WEBVTT 00:00:00.451 --> 00:00:04.339 [ominous music] (Leonardo DiCaprio) Ancient life on earth. 00:00:04.339 --> 00:00:09.191 Over millions of years plants and animals lived and died. 00:00:09.191 --> 00:00:15.006 That decomposed life sunk deep into the ground, and as a result, 00:00:15.006 --> 00:00:20.784 an ancient menace was created...fossil fuels. 00:00:20.784 --> 00:00:26.491 Black oil, coal, and gas, have created modern society as we know it. 00:00:26.491 --> 00:00:32.054 This ancient sunlight unleashed global industrial power on a scale 00:00:32.054 --> 00:00:35.537 never before witnessed in the history of the planet. 00:00:35.537 --> 00:00:40.132 But when burnt into the atmosphere, carbon causes climate change. 00:00:40.132 --> 00:00:45.228 Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate change 00:00:45.228 --> 00:00:48.592 is happening now and is caused by human activity. 00:00:48.592 --> 00:00:53.493 However, the fossil fuel industry continues to pull that carbon out of the ground. 00:00:53.493 --> 00:00:58.057 They drill, they extract, making trillions of dollars. 00:00:58.057 --> 00:01:04.175 They frack, they mine, earning astronomical profits. 00:01:04.175 --> 00:01:08.397 We need to keep this carbon in the ground. 00:01:08.397 --> 00:01:13.612 In order to prevent a catastrophic warming of the planet by 2 degrees Celsius, 00:01:13.612 --> 00:01:19.029 we cannot burn more than 500 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere. 00:01:19.029 --> 00:01:23.501 But the fossil fuel industry has access to five times more than that. 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. 00:01:31.221 --> 00:01:36.345 We must fight to keep this carbon in the ground., and it is possible. 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, 00:01:43.859 --> 00:01:48.183 And that there is a simple solution. Put a price on carbon pollution. 00:01:48.183 --> 00:01:53.994 In the United States we spend $110 billion federal dollars on climate change events. 00:01:53.994 --> 00:01:56.967 That's about $300 a person in tax dollars. 00:01:56.967 --> 00:01:59.739 - But which certainly need a price on carbon pollution. 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. 00:02:05.293 --> 00:02:08.507 And that cost should be reflected in the cost of carbon pollution. 00:02:08.507 --> 00:02:11.951 - In the '50s in London, based on the industrial revolution, 00:02:11.951 --> 00:02:15.532 there was so much pollution, as you see in Beijing and around China today, 00:02:15.532 --> 00:02:17.585 that you actually couldn't see six straight feet in front of you. 00:02:17.585 --> 00:02:20.555 They put a price on pollution, and it changed. 00:02:20.555 --> 00:02:22.435 - You have to put a price on carbon, 00:02:22.435 --> 00:02:27.203 and that can either happen by carbon trading or through a carbon tax. 00:02:27.203 --> 00:02:31.037 There's a moral imperative there, but there's also a business imperative. 00:02:31.037 --> 00:02:35.124 - Senator Boxer and I have introduced legislation to do just that. We are going 00:02:35.124 --> 00:02:41.443 to do it in a way that impacts fewer than 3,000 of the most significant 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 00:02:47.582 --> 00:02:50.843 the " freedom" to destroy the planet. 00:02:50.843 --> 00:02:53.384 They cannot continue to be able to do that with impunity. 00:02:53.384 --> 00:02:56.492 - The government has been subsidizing energy for decades 00:02:56.492 --> 00:03:00.716 to the tune now of a trillion dollars a year. We need to redirect these subsidies 00:03:00.716 --> 00:03:03.566 that encourage innovation. That's what we need in the world. 00:03:03.566 --> 00:03:07.788 But the biggest barrier is money from fossil industries that want to defend 00:03:07.788 --> 00:03:11.191 their market share, and which I consider the industries' walking butt. They've got 00:03:11.191 --> 00:03:13.449 tremendous assets underground that they want to be able to mine. 00:03:13.449 --> 00:03:17.103 Those are trillions of dollars of assets that the fossil energy companies used 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, 00:03:20.839 --> 00:03:24.506 to leave them underground is not going over real well In those industries. 00:03:24.506 --> 00:03:28.472 But in fact, if we wanted to head off the worst uncontrollable damages 00:03:28.472 --> 00:03:29.712 from climate change, that's what we have to do. 00:03:35.904 --> 00:03:36.522 Thom Hartmann: Finland and the Netherlands implemented a carbon tax back in 1990. 00:03:36.522 --> 00:03:40.227 Both, putting a price tag on each ton of CO2 poison. 00:03:40.483 --> 00:03:44.022 - In the beginning of the '90s there was a deep understanding that we should do something. 00:03:50.910 --> 00:03:55.221 We think that the Finnish economy should be based on sustainable energy in order 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 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 which is, of course, the main target. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Thom Hartmann: Since then several other nations have created their own versions, including 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Norway, Costa Rica, and the United Kingdom. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Ireland passed a carbon tax in 2010. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 - It was very simple to introduce. When they see a carbon tax if place, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 people know that they can invest in alternatives that actually 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 cut out the use of fossil fuel. 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. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And what we've seen in the last 5 years is we have doubled amount 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 of renewable energy supplies, so the benefit for the consumer 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is if through those signals you can cut out the wasteful use of energy, then everyone 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. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Thom Hartmann: In Australia, renewables like wind are now cheaper than fossil fuels 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. 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. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In 2007, Boulder, Colorado passed a carbon tax charging $13 for every metric ton of CO2. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 - The carbon tax was generated and voted into place by Boulder voters. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So it's a surcharge on electricity consumption and it's applied to residential, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 commercial, and industrial customers here in Boulder. The effect has been really tremendous. 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. 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 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 just on demand side alone. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 - We actually proposed that every single dollar go back to American households. 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. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 - Finally we're at the point where wind power and solar are coming down in price 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in a quarter of the United States. Solar voltaics are already cost effective. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Last year more wind power was added than natural gas power. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And this is true around the world. We have the technologies at hand. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We are ready now to really ramp up deployment. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 - The figures for Ireland I think show an example that you can actually start 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 cutting out the carbon and your economy still holds up. 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. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 - We've been disappointed by the national policymakers who haven't been 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 able to resolve their differences about this, and time is growing, very, very short. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 President Obama is the last president with a chance to confront this problem 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in an way that may head off the worst of the damage. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 - But given the severity of the problem right now, we're not moving fast enough. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We're looking at a fight to save this planet. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And we have got to be bold and we have got to be aggressive. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 - If it's not going to happen at the federal level or the state level, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we in the communities where the innovation occurs, where we're gonna be 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 on the front lines of the impact of climate change, we need to take it 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in our own hands and make the changes that we need to see. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 (Leonardo DiCaprio) If national governments won't take action, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 your community can. We no longer need the dead economy of the fossil fuel industry. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We can move our economy town by town, state by state to renewable energy 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and a sustainable future. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 To learn more and join the movement, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 go to greenworld rising.og. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 [tranquil mid tempo orchestral music]