0:00:00.451,0:00:04.339 [ominous music][br](Leonardo DiCaprio) Ancient life on earth. 0:00:04.339,0:00:09.191 Over millions of years plants and animals lived and died. 0:00:09.191,0:00:15.006 That decomposed life sunk deep into the ground, and as a result, 0:00:15.006,0:00:20.784 an ancient menace was created...fossil fuels.[br] 0:00:20.784,0:00:26.491 Black oil, coal, and gas, have created modern society as we know it. 0:00:26.491,0:00:32.054 This ancient sunlight unleashed global industrial power on a scale 0:00:32.054,0:00:35.537 never before witnessed in the history of the planet. 0:00:35.537,0:00:40.132 But when burnt into the atmosphere, carbon causes climate change. 0:00:40.132,0:00:45.228 Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate change 0:00:45.228,0:00:48.592 is happening now and is caused by human activity. 0:00:48.592,0:00:53.493 However, the fossil fuel industry continues to pull that carbon out of the ground. 0:00:53.493,0:00:58.057 They drill, they extract, making trillions of dollars. 0:00:58.057,0:01:04.175 They frack, they mine, earning astronomical profits. 0:01:04.175,0:01:08.397 We need to keep this carbon in the ground. 0:01:08.397,0:01:13.612 In order to prevent a catastrophic warming of the planet by 2 degrees Celsius, 0:01:13.612,0:01:19.029 we cannot burn more than 500 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere. 0:01:19.029,0:01:23.501 But the fossil fuel industry has access to five times more than that. 0:01:23.501,0:01:31.221 Almost twenty-eight-hundred gigatons of carbon pollution is ready to be pulled out of the ground, sold, and burned. 0:01:31.221,0:01:36.345 We must fight to keep this carbon in the ground., and it is possible. 0:01:36.345,0:01:43.859 - People are ready for conversation. They're ready to understand that carbon pollution is causing this challenge, 0:01:43.859,0:01:48.183 And that there is a simple solution. Put a price on carbon pollution. 0:01:48.183,0:01:53.994 In the United States we spend $110 billion federal dollars on climate change events. 0:01:53.994,0:01:56.967 That's about $300 a person in tax dollars. 0:01:56.967,0:01:59.739 - But which certainly need a price on carbon pollution. 0:01:59.739,0:02:05.293 Right now it's a free good and we're using the atmosphere as a sewer and that has a real cost. 0:02:05.293,0:02:08.507 And that cost should be reflected in the cost of carbon pollution. 0:02:08.507,0:02:11.951 - In the '50s in London, based on the industrial revolution, 0:02:11.951,0:02:15.532 there was so much pollution, as you see in Beijing and around China today, 0:02:15.532,0:02:17.585 that you actually couldn't see six straight feet in front of you. 0:02:17.585,0:02:20.555 They put a price on pollution, and it changed. 0:02:20.555,0:02:22.435 - You have to put a price on carbon, 0:02:22.435,0:02:27.203 and that can either happen by carbon trading or through a carbon tax. 0:02:27.203,0:02:31.037 There's a moral imperative there, but there's also a business imperative. 0:02:31.037,0:02:35.124 - Senator Boxer and I have introduced legislation to do just that. We are going 0:02:35.124,0:02:41.443 to do it in a way that impacts fewer than 3,000 of the most significant 0:02:41.443,0:02:47.582 fossil fuel polluters in the country. And the reason you do it , is people should not have 0:02:47.582,0:02:50.843 the " freedom" to destroy the planet. 0:02:50.843,0:02:53.384 They cannot continue to be able to do that with impunity. 0:02:53.384,0:02:56.492 - The government has been subsidizing energy for decades 0:02:56.492,0:03:00.716 to the tune now of a trillion dollars a year. We need to redirect these subsidies 0:03:00.716,0:03:03.566 that encourage innovation. That's what we need in the world. 0:03:03.566,0:03:07.788 But the biggest barrier is money from fossil industries that want to defend 0:03:07.788,0:03:11.191 their market share, and which I consider the industries' walking butt. They've got 0:03:11.191,0:03:13.449 tremendous assets underground that they want to be able to mine. 0:03:13.449,0:03:17.103 Those are trillions of dollars of assets that the fossil energy companies used 0:03:17.103,0:03:20.839 to evaluate their worth in the stock market. And the fact that we want to strand them, 0:03:20.839,0:03:24.506 to leave them underground is not going over real well In those industries. 0:03:24.506,0:03:28.472 But in fact, if we wanted to head off the worst uncontrollable damages 0:03:28.472,0:03:29.712 from climate change, that's what we have to do. 0:03:35.904,0:03:36.522 Thom Hartmann: Finland and the Netherlands implemented a carbon tax back in 1990. 0:03:36.522,0:03:40.227 Both, putting a price tag on each ton of CO2 poison. 0:03:40.483,0:03:44.022 - In the beginning of the '90s there was a deep understanding that we should do something. 0:03:50.910,0:03:55.221 We think that the Finnish economy should be based on sustainable energy in order 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to make our society competitive and in order to save our planet, which is, of course, the main target 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 which is, of course, the main target. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Thom Hartmann: Since then several other nations have created their own versions, including 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Norway, Costa Rica, and the United Kingdom. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Ireland passed a carbon tax in 2010. