How to Let Go of the World: and Love All the Things Climate Can't Change (2016) - full transcript

("Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" playing)

? Desmond has a barrow

in the marketplace ?

? Molly is the singer

in a band ?

? Desmond says to Molly,

"Girl, I like your face" ?

? And Molly says this

as she takes him by the hand ?

? "Ob-la-di, ob-la-da,

life goes on, bra ?

? La-la,

how the life goes on" ?

? "Ob-la-di, ob-la-da,

life goes on, bra ?

? La-la,

how the life goes on" ?

? Desmond takes a trolley

to the jeweler's store ?

? Buys a 20-carat

golden ring... ?

Josh Fox:

I bet you're wondering

why I'm dancing my ass off

right here,

at the top of this movie.

Let me tell you

a little story

going back a few years.

I live along the banks

of a stream

that's part of

the Delaware River watershed,

up there near the border

of Pennsylvania and New York.

So in 2008,

the oil-and-gas industry

came to our little corner

of the world.

They wanted

our little river basin.

It seems there was oil

and gas under it.

They proposed to drill

and frack

tens of thousands

of oil-and-gas wells

all over the place.

You know that story--

the one where

the fossil-fuel industry

comes to town

and basically destroys

everything in its path.

It's happening

all over the world,

everywhere you look.

A new community

is fighting off

mountaintop removal

or long-wall mining,

or open-pit mining for coal,

or tar-sands extraction

for oil,

or offshore drilling,

and, of course, fracking.

Seems like almost

every corner of the globe

is under siege

by new and more

and more extreme forms

of energy extraction.

And all of this at a time

when we can get off

fossil fuels all together.

And so

in our little community,

people fought back, saying,

"There's a better way."

Rallies, protests,

the threat

of civil disobedience

en masse.

And on one bright

and beautiful day

in November of 2011,

the River Basin Commission

took the Delaware River

off the table.

No fracking. No drilling.

The people won.

And in this little corner

of the world,

for now at least,

that is cause for dancing.

? Yeah, "Ob-la-di, ob-la-da,

life goes on, bra ?

? La-la

how the life goes on"... ?

When I woke up

the next morning,

sore and hungover,

it was as if

I was breathing new air.

For the first time in years,

these woods

weren't being threatened.

If you really allow yourself

to let go in nature,

something inside of you

tries to fight it

for a while.

But slowly and surely,

it takes you over.

You lose track of time,

of days.

Something in you

finds a totally

different rhythm.

I hadn't felt it

in such a long time.

It's there waiting for you.

Something

that agrees with you inside.

You sit down

and find a place

to contemplate.

Just to think.

All I wanted

was just to stay here,

to stay at home...

to be left alone,

just to listen...

and be thankful.

? ?

Then all of a sudden,

I saw something that broke

my meditative trance--

my tree was dying.

When I was five years old,

walking along the dirt road

with my father,

I saw

a little hemlock sapling

about my size.

It was growing way too close

to the road.

I said,

"Dad, I think that tree

is gonna get hit by a car.

We should move it.

It's not gonna

make it there."

So we dug up the sapling

and moved it to

the front yard.

35 years later,

it's 40 feet tall.

It's more than outgrown me.

And what I noticed that day--

it was dying.

Not of natural causes.

Half of the tree was gone,

being eaten by a parasite

called the wooly adelgid,

which I learned

had been advancing

up the coast of the US,

eating our iconic

hemlock forests

from Virginia,

advancing

through Pennsylvania

and New York,

all the way up to Maine.

Climate change

is allowing the wooly adelgid

to advance north.

Not enough frost,

not enough cold days.

It just

doesn't get cold enough

to kill off the bugs anymore.

Hemlocks are the forest.

They're a keystone species,

meaning

the rest of the forest

depends on them.

When I saw the tree,

thoughts came rushing in.

It dawned on me

that even though

we could beat

the fossil-fuel industry

in our own backyard,

we might lose everything

we love to climate change.

Just a few months later,

New York City

was about to get

the same wake-up call.

(singers vocalizing)

? If I represent

the one that did this to you ?

? Then cut away the parts ?

? That represent the thing

that scarred you ?

? I said ?

? Get up, stand up,

get up, stand up, get on it ?

? Yes, I am ?

? No longer who you

thought this one would be ?

? We end up here

on the mountain ?

? That I climb

to lose you ?

? I said, I said

give me the business ?

? That business

could work through ?

? I said ?

? Ask me, but all

my wisdom departed ?

? Tell me,

but all my wisdom departed ?

? But oh, please,

at least answer me this ?

? Answer me, answer me,

what's the business, yeah? ?

? Don't take my life away,

don't take my life away. ?

Fox:

New York City was not built

to withstand a storm surge

like the one resulting

from Sandy.

The storm surge overwhelmed

the coastal areas,

depositing yachts

in the middle of streets,

flooding houses.

In Brooklyn's Sheepshead Bay,

the Atlantic Ocean

had swamped everyone's

first floor.

With keys

to seven or eight houses

along his block,

the flatlands post commander

for the American Legion,

Mike Rodriguez,

was coordinating demolition

and rebuilding.

Fox:

So this was seven feet

of water?

On so many homes,

you can see the water lines,

where the water went up.

Right.

Okay?

Was this an official

evacuation area or not?

Ahh, truthfully no.

So people stayed here

and rode it out?

People just couldn't

get away quick enough,

'cause it came in so quickly.

Fox:

Hurricane Sandy

was the largest storm

ever to hit the East Coast

of the United States.

It hit

at high tide at midnight--

dark, cold, furious and wet.

And when it blew

the transformer

in lower Manhattan,

hundreds of thousands

lost power.

Man on radio:

I can't stop the water.

Oh my God,

I can't believe this.

I'm going down--

Man #2: I don't want to die.

I can't get up.

I can't close the door!

Fox:

Breezy Point,

a neighborhood of firemen

and first responders,

burned to the ground

when Sandy

ruptured gas lines.

The firemen in that community

who had rushed out

to help the rest of New York

couldn't do anything

to stop it.

Fox:

It smells pretty bad, huh?

What is that sewage?

Well, it's sewage.

In the beginning,

you could hear all

the gurgling

coming up from the bowls

and sinks and everything.

So water

was actually coming up

through the toilets?

It was comin' up

through the toilets.

It's amazing

to see sand,

like on top

of the toilet seat.

Yeah.

Fox: Mike Rodriguez

was one of tens of thousands

of people all across the coast

sorting through

everything they had

for the few odd possessions

that had survived

the floodwaters.

This is the, uh,

trap door to the basement.

So the water actually-- whoa!

Pushed it right up.

What's the refrigerator

doing there?

Yeah. I haven't moved

the refrigerator yet

because I'm still waiting

for the people to come

and see it,

because I got a warranty

still on it.

(laughing)

So it's warranted

for getting thrown

across the room like that?

Today, it's a year old.

That's what

the candles are for--

its birthday.

Fox:

One of the only things

in Mike's flooded house

that somehow managed

to escape unscathed

was his Santa Claus costume.

If you look over here

where the water line is,

and then you look

at the buttons on

the Santa suit...

It's dry.

I mean, there's the hat,

the uh--

There's the wig

and everything.

The wig and everything.

It looks totally--

It look like

it wasn't even touched.

I just bought that

because I needed

a new Santa suit

to play Santa Claus.

I do it every year

at, uh, Saint Finbar's, okay?

For the kids with autism.

So, uh, I said it's one

of those little miracles.

Fox:

Just after

I left Mike's house,

I learned

that on their block,

water had rushed in so fast

that it drowned a woman

in her living room.

Justin Wedes:

Oh, the man that I was trying

to have you film right there,

John-- camera here--

that his wife drowned

in that building,

in that house.

Just now?

During the storm.

His wife drowned

during the storm?

Fox:

As a journalist,

you always

have that decision to make.

That day I just

didn't have the heart

to walk up to a man

grieving over

his drowned wife and say,

"Can I get your story

on camera?"

But the image

stuck in my mind--

the freezing

near-November waters

of the Atlantic Ocean

rushing in,

overtaking your front door,

your windows,

your furniture

and finally you.

Fox:

So this is not

a normal landfill?

Wedes:

No, this is a parking lot.

This a beach.

And this is the parking lot

for the beach.

Fox:

This is what the remains

of a pocket of civilization

looks like.

Mattresses, sides of houses,

each small pile

representing a person

or a family.

A tiny sliver

of the American dream,

left on the scrap heap

in huge disarrayed heaps,

with every second

more and more piled on.

And down at the end

of the ruined beach house,

a tangle of lifeguard chairs

that couldn't save a beach

from drowning.

Everyone in this neighborhood

told me

I had to check in

at the Action Center,

a place that existed

to address the other disaster

that was happening

in New York City--

economic inequality

and poverty.

Even a month after the storm,

lines for aid

at the Action Center

went around the block.

And the calm at the center

of both of these storms

was Mrs. Aria Doe.

We knew if we weren't here,

nobody else was coming.

And in this community,

65% live 200% below

poverty levels.

So you have

the inherent disease,

you have the inherent drugs,

you have the inherent crime

that comes with poverty

in living in

a third-world situation

in an affluent country.

So we knew nobody was coming.

It's typical.

We have clothing,

warm blankets.

Over here, we have food packs.

We must have given out 800

or 900 today, I would assume.

The response

has been so overwhelming.

There were Brooklyn moms

who heard about the babies

in wet diapers,

two weeks later in wet beds.

Frontline soldiers

that are standing in the gaps

between the have

and have-nots,

between the resource

and services,

and linking them up.

We live in the United States

and our citizens

should not be lacking

like this.

Okay, they supplied us

with some water or food

or clothing.

But right now,

besides that, we need love,

we need counseling,

we need help unconditional.

