"DISRUPTION" - a film by KELLY NYKS & JARED P. SCOTT

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****http://tinyurl.com/ogmj262*********
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Premieres September 7th @ watchdisruption.com - 52 min
Join the Peoples Climate March, September 21st @ peoplesclimate.org
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A PF PICTURES production
Produced & Directed by KELLY NYKS & JARED P. SCOTT
Executive Producer JON WARNOW
Edited by NATALIA IYUDIN
Director of Photography TAD FETTIG
Original Music by MALCOLM FRANCIS
Art Direction & Animation by EVE WEINBERG
Associate Producer & Additional Editing HYPATIA PORTER
Animation by HALA ALHOMOUD | MADELINE QUINN
Associate Producer ZOE COUACAUD
Production Coordinator KAYCI ROTHWEILER
Additional Cinematography by MIKE MCSWEENEY, IAN COOK, ANDRE DAHLMAN, DAVID OHANA, NIKKI BRAMLEY, ANDREW BAKER, DAVID HICKS
Color by JORDAN BRAMLETT
Assistant Editing by SHAHEEN NAZERALI
Audio Mix by MATT ROCKER & IAN STYNES
Research Coordinator ANDY DELOACH
Production Assistant REED YURMAN
[complete credits at end of film]
---
* “HOME” by Yann Arthus-Bertrand
© 2009 MY PLANET – ELZEVIR FILMS
Courtesy of Yann Arthus Bertrand"
* Additional Footage Courtesy of Greenpeace International, Dahlman/Cook Productions, Richter Productions, Mike McSweeney, David Ohana, Casey Neistat, John Mattiuzzi, Eric Feijten, Randy Scott Slavin.
[complete attribution in end credits]
* Special Thanks to 350.org and Jon Warnow
[complete thanks in end credits]

Power concedes nothing without a demand.

Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never did and it never will.

- Frederick Douglass

1968

This is Apollo 8 coming to you live from the moon

The vast loneliness up here of the moon is
awe-inspiring

And it makes you realize just what you have
back there on Earth

The Earth from here is a grand oasis in the
big vastness of space

- Oh my god look at that picture over there
- Wow, is that pretty

You got a color film Jim?

Hand me a roll of color film quick. Quick.

Wow, that's a beautiful shot

From the crew of Apollo 8 we close with "Good
night, good luck, and God bless all of you...

... all of you on the good Earth"

We no longer live on that Earth

The world hasn't ended

But the world as we know it has

Can you hear me?

I have an emergency

The water is rising very quickly

We're looking at about five feet of water...

... and there's about 17 people on the second floor right now

We're going to need to evacuate - we need to get out of here

We're trying to get you guys out

Are you alright? You OK?!

There is new and dramatic evidence of what's happening to our world

and tonight we'll look at the impact already being felt

The red flags about extreme weather we've
all endured

together all across the globe

We are literally engaged in an unprecedented
experiment

with the one planet that we know of that can support life.

We will respond to the threat of climate change,
knowing that the failure to do so

would betray our children and future
generations

The big question mark is the future, of
course, and a new kind of normal

Things are gearing up for the UN-hosted
climate change summit in New York

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will
host the summit.

I will convene a climate summit for leaders
at the highest level.

I urge political leaders of the world to prioritize
their political energy on climate change.

We have to get serious about bringing real
commitments to the table for that summit.

If things go "business as usual" we will not
live, we will die.

DISRUPTION

100 DAYS UNTIL THE MARCH

[Matt Leonard - Organizer - People's Climate March]

On September 23rd the United Nations is
holding a historic climate summit where

they've invited world leaders and heads of
state from around the world

We're trying to organize the
largest-ever climate rally

on the streets New York in response to this,
hopefully turning the tide

of what comes out of that summit, and reshaping
what the entire climate movement looks like

going forward.

Climate tipping points are scary

but if we stay connected to each other
we can build

the largest climate mobilization in
history. We all have power to create

the movement tipping point on climate
change.

the one that takes our leaders from this place
of inaction

and puts them on a journey towards
saving the planet.

All the big social movements

in history have had people in the streets.

Women's voting rights, the civil rights movement
-- and even more recently

[Keya Chatterjee Dir. of Renewable Energy, WWF]

on climate issues, our big successes have
happened when people left their homes

and went out into the streets.

This is a bigger fight than in fact has ever
been won.

[Naomi Klein - Author - "This Changes Everything"]
It's not that we need to save the Earth.

We need to save the systems that make the
Earth compatible

with human existence and the existence of other
life forms.

