The world is definitely going to end one day.
All of this will be gone and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.
Everything is temporary
and we’re all going to die.
I’m going to talk to some experts,
share some history,
and find out the truth
about what’s finally going to do us in,
how long we have until it happens,
and if there’s anything we can do to slow it down.
You’re going to lose London,
parts of New York,
Boston,
parts of Washington.
The mass movement of people,
dwindling natural resources...
One of the things I don’t think we fully understand is
how life is all interwoven
and what, when you start pulling those threads out it might do.
Maybe as I was worrying about nuclear war and robots,
the real answer to the end of the world was right in front of me.
People burning shit they shouldn’t be burning.
Since 1880, the world has seen a 1.4 degree rise in temperature—
with two thirds of that coming since 1975.
But you don’t need me to explain climate change to you,
you’ve heard all this before.
Let's look at the scary details though.
Like the unexpected consequences of climate change.
It could be disease, not flooding, that kills us all.
And what’s the deal with climate change deniers?
What could their motivation possibly be?
We’ll also look at the ways that climate change is already
affecting the world and hurting people.
But just how bad is it?
I heard whispers about a mysterious man who had all the answers.
He had predicted this years before anyone else, but no one believed him.
He was cast away to the fringes of society.
So, from your research, what does a
worst case scenario world completely beset by climate change look like?
Well, the scientists are, of course continuing to wrestle with a
the details, but there are some who are
concerned that the vast store of methane and carbon dioxide
in the frozen arctic soils of the world could be
released over a time period that would actually significantly
worsen the climate crisis.
In other words, there’s already naturally occurring green house gasses
frozen in some super cold dirt.
But as the earth gets warmer from human caused green house gasses,
those natural gasses could defrost and be released into the atmosphere.
What are some of the unexpected scenarios that someone might not know
is a consequence of climate change and rising temperatures?
The radical change in the relationship between human beings and microbes.
We saw the Zika virus mutate and create catastrophic birth defects
in parts of the America's last year.
One of many tropical diseases spread largely by
air travel and the transportation revolution.
But the changing climate conditions change the areas in which these
viral diseases—and bacterial diseases take route and become endemic.
The relationship between humans and these
microbes has always been mediated by climate
and as the climate changes, that’s an area that people are keeping
a close eye on.
Because we understand how to live on the earth at this temperature,
we don’t know how to live on the earth at a higher temperature.
Well, not in the civilization we’ve constructed.
All of the food crops that we rely upon were patiently
selected over many, many generations by neolithic women
during the stone ages.
And the plants that they selected, that we still eat,
are optimized for the climate conditions that we’re now
in the process of changing.
We need more fresh water as temperatures increase.
Humans,
animals,
plants,
a lot of our systems—like energy systems
all need water—particularly agriculture.
And we are depleting the underground water aquifers
in quite a few regions of the world, much faster
than they can be replenished.
So that’s what they mean by "water, water, everywhere and none of it to drink"
And that was coming from the Vice President, Al Gore.
He was the Vice President,
so you know he’s got some clout.
But I’m going to talk to some other really trustworthy people too.
Like, the military.
This is retired rear admiral, David Titley.
He was in charge of the Navy’s climate operations for years.
30 feet of sea level rise probably displaces roughly
half a billion people, 500 million people.
And some people say, ‘well geez, you know, we’re going to have
a long time and we are taking an already pressurized
world with lots of issues.'
And we are now adding one, that was in fact caused by man.
The rapidly changing climate.
If you look at the U.N. big report,
they call it ‘The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,'
It’s a mouthful, but It’s a big U.N. report that’s kind of a
consensus report of everybody.
They actually don’t have that alarming talk about sea level rise.
They talk about ‘It’s a few feet—maybe, you know, 2, 3,
possibly 3 feet, but more like 2 feet.'
In their last report.
More and more of the science is saying,
that’s a pretty significant underestimation.
There are a lot of things that we can still do.
But, there’s a saying in the Navy, that the naval aviators have—
and they say two things are of no use to you as a pilot:
altitude above you and runway behind you.
I would argue that we’re putting a bunch of runway behind us on this.
There really is no ‘Planet B.'
But if you don’t trust the military, what about the clergy?
The Pope himself said, in a letter about climate change,
that the earth is an immense pile of filth.
The Pope said that.
There’s this guy Gaël Giraud.
He’s a Catholic priest and scientist who works with the French government
on their climate research.
If you don’t believe those guys acting based on numbers and research,
I also met with David Nicholson.
He works for the climate change division of Mercy Corps,
where he works in developing countries.
Nicholson sees the real life effects of change that are already
happening to communities around the world.
We think about climate change as something of a threat multiplier.
So we’re starting to see
less and less access to certain key recources,
or the reliability of certain weather patterns making agriculture systems
more and more challenging, so, it magnifies existing challenges.
One specific example I can give you is
the work we’ve been doing in Ethiopia.
We’ve been working for many years with cattle raising communities.
In the drylands of Ethiopia.
Which are really seeing significant shifts in weather patterns.