And it's sad that

we have to meet like this.

Fox:

I mean, you can see the sand

from the beach right here.

Jackson:

Right, look at the sand

right there.

But this now

beach-front property

right here.

Right, exactly! Nice!

There you go,

you could charge more.

(laughs)

And this right here,

what you lookin' at,

this is part of the sand dune

that was sittin'

on the beach for the birds,

but now it's in the park.

Look what Sandy did. Yeah.

It just opened up--

Fox:

Sandy had rearranged

the elements of a boardwalk

into a cubist abstraction

of what a boardwalk would be.

Picasso would have been proud.

Fox:

So if you had a message

to take to people from here,

what would it be?

An old saying like Spike Lee--

"Wake up."

Fox:

That was it for me.

That was the moment

I realized I couldn't

go back home

to escape into the woods.

(vocalizing)

? ?

? I don't know ?

? What to say ?

? I feel lost and confused ?

? I want someone to love ?

? But everyone's being used ?

? Man, I feel like a mess ?

? Like I always feel down ?

? Just leave me alone ?

? But I need someone around ?

? I'm on my last legs ?

? I need some sign of hope ?

? Is it all just a waste? ?

? Is my life just a joke? ?

? When time

and space collide ?

? I hope I'm by your side ?

? When time

and space collide ?

? I hope I'm by your side ?

(vocalizing)

You know, I met

a very interesting guy.

His name was Bill.

He said we need

to stop callin' it Sandy.

Fox:

Right.

We need to call it Exxon

and all the other

gas companies

that's causing this ruckus

right here.

Fox:

Yeah, I know that guy Bill.

I got to thinking

how unfair it is

to sort of name these things

after harmless girls.

You know, every girl

named Sandy in the New York

metropolitan area

is gonna spend

the next 10 years

hearing bad jokes.

Time to name them

for the people

who are causing them.

We should go

right through the alphabet

finding every oil

and coal and gas company

'cause it's these guy's carbon

pouring into the atmosphere

that are super-charging

these hurricanes.

Sandy was the lowest

barometric pressure

ever recorded

north of Cape Hatteras.

Its winds stretched

further than any storm

we've ever measured.

We should call it what it is--

Hurricane Exxon.

And that way,

the stories in the paper

and on the news

would sound just right--

"Exxon is coming ashore

along the Jersey coast,

"destroying houses

left and right.

Exxon has smashed

into lower Manhattan,

flooding the subway system."

That's how

we should be thinking

about these things.

Fox:

I caught up with Bill

at the most well-lit

food court in the capital.

Here's how to understand

the basics--

When you burn

coal and gas and oil,

you put carbon dioxide

into the atmosphere

and its molecular structure

traps heat

that would otherwise

radiate back out to space.

We've raised the temperature

of the earth one degree so far.

That doesn't sound

like so much.

20 years ago we didn't think

it would be enough

to really alter things,

but we underestimated

how finely balanced

the planet's physical systems

were.

One degree has been plenty

to get everything frozen

on earth to start melting.

It's been enough

to completely alter the way

that water moves

around this planet.

The atmosphere

is now about 4% wetter

than it was 30,

40 years ago.

That is an enormous change

in a basic physical parameter

of the planet.

Once you've evaporated

all that water

up into the atmosphere,

it's gonna come down.

And now it comes down

in wet areas

in deluge and downpour

and flood.

That's probably

the single biggest way

you can tell

that we've left behind

the Holocene--

this 10,000-year period

of benign climatic stability

that underwrote the rise

of human civilization.

And now we're, you know,

running into something else.

This is a different planet.

We've made it

a different planet.

And we're doing it

really fast

and it's really dangerous.

It's terrible--

(man talking)

McKibben:

Why not? Why not?

Why not?

Because it looks

like it's open,

because all the lights

are on.

McKibben:

We just walked right down

without any--

So where would you

like us to go?

No, no, but, like,

down out of the food court--

It's a free country,

except in the food court

in the Ronald Reagan building.

McKibben:

I spent a lot of time

around the world,

including in places

like the Antarctic, in Tibet,

on the great lava fields

of Iceland--

in the places that remind you

that we actually live

on a planet.

I guess

I have a stronger sense

than I used to

of the fragility

of the whole operation.

Fox:

At the top of the world,

if you get on the right road,

it'll dead end

straight into a glacier.

Huge amounts of water

are stored in glaciers.

And the warming of the earth

is fundamentally changing

the way water moves

and behaves

around the planet.

These tiny little rivulets,

tiny little streams--

the ice melting,

running through cracks,

making their way down

to the edge of the glacier.

I guess every tidal wave

starts with one drop.

You can almost feel

a tide building.

Because of weather patterns

and patterns of pollution,

the poles

are actually warming faster.

And although the global

average temperature

has been raised

by one degree Celsius,

Alaska's temperature

has increased

by more than three degrees

in the last half century.

Glaciers are melting

at staggering rates,

some of them losing

up to one kilometer

of thickness.

Iceland, Greenland,

Antarctica, Alaska--

the poles of the earth

warming faster

than they have

in 10,000 years.

The Arctic ice cap

has shrunk

to the lowest level

ever recorded.

And scientists

monitoring the meltdown

say that acceleration

could be catastrophic

in terms of sea-level rise.

And if it doesn't stop,

the potential

to wreak havoc across

the planet starts here,

at the top,

where the ice is.

You wonder--

How fast is this happening?

How much time

do we have left?

In Copenhagen, in 2009,

the world was

supposed to come together

and solve the problem

at the international climate

conference called COP--

the Conference

of the Parties.

But that's not what happened.

Talks devolved,

nations fought.

No one could decide

what to do.

The one thing

that they did decide

was that we were going

to try as a world

to keep climate change

to two degree Celsius.

But there was

no binding agreement

about curtailing emissions.

Then I learned

something startling.

The carbon dioxide

that's in the atmosphere now

will continue

to warm the earth

for the next several decades,

no matter what we do.

We've already

warmed the climate

by about a degree Celsius.

We probably have

another half a degree Celsius

in the pipeline already.

We've put enough heat

into the oceans.

We've put enough

greenhouse gases

into the atmosphere.

And if you add that up,

that's half a degree

that's committed,

plus one degree that's

already happened.

That's 1.5 degrees Celsius

out of two degrees.

Fox:

At two degrees warming,

sea level will rise

between five and nine meters.

Most of

the world's populations,

most of the world's cities,

are on coastlines.

Here's what New York City

looks like

at seven meters

of global sea-level rise.

We lose the harbor

in San Francisco

and the Central Valley

becomes an inland sea.

Here's Boston...

Philadelphia....

Washington D.C..

Here's Florida,

Shanghai.

The list goes on and on.

An earth that warms

by two degrees

would force everyone

who lives on coastlines

to move.

Where are all those people

going to go?

As environmentalists,

we've been talking

for decades now

about saving the planet.

But as I think about it,

the planet's probably

gonna be around for some time.

What-- what's at stake now

is-- is civilization itself.

I don't think civilization

can survive

the melting

of the Greenland ice sheet

and the associated rise

in sea level.

I mean, we'd be looking

at hundred of millions

of rising-sea refugees.

The East Coast

of the United States

would be very vulnerable

to even a three-foot rise

sea level.

But it's not just

the initial rise itself,

but the realization

that if that happens,

that's only the beginning.

Greenland and

west Antarctica together,

it's about 39 feet.

So we'd have a world

where the land base

would be shrinking

and the population

presumably still growing,

and enormous stresses

on systems

as millions

of rising-sea refugees

cross national boundaries--

creates unimaginable

stresses.

The big polluters

are already putting

your bodies on the line.

You have a bunch

of monied interests

who have a big monetary stake

in the status quo.

They don't care

that the status quo

is an airplane

pointed straight down

and accelerating.

It's their airplane.

And they don't want anybody

to bail out of it.

The big polluters

who are selling you

carbon-based fuel

only want one thing--

everything.

Fox:

I also learned that two degrees

is not just a limit,

it's an average.

It's an average, right?

But it combines

the temperature data

we have from thousands

of stations for a year.

Desmond Tutu said for Africa,

a two degree target

means three degrees warming,

3.5, four degrees warming.

And he says,

"If you agree to two degrees,

"you agree

to cooking our continent."

In daily temperatures

of 45, 48 degrees Celsius,

agricultural life

in a rural community

would cease.

My worst fear

is that we've seen

the veritable tip

of the iceberg--

the unprecedented drought

we're seeing in California

is likely symptomatic

of far worse drought

over an exceedingly

larger part of the world.

We are seeing

more intense hurricanes

driven by warmer

ocean temperatures.

Superstorm Sandy

is a harbinger of

what's to come.

Fox:

We'd be looking at

increased extreme weather,

like the swarms of tornadoes

that hit the Midwest in 2011,

or the Polar Vortex,

the circle of Arctic air

that spun out of control

in 2014 and 2015,

creating record snowfalls

in Boston and New York.

And these were not

the only effects

that were happening

right now.

Coral reefs experienced

the worst bleaching incident

in history--

one step

on the way to death.

The cause?

A warming ocean.

We're literally seeing

the loss of habitats,

the migration of habitats

at a rate

that these species

just can't keep up with.

Species are moving

towards the poles,

or if they live

on mountain sides,

they're moving

up the mountains

to try and stay

in the envelopes

of their thermal tolerance.

If you look

at endangerment rates--

how many mammals

are considered endangered,

it's about a quarter.

And if you look at rate

in which--

Fox:

A quarter of all mammals

are considered endangered

right now?

Yes. Yes.

Fox:

And that Australia

has invented new colors

for their weather map

because it had never

been that hot before.

Lots of projections

on crops.

We can only imagine

food insecurity

skyrocketing.