This is the fight of our time, but none of
us should exactly have to be activists

about all this. In a rational world, the fact
that scientists have said

the worst thing on Earth is happening
now and here's what you can do to stop it

[Bill McKibben - Co-Founder, 350.org]
that would have been enough to push our

systems into action.

Of all the things that probably
get me most upset, it's when people start

presenting climate change as if it's
something new.

[Dr. Naomi Oreskes - Professor, History of
Science, Harvard.]

The science behind our understanding of
man-made climate change

is very old and very well
established. So the task we've taken on

is documenting this history to help us
understand where we are

how we got here, and how we can change
course.

Scientists have known for more than 150
years that carbon dioxide was a greenhouse gas

Fourier came up with this notion
that there were gasses in our atmosphere

that allowed sunlight to pass through, like
a window, but then when sunlight bounced off

the Earth's surface they trap the heat in.

[Dr. Heidi Cullen - Chief Scientist, Climate Central]

So you had now this establishment of what we now call "the greenhouse effect."

In the 1850's, John Tyndall made laboratory
measurements of the absorption of heat radiation

by carbon dioxide

[Dr. James Hansen - Former Director, NASA (GISS)]

And he concluded that if you change the CO₂ in the atmosphere

it's going to affect the planetary energy balance

Tyndall was the one who really came along
and proved that carbon dioxide

was a natural thermostat that helped
set our planet's temperature

In the late 1800's, it was the great Swedish chemist Arrhenius who first did the calculations

about what would happen as we, as he put it, "evaporated our coal mines into the air"

But people didn't pay much attention
to that in the 20th century

because we were too busy figuring out
cool new ways to burn fossil fuel

It was only in the late 1950's that we
even bothered to measure

to see if it was accumulating in the atmosphere

That instrument, which one up on the side of
Mauna Loa in Hawaii

is the most important scientific instrument in the world

Beginning in 1959, it found that there was a steadily accumulating amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere

the so-called "Keeling Curve"

The Keeling Curve is one of the most important
pieces of scientific work of the 20th century

that shows us that carbon dioxide
has been rising continuously

and systematically since the
industrial revolution

Keeling didn't just show that there was an increase in carbon dioxide, he also pinpointed the source

And what Keeling showed so incredibly
was that roughly one out of

every four CO₂ molecules in our atmosphere
today was put there by us

Just a year ago, we passed 400 parts per million
of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere

Now the pre-industrial level was about
280 parts per million

So human society in the industrial era has raised the
level of CO₂ in the atmosphere by about 40%,

[Justin Gillis - Journalist, The New York Times]

and many people fear that before we're
done we're gonna double it or even triple it

We're pumping CO₂ into the atmosphere

at a speed which we have never seen
before in modern human history

We're absolutely racing into unchartered territory

In our lifetimes, human beings left behind
the Holocene, this 10,000-year period

of benign climatic stability that coincides
with the rise of human civilization

We have crossed a great threshold,
and we stand on the edge of others

[Van Jones - Host, CNN Crossfire]

I remember when The Weather Channel was this
kind of nice, sleepy little station

Now it's like a horror show where
the climate is being disrupted

That's not for next year or a thousand years
from now. That's happening right now.

What all climate scientists will agree on is that

the entire atmosphere has changed -- all
the atmospheric dynamics have changed

So every event that happens now
is in the context of climate change

is different from how it would have been

A typhoon slammed into the Philippines
with winds of 195 miles per hour

That's higher than the winds from Hurricanes
Sandy and Katrina combined

The world is mobilizing to help the Philippines,
but just a trickle of food and water and medicine

has reached the victims of Typhoon Haiyan

A million people were forced to flee their homes.
They're now trying to salvage what's left

Hundreds of thousands are thronging
relief centers, desperate for life's necessities

Many residents have covered their faces to
mask the smell of the dead, while they searched

for relatives in some of the hardest hit areas

This is one of the top storms ever seen on this planet

Mister President, your excellency

What my country is going through as a result
of this extreme climate event is madness

[Yeb Saño - Climate Negotiator, Philippines]

Super Typhoon Haiyan made landfall
in my own family's hometown

And the devastation . . . is staggering

I struggle to find words to describe
how I feel about the losses

To anyone outside who continues to deny and
ignore the reality that this climate change

I dare them -- I dare them to get off their ivory towers and away from the comfort of their arm chairs

I dare them to go to the islands of the Pacific

We refuse as a nation to accept a future where
super typhoons like Haiyan become a way of life

We refuse to accept that running away
from storms, evacuating our families,

counting our dead become a way of life.
We simply refuse to.

We can fix this. We can stop this madness.

