1
00:00:29,525 --> 00:00:33,779
Like most people, I'm not an activist by nature.

2
00:00:33,779 --> 00:00:37,325
There's really not that many people whose greatest desire it to go out and fight the system.

3
00:00:40,061 --> 00:00:43,932
My theory of change was I'll write my book, people will read it and they'll change.

4
00:00:43,932 --> 00:00:47,289
But that's not how change happens.

5
00:00:49,739 --> 00:00:57,485
So I've been kind of forced to go against my sense of who I am most comfortable being.

6
00:00:58,732 --> 00:01:01,006
It seems like it's the things that's required now

7
00:01:01,006 --> 00:01:06,637
and I think it's probably required that an awful lot of us doing things that are a little hard for us,

8
00:01:06,667 --> 00:01:10,955
make a little noise, be a little uncomfortable,

9
00:01:10,955 --> 00:01:14,608
push other people to be a little uncomfortable.

10
00:01:14,608 --> 00:01:17,946
This is really the fight of our time.

11
00:01:17,946 --> 00:01:24,703
It's official: 2012 was the hottest year in the United States since weather scientists started keeping records.

12
00:01:24,703 --> 00:01:30,292
2012 was not only the warmest year on record, but also the second most extreme,

13
00:01:30,292 --> 00:01:34,598
featuring tornadoes, wild fires, a massive drought.

14
00:01:34,660 --> 00:01:37,372
Rising seas due to climate change.

15
00:01:37,372 --> 00:01:40,642
Heat trapping gases from burning oil, coal and gas.

16
00:01:40,642 --> 00:01:46,548
10.9 billion dollars in profits, people look at this and say that's a world turned upside down.

17
00:01:46,548 --> 00:01:53,096
Listening to your testimony makes me even more convinced that we need to act to prevent cataclysmic climate change.

18
00:01:53,096 --> 00:01:57,975
BP cut corner after corner and now the whole gulf coast is paying the price.

19
00:01:57,975 --> 00:02:00,513
How can you justify the record profits you're making?

20
00:02:00,513 --> 00:02:03,329
Well our business is one of very large numbers.

21
00:02:06,980 --> 00:02:12,693
Okay, let's bring out Bill, he's an environmentalism and president and co-founder of 350.org.

22
00:02:12,693 --> 00:02:16,883
And my guest Bill McKibben, our nation's leading environmentalist.

23
00:02:16,883 --> 00:02:19,674
We started this thing called 350.org.

24
00:02:19,674 --> 00:02:23,214
We're going out and building the kind of political movement that will change things.

25
00:02:30,796 --> 00:02:36,897
We just announced this road show out across the country to really try take it at the fossil fuel industry.

26
00:02:38,319 --> 00:02:42,540
People are just lining up to try and get involved in this fight.

27
00:03:15,648 --> 00:03:20,004
Well, thank you all,

28
00:03:24,219 --> 00:03:27,703
thank you all so much for being here today.

29
00:03:27,703 --> 00:03:35,418
It is a great pleasure for me to get to be here tonight

30
00:03:35,418 --> 00:03:39,170
and one of the gifts for me of these last few months was getting,

31
00:03:39,170 --> 00:03:42,337
tiring as it was in a sense, to travel around the country.

32
00:03:42,337 --> 00:03:48,045
And one of the things that was great was just being reminded was what an incredibly beautiful place this is.

33
00:03:48,045 --> 00:03:55,675
You know, we got to Denver and it was gorgeous but the air was full of smoke from fires still burning in December

34
00:03:55,675 --> 00:03:57,680
after the biggest fire season ever

35
00:03:57,680 --> 00:04:04,070
and we got through this gorgeous farmland, much of it still-60% of it still in a federally declared drought.

36
00:04:04,070 --> 00:04:09,469
But it's also worth just saying that it's a terrible thing to take a world this beautiful

37
00:04:09,469 --> 00:04:16,585
and, for the sake of outsized profits for a few people for a little while, lay it to waste.

38
00:04:16,585 --> 00:04:20,900
Tonight's the start of the last campaign I may really get to fight.

39
00:04:20,900 --> 00:04:25,919
Not 'cause I'm getting tired but because the planet's getting tired.

40
00:04:25,919 --> 00:04:30,299
In the world that we've built where our institutions aren't working the way they should,

41
00:04:30,299 --> 00:04:34,686
we have to do more than we should.

42
00:04:34,686 --> 00:04:36,515
That news doesn't depress me.

43
00:04:36,515 --> 00:04:40,518
In a sense it excites me, because I think we know what we need to do.

44
00:04:40,518 --> 00:04:42,979
I think we've peeled away the layers of the onion.

45
00:04:42,979 --> 00:04:44,945
We've got to the very heart of things.

46
00:04:44,945 --> 00:04:51,447
As of tonight, we're taking on the fossil fuel industry directly.

47
00:04:54,321 --> 00:04:59,524
The moment has come where we have to take a real stance, we're reaching limits.

48
00:04:59,950 --> 00:05:09,421
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,

49
00:05:09,421 --> 00:05:15,800
particularly the carbon dioxide that is the ubiquitous biproduct of burning fossil fuels.

50
00:05:15,800 --> 00:05:23,375
You burn coal or oil or gas, you get CO2 and the atmosphere is now filling up with it.

51
00:05:23,375 --> 00:05:27,378
We know what the solutions for dealing with this trouble are,

52
00:05:27,378 --> 00:05:32,200
many of the technologies we need to get off fossil fuel and onto something else.

53
00:05:32,200 --> 00:05:36,898
The thing that is preventing us from doing it is the enormous political power

54
00:05:36,898 --> 00:05:45,014
wielded by those who have made and are making vast windfall profits off of fossil fuels.

55
00:05:46,759 --> 00:05:52,679
Well, there have been a lot of efforts by scientists to try to estimate whether we are living sustainably

56
00:05:52,679 --> 00:05:58,310
in the sense of whether we're consuming planetary resources at a rate that can be continued.

57
00:05:58,310 --> 00:06:06,063
The threat that this combination that climate change, water shortages, food shortages and rising energy prices

58
00:06:06,063 --> 00:06:11,867
is enormously troubling to anyone who's aware of the data and the way these issues could play out.

59
00:06:11,867 --> 00:06:17,371
You can't keep increasing your economy infinitely on a finite planet.

60
00:06:17,371 --> 00:06:20,512
One of the things that humanity is facing is the need

61
00:06:20,512 --> 00:06:26,180
to dramatically reduce its carbon footprint over the next 40 years.