Fox:

The failure

of the Russian grain harvest,

or the failure of the Texas

winter wheat harvest,

or the worst flooding

in history in Pakistan,

Australia, Texas,

Vermont, Turkey,

or the worst droughts

in history

in the Middle East.

Syria experienced

its worst drought ever--

five years of no rain.

And when farmers protested

the uneven distribution

of aid,

the authoritarian

Assad regime put many

of them in prison,

setting off

the Syrian civil war--

the world's first

climate change civil war.

And now Syrians

and Mid-East refugees

swarming across

European boundaries.

Mann:

Four star generals

are telling us

that climate change

is our greatest potential

national security threat.

Fox:

And I learned that in 2011,

the US House

of Representatives

voted 240 to 184,

defeating a resolution

that simply said,

"Climate change is occurring,

"is caused largely

by human activities,

and poses significant risks

for public health

and welfare."

That's it--

just an acknowledgment

of the science.

And that

the fossil-fuel giants,

the Koch brothers,

plan to spend nearly

$1 billion

in the 2016

presidential election.

Maybe that's why every

single Republican candidate

denies the fossil-fuel

connection to climate change.

And all of this is happening

in plain sight.

There are thousands

of climate scientists

and climate analysts

and political analysts

who know this beyond

a shadow of a doubt.

But even today,

science and politics

are at odds.

In Paris at COP 21 in 2015,

200 nations came together

and signed an unprecedented

climate deal.

But the emissions targets

set in Paris are nowhere

near enough.

They still set the world on

track to warm by 3.5 degrees,

prompting some scientists

and analysts to say

that Paris

was actually a step backwards

from the two degrees target

set in Copenhagen.

Especially dire considering

that Lester Brown said--

If we want to save

the Greenland ice sheet,

then you're looking

at an 80% cut by 2020.

Fox:

2020, to stave off

the melting

of the Greenland ice sheet.

How are we going

to reduce emissions by 80%

when what's

actually happening

is that we are

increasing emissions

and the fossil-fuel industry

right now is expanding,

with hundreds

of gas-fired power plants

and thousands of miles

of fracked gas pipelines

proposed

and an expansion

of off-shore drilling

in the United States?

Power plants

all over the world

being built every day

that would be

burning fossil fuels

well into the 2050s?

And in fact a 2015 study

from the University of Florida

tells us based on current

CO2 levels in the atmosphere,

we're in for

a five-to-nine meter

sea-level rise

no matter what.

Overwhelmed.

Overwhelmed. Overwhelmed.

And projections indicate...

We don't stop at two degrees.

We sail right past it

on our way to three, four,

five degrees Celsius.

Kolbert:

It is often said

we are running

a global experiment

for which we have no control.

Tschakert:

70,000 people died in Europe

because of the heat wave

under a 0.8 degree warming.

Fox:

And we will hit

two degrees of warming...

Fox:

...by 2036?

Yeah.

I mean, how-- how do we--

Fox:

And that many analysts say

the window

to keeping us at two degrees

in terms

of curtailing emissions

closes in 2017.

Overwhelmed. Overwhelmed.

And it wasn't just

fossil-fuel emissions.

And that's where things

get really tricky...

Fox:

20% to 35% of climate-change

causing emissions

were coming

from the food sector.

Methane's even more potent

a heat absorber than

we thought before.

Fox:

Americans eat nine ounces

of meat per person, per day.

That's unprecedented

in human history.

In other worlds,

a major overhaul

of every human system--

politics, food, energy,

transportation, media,

and all in the next

three to four years.

I don't know about you,

but I'm about ready to watch

a few cat videos right now.

(laughing)

And you have

ocean acidification...

(squealing)

Mann:

The same CO2 we're putting

into the atmosphere

is seeping into the oceans

and acidifying them

and literally dissolving

creatures like shellfish,

that make calcium carbonate

skeletons.

The oceans are now 30%

more acidic than they were

at the start

of the industrial revolution.

If you talk

to marine scientists,

the ramifications

are potentially, you know--

the list is almost endless.

Fox:

At two degrees warming,

30% to 50% percent of all

the species on the planet

would go extinct.

Overwhelmed.

Can't think.

And that right now,

the forecast for the forests

of the American West

and the Grand Tetons,

and Colorado, Wyoming,

New Mexico,

Utah, Montana--

that we were watching

these ecosystems collapse

under the weight

of climate change.

Different invasive

species of beetles

were overwintering.

The American West

didn't have that stretch

of cold weather anymore.

And that the beetles

had chomped 83 million acres.

And it was supplying

an enormous amount of fuel

for the worst wildfires

raging in American history,

that had never been that hot

and had never been that dry.

Sometimes when I talk

about climate change,

when I give a public lecture,

I will show the Four Horsemen

of the Apocalypse

to the audience.

And the reason I do that

is that each of the horsemen

make an appearance

in the impact

of climate change--

War, because of

increased competition

for diminishing resources.

Famine, especially

in tropical regions.

Then you have human health--

increased spread

of tropical diseases

into higher latitude

regions,

the absence

of a killing frost

will allow

many tropical diseases

like malaria,

(voice fading)

dengue fever to...

Fox:

That's when I realized--

I was beginning to think

it was too late.

Too late for the coastlines.

Too late for New York City.

Just too late.

So, yeah.

Whether it's--

Fox:

Which horseman is that?

That's-- that's--

that's uh...

pestilence and-- and death.

Pestilence and death.

Yeah.

? ?

Fox:

I just couldn't

do it anymore.

(woman singing)

? I was born... ?

I just felt like giving up...

? In a cloud... ?

...walking away.

Burying my head in the snow

that was falling

all around me.

It was just too much.

I felt like letting it all

just float away.

? Now I am falling... ?

Quitting this mission,

becoming just another dot

on the landscape.

Insignificant.

Unable to do anything.

Just let it all go.

? You know

you can hear me... ?

All those greenhouse gasses

hanging there,

like a century

of human regret.

? Keep fallin' ?

? I'll find you... ?

I would love for this

to be the part of the movie

where I say,

"Everything's going

to be okay."

I can't do that.

Here's what we know--

the fires, the droughts,

the floods,

the hurricanes,

the tornadoes--

they'll get worse.

We'll lose

our coastal cities,

most of our forests.

We'll lose 30% to 50%

of the species

on the planet.

That's a lot of goodbyes.

How do you

even begin to grieve?

I felt like I'd eaten

from the Tree of Knowledge

and there was no going back.

But somehow your mind

forms a question--

Those are all the things

that climate change

will destroy.

What are the things

that climate change

can't destroy?

What are those parts of us

that are so deep

that no storm

can take them away?

? I am sky... ?

I needed to find the people

who'd found this place--

this place of despair--

and who'd gotten back up.

I needed to find the people

who had no choice.

What are the things

that climate change

can't destroy?

? My broken heart... ?

The moment you surrender,

I really think

that's the moment

when you change.

But that's also the moment

you find

the revolution inside.

? My fleeting soul ?

? Fleeting... ?

Into the jungle.

(laughing)

This is like paddling

through a corn field.

You know,

it's like the Amazon

is made of salad.

It's like a salad.

Look at that tiny little frog.

Oh my God.

And look at that spider.

Oh my God, look at the size

of that tree!

Whoa, look at that tree.

Is that a tree?

What the fuck is that?

?Qu? es esto?

Guide:

Esto es huevo de Churro.

Huevo de Churro.

De Churro.

Eggs of the Churro.

S?, as? pone.

What is a Churro?

(bird call)

Fox:

What is that sound?

The tree is so weird.

It landed right there.

Look at that.

Oh, wow.

That's a huge cricket.

That's the biggest cricket

I've ever seen in my life.

Biting wasps

that don't let go?

Oh. Monkeys? Where?

Jungle rat

on your back. Hmm.

Guide:

Not anymore.

Not anymore? Okay, well,

as long as it's gone now.

Fox:

The Amazon River

is the longest river

in the entire world,

running more

than 4,000 miles.

But the Amazon

is not just a river,

it's a whole ecosystem.

The Amazon Rainforest

regulates the climate.

It's the lungs of the world.

It's the most

biodiverse place

on the face of the earth--

thousands of species of trees

that are not found

anywhere else,

animals, insects,

everything imaginable.

It's raw creation.

We think of the Amazon

as the purest place on earth,

but at the headwaters

in Peru and Ecuador

are hundred of thousands

of acres parceled out

for oil drilling.

With 40-year-old pipelines,

spills happen all the time.

Latin America is also

the most dangerous place

in the world

to be an environmentalist,

with hundreds of human rights

and environmental defenders

being murdered in the last

several years.

In spite of the danger,

these indigenous

environmental monitors

were desperate to get

the word out.

We were investigating

two routine spills,

not major headline events,

things that happen

all the time,

but devastating

none-the-less.

We were told that

it was an 11 kilometer trek

into the jungle

just to find the spill.

We got up

at 4:00 in the morning,

get in canoes,

paddled by hand

across the Mara?on.

(speaking Spanish)

Fox:

He seems to know

every single little stream

and little place to go in.

Like, did he just

discover this as a child?

Does he have a map of it

in his head? How does it work?

(Mozombite speaking)

Fox:

Ander and his team

of indigenous

environmental monitors

work for free.

They were offered to be paid

by the government,

but said no

because they didn't want

the potential influence

and corruption

that could come of it.

They were there

to protect their church,

their cathedral,

their high school,

their hardware store,

their source of food.

Fox:

Going with these guys

in hand-carved canoes

with hand-carved paddles

four or five kilometers

deep into the jungle

just to hit the trailhead,

paddling through this mystery,

silently, quietly--

it's the stuff that happens

to you in your dreams.

Watch the guy at age 65,

after paddling six hours,

pulling his canoe

through the brush

in two feet of water.

These guys do this every day,

spill after spill,

and they never seem

to get tired.