80 DAYS UNTIL THE MARCH

People's Climate March Coordinating Committee
Organizing Meeting

Hello, hello. Alright folks we know why we're here

[Eddie Bautista - Executive Director, NYC-EJA]

We have 80 days starting tomorrow to pull off
the largest climate march in history

It's really important for folks to remember
that although climate change affects everyone

the impacts are not evenly distributed

We're asking each one of these breakout groups,
prioritize people of color, folks

because this is real, it's disproportionate,
and it's time to bring it

They need to act on a binding global agreement
to reduce greenhouse gases

[Tomas Gardaño - Organizer, People's Climate March]

We can do that and create jobs at the same time

Part of what we're doing is moving people
from fossil fuels to the solutions

[Lee Ziesche - Grassroots Coordinator]

and also presenting them with economic
opportunities around the solutions

[Armando Chapelliquen - Project Coordinator, NYPIRG]
The idea of who's going to be leading this march...

...are the people in this room

[Rev. Clinton Miller - Brown Memorial, Baptist Church]
This environmental issue is the singular issue

of our time, of our day, that will determine how we live, where we live, and if we live.

The most important tool that we have is our
people power. There are already 325 groups,

and that list is going to grow every single
day. Whatever you're thinking about doing

to help build this mobilization, rethink it.
And make it bigger. Make it bolder.

Our job is to make sure everybody hears about it.
And then they'll get there. They'll get there.

That's our job

[Nuclear Disarmament Movement - New York City]

In 1982, the UN convened a first special section
on nuclear disarmament

and we came together and said when
the representatives

of governments all around the world
gather in New York City at the UN

we need to be on the streets making our voice heard

New York City's anti-nuclear demonstration
turned out to be the biggest

political demonstration in US history

It was, and still to this day, is the largest single gathering, if you will, of people in this country

I think there was one computer in the
office. Everything else was by phone

And this thing we called "the mail" --
we now call it "snail mail"

But there was something about that
reality that we didn't have the

technology that we now have
that actually forced people

to talk directly to each other.

Until we have real peace, with real justice

we will not go home and be quiet, we will
go home and organize!

One of the really interesting things about that
demonstration is that some 600 local groups

were formed, and many of those groups
lasted for years afterwards

To me, the real power of that
day was the organizing experience that led

up to it and then the organizing
that came out of it

Some experts are now saying that
the whole world is heating up

because of a "global greenhouse effect"

[Dr. Naomi Oreskes - Professor,
History of Science, Harvard]

Scientists had been saying for a long
time that climate change might occur

but 1988 is the year when Jim Hansen
and his team at NASA

say both in the scientific peer-reviewed literature,
and in public, that it's actually happening

[Dr. James Hansen - Former Director, NASA (GISS)]
The changes in atmospheric composition

that humans were making was going to have
a big impact on the Earth's climate

The greenhouse effect has been detected,
and it is changing our climate now

Hansen's testimony was reported on the
front page of The New York Times

and there was actually a bill introduced
into Congress -- the National Energy Policy Act

to immediately begin to phase out the use of fossil fuels in order to prevent disruptive climate change

And of course that was supported
by the creation of the IPCC --

the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change -- that year

So there was political momentum,
there was some scientific momentum

there was strong scientific evidence,
there was media attention

and then the whole thing kinda fell apart

The Earth Summit, a 12-day, 178-nation
conference on the environment

began today in Rio de Janeiro

Battle lines are already drawn between
the haves and the have-nots

So far, all the agreements are non-binding -- requiring no specific action on the environment

As time has gone on, the scientific
warnings keep intensifying

and yet there has been no effective political response

All political efforts to get a handle on this issue

have essentially failed

I am the one that is burdened with
finding the balance between

sound environmental practice on the one hand

and jobs for American families on the other

The agreement hammered out in Kyoto,
Japan requires industrialized nations

to make substantial cuts in greenhouse gas emissions

[Justin Gillis - Journalist, The New York Times]

The United States actually never ratified the Kyoto Protocol which is one reason it didn't work

President Bush ignited a storm of controversy

when he decided to abandon the Kyoto Protocol

which sets caps on the emissions of
greenhouse gases in developed nations

For nearly two weeks, the US delegation
had blocked proposal after proposal

draft after draft

refusing to even discuss mandatory cuts
in greenhouse emissions

Now we switch to the big climate
conference going on in Copenhagen

Today developing countries made themselves heard

Led by Africa, 135 nations, including India and China

staged a five-hour boycott

angry over what they say are insufficient carbon cuts proposed by the world's rich countries