We’ve been working quite closely with different communities
to figure out new ways to manage natural resources.
The grasslands that the cattle rely on,
the water resources, the water points that for a long time
they’ve relied upon.
And this is because the traditional methods, which have been around
for thousands of years,
are no longer suitable to the shifting weather and weather patterns
and the shifting climate.
Do you think the first world has too much of a sense of comfort and security
in regards to these sorts of things?
Certain wealthier countries are more insulated from the challenges
we’ve seen so far.
People's livelihoods are less directly linked to the weather system.
We don’t rely on food growing in our own land in order
to feed ourselves and our families.
We also have systems of governance,
and governments that put things into play that
support us, but that cushion will run out at some point because
these challenges will get—we’ll be beyond what we're currently able
to cope with.
The mass movement of people, dwindling natural resources—
these are things that can cause conflict and can lead to larger
regional conflicts that will inevitably have security concerns
for the rest of the world.
All of the people I spoke with came from different facets of society.
Yet they all agree.
Climate change as a threat is real
and It’s being caused by humans.
But some people don't agree
and I honestly don’t know what’s going through their heads.
Do they seriously not believe the science,
or do they only care about money and have no foresight?
Or are they all cynical lunatics doggedly pursuing the end of the world?
Having these silly false debates about the science is nothing more
than a delaying tactic.
100% of peer reviewed scientists have a consensus,
and that is that this is happening.
I don’t believe that.
100%?
Every bit of that global warming?
I don’t buy it.
They don’t have to disprove science,
they don’t have to disprove global warming,
they just want to create doubt,
they want to create confusion,
they want to create the perception that there’s this big tussle
in the science community—
and they go through considerable lengths to do that.
But none of that changes the fact that the ice will continue to melt.
So what evidence are these people who don't seem
scared of climate change possibly using?
Take President Trump, for example.
When he pulled out of the Paris Accord, he said this:
Even if the Paris Agreement
were implemented in full,
with total compliance from all nations,
it is estimated it would only produce a two tenths
of one degree, think of that,
this much
celcius reduction
in global temperature
by the year 2100.
Tiny,
tiny,
amount.
So, obviously I had to talk to the guy that did the study Trump was quoting.
Dr. John Reilly, of MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy
of Global Change.
Is there anything in your research that justifies him
saying pulling out of the Paris Accord is a good idea
based on what you guys found.
We, in no way, imagined that
our work would suggest that you should get out of Paris.
If anything, we were trying to suggest that
too bad that Paris didn’t go a little bit further.
And that there was a lot more work to be done
in succeeding accords.
If you’re going on a long hike,
you know, the first step isn’t going to get you very far,
but if you say, ‘oh well never mind, you’ll never get there.'
President Trump’s thing with the Paris Accord,
that’s not the first time this has happened you team.
In 2008, something similar happened with members of congress.
Yes, we were looking at the Waxman-Markey bill about that point
and we were trying to say
look how much revenue could be generated by selling the allowances
rather than giving them away.
And that could then result in, you know, $2,500
being sent to every family of 4.
So the Republicans took that $2,500
and said, 'that was the cost of the policy to every family.'
which was exactly kind of a complete misinterpretation of the story.
So uh, very disturbing.
So how big of a deal is it to pull out of the Paris Accord?
Let’s go talk to Laurence Tubiana.
She was France’s ambassador to COP21
so she basically wrote the damn thing.
Even if the world’s moving in the right direction,
it still really feels like we’ve passed a point of no return.
So I went back to Vice President Al Gore
to ask him if we should just…give up.
What do you have to say to someone that watches the news,
hears this research, and just says,
'you know, we’re fucked, I’m going to go to my bunker and hide.'
Yeah, is this where we get to the hope?
Yeah, I hope so!
Okay? Yeah, well,
the solutions to the climate crisis are being developed much faster
than people expected.
Electricity for example, from solar and wind
is now cheaper in many regions
than electricity from burning fossil fuels,
sustainable agriculter, sustainable forestry, battery technologies,
electric vehicles, retrofitted buildings.
All of these are job creators,
all of these are developing quickly.
We do need the policies that will push these solutions forward,
even though they are cheaper, the old carbon polutting companies
are still trying to hold back the change.
So, I hope your audience will decide to become politically active.
Join the Indivisible Movement, for example.
Join the Climate Reality Project.
Let the policy makers and politicians know that you really care about this.
If there are massive numbers of people who feel passionitely about it,
everything will change for the better.
One of the experts I spoke with accidentally gave me
an interesting solution to the problem.
It may be that,
whole chunks of the earth become
largely uninhabitable and impoverished—
and in that sense, green house gas emissions
may be self-limiting if there’s few people,
and we’re all poor, we won’t be driving Hummers around.
That’s not the type of policy we recommend to solve climate change.
But It's too late, he already said it.
So if a human-free earth is key,
what could destroy all humans but leave the earth intact?
Major disease could do it.
Grab your hand sanitizer—
because next time, we dive head first
into global epidemic.