1 00:00:00,961 --> 00:00:05,658 [ominous music] (Leonardo DiCaprio) Ancient life on earth. 2 00:00:05,658 --> 00:00:10,861 Over millions of years plants and animals lived and died. 3 00:00:10,861 --> 00:00:16,095 That decomposed life sunk deep into the ground, and as a result, 4 00:00:16,095 --> 00:00:21,611 an ancient menace was created...fossil fuels. 5 00:00:21,611 --> 00:00:27,836 Black oil, coal, and gas, have created modern society as we know it. 6 00:00:27,836 --> 00:00:33,484 This ancient sunlight unleashed global industrial power on a scale 7 00:00:33,484 --> 00:00:37,051 never before witnessed in the history of the planet. 8 00:00:37,051 --> 00:00:41,253 But when burnt into the atmosphere, carbon causes climate change. 9 00:00:41,253 --> 00:00:46,001 Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate change 10 00:00:46,001 --> 00:00:49,690 is happening now and is caused by human activity. 11 00:00:49,690 --> 00:00:54,304 However, the fossil fuel industry continues to pull that carbon out of the ground. 12 00:00:54,304 --> 00:00:59,127 They drill, they extract, making trillions of dollars. 13 00:00:59,127 --> 00:01:04,804 They frack, they mine, earning astronomical profits. 14 00:01:04,804 --> 00:01:09,486 We need to keep this carbon in the ground. 15 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In order to prevent a catastrophic warming of the planet by 2 degrees Celsius, 16 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 we cannot burn more than 500 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere. 17 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But the fossil fuel industry has access to five times more than that. 18 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Almost twenty-eight-hundred gigatons of carbon pollution is ready to be pulled out of the ground, sold, and burned. 19 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We must fight to keep this carbon in the ground., and it is possible. 20 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 - People are ready for conversation. They're ready to understand that carbon pollution is causing this challenge, 21 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And that there is a simple solution. Put a price on carbon pollution. 22 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In the United States we spend $110 billion federal dollars on climate change events. 23 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 That's about $300 a person in tax dollars. 24 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 - But which certainly need a price on carbon pollution. 25 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Right now it's a free good and we're using the atmosphere as a sewer and that has a real cost. 26 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And that cost should be reflected in the cost of carbon pollution. 27 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 - In the '50s in London, based on the industrial revolution, 28 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 there was so much pollution, as you see in Beijing and around China today, 29 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 that you actually couldn't see six straight feet in front of you. 30 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They put a price on pollution, and it changed. 31 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 - You have to put a price on carbon, 32 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and that can either happen by carbon trading or through a carbon tax. 33 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 There's a moral imperative there, but there's also a business imperative. 34 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 - Senator Boxer and I have introduced legislation to do just that. We are going 35 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to do it in a way that impacts fewer than 3,000 of the most significant 36 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 fossil fuel polluters in the country. And the reason you do it , is people should not have 37 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 the " freedom" to destroy the planet. 38 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 They cannot continue to be able to do that with impunity. 39 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 - The government has been subsidizing energy for decades 40 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to the tune now of a trillion dollars a year. We need to redirect these subsidies 41 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 that encourage innovation. That's what we need in the world. 42 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But the biggest barrier is money from fossil industries that want to defend 43 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 their market share, and which I consider the industries' walking butt. They've got 44 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 tremendous assets underground that they want to be able to mine. 45 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Those are trillions of dollars of assets that the fossil energy companies used 46 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to evaluate their worth in the stock market. And the fact that we want to strand them, 47 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to leave them underground is not going over real well In those industries. 48 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 But in fact, if we wanted to head off the worst uncontrollable damages 49 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 from climate change, that's what we have to do. 50 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 - Finland and the Netherlands implemented a carbon tax back in 1990. 51 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Both, putting a price tag on each ton of CO2 poison. 52 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 - In the beginning of the '90s there was a deep understanding that we should do something. 53 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We think that the Finnish economy should be based on sustainable energy in order 54 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to make our society competitive and in order to save our planet, which is, of course, the main target 55 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 which is, of course, the main target. 56 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 - Since then several other nations have created their own versions, including 57 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Norway, Costa Rica, and the United Kingdom. 58 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Ireland passed a carbon tax in 2010. 59 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 - It was very simple to introduce. When they see a carbon tax if place, 60 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 people know that they can invest in alternatives that actually 61 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 cut out the use of fossil fuel. 62 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It starts to have that effect improving energy efficiency in your homes and improving industries' energy efficiency. 63 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And what we've seen in the last 5 years is we have doubled amount 64 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 of renewable energy supplies, so the benefit for the consumer 65 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 is if through those signals you can cut out the wasteful use of energy, then everyone 66 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 is saving money and it more than covers the cost of the carbon tax in the first place. 67 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Thom Hartmann: Iin Australia renewables like wind are now cheaper than fossil fuels 68 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 like coal. Recently China put a price on carbon in over 7 regions and will add more. 69 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Now it's up to the United States, where there's good news another a local level. 70 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 In 2007, Boulder, Colorado passed a carbon tax charging $13 for every metric ton of CO2. 71 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 - The carbon tax was generated and voted into place by boulder voters. 72 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So it's a surcharge on electricity consumption and it's applied to residential, 73 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 commercial, and industrial customers here in Boulder. The effect has been really tremendous. 74 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So once the carbon tax went into place, it has generated about 1.8 million dollars a year. 75 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 What's been extraordinary is that we've been able to really turn the curve so to speak on our emissions 76 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 just on demand side alone. 77 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 - We actually proposed that every single dollar go back to American households. 78 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Carbon tax is the right way to go and is actually the conservative answer to global warming. 79 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 - Finally we're at the point where wind power and solar are coming down in price 80 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 in a quarter of the United States. Solar voltaics are already cost effective. 81 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Last year more wind power was added than natural gas power. 82 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And this is true around the world. We have the technologies at hand. 83 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We are ready now to really ramp up deployment. 84 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 - The figures for Ireland I think show an example that you can actually start 85 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 cutting out the carbon and your economy still holds up. 86 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 The world didn't come to an end. I think it's a lesson for the rest of the world. 87 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 - We've been disappointed by the national policymakers who haven't been 88 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 able to resolve their differences about this, and time is growing, very, very short. 89 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 President Obama is the last president with a chance to confront this problem 90 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 in an way that may head off the worst of the damage. 91 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 - But given the severity of the problem right now, we're not moving fast enough. 92 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We're looking at a fight to save this planet. 93 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 And we have got to be bold and we have got to be aggressive. 94 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 - If it's not going to happen at the federal level or the state level, 95 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 we in the communities where the innovation occurs, where we're gonna be 96 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 on the front lines of the impact of climate change, we need to take it 97 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 in our own hands and make the changes that we need to see. 98 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 (Leonardo DiCaprio) If national governments won't take action, 99 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 your community can. We no longer need the dead economy of the fossil fuel industry.