If Hollywood had been writing a story,
it all would have come right in the end

and all the nations would have
pledged their best effort

And nothing like that happened --
the thing was a fiasco, a failure

The frustrations of the last 10 days
explode on the streets of Copenhagen

Outside the Bella Center where negotiators still haven't reached a climate agreement

2500 protesters tried to storm
the hall to make an impact

[Bill McKibben - Co-founder, 350.org]
Nothing happened because

the fossil fuel industry was still strong enough to scare nations into avoiding the issue

[Naomi Klein - Author, "The Shock Doctrine"]
What happened in Copenhagen, for a lot of people

was this realization "no leader was going to save us"

We have to be strong enough to
scare our national leaders

into doing the right thing in New York City in September

If we can demonstrate that

then better things will happen in Paris
than happened in Copenhagen

These things are not separate
moments in time

This is a all part of one string, and
what we're fighting towards in Paris

is highly dependent on what happens in September

This is going to have to be the fight our lives

[Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) - Berlin, Germany]

Welcome to this press conference to present
the report of IPCC Working Group 3

on mitigation of climate change

[Dr. Rajendra Pachauri - Chairman, IPCC]
If we really want to bring about a limitation

of temperature increase to no more
than 2 degrees Celsius

there is then the need for an
unprecedented level of international cooperation

The way we've approached climate change

is the scientific community builds the case, it
synthesizes the evidence,

it presents that evidence then to the policymakers

We've proven beyond a doubt that
climate change is real

that the Earth's temperature is warming

[Dr. Heidi Cullen - Author, "Weather of the Future"]
that that warming is predominantly caused by

the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities, and that that additional warming poses

a significant threat

What the policy-making community did was
they came up with the definition

of what they called "dangerous human interference"

In 2009, the nations in the world agreed on

a target of 2 degrees Centigrade or 3.6
degrees Fahrenheit of maximum warming

above the pre-industrial level

That would require emissions
worldwide almost entirely stopping

within a matter of decades

[Dr. John Sterman - Director,
MIT System Dynamics Group]

A lot of people talk about two degrees as
a safe level, well there is no safe level

two degrees is a round number that would be safer

but we'll still have substantial climate impacts

One degree is melting the Arctic and Antarctic. We'd be crazy to find out what two degrees will do

but we're probably going to find out

Even if we do everything right at this
point, that's about as good an outcome as

we can hope for

The other thing the IPCC did was they tied that 2 degrees Celsius, 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit threshold

to the amount of fossil fuels that
we can actually burn

And they came up with this red line in the sand which was a trillion tons of carbon

The problem is we're already more than halfway there

We're approaching 600 million tons already

and at the rate things are going

we will have completely exhausted that
carbon budget within thirty years

The same leaders who say they

want the temperature to go up no more
than 2 degrees have put forward

a series of proposals that when you add them up, leads to the temperature rising 6 degrees

the point past which most sane
scientists think

civilization on the scale that we now
know it will not be possible

It's almost a kind of refusal to come to
grips with reality

There's just this enormous gap between
what country say they want to do and what

they're actually on track to do

People call this the emissions gap

Much of this is about mathematics. We've got
to leave 80 percent of fossil fuels in

the ground

The fossil fuel industry wants to burn all
its reserves, if they do then we get that

six degrees

Each day of inaction, of business as usual,
puts us closer and closer on this crash course

58 DAYS UNTIL THE MARCH

[People's Climate March - Host Committee Meeting, NYC]

We're two months out from this demo, obviously
we all know in this room, a tremendous amount

of work has happened, is happening every day,
getting the word out, mobilizing people

[Leslie Cagan - Peace & Justice Organizer]
At this point, every day counts. Every day when

we miss an opportunity, it's gone.

It's not just a one-day march, it's our long-term
ability to build a strong climate movement

that we need to invest in

[Ananda Lee Tan - Climate Justice Alliance]
So being inclusive to us is really about multiple things

but recognizing that we live in a society with there is privilege, there are inequities

and in order to address the climate crisis, we have to first address those inequities

That will allow us to then bring a movement strong enough to address the global ecological crisis

If you think for second about this,
there is this just layer of stuff under the ground

Got put their in a specific time in

a specific way

and it just captured millennia of solar energy

[Chris Hayes - Host, All in with Chris Hayes | MSNBC]
And we just happened upon it

It's like if you were just walking around, and then put something in the ground

and there's just millions of dollar bills down there, just pulling them out

Everything about what we do and who we are
and how we live

is dependent upon the fact that we just
found the stuff sitting there

and that stuff said "Oh, you don't have to

have everyone working in the fields all
the time -- you can have cities, you can have

cars, you can have iPhones." And the way I
view it is, as incredible as that stuff is

we've been paying this price on it the whole
time. And there's this clock running