That's how badly

they want the story out.

So we got to the trailhead

after paddling five

or six hours

through this amazing

sunken forest.

After another hour or two

of wading through

this soaked underwater trail,

we finally emerged

at high ground.

We were getting close.

We saw this ominous sign--

a worker's latex uniform

on a cross,

ghostly and ghastly.

And then of course,

as we got nearer

to the spill,

the smell of petroleum.

Fox:

These guys were trying

to pick up

thousands of gallons of oil

with buckets

and rubber gloves,

day after day,

inhaling the volatile

organic compounds,

getting sick.

And then a new group

of workers would come in,

doing this in Wellingtons

and jeans.

That the company

cared that little

about giving its workers

safety equipment--

you can imagine

how little they cared

about destroying

the rainforest itself.

That a 40-year-old pipeline

is going to rupture

and going to spill

is a foregone conclusion.

At that point,

you can't even really

call it a spill.

A spill is something

that happens by accident.

You're reaching for the corn

and you knock your glass

of milk off over the table.

There's a big difference

between accidents

and negligence.

? ?

Besides oil drilling,

another huge threat

to the Amazon

is deforestation.

Companies will come in,

buy parcels of land,

say that they're

going to do something

relatively innocuous,

and then clear-cut

the hell out of the forest.

Again, we had to come in

the back way.

(Ausberto Jaba talking)

Fox:

Under the canopy of trees,

it's cool.

The sun

doesn't break through,

except in small spots.

One more time,

bushwhacking through

the most biodiverse forest

on the face of the earth.

A kind of beauty

that you can't

possibly describe.

Fox:

He said it was

a 15-minute walk

to the edge of the forest.

Of course,

an hour and a half later,

we got there

and sent up the drone.

(beeping)

? ?

It's beginning

to be a habit of mine

to go to some

of the most beautiful places

on earth,

be completely awestruck

in their majesty,

and then arrive

at the location

where they're currently

being destroyed.

Only millennia

after millennia

could develop this type

of richness.

And then you arrive

at what man is doing.

This culture,

which is inevitably

to destroy that incredible,

intoxicating beauty.

Fox:

Deforestation accelerates

climate change

because forests breathe in

and contain the carbon

that we exhale

through our bodies,

through our factories,

through our cars,

and through

our industrial processes.

The technical term for it

is a "carbon sink."

I think about it

as the body of the forest.

Carbon makes up the trees.

It's a synchronicity

and balance

that the planet earth

achieved.

People and animals

exhale carbon dioxide.

Trees inhale carbon dioxide

and exhale oxygen.

When you cut down the forest,

you get less oxygen

and you get

more carbon dioxide.

Protecting the Amazon

from deforestation

and oil drilling

has got to be at the top

of any climate list.

I can't-- I can't believe

how much like home

this feels like.

It's really amazing.

Fox:

The Sarayaku River

reminded me so much

of the Delaware--

an old, winding,

brown river

that really wasn't

all that deep.

And just like

on the Delaware,

the tribes on the Sarayaku

had defeated

the oil-and-gas industry.

A representative

of the next generation

in Sarayaku,

Nina Gualinga, was becoming

internationally recognized

as a voice on climate.

Sometimes I come here

in the night

and I lay down and the sky

is, like, just full,

full, full of stars.

Fox:

This is the town that fought

the oil industry and won.

Yeah, this is it.

I might have been, like,

seven or eight years old,

something like that.

And they came here

to negotiate with our leaders.

But especially the women--

they said no.

When we said no,

they backed up

the oil companies

with military forces.

Fox: Wow.

And I think

when the government sent

the military troops here,

they thought, like,

"Okay, so Sarayaku--

"the middle of nowhere.

Nobody knows who they are.

"They're just, like,

around 1,000 people

and nobody will care."

But, I mean,

we were smarter than that.

My uncle

had his video camera

and he taped

what was going on

and suddenly everybody knew

about what was going on here.

(woman shouting)

Fox:

Can you imagine running up

to a military helicopter

and confronting them,

and saying,

"What are you doing here?

We don't want you here"?

But that was the strength

of the movement in Sarayaku.

Fox:

Is that an umbrella?

That's for your camera.

(laughing) Great!

Here you go.

Fox:

Sarayaku is hundreds

of miles into the jungle

and they have

a documentary edit bay

and internet hookup

run by solar panels.

Impressive.

Fox:

They had the basic belief

that everything alive

has a spirit--

that everything

from the yucca plant

to the jaguars

to the parrots to the trees

to the parasites--

everything was to be

respected.

Everything

was to be honored.

(Eriberto talking)

Fox:

The tribes in Sarayaku

had actually

created a new section

of international law--

an important legal precedent

for indigenous people

everywhere.

There's a bold tactic,

a tradition really,

that people have used

in desperate times

to make a difference.

And although

he didn't plan on it,

Tim DeChristopher in Utah

felt he had no choice.

Reporter:

The Bush administration's

Bureau of Land Management

rushed to do one last favor

for their friends

in the oil-and-gas industry.

And they held an auction

to sell oil-and-gas

drilling rights

on thousands of acres

of federal land.

Now sites were located

in fragile ecosystems

near breathtaking scenery,

like a parcel of land

near Arches and Canyonlands

National Parks in Utah.

Many environmental groups

launched campaigns

to oppose the sale

of the land.

27-year-old Tim DeChristopher

posed as a potential bidder

and bid hundreds

of thousands of dollars

on parcels of the land,

driving up prices,

and winning some 22,000 acres

to block

the sale by disrupting

the auction itself.

Fox:

And although

the Obama administration

eventually threw out

the auction,

finding the whole proceedings

illegal,

they still

prosecuted and convicted

Tim DeChristopher

for violating

a federal oil-and-gas law.

It wasn't especially

premeditated.

I got in there

and saw the opportunity

to make the difference.

And then realized

that seeing that opportunity,

I couldn't ethically

justify not taking it.

Fox:

He took us to the parcels

of land

he defended just weeks

before his sentencing.

This area is all the parcels

that I've won.

Fox:

You won how many?

I won 22.

22,000 acres?

Yeah, 22,000 acres.

And these are still

now protected?

Yeah, I mean as protected

as most federal land is,

which is not

all that protected.

(laughs)

DeChristopher:

The shift occurred for me

that it wasn't about

environmental issues anymore,

but it was about

where we were headed

and what that really meant

in human terms.

I mean, so much of it

was often discussed

in rather sterile

scientific terms

and not many people

were talking about it

in terms of

the actual human impact,

the social impact

of what that looked like

for our society,

what that looked like

when there are cities

underwater

and millions of refugees

streaming inland.

And getting to that point

where if you're going

to have enough to eat,

it means someone else

not having enough to eat.

Survival actually meant

surviving at someone else's

expense.

Fox:

In terms of a solution,

clearly there is this idea

of renewable energy.

But that doesn't take

into account

any kind of structural

approach.

Solar, wind, geothermal--

those can actually produce

enough energy to meet

our energy needs.

But there's no

renewable-energy technology.

There's no energy source

we've ever discovered

that can produce

enough energy

to produce

enough material goods

to meet our emotional needs.

What I'm trying to say

is that

you can't divorce energy

from the rest of the system,

from the rest of the model.

Energy production

is not separate

from social issues,

from the way

that we seek happiness

in our culture,

from our economic system.

It's not an isolated issue

from our political system,

or our corporate structure.

When we're looking

at those solutions

of renewable energy,

we need to understand

that we need more

than just a shift in energy.

We need a shift

in that entire model

that's interconnected.

Our old model

of trying to meet

all of our emotional needs

with consumer goods

hasn't made us happy anyway.

It hasn't worked.

There's a lot of ways

in which

a collapse can be

a step forward for us--

of saying, "Oh,

maybe greed and competition

weren't the best values

to be basing

our society off of."

It can be that opportunity

to refocus.

Because in this period

of being too late

to stop climate change,

we're going to be navigating

through the most intense

period of change

that humanity has ever seen.

And it means it's a bigger

fight than before.

DeChristopher:

I stopped trying

to avoid despair

and then

I even stopped trying

to get through despair.

And I just picked it up

and carried it with me

everywhere that I go,

and just realized

I had to make a place

in my heart for despair

and keep doing the work.

One way of looking at it

is that carrying around

a heavy weight

is a burden

in tranquil times.

But in turbulent

and stormy times,

that heavy weight

is an anchor

and that big rock

that you carry around

can be what prevents you

from getting swept away.

Fox:

Just after this interview,

Tim was sentenced

to two years in

federal prison.

They took him straight

out of the courtroom

and locked him up

on the day of his sentencing.

Didn't even have time

to clean up his apartment.

Across the world,

Australia

had basically committed

to taking a chunk

out of its continent

in the form of coal

and shipping it out to Asia

to be burned

in rapidly developing

economies

of China

and Southeast Asia.

Once burned, the carbon

from these mines

flooding the atmosphere

threatens to warm oceans,

raise sea levels

and flood dozens

of low-lying

Pacific Island nations--

places like Vanuatu, Samoa,

the Solomon Islands,

the Marshall Islands,

Fiji, Tuvalu.

Many of these nations

are atolls--

islands only a few meters

above sea level.

An unprecedented gathering

of fighters

from 12 Pacific Island

nations,

the Pacific Climate Warriors,

were formed.

Can a person stop a wave?

Could you stand on the shore

and stop a wave

from crashing?

Can you imagine growing

up on an island

in the middle

of the Pacific Ocean--

blue water,

fish, sun, beautiful,

some place

that a lot of people

would think about

as a kind of paradise?

But then imagine

that one day the waves

that used to gently lap

at the shoreline

started to get

more ferocious,

creeping up further

and further inland

till they reached

the front of your house,

till they sink the whole

of your island paradise.

