9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000


9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
[ominous music]

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(Leonardo DiCaprio) Ancient life on earth.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Over millions of years plants and animals lived and died.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
That decomposed life sunk deep into the ground, and as a result,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
an ancient menace was created...fossil fuels.[br]

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Black oil, coal, and gas, have created modern society as we know it.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
This ancient sunlight unleashed global industrial power on a scale

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
never before witnessed in the history of the planet.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But when burnt into the atmosphere, carbon causes climate change.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate change

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is happening now and is caused by human activity.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
However, the fossil fuel industry continues to pull that carbon out of the ground.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They drill, they extract, making trillions of dollars.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They frack, they mine, earning astronomical profits.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We need to keep this carbon in the ground.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In order to prevent a catastrophic warming of the planet by 2 degrees Celsius,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we cannot burn more than 500 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But the fossil fuel industry has access to five times more than that.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Almost 2800 gigatons of carbon pollution

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is ready to be pulled out of the ground, sold, and burned.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We must fight to keep this carbon in the ground, and it is possible.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
>> People are ready for conversation. They're ready to understand that carbon pollution is causing this challenge,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and that there is a simple solution. Put a price on carbon pollution.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In the United States we spend $110 billion federal dollars on climate change events.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
That's about $300 a person in tax dollars.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
>> But we certainly need a price on carbon pollution.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Right now it's a free good and we're using the atmosphere as a sewer and that has a real cost.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And that cost should be reflected in the cost of carbon pollution.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
>> In the '50s in London, based on the industrial revolution,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
there was so much pollution, as you see in Beijing and around China today,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that you actually couldn't see six straight feet in front of you.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They put a price on pollution, and it changed.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
>> You have to put a price on carbon,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and that can either happen by carbon trading or through a carbon tax.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
There's a moral imperative there, but there's also a business imperative.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
>> Senator Boxer and I have introduced legislation to do just that.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We are going to do it in a way that impacts fewer than 3,000 of the most significant

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
fossil fuel polluters in the country.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And the reason you do it, is people should

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
not have the " freedom" to destroy the planet.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They cannot continue to be able to do that with impunity.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
>> The government has been subsidizing energy for decades

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to the tune now of a trillion dollars a year. We need to redirect these subsidies

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that encourage innovation. That's what we need in the world.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But the biggest barrier is money from fossil industries that want to defend

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
their market share, and which I consider the industries' walking butt. They've got

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
tremendous assets underground that they want to be able to mine.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Those are trillions of dollars of assets that the fossil energy companies used

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to evaluate their worth in the stock market. And the fact that we want to strand them,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to leave them underground is not going over real well In those industries.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But in fact, if we wanted to head off the worst uncontrollable damages

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
from climate change, that's what we have to do.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Thom Hartmann: Finland and the Netherlands implemented a carbon tax back in 1990.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Both, putting a price tag on each ton of CO2 poison.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
>> In the beginning of the '90s there was a deep understanding that we should do something.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
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,

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,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
including 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 in 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

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
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 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 at a local level.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In 2007, Boulder, Colorado passed a carbon tax

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
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.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The effect has been really tremendous.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So once the carbon tax went into place,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it has generated about $1.8 million 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,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so to speak, on our emissions 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

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
start 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 a 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,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
where we're gonna be on the front lines of the impact of climate change,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we need to take it in our own hands

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
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.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We no longer need the dead economy

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
of the fossil fuel industry.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We can move our economy town by town, state by state

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to renewable energy 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 greenworldrising.og.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
[tranquil mid tempo orchestral music]

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000