62
00:06:26,180 --> 00:06:32,177
And we're talking in the wealthy countries about 80 to 90% reductions.

63
00:06:32,177 --> 00:06:37,109
We're no longer at the point of trying to stop global warming.

64
00:06:37,109 --> 00:06:39,832
Too late for that.

65
00:06:39,832 --> 00:06:45,710
We're at the point of trying to keep it from becoming a complete and utter calamity.

66
00:06:45,710 --> 00:06:47,214
We shouldn't have to be here tonight.

67
00:06:47,214 --> 00:06:51,383
If the world worked in a kind of rational way, we shouldn't have to be here.

68
00:06:51,383 --> 00:06:57,214
25 years ago our scientists started telling us about climate change.

69
00:06:58,015 --> 00:07:05,065
I played my small role in that by writing the first book about all this in 1989 for a general audience,

70
00:07:05,065 --> 00:07:08,033
a book called The End of Nature.

71
00:07:09,131 --> 00:07:14,491
If the world worked as it should, our leaders would have heeded those warning, gone to work,

72
00:07:14,491 --> 00:07:20,880
done the sensible things that at the time would have been enough to get us a long way to where we needed to go.

73
00:07:20,880 --> 00:07:26,032
They didn't. And that's why we're in the fix we're in.

74
00:07:26,541 --> 00:07:32,987
This is the biggest emergency the human family has faced since it came out of the caves.

75
00:07:32,987 --> 00:07:34,571
There is nothing bigger.

76
00:07:34,571 --> 00:07:38,732
All these issues matter: immigration and health care and education.

77
00:07:38,732 --> 00:07:42,746
But this one is really about the physical change of the planet.

78
00:07:42,746 --> 00:07:46,417
We all have been saying we need to save the planet.

79
00:07:46,417 --> 00:07:52,672
But as I think about it, the planet's going to be around for some time to come.

80
00:07:52,672 --> 00:07:57,215
What's at stake now is civilization itself.

81
00:08:02,365 --> 00:08:05,016
Our most important climatologist, Jim Hansen,

82
00:08:05,016 --> 00:08:12,355
has his team at NASA do a study to figure out how much carbon in the atmosphere was too much.

83
00:08:12,355 --> 00:08:17,282
The paper they published may be the most important scientific paper of the millenium to date,

84
00:08:17,282 --> 00:08:20,453
said we now know enough to know how much is too much.

85
00:08:20,453 --> 00:08:24,994
Any value for carbon in the atmosphere greater than 350 parts per million

86
00:08:24,994 --> 00:08:33,920
is not compatible with the planet on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.

87
00:08:33,920 --> 00:08:36,927
That's pretty strong language for scientists to use.

88
00:08:36,927 --> 00:08:45,603
Stronger still if you know that outside today, the atmosphere is 395 parts per million CO2.

89
00:08:45,603 --> 00:08:48,907
And rising at about 2 parts per million per year.

90
00:08:50,397 --> 00:08:53,191
Everything frozen on earth is melting.

91
00:08:53,191 --> 00:08:57,718
The great ice sheet of the arctic is reduced by more than half,

92
00:08:57,718 --> 00:09:02,196
the oceans are about 30% more acidic than they were 30 years ago

93
00:09:02,196 --> 00:09:07,619
because the chemistry of sea water changes as it absorbs carbon from the atmosphere.

94
00:09:07,619 --> 00:09:10,940
And because warm air holds more water vapor than cold,

95
00:09:10,940 --> 00:09:16,049
the atmosphere is about 5% wetter than it was 40 years ago.

96
00:09:16,049 --> 00:09:19,588
That's an astonishingly large change.

97
00:09:22,512 --> 00:09:29,524
There's more energy coming in and being absorbed by the earth than there is heat being radiated to space,

98
00:09:29,524 --> 00:09:36,530
which is exactly what we expected because as we add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, it traps heat.

99
00:09:36,530 --> 00:09:43,404
Now we can measure that and that's the basis by which we can prove that the human made impacts

100
00:09:43,404 --> 00:09:49,443
on atmospheric composition are the primary cause of the climate change that we're observing.

101
00:09:51,899 --> 00:09:53,549
So let's get to work.

102
00:09:53,549 --> 00:09:56,995
We're calling this Do the Math and we're gonna do some math for a moment.

103
00:09:56,995 --> 00:09:59,620
Just three numbers, okay?

104
00:09:59,620 --> 00:10:02,888
I wrote about them in a piece last summer for Rolling Stone.

105
00:10:02,888 --> 00:10:05,332
A piece that went oddly viral.

106
00:10:05,332 --> 00:10:12,164
It was the issue with Justin Bieber on the cover,

107
00:10:12,164 --> 00:10:14,022
but here's the strange thing:

108
00:10:14,022 --> 00:10:17,114
The next day I got a call from the editor saying,

109
00:10:17,114 --> 00:10:24,120
"Your piece has gotten ten times more likes on Facebook than Justin Bieber's."

110
00:10:24,120 --> 00:10:30,272
Some of that is doubtless the result of my sort of soulful stare, you know.

111
00:10:30,272 --> 00:10:34,669
But mostly it's because we managed to just kind of lay out this math

112
00:10:34,669 --> 00:10:38,842
in a very straight forward way that people needed to understand

113
00:10:38,842 --> 00:10:44,767
as we were going through what turned out to be the hottest year that America has ever experienced.

114
00:10:44,767 --> 00:10:47,914
Before we get to those three numbers, here's where we are so far:

115
00:10:47,914 --> 00:10:52,545
We've burned enough coal and gas and oil to raise the temperature of the earth one degree.

116
00:10:52,545 --> 00:10:53,272
What has that done?

117
00:10:53,272 --> 00:10:59,068
There was a day last September when the headline in the paper was "Half the Polar Ice Cap is missing."

118
00:10:59,068 --> 00:11:02,198
Literally. I mean if Neil Armstrong were up on the moon today,

119
00:11:02,198 --> 00:11:05,868
he'd look down and see half as much area of ice in the arctic.

120
00:11:05,868 --> 00:11:11,470
We've taken one of the largest physical features on earth and we have broken it.

121
00:11:14,884 --> 00:11:16,740
Shall we work through the numbers?

122
00:11:17,019 --> 00:11:19,288
There are three, and they're easy.

123
00:11:19,619 --> 00:11:21,328
The first one's 2 degrees.

124
00:11:21,328 --> 00:11:26,757
That's how much the world has said it would be safe to let the planet warm.

125
00:11:26,757 --> 00:11:30,713
In political terms, it's the only thing that anybody's agreed to.