(men all chanting)

(blowing horn)

Fox:

Thousands

of Pacific Islanders

have already had to vacate

their home islands

due to salt-water intrusion

and sea level rise.

The Pacific Climate Warriors

decided to fight back

against Australian coal,

blockading the largest coal

export facility in the world,

the Port of Newcastle,

where hundreds of thousands

of tons of coal

are shipped out

every single day.

Mila? Loeak:

The Marshall Islands

is barely three meters

above sea level, yeah.

We're very exposed

to climate change.

And when the floods come,

we really don't

have anywhere else to go.

It's much like Tuvalu,

Kiribati, the Maldives.

Fox:

So you're worried

that you're going under first?

Yeah.

Fox:

With hand-carved

traditional canoes,

they were set to paddle out

into the channel

of Newcastle

to try to blockade

and stop coal ships

that were the size

of the Empire State Building.

Fox:

Have you commanded a boat

like this before?

Yeah,

I'm the captain of this--

uh, we call it

(Marshallese word),

which is

the (Marshallese word).

Fox: It's amazing huh?

Yeah.

How many people

can fit in it?

Uh, yeah, 10 people

can fit inside,

but if you have,

like, skinny, skinny people,

they can fit

more than 10 people,

15 people--

10, but more than 10

if they're skinny?

Yeah.

We lost most

of the coast areas--

You lost most

of the coast already?

Yeah, yeah.

(all hooting)

Mika Maiava:

We fight for our survival,

with what is going on here

in the coal industry.

Then how can this government

or these people say

that it's not real

and continue to expand

coal industry?

You know,

that's just selfish.

Our values,

our cultural values

is one of the reasons

we are in this fight.

Everybody's equal,

so we care for everybody.

Just before I came here,

my brother went fishing.

Because of the value

and our principles,

he has to bring that fish

to the village

to be distributed

to everybody.

So everybody cares

for each one.

We are not drowning!

We are fighting!

We are not drowning!

We are fighting!

(cheering)

Fox:

Before I say anything else

about this sequence,

you should probably know

that the downside

of what we were about

to do was, you know--

this is the short list--

drowning, arrest,

run over by boats,

all kinds of sharks,

jellyfish, getting punched,

sea creatures,

drifting away in currents

out to the Pacific Ocean,

cultural disrespect,

big waves-- Well,

you get the idea.

I'll just say

that this was the closest

I've ever been

to feeling like I was

in that last scene

in " Star Wars."

("Star Wars" theme playing)

We didn't know

what would happen

when a massive coal tanker

entered the port

to be greeted by seven

hand-carved canoes

from the Pacific Island

nations

and by dozens of Australian

kayaking protesters

flooding the channel.

Nothing like this

had ever happened before.

Tiny canoes

like little X-wing fighters

up against the Death Star.

Australian police

swarming in jet skis,

intentionally trying

to capsize boaters.

The first confrontation

was upon us.

A huge coal ship

was leaving port.

Fox:

I mean this is amazing.

This has actually worked.

They've actually stopped

the coal ship.

I can't really

describe the feeling

of watching people

in hand-carved canoes

threaten to be sucked under

by giant tugboats

pulling these ships

out to sea.

It was true bravery.

Protester:

We are not drowning!

We are fighting!

We are not--

All: Drowning!

We are--

Fighting!

We are not--

All: Drowning!

We are--

Fighting!

This is where the protest

tipped out of the symbolic

and into something actual.

This was the fight.

This was how you stop

a wave from crashing

and destroying your home,

pulling your family

out to sea.

This was how you do it.

(all singing)

Fox:

This is one hell of a thing

to stare down a coal ship

like this.

Holy moly. Whoa.

Fox:

This kind of confrontation

had never happened before.

Of course,

the Australian police

didn't wait long.

Fox:

Oh man, they took his canoe

in the boat.

Unbelievable.

The cops are reaching

into the boats.

(protesters cheering)

That was actually a fight.

When they opened up

for Westerners

to get

into the Vanuatu canoe,

the people who

jumped onboard were me,

a 92-year-old World War II

veteran named Bill,

a woman and her dog

and a 15-year-old

Aboriginal girl.

I should point out

at this moment

that my camera

is not at all waterproof.

A flotilla of 50

or 60 Australia kayaks

surrounded

one of the police boats

while the Vanuatu canoe

that I was on was over

to the left.

We were being held in place

by a big black police skiff,

the waves rocking us

back and forth.

All of a sudden,

a few kayakers broke off

and tried to make a run

for it.

They got out pretty far,

causing the Australian

Coast Guard

to loop around and create

a monster wake-- a big wave.

When the wave hit us,

we tipped side to side.

Not a problem.

But it caused the police boat

to tip as well,

coming down

on the pontoon side

of the Vanuatu canoe.

I think everybody

on the canoe said,

"Oh, shit" at the same time.

All:

Oh, shit!

For a second I thought,

"Oh, maybe we don't

actually need that pontoon."

Because we rocked once

and we rocked twice,

and we rocked a third time.

And I realized,

"No, we're going

in the drink.

"We're going where all those

many kinds of sharks

are under the water."

(all screaming)

(ticking)

This is the kind of thing

that seems to happen

in virtual slow motion.

So I can't tell you

at what point in time

I recognized that

there was someone

who'd already been arrested

on the police boat

yelling my name,

but it was somewhere

between the last rock

and the moment

I hit the water

that I realized

I could probably

throw my camera to him

15 feet in the air.

'Cause that was really

the only choice.

So I threw it

and then went under.

Oh, shit.

When I looked up,

I was kind of amazed

to realize that not only

had the police's captive

actually caught the camera,

but was continuing to film

as all of us,

including the 92-year-old

World War II veteran

named Bill,

were paddling,

trying to catch one

floating thing or another.

Police officer:

Mind giving us a hand

and puttin' the friggin'

camera down?

The mothership

had broken into two pieces,

was filling with water

and would have to be towed

back onto land by the police

while its inhabitants

were crying onboard.

Of course, I didn't see

any of this

because I had been picked up

out of the water

by the Greenpeace boat,

literally lifted up

by my life jacket

and pushed onboard.

This was not

our finest hour--

weeping over a broken ship,

a coal barge

with thousands of tons

of coal leaving port.

Stay calm

and stay strong!

Stay calm and stay strong!

Man:

...I want you to take

one of these

and put it back

in the water!

Fox:

But what was amazing

was that

within about 15 minutes,

everyone had stopped crying,

got out their screw guns

and their ropes,

repaired the Vanuatu canoe,

and put it back on the water.

(cheering)

Maiava: Put some music on!

(cheering increases)

(Maiava talking)

So that even

if the people look like--

look at you

like you're losing,

you are not losing

because you already won

in your heart.

You know? By that--

you know, hoping that--

that message or that energy

that you give out

will change

somebody else's heart.

Like what we are doing here

is a statement,

is a very powerful statement,

that we say we stand

as Pacific Islands

in solidarity.

(call-and-response singing)

(all cheering)

Fox:

No other coal ships

left port that day.

A huge victory.

10 coal ships

decided not

to jump into the fray.

578,000 tons of coal

was stopped

from leaving port,

at least for one day,

by the Pacific

Climate Warriors,

who were not drowning,

who were fighting.

In Beijing you can stare

straight at the sun,

a pale thin yellowish disc

that bears no threat

to your retina.

Layer upon layer

of particulate matter

and smog shielding my eyes

from the brightness.

I originally thought

we were landing in China

on a cloudy day--

you know, one of those

overcast gray days,

like it might rain.

But then I was told,

"No, this isn't weather.

This is pollution."

Fox:

This isn't even a bad day,

you're saying?

This is just

a regular old day.

These are nice buildings.

It would be great

to be able to see them.

So inside

the air is filtered?

Oh, wow.

Fox:

Every apartment,

every car

had an air filter

that filtered out something

called PM 2.5.

Particulate matter

that was 2.5 microns.

Small enough to be inhaled,

pass through your lungs

and enter your bloodstream.

And in Shanghai, Beijing,

and many other places

throughout China,

people would get up,

look at the app

on their phone

and check the PM 2.5 count,

just like you were checking

the weather.

Man:

They told me

we have 50 today.

So that's actually

really good.

Fox:

50 is good? What's bad?

I mean, in the United States,

it's probably 10 every day.

10. Okay.

Fox:

The pollution all around us--

where did it come from?

Burning coal to supply power

for factories

and construction.

Everywhere we went--

construction, construction,

construction.

I've never seen

so many cranes in my life.

Looked like places

they were building

entire cities from nothing.

And they were.

China is building

the equivalent

of one

Philadelphia-sized city

every month.

And for some reason,

the Chinese

didn't build individual

apartment buildings.

They built the same building

over and over and over again

next to each other.

Building complexes

of 60 buildings

that were all the same.

And the same went for trees.

Deforested areas in China,

replanted as monocrop.

One tree in rows,

cloned, ad infinitum.

And I realized,

Beijing was a city

of 20 million people

and none of them

opened their windows.

(breathing

through respirator)

Fox:

Someone's back roof.

Oh my God,

what a crazy sight.

241.

241?

Fox:

It's got a little symbol

that says,

"Don't fuck with this."

(man talking)

Right, right.

Fox:

Implications

for people's health

and children's health

were off the charts.

Air pollution is killing

about 1.6 million people

every year in China,

or nearly 4,400 people

every day.

That's 10 747s crashing

every single day.

Oh my God.

Is this for real?

I just can't believe this.

Can you imagine coming

to visit your loved ones

here in this place?

Someone is coming here.

There are new flowers.

Do you smell that?

It smells terrible.

Fox:

Something really awful

happens to a person

in a place where there

is this much bad air.

If you can't trust the air

you breathe,

it alters your internal

approach to everything.

You don't want

to touch things or people.