The classic market failure is "negative environmental
externalities"

That's just jargon for "you're not paying the full
costs for the fossil fuels that you burn"

The racket that the fossil fuel industry has
run is to take costs of its products, and

export them to the public

[Keya Chatterjee - Director of
Renewable Energy, WWF]

Think about the litany of impacts: from sea
level rise, ocean acidification, the collapse

of ecosystems that we rely on for food, water
availability. These things are really expensive

-- when you have huge wildfires, it costs
a lot of money

All those costs are being dumped onto us as a society, and not being paid by people who are polluting

These big massive polluters

get to dump megatons of carbon in the
atmosphere, for free

You can't pollute for free. If you
litter you get a fine.

That makes coal and oil and other fossil fuels
more competitive

against solar and wind and other sources

than they deserve to be

[Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D - RI) Co-Chair, Task Force on Climate Change]

Behind the environmental problems that carbon
pollution causes

and behind the economic problems is a
political problem

that a very small group of very powerful
special interests

have exerted very rough control over the
political establishment

We're up against the fossil fuel lobby
that has complete access to the

political class and the ability

to bribe through legal means

and blackmail through the use of attack ads and so on

even people who oppose them have trouble opposing them too strongly

because they are in some ways economically dependent on them

Right now we have a monopoly controlled by the big carbon polluters

They grant themselves subsidy after subsidy

Think about this: how much money does the Pentagon
spend

helping big private oil companies get
their for-profit products in the Middle East here?

About half of the Pentagon's budget is just

helping Chevron and Shell and Exxon get their
for-profit product here

What if they had to pay for that service -- how
how much would gas cost then?

Plus, they also get all kinds of tax breaks
and other kinds of loopholes

They are a system based on a grow or die ethic, but rather than respond to the climate crisis

by scaling back

they're doubling down through fracking, through
tar sands oil

through coal exports, mountain top removal.
They have become more brazen.

It's a rogue industry, it's an industry if whose business
plan is followed to the letter will wreck the planet

Once you know that, then you know that these are now illegitimate business plans

We have to figure out how to disassociate ourselves with them

And that is beginning to happen all over the world

On the Great Lawn of Central Park

I was up on a stage
probably 70 feet in the air looking out

at that sea of people stretching out farther than the eye could see

[Denis Hayes - Founder, Earth Day Network]
The crowd estimates were larger than a million people

April 22 1970:
the grassroots mobilization which we

recalled as the first Earth Day, 20 million
Americans called away from their jobs and

their classes into the streets in their communities

When Nixon was looking at television at these huge crowds in city after city, across the country

he apparently muttered to Ehrlichman,
"A lot of those people have got to be Republican"

And Republicans needed him to do something
for them on this issue, he felt

And it was Nixon, arguably one of the most anti-environmental presidents in American history

who felt compelled to sign the Clean Air Act

[Denis Hayes - Chairman, Earth Day April 22]
I think the things we've been doing to date

are a reason to give us a little bit of hope
we've seen a degree of responsiveness on the

part of the House of Representatives and on
the part of the US Senate

In a matter of three years, we passed the Clean
Air Act, the Clean Water Act

the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act

the National Environmental Policy Act, the Environmental Education Act, Superfund

I'd go so far as to say that with the
possible exception of the New Deal it was

the most fundamental restructuring

of the ground rules of the American economic system

the nation has experienced

50 DAYS UNTIL THE MARCH

We are 50 days away from the largest climate
march in history. Are you all ready?

[People's Climate March Press Conference - Times Square, NYC]

This is not just about the environment.
It's about the community

[Eddie Bautista - Executive Director, NYC - EJA]
It's about public health, it's about jobs, it's about justice

[LaTonya Crisp-Sauray - TWU Local 100 Recording Secretary]

It was labor that got this city up and moving, and it will be labor that continues to move this city

We are the community. Are we not the community?

Our people, our people who have
been at the front line, not being able to breathe

[Elizabeth Yeampierre - Executive Director, Uprose]
suffering from asthma, upper respiratory

pulmonary diseases, cancer clusters, because of environmental racism

Climate change exacerbates every
kind of social injustice

[Rev. Fletcher Harper - Executive Director, Greenfaith]
that faith communities have fought against

for thousands of years

And we will not stop marching and praying and acting until we have a strong climate treaty

We've got a movement, brothers and sisters,
and we've got to stay together

So join us on the 21st to march and send
that signal to the United Nations

[Crowd chants, "The people united will never be defeated"]

[Bill McKibben - Author, "Eaarth"]
It's only by accident that we even think

of climate change as an environmental issue

You could just as easily think about it as another example of what happens in an unequal society

The people who have contributed the least to climate change, and who have benefited the least

from the use of fossil fuel, are the
first people to feel the effects

People in the poorest parts
of the world suffer enormously already

and will suffer enormously more
as the century wears on

Climate disruption is a social justice issue

[Van Jones - Co-Founder, Rebuild the Dream]
Who gets hit first and worst every time

there's one of these weather disasters?