126
00:11:30,713 --> 00:11:34,049
Some of you may remember that climate summit in Copenhagen.

127
00:11:34,049 --> 00:11:40,094
There was only one number in the final two page voluntary accord that people signed.

128
00:11:40,094 --> 00:11:44,112
Only one number in it: 2 degrees.

129
00:11:45,267 --> 00:11:49,631
Every signatory pledged to make sure the temperature wouldn't rise about that.

130
00:11:49,631 --> 00:11:55,293
The EU, Japan, Russia, China, countries that make their money selling oil like the United Arab Emirates,

131
00:11:55,293 --> 00:11:58,880
the most conservative, recalcitrant, reluctant countries on earth.

132
00:11:58,880 --> 00:12:00,243
Even the United States.

133
00:12:01,366 --> 00:12:07,223
If the world officially believes anything about climate changes it's that 2 degrees is too much.

134
00:12:09,835 --> 00:12:14,353
Second number that scientists have calculated is

135
00:12:14,353 --> 00:12:20,612
how much carbon we can pour into the atmosphere and have a reasonable chance of staying below two degrees.

136
00:12:20,612 --> 00:12:24,558
They say about 565 more gigatons.

137
00:12:24,558 --> 00:12:26,894
A gigaton is a billion tons.

138
00:12:26,894 --> 00:12:32,203
That's not a perfect chance, that's worse odds than Russian roulette, you know.

139
00:12:33,983 --> 00:12:38,837
Sounds like is should - it is a lot, 565 billions tons of CO2.

140
00:12:38,837 --> 00:12:43,704
The problem is we pour 30 billion tons a year now and it goes up 3% a year.

141
00:12:43,704 --> 00:12:47,755
Do the math and it's about 15 years before go past that threshold.

142
00:12:47,755 --> 00:12:50,139
So that's sobering news.

143
00:12:51,375 --> 00:12:54,840
But the scary number is the third number.

144
00:12:54,840 --> 00:12:57,442
The third number was the important one and the new one

145
00:12:57,442 --> 00:13:01,900
and it came from a team of financial analysts in the United Kingdom.

146
00:13:01,900 --> 00:13:07,811
And what they did was sit down with all the annual reports and SEC filings and things

147
00:13:07,823 --> 00:13:15,546
to figure out how much carbon the world's fossil fuel industry, how much they had already in their reserves

148
00:13:15,546 --> 00:13:22,315
and that number turned out to be 2795 gigatons worth of carbon.

149
00:13:22,315 --> 00:13:29,125
Five times as much as the most conservative governments on earth think would be safe to pour into the atmosphere.

150
00:13:31,249 --> 00:13:32,100
It's not even close.

151
00:13:32,100 --> 00:13:35,418
I mean, it's five times more.

152
00:13:35,418 --> 00:13:42,038
Once you know that number, then you understand the essence of this problem.

153
00:13:48,389 --> 00:13:54,981
What the fossil fuel industry is doing is locking us into a future that we can't survive, that humanity cannot survive.

154
00:13:54,981 --> 00:13:58,373
And we know this because just at the end of 2012

155
00:13:58,373 --> 00:14:02,712
we heard this from three different conservative sources simultaneously:

156
00:14:02,712 --> 00:14:08,704
The World Bank, The International Energy Agency, Price Waterhouse Cooper, hardly a hippy outfit.

157
00:14:08,704 --> 00:14:14,598
All told us that if we do nothing but more of the same, if we dig up those reserves,

158
00:14:14,598 --> 00:14:18,988
we are headed toward 4-6 degrees warming celsius.

159
00:14:20,157 --> 00:14:28,390
These numbers show, and I want to be absolutely clear here, these companies are a rogue force, they're outlaws.

160
00:14:28,390 --> 00:14:34,146
They're not outlaws against the laws of the state. They get to write those for the most part.

161
00:14:34,146 --> 00:14:36,899
But they're outlaw against the laws of physics.

162
00:14:36,899 --> 00:14:41,313
If they carry out their business plan, the planet tanks.

163
00:14:43,236 --> 00:14:46,630
We have all the engineers and entrepreneurs we need.

164
00:14:46,630 --> 00:14:55,557
The thing that's hold us back above all else is the simple fact that the fossil fuel industry cheats.

165
00:14:55,557 --> 00:15:00,775
Alone among industries, they're allowed to pour out their waste for free.

166
00:15:00,775 --> 00:15:04,413
Nobody should be able to pollute for free.

167
00:15:04,413 --> 00:15:10,663
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.

168
00:15:10,663 --> 00:15:13,994
If you run a small business, you can't just dump the garbage in the road,

169
00:15:13,994 --> 00:15:16,868
you've got to pay to have it hauled away or you get a fine.

170
00:15:16,868 --> 00:15:25,079
The only people who can pollute for free are these megapolluters when it comes to carbon: big oil, big coal.

171
00:15:25,079 --> 00:15:30,091
If you get a $25 fine for littering, you're going to pay $25 more

172
00:15:30,091 --> 00:15:37,731
than all of the industrial polluters have ever paid in 150 years for the carbon they've been dumping.

173
00:15:37,731 --> 00:15:40,137
That's how whack this whole thing is.

174
00:15:40,137 --> 00:15:42,718
It's almost how we define civilization.

175
00:15:42,718 --> 00:15:46,607
You pick up after yourself unless you're the fossil fuel industry.

176
00:15:46,607 --> 00:15:50,154
Then you pour that carbon into the atmosphere for free

177
00:15:50,154 --> 00:15:56,659
and that is the advantage that keeps us from getting renewable energy at the pace that we need.

178
00:15:56,659 --> 00:15:59,884
We should internalize that externality.

179
00:15:59,884 --> 00:16:07,167
The only reason we haven't is because it would impair somewhat the record profitability of the fossil fuel industry

180
00:16:07,167 --> 00:16:11,034
and so they have battled at every turn to keep it from happening.

181
00:16:11,034 --> 00:16:13,632
These are rogue companies now.

182
00:16:13,632 --> 00:16:17,469
Once upon a time, they performed a useful social function.

183
00:16:17,684 --> 00:16:25,155
For a long time, the US's engine was fossil fuels like oil and coal to power trains, to power cars, to power industry.

184
00:16:25,155 --> 00:16:28,102
In the mid 1900's we realized there were consequences.

185
00:16:28,102 --> 00:16:32,171
If you look at industries like coal now, we just did a report with Harvard Medical School

186
00:16:32,171 --> 00:16:35,531
that showed that if they actually paid for what they're doing to us,

187
00:16:35,531 --> 00:16:42,705
what we're paying indirectly for that electricity, coal would cost anywhere from 3 to far more times their current cost.