You don't sleep well.

You don't feel confident

in the words you speak.

There's no joy.

No enjoyment.

No urge to dance, to sing.

Joy requires deep breaths.

So does laughter.

So does singing.

There's no freedom possible

without a clean environment.

That's clear here.

Pollution is oppressive

in the most basic sense.

The air holds you down.

So there's part of you

perpetually gasping

for breath.

And the car charges forth

to the next interview,

to the next location.

Just past

another cooling tower,

another smoke stack.

Windows never rolled down,

no breeze ever in a city

that never opens its windows.

Man: This is the place.

Fox: That's him?

Fox:

I heard about Wu Di,

a renegade artist,

presenting

the pollution problem

in China

in shocking

and innovative ways.

(speaking Chinese)

Fox:

Maybe we should take

these photographs to Walmart,

you know, and make a huge one

outside of Walmart?

Fox:

A big chunk

of China's energy use

belongs to the world,

belongs to the consumer.

belongs to the person

buying the thing

that they bought this year

and that they're going

to throw away in six months.

I don't feel like these

are Chinese factories.

I mean, sure, they are.

Nut they're just as much

American factories.

They just happen

to be in China.

So it's unfair to say, "Oh,

look at Chinese emissions,"

when they're burning

all that coal, oil and gas

to make products

for Americans and Europeans

and people all over the world.

Fox: So she's breathing in

the balloon?

Man: Yeah.

Fox:

Wu Di became famous overnight

for his picture of Fei Fei,

a young girl in Beijing

with pulmonary problems.

Fei Fei's mom,

a former aid worker

who had worked in Tanzania,

named her Fei Fei--

Memories of Africa.

Fei Fei was allowed

to go out and play

when the PM count

was under 100.

That is, under 10 times

what a normal day might be

in the United States.

We got lucky. The day

we went to see Fei Fei,

the PM count was 50.

Fox:

What is that?

This is the inhaler.

That's her inhaler?

In 2012, we found

her some problem

and we went to the hospital.

The doctor told me

that we have to be

extremely cautious

when the air is bad.

She is more vulnerable

comparing to other kids

because of her throat.

Fox:

This week you are going

to your grandparents?

Fox:

Are you surprised?

(laughs)

A lot of mothers talk a lot

about the air problem here

in Beijing.

And we are all

very careful about this.

If you go to the hospital,

you see a lot of kids

having this problem.

At first, the Chinese people

don't know.

I think the government knows,

but we don't know.

But we can feel it.

We can see it,

we can smell it.

Then we start

to ask the government.

I think this kind of

gave a very big pressure

to the Chinese government

because the Chinese people

start to ask questions.

In China, we say,

"Every drop of water

come together

will become a big river

or even become a sea."

So I think

every Chinese people

is like a small drop of water,

but we are going

to the same direction

and we all say

that we are not happy

with the current situation.

? ?

Fox:

China consumes

3.8 billion tons

of coal per year.

The rest of the world,

combined,

consumes 4.3 billion tons.

In China, the pollution

makes it eminently clear--

working on climate change

doesn't just mean

dealing with the future.

It means making the air

better right now.

It means making public health

better right now.

It means a whole host

of things changing right now.

(engine rumbling)

60% of all the solar panels

in the whole world

are made in China.

No other country is capable

of ramping up production

of renewable energy

at the scale,

efficiency

and cost of China.

Solar thermal heating

provides hot water

to 700 million Chinese.

Renewable energy

gives us the option

to address the system.

We think of China

as a Communist country,

but it's not devoid

of entrepreneurs

like Huang Ming

from Hi-Min Solar.

Fox:

So did you design

the process?

Yeah.

You did?

Yeah.

How did you get the money

to start?

There's market, there's money.

Fox:

Huang Ming, CEO,

made his fortune

with an innovation in solar--

hot water heaters that go

on the roof of your building.

So simple and so affordable.

As of 2012, Hi-Min Solar

installed units

for 250 million people.

And that's made Huang Ming

a very rich man.

My dream was to make solar

everywhere, everything.

Solar toys, solar chargers,

solar hat, solar heating,

solar everything.

Solar cooker.

I love cooking, you know?

Chicken? Eight minutes.

Eight minutes for chicken?

I get hungry

when I'm looking at it.

(laughs) Good!

Fox:

Some people collect stamps,

some people collect

"Star Wars" figures.

Huang Ming collects

antique solar thermal units.

He's built an entire museum

of the sun.

All the machinery.

So the museum

is not open right now?

No.

Why? Because it...

Fox:

The museum had been hit

by a massive flood--

the display panels

with words running together

like water-colored paintings.

Fox:

What was the flood from?

A big storm?

Big storm, big rain.

I heard that Huang Ming

also has one

of the solar panels

that Jimmy Carter installed

on the White House roof.

It says,

"A generation from now,

this solar heater

"can either be a curiosity,

a museum piece,

an example of a road

not taken..."

Jimmy Carter:

Or it can be just

a small part

of one of the greatest

and most exciting adventures

ever undertaken

by the American people--

Fox:

"Harnessing the power

of the sun to enrich our lives

as we move away

from our crippling dependence

on foreign oil."

So it's a museum piece.

Fox:

The solar thermal units

went on the roof

of the White House in 1979.

One of Ronald Reagan's

first actions

when he became president

in 1981

was to take them

back down again.

A piece of American history

rotting in the basement.

Do you look

at this thing sometimes

and feel like there's

some kind of magic?

Yeah. Yeah.

Still in good condition.

Yeah, would it still work

if you put it in?

Yeah.

Still works?

Yup. That's America.

That's the--

that's true America.

Not-- not the situation

right now.

Right.

? ?

Fox:

Suffice it to say,

this is about development.

600 million Chinese people

were in the course

of migrating

from a rural

agrarian lifestyle

where they maybe

use one light bulb

in their homes,

to being modern city-dwellers

who use a lot of energy.

If China's development

continues to be dependent

on coal,

it'll be disastrous

for the Chinese

and the climate.

Through the development

of renewable energy,

we can work

on the bigger problem--

the problem that caused

all this in the first place--

political, social,

and economic inequality.

Community solar!

(Fox laughs)

I'm a huge supporter

for community solar.

We have everything we need.

We have all the technologies.

We have all

the human resources,

and we have all

the natural resources.

Originally from China,

Ella Chou is one person

who is trying to advise China

to go in that direction.

An expert

in renewable energy,

she's advising

the Chinese government

on community development

of solar.

Basically it's

a lot of individuals

coming together,

deciding they need--

they want to buy a solar farm

that is off-site

from where they are living.

They can be installed,

managed, operated,

maintained by a utility even.

Fox:

So I'm looking at

these gigantic coal plants.

And I'm thinking,

how is something small

like community solar

going to compete with this?

By scaling.

China has the ability

to scale up emerging

technologies

such as CSP--

concentrated solar power,

such as tidal or

wave power or any of

the hydro-connected power.

That will

really move the needle

on these technologies'

own commercialization,

make them cheaper

for the rest of the world.

I'm saying that

we use climate change

as an opportunity

to harness the power

of the people

and to be able to develop

the technologies

in a way that is beneficial

for the economy,

for the environment, and for

all the social benefits

that we want to harness

out of it.

I actually think

it's a very precarious balance

right now,

with the economic development,

with the increasing

inequality,

with the environmental

degradation.

Fox:

Yeah. In the same day

we were with Wu Di,

we found a construction hut

that was eight RMB

per night to rent.

No facilities,

incredibly dirty, right next

to the polluted river.

And then we went across town

to an $8 million house.

So you think inequality

is perhaps a greater threat

than climate change

in China right now?

The two are compounded,

right?

Right.

You see the poor are really

the ones suffering

the real consequences

of climate change.

The challenge

is how to build a core value

in a way that is free

and that

it's a people's value.

I believe there is something

called the moral imagination.

The moral imagination?

The moral imagination.

Uh-huh.

So it, I think

the moral imagination

forces us to get out

of our box of thinking about,

for instance,

what is being successful?

Society might tell you

that you should work

for Mackenzie

or Goldman Sachs or whatever.

You know,

as a college graduate,

you should go find a job.

That's your top priority.

You should buy a house.

The moral imagination

allows us to think outside

of this box,

having a moral value

about what you want

as a person, as an individual.

What you want

out of your own humanity.

What do you want to do

for the world, for yourself?

Fox:

If there was any idea

that could rocket you off

into the stratosphere,

this was it.

The moral imagination

wrote the Bill of Rights,

came up with the idea

of democracy.

It dreamed up

all the core values

that were emerging

in all these climate warriors

around the globe.

And all across the earth,

a movement was

being imagined.

The moral imagination

designed and built

the first solar panels,

wind turbines,

geothermal power plants.

Technology paired

with an ethical will.

Innovations

in renewable energy--

tidal power and wave power

installed in sea walls

that ring our coastlines.

The basic truth

that renewable energy

can provide 100%

of the power on the planet.

And right now,

people coming up

with carbon negative forms

of energy

that actually take CO2

out of the air.

Microgrids,

permaculture,

and high-yield sustainable

farming and nutrition.

Composting to create

a carbon-absorbing layer

of top soil.

Communities banded together

to boycott fossil fuels

and a movement

of moral investing

that had amassed

over $1 trillion

in divestment

from fossil fuels.

There's no end

to human innovation

once the moral imagination

is invoked.

And standing there

listening to Ella Chou

talk about demand electricity

and grid optimization...

So these are viable

technical solutions

to a humanitarian problem...

...I not only felt

totally out of my league,

but ashamed

that I ever wanted to sit

at home and do nothing.

I wanted to stay at home

and, like,

hang out in my house

and not be bothered.

So stupid to think that way,

in a way, you know?

It's just not possible.

What's required

is so much more.

