:37:46.210 We know that civil disobedience has helped to achieve great things. 0:37:46.210,0:37:49.295 It's helped secure for women the right to vote. 0:37:49.295,0:37:51.047 It's helped to end segregation. 0:37:51.047,0:37:54.599 And so we know that we can't win on climate change if we continue to dither, 0:37:54.599,0:37:57.145 if we continue to talk about it but not do anything. 0:37:57.145,0:38:00.132 We have a moral catastrophe on our hands. 0:38:02.016,0:38:07.523 We have to do this because our democracy has been subverted, our laws have been subverted. 0:38:07.523,0:38:10.745 I say it's criminal. I say that not lightly. 0:38:10.745,0:38:14.424 When you have no recourse in our democracy, legally or democratically, 0:38:14.424,0:38:20.709 we not only have the right but we have the duty to break the law to show our discontent. 0:38:20.709,0:38:29.668 As a nation, we can come together. This is not about Republican or Democrat, it's about humanity. 0:38:29.668,0:38:37.560 We're connected to each other and that organizing has got to be the basis for this kind of larger fight. 0:38:39.652,0:38:45.868 We're very glad to be here, some of us are especially glad to be here because we're glad to be out of jail 0:38:45.868,0:38:51.357 where we spent much of yesterday in this demonstration about the Keystone pipeline 0:38:51.357,0:38:56.947 and that's, of course, of the reasons Americans are descending on this city this week. 0:38:56.947,0:38:58.789 Thousands of people marched past the White House 0:38:58.789,0:39:03.669 and urged President Obama to take strong measures to combat climate change. 0:39:03.669,0:39:09.877 In the second high profile event organized in a week by groups including the Sierra Club and 350.org. 0:39:10.077,0:39:17.716 I'm here because I have an obligation to my children, my ancestors, our future generations. 0:39:17.716,0:39:24.286 If this pipeline goes through, it will be at the cost of human life. 0:39:24.286,0:39:29.812 When disaster strikes, it's not going to know race, color or creed. 0:39:29.812,0:39:38.437 The fossil fuel barons, their lawyers, their spindoctors are losing their grip on our countries psyche. 0:39:38.697,0:39:43.078 We're not going to create the clean energy economy when one side beats the other, 0:39:43.078,0:39:48.120 we're going to win when we all come together for solutions that work for all of us. 0:39:48.290,0:39:53.544 And the good news is that in this country, when we finally decided that we're going to take action 0:39:53.544,0:40:00.768 on a moral question at the question of who we are we tend to respond, when we respond, explosively. 0:40:03.889,0:40:08.096 That is the epic struggle of this century and we're going to meet it. 0:40:08.096,0:40:10.178 If we don't we won't have a twenty-second century. 0:40:10.178,0:40:14.690 Whenever a great generation stands up, it stands up based on idealism. 0:40:14.690,0:40:17.693 It stands up based on moral courage and that's what's happening now. 0:40:17.693,0:40:28.079 This is the last minute of the last quarter of the biggest most important game humanity have ever played. 0:40:28.079,0:40:34.709 The reality of our movement is this: if we fail, the consequences are dire. 0:40:34.709,0:40:38.436 None of you could be in a more important place than you are right now. 0:40:38.436,0:40:42.385 Part of this battle against the very deepest problems we've ever faced, 0:40:42.385,0:40:45.512 very few people on earth ever get to say, 0:40:45.512,0:40:50.642 "I'm doing the most important thing I can be doing any place on the planet at this moment in time" 0:40:50.642,0:40:56.388 but you guys get to say that because you are on the front lines of this all-important battle. 0:40:57.566,0:41:00.569 I think we can win this fight. 0:41:00.569,0:41:07.253 I think we can win it if we act as a community, if we do not do anything that would injure that community 0:41:07.253,0:41:14.454 but instead build and knit that community together in a way that allows it to take powerful action. 0:41:18.427,0:41:20.889 We know the end of the story. 0:41:20.889,0:41:26.602 Unless we rewrite the script, it's very clear how it ends with a planet that just heats out of control. 0:41:27.227,0:41:30.874 So that's our job: to rewrite the story. 0:41:31.200,0:41:40.089 All I ever wanted to see was a movement of people to stop climate change and now I've seen it. 0:41:42.247,0:41:49.842 Today at the biggest climate rally by far, by far, by far in US history, 0:41:49.842,0:41:54.267 today I know we're going to fight the battle, 0:41:54.267,0:42:01.971 the most faithful battle in human history is finally joined and we will fight it together.