188
00:16:42,705 --> 00:16:48,633
They would be out of business and that is just, financially and morally, bankrupt.

189
00:16:48,633 --> 00:16:55,807
When a utility burns coal, it is the cheapest source of fuel, but they're not paying the full price.

190
00:16:55,807 --> 00:17:02,379
The externalities, the additional costs to society, to human health, to the environment,

191
00:17:02,379 --> 00:17:06,645
are not factored in as a cost of doing business.

192
00:17:06,645 --> 00:17:10,731
We subsidize the fossil fuel industries.

193
00:17:10,855 --> 00:17:14,795
We are paying them to continue to keep polluting and this means all kinds of things:

194
00:17:14,795 --> 00:17:23,077
it's tax breaks, it's loans, it's the fact that armies protect their pipelines and protect their trade routes.

195
00:17:23,077 --> 00:17:31,385
You're helping them stay on top and preventing their competitors like renewable fuels from competing.

196
00:17:31,385 --> 00:17:33,562
What we need is a level playing field.

197
00:17:33,562 --> 00:17:39,865
We could be using that public money, tax-payer money, to make the shift to green energy.

198
00:17:41,177 --> 00:17:44,581
Occasionally they will pretend to be seeing the light.

199
00:17:44,581 --> 00:17:53,356
Ten years ago, BP announced that their initials now stand for Beyond Petroleum and they got a new logo

200
00:17:53,356 --> 00:18:02,582
and put some solar panels on some gas stations and they invested a tiny bit of money, a pittance in solar and wind research.

201
00:18:02,582 --> 00:18:06,789
Even that proved too much, three years ago they sold off those divisions

202
00:18:06,789 --> 00:18:11,252
and said that from now on they were going to concentrate on their core business.

203
00:18:11,252 --> 00:18:15,134
Which turned out to be basically wrecking the Gulf of Mexico.

204
00:18:16,255 --> 00:18:19,841
Why are they so fixated on hydrocarbons?

205
00:18:19,841 --> 00:18:23,678
Because these are the most profitable enterprises in human history.

206
00:18:23,678 --> 00:18:29,645
The top five oil companies last year made 137 billion dollars.

207
00:18:29,645 --> 00:18:33,872
That's 375 million dollars every day.

208
00:18:33,872 --> 00:18:37,136
That's a lot of money.

209
00:18:37,136 --> 00:18:42,117
They got 6.6 million dollars in federal tax breaks daily.

210
00:18:42,117 --> 00:18:46,916
They spent $440,000 a day lobbying congress.

211
00:18:46,916 --> 00:18:51,959
Rex Tillerson, the head of Exxon, made $100,000 a day.

212
00:18:52,706 --> 00:18:56,338
Which, by the way, one of my favorite talking points

213
00:18:56,338 --> 00:19:02,928
is that climate scientists make up their findings because they're in it for the grant money, okay.

214
00:19:07,697 --> 00:19:11,187
The only problem that these companies have now

215
00:19:11,187 --> 00:19:17,066
is that the scientists are watching in real time while they pull off this heist and it's getting harder to deny.

216
00:19:17,066 --> 00:19:20,527
In fact, they're being to kind of admit what's going on.

217
00:19:20,527 --> 00:19:27,410
Last summer, for the very first time, the CEO of Exxon, Mr. Tillerson gave a speech in which he said, yes, it's true.

218
00:19:27,410 --> 00:19:28,953
Global warming exists.

219
00:19:28,953 --> 00:19:36,749
Clearly there's gonna be an impact so I'm not disputing that increasing CO2 emissions is going to have an impact.

220
00:19:36,749 --> 00:19:38,506
It'll have a warming impact.

221
00:19:38,506 --> 00:19:42,303
But since the only way to stop that would be to take a hit to the company's profitability,

222
00:19:42,303 --> 00:19:44,849
he immediately tried to change the subject.

223
00:19:44,849 --> 00:19:48,097
It's an engineering problem and it has engineering solutions.

224
00:19:48,097 --> 00:19:51,267
Really? What kind of engineering solutions were you thinking?

225
00:19:51,267 --> 00:19:56,020
Changes to weather patterns that move crop production areas around, we'll adapt to that.

226
00:19:56,020 --> 00:19:59,583
Look, I mean all respect, but that's crazy talk.

227
00:19:59,583 --> 00:20:03,653
We can't move crop production areas around, okay.

228
00:20:03,653 --> 00:20:08,284
Crop production areas are what people in Vermont refer to as farms, okay.

229
00:20:08,468 --> 00:20:13,286
We already have farms every where that there is decent soil on earth.

230
00:20:13,286 --> 00:20:17,003
It is true that Exxon has done all it can to melt the tundra,

231
00:20:17,003 --> 00:20:22,174
but that does not mean that you can just move Iowa up there and start over again.

232
00:20:22,174 --> 00:20:24,092
There is no soil.

233
00:20:24,757 --> 00:20:28,975
If fossil fuel companies want to change, here's how we'd know they're serious:

234
00:20:28,975 --> 00:20:33,684
One, they'd need to stop lobbying in Washington.

235
00:20:33,684 --> 00:20:38,814
Two, they'd need to stop exploring for new hydrocarbons.

236
00:20:38,814 --> 00:20:44,069
The first rule of holes is that when you are in one, stop digging, okay.

237
00:20:44,069 --> 00:20:48,118
And the third thing they'd need to do is go to work with the rest of us

238
00:20:48,118 --> 00:20:55,582
to figure out the plan where they turn themselves into energy companies, not fossil fuel companies

239
00:20:55,582 --> 00:21:00,753
and figure out with the rest of us how to keep 80% of those reserves underground.

240
00:21:02,536 --> 00:21:06,469
The thing that really does make this almost pathological

241
00:21:06,469 --> 00:21:12,064
is the fact that when we already have almost five times as much carbon as we can possibly burn,

242
00:21:12,064 --> 00:21:17,937
I mean Exxon alone: 100 million dollars a day exploring for new hydrocarbons.

243
00:21:17,937 --> 00:21:23,799
By this point we're scraping the bottom of the barrel. I mean we're in tar sands, we're doing shale oil,

244
00:21:23,829 --> 00:21:28,863
we're doing fracking, we're doing mountain top removal, we're doing deep sea drilling,

245
00:21:28,863 --> 00:21:34,114
we're taking apart the earth to look for the last bits of gas and oil and coal.

246
00:21:49,633 --> 00:21:56,848
I find that when I get depressed, the best antidote by far is action and I think that that's true for most people.