It's low-income people, people of color,
people who can't get out of harm's way

And people who can't bounce back easily because they
don't have the money, or the social standing

or the political connections

Our communities are disproportionately impacted

[Jeanette "Jet" E. Toomer - Community Organizer, NYC-EJA]

We're all seeing that it's the indigenous
people, the people of color

the low-income people who have historically
suffered the burden

of so many other politically driven crises

There are so many countries that have been

systematically plundered over hundreds of years

And this is often described as an ecological debt, climate debt

[Naomi Klein - Author, "This Changes Everything"]
The whole idea that there are disposable places

was always a racist idea

The idea of sacrifice zones: just treating people and places like garbage

The place where it's hardest for it to sink in is in the suburban United States

We're insulated against the natural world -- that's what the suburbs really are

a way to make you not notice
the natural world very much

And we're insulated in those places by wealth

At least we think we are

Scientists are screaming from the
rooftops about us avoiding going over

a two degree rise in the temperature of the planet

Why are they so worried about that?

[Ricken Patel - Founder & Executive Director, Avaaz]
If we go over that amount of warming

there are feedback loops in our ecosystems

-- tipping points that climate change
could spin out of control

And it happens like that

There are switches that can be tripped
where suddenly you are in brand new territory

and you don't even begin to know what to
do about it

This is not a linear kind of problem that
we're dealing with

This is very much an exponential kind of problem

Right now we're on the edge of three
major tipping points

The first one is the Arctic ice cap. That ice cap is like a mirror that reflects the sun's light

off the Earth and keeps it from warming us up

But as it melts, you get a smaller mirror

which means a warmer Earth, which means more melting, which means more climate change

Another example is arctic methane -- we've
got a gigantic amount of methane gas

frozen into the tundra, and it is 50
times as toxic as CO₂ is. It's CO₂ on steroids.

As it warms, and that methane gets
released, it then causes global warming to

get worse, which means it warms more, which
means more methane released

which means worse warming, and that
process spins out of control

Another example of a tipping point is ocean
acidification. As you get more CO₂ in the atmosphere

a lot of it is actually going into our oceans

And a lot of stuff, like plankton, can't live
in that kind of acidified water

And plankton is the basis of the food chain -- if the plankton die, we lose the whole ocean ecosystem

These kinds of feedback loops and tipping
points are what keep me up at night --

that we will hit one before we're able to turn
things around

Even if we went "cold turkey" today, because of the time lags in our climate system

we've already signed up for things that we can't see yet

We live in a razor-thin livable universe

Just a few kilometres below
my feet, it's too hot to live

Just a few kilometres above my head, the air is too thin to breathe

It's not about a few more droughts and a few more storms

It's about a catastrophic shift in this fragile balance of our biosphere

that threatens everything we love

37 DAYS UNTIL THE MARCH

What we all need to be focused on is
turnout, turnout, turnout

Youth, is there somebody that wants to do
an update from youth. Armando?

[Armando Chapelliquen - Project Coordinator, NYPIRG]
So just a quick list of things I wanted to go over

Obviously a lot of folks who are working on the youth stuff are working at

the Climate Justice Youth Leadership Summit

There's a lot of organizing going on right
now there for the People's Climate March

So a lot of people who may not have been plugged
in already

are getting informed about it, and
the people who are already informed about it

are getting even more people fired up about it

[Climate Justice Youth Summit - New York City]

There's a lot of things that we pay attention
to, that we focus on, that are fun -- but

they are short-lived, and they are not for
the betterment of us

We have to re-prioritize what's important to us

Our environment isn't
just ice caps melting in Antarctica

We're the ones who face the problems day-to-day --

if you're breathing in smog
or your little brother has asthma

that's environmental injustice, and those are things
that we have the power to push back on

Imagine being the person who changes the face of climate change

so that we don't have to deal with
those impacts every day

[Joaquin Brito Jr. - Climate Justice Organizer, Uprose]

So on September 21st, we're going to march for Climate Justice -- so who's with us? Come on let's hear it!