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 - It was very simple to introduce. When they see a carbon tax if place, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 people know that they can invest in alternatives that actually 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 cut out the use of fossil fuel. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It starts to have that effect improving energy efficiency in your homes and improving industries' energy efficiency. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And what we've seen in the last 5 years is we have doubled amount 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of renewable energy supplies, so the benefit for the consumer 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 is if through those signals you can cut out the wasteful use of energy, then everyone 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 is saving money and it more than covers the cost of the carbon tax in the first place. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Thom Hartmann: In Australia, renewables like wind are now cheaper than fossil fuels 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 like coal. Recently China put a price on carbon in over 7 regions and will add more. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Now it's up to the United States, where there's good news another a local level. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 In 2007, Boulder, Colorado passed a carbon tax charging $13 for every metric ton of CO2. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 - The carbon tax was generated and voted into place by Boulder voters. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So it's a surcharge on electricity consumption and it's applied to residential, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 commercial, and industrial customers here in Boulder. The effect has been really tremendous. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So once the carbon tax went into place, it has generated about 1.8 million dollars a year. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 What's been extraordinary is that we've been able to really turn the curve so to speak on our emissions 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 just on demand side alone. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 - We actually proposed that every single dollar go back to American households. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Carbon tax is the right way to go and is actually the conservative answer to global warming. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 - Finally we're at the point where wind power and solar are coming down in price 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in a quarter of the United States. Solar voltaics are already cost effective. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Last year more wind power was added than natural gas power. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And this is true around the world. We have the technologies at hand. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 We are ready now to really ramp up deployment. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 - The figures for Ireland I think show an example that you can actually start 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 cutting out the carbon and your economy still holds up. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The world didn't come to an end. I think it's a lesson for the rest of the world. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 - We've been disappointed by the national policymakers who haven't been 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 able to resolve their differences about this, and time is growing, very, very short. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 President Obama is the last president with a chance to confront this problem 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in an way that may head off the worst of the damage. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 - But given the severity of the problem right now, we're not moving fast enough. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 We're looking at a fight to save this planet. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And we have got to be bold and we have got to be aggressive. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 - If it's not going to happen at the federal level or the state level, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 we in the communities where the innovation occurs, where we're gonna be 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 on the front lines of the impact of climate change, we need to take it 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in our own hands and make the changes that we need to see. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 (Leonardo DiCaprio) If national governments won't take action, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 your community can. We no longer need the dead economy of the fossil fuel industry. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 We can move our economy town by town, state by state to renewable energy 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and a sustainable future. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 To learn more and join the movement, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 go to greenworld rising.og. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 [tranquil mid tempo orchestral music]