247
00:21:56,848 --> 00:22:01,227
The problem with climate change is that it seems too big for any of us ourselves to take on.

248
00:22:01,227 --> 00:22:02,977
And ideed it is.

249
00:22:02,977 --> 00:22:09,278
It's only when we're working with other people, as many other people as possible, that we have any hope.

250
00:22:09,278 --> 00:22:14,383
So that's why I spend my time trying to build movements. I think it's the only chance we've got.

251
00:22:14,383 --> 00:22:22,355
Anybody can get involved. There's always stuff to be done and more of it all the time. That's what movements look like.

252
00:22:23,167 --> 00:22:30,967
We started 350.org in 2008 and when I say we I mean me and seven undergraduates at Middlebury College.

253
00:22:30,967 --> 00:22:35,851
We had the deep desire to try and do some global organizing

254
00:22:35,851 --> 00:22:40,237
about the first really global problem this planet's ever faced.

255
00:22:40,237 --> 00:22:42,481
And we spread out around the planet

256
00:22:42,481 --> 00:22:48,069
and for the next year or so we found people all over this earth who wanted to work with us.

257
00:22:48,069 --> 00:22:54,657
We asked them all to take one day and this was our first big day of action was in the fall of 2009.

258
00:22:54,657 --> 00:22:57,370
We said, Will you all join us for one day?

259
00:22:57,370 --> 00:23:01,094
Will you do something on that day to take this most important number, 350,

260
00:23:01,094 --> 00:23:05,129
and drive it into the information bloodstream of the planet?

261
00:23:05,129 --> 00:23:10,672
For the next 48 hours, pictures just poured in many a minute.

262
00:23:10,672 --> 00:23:16,074
Before it was over, there'd been 5200 demonstrations in 181 countries.

263
00:23:16,074 --> 00:23:20,853
CNN called it the most widespread day of political activity in the planet's history.

264
00:23:20,853 --> 00:23:24,481
Cities across the globe have gathered today to rally for solutions to climate change.

265
00:23:27,496 --> 00:23:29,944
Locations around the globe.

266
00:23:29,944 --> 00:23:34,336
Hundreds of environment campaigners gathered in Edinborgh today.

267
00:23:38,701 --> 00:23:42,209
So we've gone on since then to do more of these big days of action.

268
00:23:42,209 --> 00:23:44,808
We work in every country but North Korea.

269
00:23:44,808 --> 00:23:47,891
We have had about 20,000 rallies or so.

270
00:23:47,891 --> 00:23:50,141
And we've gone on to do more direct things:

271
00:23:50,141 --> 00:23:53,010
spearhead the fight against the Keystone Pipeline,

272
00:23:53,010 --> 00:23:56,887
organize the largest civil disobedience action in thirty years.

273
00:23:56,887 --> 00:23:59,967
Now the high stakes battle over whether the Obama administration

274
00:23:59,967 --> 00:24:03,813
should approve a major oil pipeline bisecting the US.

275
00:24:03,813 --> 00:24:08,324
It would transfer tar sands from Alberta, Canada down to the Gulf of Mexico.

276
00:24:08,324 --> 00:24:11,776
The type of oil the pipeline would carry is far more toxic.

277
00:24:11,776 --> 00:24:14,446
Among the dirtiest of all fossil fuels.

278
00:24:14,446 --> 00:24:17,618
This pipeline has proven to be very controversial.

279
00:24:17,618 --> 00:24:23,249
To the federal government to decide whether or not to give Keystone XL the green light.

280
00:24:23,496 --> 00:24:32,178
Tar sands is destructive in and of itself but it's also symbolic of a way of developing,

281
00:24:32,178 --> 00:24:35,966
a way of growing our economy that just can't be sustained.

282
00:24:36,647 --> 00:24:42,059
Right now a company called TransCanada has applied to build a new pipeline

283
00:24:42,059 --> 00:24:48,425
to speed more oil from Cushing to state-of-the-art refineries down in the Gulf Coast

284
00:24:48,425 --> 00:24:52,444
and today I'm directing my administration to cut through the red tape,

285
00:24:52,444 --> 00:24:56,758
break through the bureaucratic hurdles and make this project a priority.

286
00:25:01,957 --> 00:25:07,668
August was the beginning of the people's veto of this whole proposal.

287
00:25:07,668 --> 00:25:15,776
We will never give up until the very idea of Keystone XL is dead and buried.

288
00:25:16,329 --> 00:25:20,178
Tar sands are the turning point in our fossil fuel addiction.

289
00:25:20,178 --> 00:25:28,245
The fundamental fact is that as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy, they will continue to be used.

290
00:25:28,245 --> 00:25:33,691
The solution is to begin to put a price on carbon emissions.

291
00:25:33,691 --> 00:25:40,448
We the American people should not have to sacrifice our land and water to meet TransCanada's bottom line.

292
00:25:40,448 --> 00:25:46,871
We stand here right now because we are at our lunch counter moment for the twenty-first century.

293
00:25:46,871 --> 00:25:50,001
President Obama, do the right thing.

294
00:25:50,001 --> 00:25:55,895
We are at a tipping point in America's history for this environmental movement.

295
00:25:55,895 --> 00:26:01,376
If you are going to be risking arrest, you're going to be lining up on this sidewalk.

296
00:26:01,842 --> 00:26:06,014
When I saw the acts of civil disobedience in front of the White House,

297
00:26:06,014 --> 00:26:10,411
people saying I will not let this Keystone pipeline be built,

298
00:26:10,411 --> 00:26:15,747
I won't let us be committed to an energy plan based on fossil fuels.

299
00:26:15,747 --> 00:26:18,662
You know the people who got arrested in front of the White House,

300
00:26:18,662 --> 00:26:22,577
those were not all people who were all self-identified as environmentalists.

301
00:26:22,577 --> 00:26:28,748
Those were farmers and ranchers, those were people from indigenous communities, those were business leaders,

302
00:26:28,748 --> 00:26:31,624
those were grandparents and moms and dads.

303
00:26:31,624 --> 00:26:36,547
We're really starting to see an expansion of the group of people that are fighting this fight,

304
00:26:36,547 --> 00:26:39,725
but we have a lot further to go on that.

305
00:26:40,508 --> 00:26:43,898
I've been forced to do things I didn't imagine I'd ever do:

306
00:26:43,898 --> 00:26:48,268
stand up on a stage in front of thousand of people, go to jail.

307
00:26:48,268 --> 00:26:54,644
We're probably not going to be able to stop them all one pipeline, one mine at a time.