OK, alright, yes -- we pull the fossil
fuels out of the ground, we put them in the

incinerator, we put the carbon in the sky,
it warms the Earth, lots of bad stuff is going

to happen -- heat waves, extreme weather,
floods. OK, sure. But I mean, really, is that

the thing I care about most. There's all these
other issues in my life that are more pressing

For someone who is engaged in a struggle for
higher minimum wage

or worries about health care,
it's understandable that these molecules

floating around the air seem invisible
and abstract

Humans have this thing that we call a finite
pool of worry. You've got your mortgage you've

got to pay you've got your kids you've got
to take care of -- and they tend to be more immediate

We respond to things that feel
incredibly urgent, like a gun to the head,

a stampede a wild elephants. Climate change
is a completely

different kind of risk. It plays out
over these very long time scales, and it's

really hard to perceive it as a very urgent threat

The other thing that happens is that there's something
called a "single action bias"

We have this tendency to see a threat, and we try
to fix it with one thing

it's like the silver bullet solution. When we look at climate change we become overwhelmed by it

because there's so many different ways that we're
going to need to fix it

25 years we've been talking about climate change. The
level of scientific reports becomes higher and higher

[George Marshall - Author, "Don't Even Think About it"]
Why has that still not compelled

the majority of people to action?

Cognitive psychologists have been mapping
the processing systems within our brains

and they have found that there are two parallel
and deeply interlocked processing systems

The rational side, the analytic side
which deals with information, facts, data

And we have another side which is a much more
intuitive and emotionally driven side

It is that emotional system that moves us into action

The challenge for climate change is how do
we get something that's so based in the science

to cross over to the side that makes us feel
something

People are reluctant to stand up and take action if they don't see many other people around and taking action

And that is why it is absolutely critical
that there are people who seem to be doing something

They are creating the breakage

Climate changes is strangely,
maybe uniquely, problematic

because not only are we all bystanders, we are also perpetrators actively contributing to the thing

If we recognize a problem, we become morally compelled to take action on it

There is a fundamental tipping point at which
that has to happen

25 DAYS UNTIL THE MARCH

[People's Climate Tour - Boston, MA]

Change doesn't happen because people
decide to stay home and click "like" on Facebook

[Vanessa Rule - Co-Director, Mothers Out Front]
Change happens because people like you and I

decide to get involved

We didn't want to leave it to world leaders -- their track record is not very good in dealing with this question

[Joe Uehlein - Founder, Labor Network for Sustainability]

I am a trade unionist and I am an environmentalist
and I see no conflict whatsoever in those two things

It's in our core self-interest as a
trade union movement to help build

the path to a sustainable future and get on
the right side of the climate change issue

sooner rather than later

Normally it takes a long time to switch energy sources --

50 or 60 years to go from wood to coal, coal to oil and gas

We lack 50 or 60 years

The reason we want to get off of fossil
fuels now is because we have to

to protect our way of life

We need vision for what the
post-carbon economy looks like

that is inspiring enough and delivers enough

in terms of jobs, in terms of new opportunities

in terms of better health

It has to be exciting

There are many more jobs available to people
who are going to be building wind turbines

retrofitting houses so they waste less energy

Solar panels have to be installed by a person
-- that person has to go to your home

There's no way to outsource putting
that solar panel onto a roof

A 100 percent renewable economy is within our grasp --

it is economically and technologically possible

It's not something that we need to keep researching because it's always off in the distance

No, it's here. It's a question
of political will

If you look at the renewable revolution that's
happened in Germany, it wasn't about leaving

the renewable sector to the market, it was
about creating different incentives --

and there was an explosion of
innovation and creativity

Germany is now the number one solar
country in the world, even though they had

the same amount of solar incidence as Alaska

Can we do it? Can we take the power
that has been highly centralized

and highly focused and controlled by very few hands

and it is not an accident that very few hands controlling power in the sense of electricity

leads to very few hands controlling power in the sense of political power

We are going to try a global experiment
that is going to be the most difficult

thing humans have ever done
which is to rip those two apart

which means we are democratizing
power

in both senses of the word

The real question is, are we gonna scrape the
bottom up the barrel for the last polycarbons

on Earth, to burn them too. Or can we actually
show some restraint

-- which we ask our children to do ("don't eat the last 17 marshmallows")

could you just show some restraint and choose a wiser course?

