1 00:00:00,451 --> 00:00:04,339 [ominous music] (Leonardo DiCaprio) Ancient life on earth. 2 00:00:04,339 --> 00:00:09,191 Over millions of years plants and animals lived and died. 3 00:00:09,191 --> 00:00:15,006 That decomposed life sunk deep into the ground, and as a result, 4 00:00:15,006 --> 00:00:20,784 an ancient menace was created...fossil fuels. 5 00:00:20,784 --> 00:00:26,491 Black oil, coal, and gas, have created modern society as we know it. 6 00:00:26,491 --> 00:00:32,054 This ancient sunlight unleashed global industrial power on a scale 7 00:00:32,054 --> 00:00:35,537 never before witnessed in the history of the planet. 8 00:00:35,537 --> 00:00:40,132 But when burnt into the atmosphere, carbon causes climate change. 9 00:00:40,132 --> 00:00:45,228 Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate change 10 00:00:45,228 --> 00:00:48,592 is happening now and is caused by human activity. 11 00:00:48,592 --> 00:00:53,493 However, the fossil fuel industry continues to pull that carbon out of the ground. 12 00:00:53,493 --> 00:00:58,057 They drill, they extract, making trillions of dollars. 13 00:00:58,057 --> 00:01:04,175 They frack, they mine, earning astronomical profits. 14 00:01:04,175 --> 00:01:08,397 We need to keep this carbon in the ground. 15 00:01:08,397 --> 00:01:13,612 In order to prevent a catastrophic warming of the planet by 2 degrees Celsius, 16 00:01:13,612 --> 00:01:19,029 we cannot burn more than 500 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere. 17 00:01:19,029 --> 00:01:23,501 But the fossil fuel industry has access to five times more than that. 18 00:01:23,501 --> 00:01:31,221 Almost twenty-eight-hundred gigatons of carbon pollution is ready to be pulled out of the ground, sold, and burned. 19 00:01:31,221 --> 00:01:36,345 We must fight to keep this carbon in the ground., and it is possible. 20 00:01:36,345 --> 00:01:43,859 - People are ready for conversation. They're ready to understand that carbon pollution is causing this challenge, 21 00:01:43,859 --> 00:01:48,183 And that there is a simple solution. Put a price on carbon pollution. 22 00:01:48,183 --> 00:01:53,994 In the United States we spend $110 billion federal dollars on climate change events. 23 00:01:53,994 --> 00:01:56,967 That's about $300 a person in tax dollars. 24 00:01:56,967 --> 00:01:59,739 - But which certainly need a price on carbon pollution. 25 00:01:59,739 --> 00:02:05,293 Right now it's a free good and we're using the atmosphere as a sewer and that has a real cost. 26 00:02:05,293 --> 00:02:08,507 And that cost should be reflected in the cost of carbon pollution. 27 00:02:08,507 --> 00:02:11,951 - In the '50s in London, based on the industrial revolution, 28 00:02:11,951 --> 00:02:15,532 there was so much pollution, as you see in Beijing and around China today, 29 00:02:15,532 --> 00:02:17,585 that you actually couldn't see six straight feet in front of you. 30 00:02:17,585 --> 00:02:20,555 They put a price on pollution, and it changed. 31 00:02:20,555 --> 00:02:22,435 - You have to put a price on carbon, 32 00:02:22,435 --> 00:02:27,203 and that can either happen by carbon trading or through a carbon tax. 33 00:02:27,203 --> 00:02:31,037 There's a moral imperative there, but there's also a business imperative. 34 00:02:31,037 --> 00:02:35,124 - Senator Boxer and I have introduced legislation to do just that. We are going 35 00:02:35,124 --> 00:02:41,443 to do it in a way that impacts fewer than 3,000 of the most significant 36 00:02:41,443 --> 00:02:47,582 fossil fuel polluters in the country. And the reason you do it , is people should not have 37 00:02:47,582 --> 00:02:50,843 the " freedom" to destroy the planet. 38 00:02:50,843 --> 00:02:53,384 They cannot continue to be able to do that with impunity. 39 00:02:53,384 --> 00:02:56,492 - The government has been subsidizing energy for decades 40 00:02:56,492 --> 00:03:00,716 to the tune now of a trillion dollars a year. We need to redirect these subsidies 41 00:03:00,716 --> 00:03:03,566 that encourage innovation. That's what we need in the world. 42 00:03:03,566 --> 00:03:07,788 But the biggest barrier is money from fossil industries that want to defend 43 00:03:07,788 --> 00:03:11,191 their market share, and which I consider the industries' walking butt. They've got 44 00:03:11,191 --> 00:03:13,449 tremendous assets underground that they want to be able to mine. 45 00:03:13,449 --> 00:03:17,103 Those are trillions of dollars of assets that the fossil energy companies used 46 00:03:17,103 --> 00:03:20,839 to evaluate their worth in the stock market. And the fact that we want to strand them, 47 00:03:20,839 --> 00:03:24,506 to leave them underground is not going over real well In those industries. 48 00:03:24,506 --> 00:03:28,472 But in fact, if we wanted to head off the worst uncontrollable damages 49 00:03:28,472 --> 00:03:29,712 from climate change, that's what we have to do. 50 00:03:35,904 --> 00:03:36,522 Thom Hartmann: Finland and the Netherlands implemented a carbon tax back in 1990. 51 00:03:36,522 --> 00:03:40,227 Both, putting a price tag on each ton of CO2 poison. 52 00:03:40,483 --> 00:03:44,022 - In the beginning of the '90s there was a deep understanding that we should do something. 53 00:03:50,910 --> 00:03:55,221 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 Thom Hartmann: 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: In 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. 100 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We can move our economy town by town, state by state to renewable energy 101 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and a sustainable future. 102 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 To learn more and join the movement, 103 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 go to greenworld rising.og. 104 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 [tranquil mid tempo orchestral music]