308
00:26:54,644 --> 00:26:58,354
We're also going to have to play, you know, offense.

309
00:27:00,027 --> 00:27:05,333
We think one thing the fossil fuel industry cares about is money so that's what we're going to go after.

310
00:27:05,333 --> 00:27:09,829
You want to take away our planet and our future? We're going to try and take away your money.

311
00:27:09,829 --> 00:27:12,794
We're going to try and tarnish your brand.

312
00:27:12,794 --> 00:27:20,213
This industry has behaved so recklessly that they should lose their social license, their veneer of respectability.

313
00:27:23,735 --> 00:27:28,599
We need these guys to be understood as those outlaws against the laws of physics.

314
00:27:28,599 --> 00:27:33,935
We need to take away some of their power and there's a lot of ways we're going to do it.

315
00:27:33,935 --> 00:27:37,682
One tool, the first tool, is divestment.

316
00:27:37,682 --> 00:27:45,324
We're going to ask or demand that institutions like colleges or churches sell their stock in these companies.

317
00:27:45,324 --> 00:27:47,329
The logic could not be simpler:

318
00:27:47,329 --> 00:27:52,867
If it's wrong to wreck the climate, it's wrong to profit from that wreckage.

319
00:27:52,867 --> 00:27:57,668
That argument has worked in a big way exactly once in US history.

320
00:27:57,668 --> 00:28:01,505
There has been scattered violent incidence in the Athlone mixed race neighborhood.

321
00:28:01,505 --> 00:28:04,364
Authorities returned fire without warning.

322
00:28:04,364 --> 00:28:11,139
Organized, vocal and committed students urge the university to divest itself of all investments in South Africa.

323
00:28:11,139 --> 00:28:15,228
That's what happened during the fight against South African Apartheid.

324
00:28:15,228 --> 00:28:23,194
At 155 colleges and universities, people convinced their boards of trustees to sell their stock.

325
00:28:23,194 --> 00:28:27,849
And when Nelson Mandela got out of prison, one of his first trips was to the US

326
00:28:27,849 --> 00:28:34,599
and he didn't go first to the White House, he went to Berkley to say thank you to the University of California students

327
00:28:34,599 --> 00:28:42,240
who had forced the sale of 3 billion dollars worth of Apartheid tainted stock.

328
00:28:44,750 --> 00:28:45,799
Here's what we demand:

329
00:28:45,799 --> 00:28:49,471
One, no new investments in fossil fuel companies.

330
00:28:49,471 --> 00:28:57,673
Two, a firm pledge over the next five years that they will wind down their current positions.

331
00:28:57,750 --> 00:29:03,443
It's not unreasonable. It's hard but it's not unreasonable.

332
00:29:03,443 --> 00:29:05,319
I'll give you a piece of news:

333
00:29:05,319 --> 00:29:11,126
The first college in the country to divest all its stock from fossil fuel companies

334
00:29:11,126 --> 00:29:16,751
was a college in Maine called Unity College with a 13 million dollar endowment.

335
00:29:16,751 --> 00:29:22,230
And none of that 13 million dollars at this point is in fossil fuels any place.

336
00:29:24,797 --> 00:29:28,216
Divestment really in one sense was a no brainer for us.

337
00:29:28,216 --> 00:29:34,225
When you look at other institutions and their struggle with whether or not to divest,

338
00:29:34,225 --> 00:29:38,855
it really boils down to one simple thing: willingness.

339
00:29:38,855 --> 00:29:43,609
The mayor in Seattle, he said, I spent the afternoon with my treasurer

340
00:29:43,609 --> 00:29:48,801
and we're figuring out how we're going to get the city's funds out of fossil fuel companies.

341
00:29:51,831 --> 00:29:55,205
Welcome everyone to our event tonight: Divesting from Fossil Fuels,

342
00:29:55,205 --> 00:30:00,552
a conversation with students from Barnard, Columbia, the New School, NYU and Hunter College.

343
00:30:00,552 --> 00:30:02,960
Students are asking for divestment.

344
00:30:02,960 --> 00:30:08,343
The fact that we have over 250 movements on different campusus around the country

345
00:30:08,343 --> 00:30:13,433
means that we have severely challenged that veneer of social respectability.

346
00:30:14,063 --> 00:30:19,146
They understand, like the religious denominations and cities that are also doing this,

347
00:30:19,146 --> 00:30:23,317
they understand what those numbers mean.

348
00:30:23,317 --> 00:30:26,987
It's inconsistent with the reason these institutions exist

349
00:30:26,987 --> 00:30:33,368
for them to continue to invest in something that is dedicated to the destruction of civilization.

350
00:30:33,368 --> 00:30:39,990
We're asking the administration at NYU to divest the university endowment from the fossil fuel industry.

351
00:30:39,990 --> 00:30:46,539
We can re-invest in our antiquated infrastructure and make our buildings more energy efficient.

352
00:30:46,539 --> 00:30:50,393
People are always looking for this silver bullet, instead its the silver buckshot.

353
00:30:50,393 --> 00:30:53,305
How this campaign fits into the greater scheme of things

354
00:30:53,305 --> 00:30:58,697
is that this is just one of those ways in which we can take action.

355
00:30:58,697 --> 00:31:02,096
These are the kind of solutions that the university should be leading on

356
00:31:02,096 --> 00:31:06,476
and they should be saying, we're going to take the money that's piled up in our endowment

357
00:31:06,476 --> 00:31:08,964
that right now is either doing nothing or doing harm

358
00:31:08,964 --> 00:31:13,881
and we're going to take that money away from the problem makers and give it to the problem solvers.

359
00:31:13,881 --> 00:31:17,538
Once you know what's evil, now if you're ignorant you get a pass,

360
00:31:17,538 --> 00:31:24,628
but once you know what's evil, you have a moral responsibility to withdraw your energy from it.

361
00:31:24,628 --> 00:31:28,924
We are participating in the destruction of our own world even if we don't want to

362
00:31:28,924 --> 00:31:37,506
because the fossil fuel industry is so intertwined in so many aspects in American life.

363
00:31:37,506 --> 00:31:41,844
They rely on our cooperation to continue what they're doing. But what if we said no?

364
00:31:41,844 --> 00:31:47,528
The divestment work is a piece of that and what it does is it has the ambition

365
00:31:47,528 --> 00:31:54,950
of transforming hundreds, thousands of institutions in the US to be allies rather than adversaries.

366
00:31:54,950 --> 00:31:58,319
We, as everyday people, have so much power.

367
00:31:58,319 --> 00:32:05,131
If you are a member of a church, you have the ability to work with your fellow congregants

368
00:32:05,131 --> 00:32:09,037
to make sure your church is not investing in fossil fuel companies.