A Canadian company called TransCanada
wants to build the Keystone XL pipeline

The $13 billion dollar system would carry crude
oil

from the so-called tar sands region in Alberta to Houston, Texas for refining

The Keystone XL pipeline has become a huge
focus of controversy

Tar sands oil is particularly dirty, it's particularly carbon-intensive

An estimated 2,000 environmental activists
from across the continent plan to gather in

Washington, D.C. to launch a two-week protest

It has become a symbol to both sides in
this debate where the people who want further

development of fossil fuels see getting Keystone
through as core to their strategy

And on the other side, the climate activists see
it as a symbolic fight that they have to win

I'm here as a Nebraska citizen and landowner

I'm on the advisory board of the Center for Health and the Global Environment

I'm an Evangelical Christian

I'm a proud member of the Transport Workers Union of America

You know what's so fascinating about this
whole Keystone thing is that that was supposed

to be a wedge and instead
it's been turned upside down

Now it's actually a base that is lining up

constituency after constituency

Today we act. Today we send a message to them,
and everybody else

We are taking back our futures!

Something extraordinary and unexpected has
backfired out of the ambition of the fossil fuel companies

They've built a movement by mistake

If you are going to be risking arrest, you're
going to be lining up over here

One of the tools that came into play was

peaceful civil disobedience to show the moral
urgency of these problems

that this was the crisis of our time

I saw a story in one of the trade publications of the oil industry not long ago

And they said, "We're never going
to get to build another pipeline in peace again"

And I hope they're right

As scientists, we study this out of this fascination,
and kind of awe -- this whole system that

we call "home"

We are on this planet that
is so perfectly built to sustain life

We got so lucky. And then you begin to think

what do you do with this knowledge -- this unbearable,
incredibly depressing knowledge that the decision

to burn fossil fuels was a decision that had
tremendous downside risks

that we didn't realize immediately

When I read a climate science article that talks about
mid-century projections, what I read is what

is going to happen when my kid is 40 -- that's what
I see on the page and for me it is absolutely

my responsibility then to do whatever it takes
to protect my child

Alice Walker says that resistance is the secret
of joy -- and I don't know if it's the secret

of joy, but I know it is definitely the secret
of staving off depression

The reality we're facing is very grave, so
how do you not get depressed about it

Well one way you don't get depressed is by work

Things change for lots of different reasons

There's all kinds of dynamics -- but one central element
is people being in the streets

All of us must stand up together and say, "No more!"

We live in a culture
that doesn't tell us our own history

that doesn't tell us the history of social movement wins

and the times in our past when masses of people
have taken the wheel of history and turned it

It was only one percent of Americans
that ever took part in the civil rights demonstration

but they were able to change our society
enough to stand up to those powers that be

I think that this march will go down as one
of the greatest, if not the greatest

demonstrations for freedom and human dignity ever held in the United States

Martin Luther King always said that the victories
that had been won so far

were the ones that were cheapest to the status quo. Giving legal rights and giving voting rights

doesn't cost the system nearly as much as providing
good jobs and infrastructure and good schools

We as a people will get to the promised land

Big victories have been won before,
but nothing on the scale

of the economic challenge that really
responding to the climate crisis represents

We have a responsibility to rise to our historical moment

We are joining around the world to say the time has come

If we're going to have a movement worthy of
the name, solidarity among all these different

causes needs to be the foremost principle

It's this broad and powerful spectrum of allies
that has the political weight

to move the dialogue on this

There's a tipping point coming, where the
online movements are going to move offline

If we can push this to where there's a social
tipping point, we really can move forward on this issue

We will not be stopped

Take action right now

This is the issue that I will vote on, this is the issue I will bid money on

This is the issue I will scream at the top of
my lungs into a bullhorn over

That is what moves politics

14 DAYS UNTIL THE MARCH

The People's Climate March is our chance to
show the immense power of people in solidarity

Heads of state are gathering. They need us
to say, "We demand action"

This is the right thing, at the right time,
in the right place

The whole world will be watching

Nothing moves public opinion, more than seeing
large numbers of people gathered

A march is not an end in itself. It is a tool.
In my heart of hearts I know that this

People's Climate March in September will serve to deepen this movement

I will be there in New York, September 21st

There is no replacement, even in the digital
age, for human bodies, next to each other,

standing as one, hearts beating as one, voices raised as one, making a political demand

If you don't fight for what you want, you
deserve what you get

September 21st, in some ways, is the beginning

There are teams around the world, organizing
marches in Rio, in Delhi, in Berlin, in Paris,

in London

People around the world will get together
in the largest climate change mobilization in history

Are you ready to march? Are you ready to march?

HERE IS WHAT YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW

JOIN THE MARCH
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You can't undo the day after something like
that happens

There is a line that divides good from evil,
and it runs down the middle

of every single person

When we prevail, it won't just be because
we defeated the worst instincts in other people

It will be because we overcame the worst instincts
and the worst fears, even within ourselves