We drove

out to Inner Mongolia

to see the wind farms.

But instead, we got a lesson

in human rights.

They told us

we'd see wind turbines

as far as the eye could see.

We were giddy.

We had the best meal

of our lives.

We took in a crazy

Disneyfied Mongolian

horseshow.

Then when

we got to the hotel--

the rude awakening.

The war in Iraq

was on the TV.

Three Americans

stood in the lobby

staring

at the violent explosions

that our country was causing

half the world away.

And that's the moment

the hotel concierge

called the cops.

Up until this point,

we had been incredibly lucky.

We'd escaped the infamous

Chinese political repression

of journalism and reporting.

This was still the China

where human rights

and democracy

were slaughtered

in the streets of Beijing

in Tienanmen Square in 1989.

We realized

that all of our footage

was vulnerable.

None of the copies

we'd sent back to the US

had left port in China.

If the authorities

wanted to,

they could have

taken everything

in this segment on China.

So when Alex, my cameraman,

came to my door

and told me our producer

was being detained, I said,

"Where are the hard drives?"

He said, "I'm hiding them."

It's really hard to hide

anything in a hotel room.

It's either yours

or it's the hotel's.

And if it's yours,

the authorities

can just take it.

So I did my best

to hide the hard drives

the only place I could.

At 4:30 in the morning,

there was a guard

outside the door.

I've never felt like that

in my life.

I've never felt

what it was like

to have all of

your freedom of expression,

all of my work,

at any minute

that could be taken away.

And there was no guarantee

it would ever come back.

Fox:

Even the nicest hotel room

can turn into a prison.

Fox:

And if the foreign affairs

police ran my passport,

they would see everywhere in

the country that we had gone,

who we had talked to.

The jig would've been up.

We would likely have been

arrested and deported.

And who knows

what would have happened

to all of this work then.

So the next day,

we woke up after

about an hour of sleep,

all of our interviews

canceled.

Somehow everybody heard.

We had nothing left to do.

We decided just to pretend

that we were tourists.

So the rest of

our Mongolian adventure

we did with our phones

and with a rickety

old tape camera,

which garbled

and mangled our footage

in a haze of digital static.

Everywhere we went,

we were tailed.

A small white car.

We couldn't shake them.

We even drove

100 kilometers

just to see

if they would follow us.

They did.

And when we got to lunch

at a roadside truck stop,

there was a guy

at the next table

glaring at us.

I said to our fixer-producer,

"What is that guy doing?"

He said, "He's trying

to intimidate you.

Why don't you

play the banjo?"

So in the middle

of the restaurant,

I took out the banjo

and started to play.

And what was so crazy

is that the whole time

I was playing,

I knew the hard drives,

the footage which would

have incriminated us,

was all inside the banjo

as I played.

Banjo playing

always calms me down.

It's my fail-safe

against all the stress.

And this time,

I was playing as if

all my work depended on it.

People in the restaurant

started to get into it.

And when they applauded,

the goon,

who was staring at us

at the table behind me,

got up and walked away.

Banjo one, goon zero.

I could see then that

hanging over every interview

that we had in China,

the political repression

was as oppressive or more

than the air itself,

that human rights

is the air that you breathe,

that democracy

is the environment

that you live in.

And if you can't do

what you need to do

with transparency,

openness and freedom,

then something fundamental

is missing.

So this was the lesson

and virtue offered to us

by these brave Chinese--

Speak out in spite of

the potential consequences.

Fox:

Luckily we got through

customs without questions.

Just take a moment here

to take a look

out the window with me.

I've always

found it unsettling

that the minute you step

onto a plane, you are reborn.

But this time,

it was a relief.

We landed in a place

that was quite literally

giving birth to itself

everyday.

The island of Tanna

not only has the world's

most active volcano...

Fox:

Uh-oh!

Um it's coming this way!

...but has

a 1000-year-old tradition

of indigenous democracy.

When you want to see

a government that is open,

transparent, and accountable--

this is it. This is it.

This is as open as it gets.

Fox:

Under every tree

in this tiny island nation

there was a conversation

going on about

climate change.

Because just three months

earlier,

they'd been hit

by the largest cyclone

in the history

of the Pacific.

My friends that

had picked up their canoe

that broke in half

and put it back together

were now picking up

the pieces of their entire

island nation.

It was the Hurricane Sandy

of the Pacific--

100-year-old banyan trees

knocked over like twigs.

Vanuatu found itself

at the center

of an international

conversation on

climate change.

The island of Tanna

is made up of hundreds

of small villages,

each one governed

by their own tribe,

each tribe contributing

to the conversation,

pulling on hundreds of years

of traditional knowledge.

The global action

for climate change

has to start with people

taking responsibility,

wherever they are.

"I respect you,

"so I will do something

to make sure

you and I,

you know, benefit."

Fox:

These conversations happened

in a place

called the nakamal.

a nakamal is about

a football-field-sized area

in the center of each town.

It's the place

where the whole town

gathers virtually every day,

just to talk things through.

And at the front

of each nakamal

is a massive banyan tree.

This island

has huge banyan trees

everywhere you look.

Fox:

This is your village?

Nalau:

Yeah, this is my village.

Wow. So what's

really amazing to me

is this is not

just a democratic space.

This is a nature space,

'cause you've got the tree.

Well, the tree

is quite important.

It's a structure,

a symbolic structure

of the council

that meets here.

Do you want--

you want to try?

Nalau:

You can sit on the mat

while we talk.

Fox:

Paul's project was

to integrate climate science

with traditional

democratic knowledge.

One man stands up.

He says,

"Hey, I want to tell you

the story of the boy

who wanted a bow and arrow

from his father."

(speaking)

"The father gave the bow

to the boy.

"The boy shot a small bird

with it and brought it

to his father.

"His father knew that the boy

would continue to get bigger

and bigger birds."

The story ended there.

So Paul leans over to me

and he says,

"This is a story

about starting small

and getting bigger.

The way of all progress."

He is talking

about the project

that we are working on.

Ah, I see,

the pilot project.

Yeah,

it's the first project...

Fox:

So another man gets up

and tells a different story.

There's thousands

of these custom stories

that they can invoke

at any given moment.

Each one is a teaching story.

We do this to influence

the course of events.

So the nakamal is not

just a town square.

It's a place of debate,

a place of decision making,

a place of democracy.

And then all of a sudden,

people flood the square.

Fox:

What's happening now?

Yeah, they're starting now.

That's the custom dance.

This is the custom dance?

Yes.

Paul says, "Just try

to follow the men."

(singing, clapping)

It was in the middle of that

that I wished that someone

was telling strange

metaphorical stories

and dancing and singing in

the United States Congress.

I felt like it might be

a little bit harder to lie

if what they had to do

was keep time

with the rest of the village.

A little bit harder

to push us down the path

of the oil industry

if they had to be dancing,

stomping and singing

the whole time.

(singing, clapping)

It's a system

that we all move together,

as a-- we are holding hands

and moving as a team.

Fox:

Do people see that kind

of relationship

with the developed world

in terms of climate?

Well, that's the thing.

It's like, um--

People, take ownership.

We're here, we're far away.

We don't have any factories,

but we're not blaming anyone

for climate change.

We're blaming ourselves.

Maybe we're not playing

our part right.

Fox:

All of these virtues--

we have separate words

for them,

but they are not

really separate things.

Generosity, community,

story-telling, dance,

taking care of each other.

But it does seem like

even though this is one

of the poorest places

on earth,

a place that we might

consider, quote-unquote,

under-developed,

that in the developed world,

we were the ones

who were underdeveloped.

Underdeveloped in democracy,

in generosity

and taking care

of your fellow man.

Underdeveloped in the link

between metaphor,

story, dance

and governance.

Underdeveloped in the ways

that matter.

(men chanting)

(choir vocalizing "Summertime")

Fox:

In the developing world,

there is a constant pressure

to use fossil fuels

to get out of poverty.

But in this part of Zambia,

they'd found another way.

(vocalizing continues)

We were driving

through the night

to one

of the poorest districts

of the country

of Zambia in Africa.

The Shangombo District

has no electricity,

no power plants,

no power lines.

no electric light,

no computers.

Schools had no light.

Hospitals had no light.

Homes had no light.

But something was happening

in this dark corner

of Africa.

Solar panels had begun

to crop up all over the area.

Suddenly people could

have light in their homes,

possibly basic refrigeration.

Could the answer

be as simple as the sun

coming up every day?

This is enough light

for all the kids

sitting from

where that lady is

and here where I am.

So if you put one here,

one there,

one there, one there...

Fox:

Joe, an induna,

or a tribal leader,

a member of the royal family,

was on a mission.

He was driving

all over the district

in his vintage Land Rover

to bring solar lights

to schools

so the students

could study at night.

It is the action.

Fox: Yeah.

It is the action that I do.

I do something the way

I feel I should do it.

Mwitumwa:

We work with the community,

We do what the community

asks us to do.

First we are introducing it

in schools,

then next it will be

introduced in villages.

You can't beat solar.

It has come to stay.

(cheering)

Fox:

What if someone

came and said, "Okay,

"we're going

to drill a huge oil well

or a big coal mine

and take up a huge area

here and then we'll give you

electricity"?

No, that's not a good idea.

They're forgetting

that the next second,

the person is dead.

What happens

to your grandchildren

who didn't know

about that money?

Like the way

our grandparents left,

we should also leave it

for our grandchildren.

That's why we are doing things

which are permanently--

yes, because we look

into the future of someone,

not in a short-term period.

That way

when we give the solar lights,

we want the kids,

for their education--

which one of the kids

will be one of the people

who is going to be

in a factory

that makes the solar panel.

Fox: So you want to see

the solar panels

being made here?

Being made here.

This will be an example

for the whole world.