369
00:32:09,037 --> 00:32:15,002
If you are a student on a college campus, not only do you have the opportunity, I think you have the responsibility

370
00:32:15,002 --> 00:32:19,756
to work with your fellow students to make sure that your institution of higher learning

371
00:32:19,756 --> 00:32:25,723
is not investing its endowment in the companies that are destroying your future and this planet.

372
00:32:25,723 --> 00:32:30,600
We have to send a message, a very clear message, to big oil, big energy

373
00:32:30,600 --> 00:32:38,325
that we are going to hold them liable and we are going to divest if they won't themselves being to change.

374
00:32:40,355 --> 00:32:45,330
There is nothing, and I mean nothing, radical in what we are talking about here.

375
00:32:45,330 --> 00:32:47,878
All we're asking for when we talk about climate change

376
00:32:47,878 --> 00:32:52,715
is a planet that works the way that it did for the last 10,000 years,

377
00:32:52,715 --> 00:32:55,835
a planet that works the way the one we were born onto works.

378
00:32:55,835 --> 00:33:01,180
That's not a radical demand. That's, if you think about it, a conservative demand.

379
00:33:01,180 --> 00:33:04,455
Radicals work at oil companies.

380
00:33:04,455 --> 00:33:07,648
If you wake up in the morning to make your $100,000 a day,

381
00:33:07,648 --> 00:33:11,485
you're willing to alter the chemical composition of the atmosphere,

382
00:33:11,485 --> 00:33:15,210
then you're engaged in a more radical act than anyone who ever came before you.

383
00:33:15,210 --> 00:33:20,945
And our job is to figure out how to check that radicalism, how to bring it to heel,

384
00:33:20,945 --> 00:33:27,744
how to keep it from overwhelming everything good on this planet.

385
00:33:28,263 --> 00:33:32,247
And here's the good news, since I've been giving you lots of bad news, here's the good news:

386
00:33:32,247 --> 00:33:34,999
There's plenty we can do.

387
00:33:34,999 --> 00:33:37,648
The long-term solution to climate change is very clear.

388
00:33:37,648 --> 00:33:41,899
We need to make the leap to renewable energy and we need to do it quickly, which will be hard.

389
00:33:41,899 --> 00:33:46,407
It will be the hardest thing we've done since gearing up to fight World War II or something

390
00:33:46,407 --> 00:33:49,940
but it's by no means impossible.

391
00:33:49,940 --> 00:33:53,483
When I feel a little overwhelmed with all the things we need to do,

392
00:33:53,483 --> 00:33:56,991
I go back and re-read the economic history of World War II.

393
00:33:56,991 --> 00:33:58,363
It was just a matter of months, you know,

394
00:33:58,363 --> 00:34:03,453
from the US automobile industry producing cars to tanks and planes and ships.

395
00:34:03,453 --> 00:34:08,156
It didn't take decades to restructure the US industrial economy. It didn't take years.

396
00:34:08,156 --> 00:34:10,492
It was done in a matter of months.

397
00:34:10,492 --> 00:34:11,321
And if we could do that now

398
00:34:11,321 --> 00:34:16,321
then certainly we can restructure the world energy economy over the next decade.

399
00:34:16,321 --> 00:34:18,585
And it's going to require some hard choices.

400
00:34:18,585 --> 00:34:24,480
It's going to require a real change in how we get our energy and how we move around.

401
00:34:24,480 --> 00:34:26,092
But the good news is that we have the solutions.

402
00:34:26,092 --> 00:34:28,156
You know, we have the ways.

403
00:34:28,156 --> 00:34:33,691
We know what we need to do to get to a world where we're not buring as many fossil fuels.

404
00:34:33,691 --> 00:34:38,446
Why would we build a thousand mile pipeline taking almost a million barrels of oil

405
00:34:38,446 --> 00:34:41,701
from the most carbon intensive fuel source on the planet

406
00:34:41,701 --> 00:34:45,193
when wind energy is a whole lot cheaper and a whole lot cleaner?

407
00:34:45,193 --> 00:34:50,656
Why would be drill in the arctic when we know that solar power can meet our energy needs across the country?

408
00:34:50,656 --> 00:34:54,319
Why would be frack our countrysides and our watersheds

409
00:34:54,319 --> 00:34:58,842
when we know that energy efficiency would save more energy than natural gas can provide?

410
00:34:58,842 --> 00:35:02,929
I think that we're coming to that point now where extreme energy sources are so bad

411
00:35:02,929 --> 00:35:07,600
that the questions and these challenges are going to become easier and easier.

412
00:35:07,600 --> 00:35:11,930
Our whole economy is going to be dependent on how we respond to this crisis.

413
00:35:11,930 --> 00:35:18,645
Competition between countries will be between those who will be advanced in developing the technology

414
00:35:18,645 --> 00:35:25,444
and who will be selling it to others or those who stay back and don't seize the opportunity.

415
00:35:25,444 --> 00:35:29,531
We should never underestimate our ingenuity and resolve.

416
00:35:29,531 --> 00:35:36,080
If those people that say we cannot do anything about this do not know who we are, do not know what we can do.

417
00:35:36,080 --> 00:35:40,833
I think this is the moment where we dig deep and say okay we are ready.

418
00:35:40,833 --> 00:35:45,922
The solutions are in front of us and no longer in good conscience can any of us,

419
00:35:45,922 --> 00:35:51,313
everyday citizens, elected officials, religious leaders, stand idly by.

420
00:35:51,313 --> 00:35:54,606
All the big problems that we have, they all have very local solutions

421
00:35:54,606 --> 00:35:59,610
and finding what those solutions are actually results in a whole bunch of different benefits

422
00:35:59,610 --> 00:36:03,273
from an environmental standpoint, economic standpoint and social aspect.

423
00:36:08,564 --> 00:36:14,325
We are in a situation where we're going to have an ecologically sustainable economy for everybody

424
00:36:14,325 --> 00:36:16,886
or ultimately we won't have one for anybody.

425
00:36:16,886 --> 00:36:23,292
It's just the smart thing to do to bet on the future and to being to invest in the future.

426
00:36:23,292 --> 00:36:30,306
The past has a lobby and it's a well-paid lobby and it comes right out of big oil and big coal.

427
00:36:30,306 --> 00:36:34,333
The future doesn't have a lobby until now.

428
00:36:35,471 --> 00:36:40,114
We have to be as sophisticated as the system we're trying to change.

429
00:36:40,852 --> 00:36:46,617
The legislation that Senator Boxer and I are introducing with the support of the leading environmental organizations

430
00:36:46,617 --> 00:36:49,535
actually addresses the crisis.

431
00:36:49,535 --> 00:36:53,739
A major focus is a price on carbon and methane emissions.

432
00:36:53,739 --> 00:37:00,329
I think a lot of people wondered, maybe still wonder, whether our political system is up to this task.

433
00:37:02,498 --> 00:37:05,679
In the largest sense, I don't know if we can win this fight.

434
00:37:05,679 --> 00:37:08,470
There are scientists who think we've waited too long to get started.

435
00:37:08,470 --> 00:37:11,305
Clearly the power on the other side is enormous.

436
00:37:11,305 --> 00:37:13,425
Everyone once in awhile I get discouraged.

437
00:37:13,425 --> 00:37:16,181
There was TV reporter who was sort of grilling me who said,

438
00:37:16,181 --> 00:37:20,017
Well this just seems impossible. You're up against the richest industry on earth.

439
00:37:20,017 --> 00:37:23,812
This just seems like one of these David and Goliath stories. What chance do you have?

440
00:37:23,812 --> 00:37:25,605
And I was thinking, oh, you're right, this is terrible.

441
00:37:25,605 --> 00:37:30,818
But then I thought, and since we're in church, maybe this is apropos, you know,

442
00:37:30,818 --> 00:37:37,555
I thought, I know how that David and Goliath story comes out. David wins against the odds, okay.

443
00:37:37,555 --> 00:37:42,254
I don't know if we're going to win, but we have a real chance.

444
00:37:43,063 --> 00:37:46,210
We know that civil disobedience has helped to achieve great things.

445
00:37:46,210 --> 00:37:49,295
It's helped secure for women the right to vote.

446
00:37:49,295 --> 00:37:51,047
It's helped to end segregation.

447
00:37:51,047 --> 00:37:54,599
And so we know that we can't win on climate change if we continue to dither,

448
00:37:54,599 --> 00:37:57,145
if we continue to talk about it but not do anything.

449
00:37:57,145 --> 00:38:00,132
We have a moral catastrophe on our hands.

450
00:38:02,016 --> 00:38:07,523
We have to do this because our democracy has been subverted, our laws have been subverted.

451
00:38:07,523 --> 00:38:10,745
I say it's criminal. I say that not lightly.

452
00:38:10,745 --> 00:38:14,424
When you have no recourse in our democracy, legally or democratically,

453
00:38:14,424 --> 00:38:20,709
we not only have the right but we have the duty to break the law to show our discontent.

454
00:38:20,709 --> 00:38:29,668
As a nation, we can come together. This is not about Republican or Democrat, it's about humanity.

455
00:38:29,668 --> 00:38:37,560
We're connected to each other and that organizing has got to be the basis for this kind of larger fight.

456
00:38:39,652 --> 00:38:45,868
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

457
00:38:45,868 --> 00:38:51,357
where we spent much of yesterday in this demonstration about the Keystone pipeline

458
00:38:51,357 --> 00:38:56,947
and that's, of course, of the reasons Americans are descending on this city this week.

459
00:38:56,947 --> 00:38:58,789
Thousands of people marched past the White House

460
00:38:58,789 --> 00:39:03,669
and urged President Obama to take strong measures to combat climate change.

461
00:39:03,669 --> 00:39:09,877
In the second high profile event organized in a week by groups including the Sierra Club and 350.org.

462
00:39:10,077 --> 00:39:17,716
I'm here because I have an obligation to my children, my ancestors, our future generations.

463
00:39:17,716 --> 00:39:24,286
If this pipeline goes through, it will be at the cost of human life.

464
00:39:24,286 --> 00:39:29,812
When disaster strikes, it's not going to know race, color or creed.

465
00:39:29,812 --> 00:39:38,437
The fossil fuel barons, their lawyers, their spindoctors are losing their grip on our countries psyche.

466
00:39:38,697 --> 00:39:43,078
We're not going to create the clean energy economy when one side beats the other,

467
00:39:43,078 --> 00:39:48,120
we're going to win when we all come together for solutions that work for all of us.

468
00:39:48,290 --> 00:39:53,544
And the good news is that in this country, when we finally decided that we're going to take action

469
00:39:53,544 --> 00:40:00,768
on a moral question at the question of who we are we tend to respond, when we respond, explosively.

470
00:40:03,889 --> 00:40:08,096
That is the epic struggle of this century and we're going to meet it.

471
00:40:08,096 --> 00:40:10,178
If we don't we won't have a twenty-second century.

472
00:40:10,178 --> 00:40:14,690
Whenever a great generation stands up, it stands up based on idealism.

473
00:40:14,690 --> 00:40:17,693
It stands up based on moral courage and that's what's happening now.

474
00:40:17,693 --> 00:40:28,079
This is the last minute of the last quarter of the biggest most important game humanity have ever played.

475
00:40:28,079 --> 00:40:34,709
The reality of our movement is this: if we fail, the consequences are dire.

476
00:40:34,709 --> 00:40:38,436
None of you could be in a more important place than you are right now.

477
00:40:38,436 --> 00:40:42,385
Part of this battle against the very deepest problems we've ever faced,

478
00:40:42,385 --> 00:40:45,512
very few people on earth ever get to say,

479
00:40:45,512 --> 00:40:50,642
"I'm doing the most important thing I can be doing any place on the planet at this moment in time"

480
00:40:50,642 --> 00:40:56,388
but you guys get to say that because you are on the front lines of this all-important battle.

481
00:40:57,566 --> 00:41:00,569
I think we can win this fight.

482
00:41:00,569 --> 00:41:07,253
I think we can win it if we act as a community, if we do not do anything that would injure that community

483
00:41:07,253 --> 00:41:14,454
but instead build and knit that community together in a way that allows it to take powerful action.

484
00:41:18,427 --> 00:41:20,889
We know the end of the story.

485
00:41:20,889 --> 00:41:26,602
Unless we rewrite the script, it's very clear how it ends with a planet that just heats out of control.

486
00:41:27,227 --> 00:41:30,874
So that's our job: to rewrite the story.

487
00:41:31,200 --> 00:41:40,089
All I ever wanted to see was a movement of people to stop climate change and now I've seen it.

488
00:41:42,247 --> 00:41:49,842
Today at the biggest climate rally by far, by far, by far in US history,

489
00:41:49,842 --> 00:41:54,267
today I know we're going to fight the battle,

490
00:41:54,267 --> 00:42:01,971
the most faithful battle in human history is finally joined and we will fight it together.