Fox:

Doing your homework?

Yeah.

You guys are up late.

Yeah.

You're studying the effects

of water pollution?

Yeah.

Is everybody studying

about water pollution?

Student:

Yes.

Fox:

Sometimes, you find

the most astounding things

written in the margin

of a kid's notebook

in junior high school.

Right there--

"Freedom is meaningless

if there's poverty."

The next thing that

we will go for is food.

That's what the people need.

What are they going to eat?

So if we take the same solar

to give us water

to irrigate...

Fox:

This district in Zambia

can only farm two months

out of the year

during the rainy season.

And the diet

in this region is

something called "nshima"--

corn meal,

three meals a day.

No fruit, no vegetables.

Basic nutrition

which could help fend off

all sorts of diseases

and improve the health

of the district didn't exist.

Yet the Zambezi River

runs parallel

to most of these towns.

So what Joe wants

to build next--

solar irrigation pumps,

as a women's

empowerment project.

The women of

the Shangombo District

would create

small vegetable gardens

and small

community-supported farms.

And they could

sell their vegetables

at the market.

Joe's hope

was that this would decrease

the number of women

forced into prostitution

by poverty,

and that this in turn

would decrease

the staggering AIDS rate

in the district.

The storms of poverty,

like the storms

of the climate--

the same path to shelter

from both.

A dream that development

could actually

benefit the climate

and the people.

There was just one place

left I had to go.

There was a story

about a tree

that I just couldn't

get out of my mind.

When you are born,

the first thing that

comes out of--

of the hospital room,

it's the placenta.

And they dig the ground

and put it in there.

And they plant

a coconut tree on top of it.

And when that plant

is growing,

like, it's like a pride

to you--

like that's my pito.

It's your pito.

That's my umbilical cord.

And I guess growing up,

we realized

that that's actually

our connection to the land.

So your connection

to the land is never lost.

Some governments

have no respect to that.

And with the impact

of climate change,

it's threatening

of us losing that.

You know?

And that's exactly

what's going on.

And that's where I draw

my energy from.

Voil?! I give you...

Samoa!

(laughing)

(music playing)

Ah, here's the windmill.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Fox:

You're the Jack Black

of climate change.

Fox:

Mika's wife was nine

and a half months pregnant.

This is a future

climate warrior.

He's very-- he's already

very active in my stomach.

Oh, really?

Constant, very.

Like-- like this guy?

Yeah.

Fox:

I asked Mika

if he would show us

where his placenta

was buried.

He said, "I can't.

It's too far away.

"But let's go to where

my father's placenta

is buried,

on the next island."

I really wanted to see

this tree.

I felt like

if I could see it,

I might have some

deeper understanding

of all of our connections

to the planet.

Mika hadn't been there

since he was a child.

It took us a while

to find the spot.

And when we got there,

it wasn't there anymore.

The ocean

had already taken it.

I didn't even know this.

I just knew this today.

Fox:

And this is where

the placentas were buried?

Yeah.

And now it's--

Yeah, now it's nothing.

It's quite sad.

It was all underwater.

The land

wasn't there anymore.

Sea level rise,

coastal erosion,

had overtaken it.

This must be

how it feels like--

what's going to happen to us.

I don't want in the future

to be showing my island

like this--

like, "That's where

I used to live."

Fox:

This is the first time

I've heard you stop laughing.

It's-- it's very emotional.

It's...

just standing here

and looking at it and--

we are always taking about

that we're going to drown

and the sea level rising

and everything,

but just looking

at this one it's--

I mean, just--

this is

what's going to happen

if we're not going

to do anything about

climate change.

And just knowing

that my family used

to live here,

it's probably

the same feeling

that you will feel

when your home

is going under water. It's--

Yeah.

I'm sorry.

Fox:

You don't seem depressed.

No, no.

Because the thing is that,

we-- we feel

more like warriors.

We're not depressed

because we can do something

about it.

You see?

There's a difference

between, like,

have no choice

and having a choice.

We have a choice.

I came to meet you

because I wanted

to meet people

who had no choice.

(laughter)

We have the biggest choice

there is.

It's actually to fight

and keep the things that--

that we have.

You can't just sit there

and say,

"We're gonna drown,

we're gonna drown,

we're gonna drown."

Right. Because it makes you

paralyzed, in a way.

Yeah, yeah, it--

well, you're not

doing yourself a favor.

(laughter)

("All You Need is Love"

playing)

? Love, love, love ?

? Love, love, love ?

? Love, love, love... ?

Fox:

You guys became close

during Hurricane Sandy?

Both: Yes.

Tatianna:

And Sandy happened,

and the boardwalk

went through the school.

The boardwalk

went through the school?

Yes.

Yes, flooded it out,

boardwalk was in the school.

And Raven was like,

"You should

come to my school."

And I was like, "I should."

Trying to help out,

see what you can give

to the people

who have been affected.

And my mom was saying,

you know,

"Well, our home

is always open,

"no matter if you're a friend,

you know, family.

Everybody is welcomed

and I just let her in."

She was like my little--

We were sisters.

Like the sister

I never had.

And they we're all nice

and welcoming to me.

Um...

? All you need is love,

love... ?

Doe:

It's amazing

what's going on here.

Do we have the resources

we need still? No.

Do we have

to concern ourselves with that

at certain points?

Yes.

But the amazing thing is,

we're stronger now

than we were

before the storm.

We're stronger

because internally,

we know we can face

the music together

and we can

get the job done.

We know

that what ever hits us,

we can rise above it.

And not only rise above it

as individuals,

but rise above it

collectively as a community.

One of the tenets

of what we do

is to make the community

feel safe, secure and loved.

And if you feel safe,

secure and loved, you dance!

What else are you gonna do?

If you're happy, you dance!

You know?

Climate change

is about all of us.

It is about the baby

who is now eating lead paint

because the hurricane came

and washed away

the other paint

that was covering it,

and his parents

can't afford to move.

It is about the grandmother

who was looking forward

to her retirement,

but now gets up and cries

every day because her job,

her retirement,

everything that

she was looking for--

her family is scattered

to the wind.

It is about people.

And until people understand

that it's not even

just about people,

but that it's about you

and it's about me,

then we'll continue

to have these disasters.

It is about not giving up.

Even though you have

a hand pushing you down,

you still offering a hand

to pull other people up.

? ?

Fox:

When you know

what you have to do

in this fight, well,

it's like falling in love.

You know it's going

to turn your whole world

upside down.

And it won't be an easy ride.

It'll be full of twists

and turns.

They'll be times

when you feel like

your heart is about

to break and explode.

But you have no choice.

To turn away from it

is a kind of death.

Looking out the window,

these atolls

looked like God's doodles

on the surface

of the ocean.

And we could rise the tide

and just erase them all.

We're all in the same boat.

We say, "I don't know

how to save the world.

"Yet I must save the world.

"I don't know

how to save myself.

"Yet I must save myself.

"I don't know

where my soul resides,

yet I must discover my soul

because I live within it."

This is the only planet,

as far as we know,

that has love songs.

This is the only planet,

as far as we know,

that has poetry.

And it's time to celebrate

life and love.

The world is saved

and lost every day,

not all at once.

Woman:

? One, two, three ?

? They say that time

waits for no one ?

? It's like a speeding train,

you'll have to run ?

? To keep up with the beat ?

? The day I met you ?

? My heart went out ?

? Out of my chest,

boy, you got me hands down?

? I wanted you to be mine ?

? Have you heard

the song? ?

? That makes you want

to sing along? ?

? 'Cause you're the record

in my soul ?

? You're the one

I want to hold ?

? Sit on a beach,

don't have to talk

about anything ?

? As long as you're

right next to me ?

? Palm to palm,

now eye to eye ?

? We'll take it slow,

so baby, let's go ?

? I'll write you love songs ?

? Maybe one or two ?

? So I can have my heart

always close to you ?

? Baby, believe me,

it's you ?

? Oh, have you heard

those songs? ?

? It makes you want

to sing along ?

? 'Cause you're the record

in my soul ?

? You're the one

I want to hold ?

? We're ready for change,

things can't stay the same ?

? Let go of the world,

turn the next page ?

? We're stuck in the cage

of greed, lies and races ?

? The paper with lyrics,

let go of your pain ?

? We're here to bring truth,

celebrate life ?

? Tell stories of old,

our knowledge is timeless ?

? Our eyes are soundless,

true power we find ?

? And surrender to love,

with love be surrounded ?

? This is our time,

I find our moment ?

? So turn to the sky,

love with the heart ?

? See through the disguise,

join hands with the people ?

? Together we rise-- love,

the things climate

can't change ?

? Give to the sun

and pay for the rain ?

? This is our land,

we stand to protect ?

? The record that's playing

you'll never forget ?

? Paint heroes of fire

burning the sky ?

? I can see the same stars

that burn in your eyes ?

? One person,

cause the seas to rise ?

? The water to a draw,

I'll bring hope to your eyes ?

? Our movement

is rising like the sea ?

? The people

will change the world,

it's time to plant the seeds ?

? It's time to plant

the seeds ?

? Oh, have you heard

the song? ?

? It makes you want

to sing along ?

? 'Cause you're the record

in my soul ?

? You're the one

I want to hold ?

? Have you heard

the song? ?

? It makes you want

to sing along ?

? 'Cause you're the record

in my soul ?

? You're the one

I want to hold ?

? Have you heard

the song? ?

? It makes you want

to sing along ?

? 'Cause you're the record

in my soul ?

? You're the one

I want to hold ?

? Have you heard

the song? ?

? It makes you want

to sing along ?

? I don't want to hold ?

(vocalizing)

? I don't want to hold ?

? Have you heard

the song? ?

? It makes you want

to sing along ?

? Have you heard

the song? ?

? It makes you want

to sing along. ?