Choose Earth (2025) s01e04 Episode Script

1
This series is dedicated to you,
the viewers who are watching it in 2050.
It was filmed, without using Al,
between 2014 and 2024
to try and show you who we were,
what we knew, what we were afraid of
and especially
what we were hoping to achieve.
Only you know whether we succeeded or not.
Shamans are warriors.
We are fighting entropy in all its forms.
What is entropy?
It's the law that says
everything in the universe tends to die.
In life, we face bifurcation points.
Moments when we must choose a direction,
right, straight, or left.
I don't believe in destiny or karma.
A person can change their life
through thought and intention.
The climate is changing,
it's visible to the naked eye.
And not for the better.
This is a point of bifurcation.
I've lived on Lake Baikal for 20 years
and I've never seen this condition of ice.
Flat, transparent,
like a mirror to the horizon.
I don't know how to explain it.
I don't have as much English words
as in Russian.
Siberia is definitely a gift,
especially Lake Baikal.
I'd always wanted to go there.
Ever since I was a little girl, I'd been
fascinated by its stories and legends.
The hardships, the challenges, the gulags.
It was always about human endeavour.
I'd never really heard
about its powerful nature,
its raw beauty, the surprising abundance,
the mysticism.
No wonder they say shamanism
was born there.
This lake is over 30 million years old.
It's the oldest lake in the world,
the biggest, the purest.
They say it originated from the intense
prayers of the Buryat people.
During a massive fire,
they called out to gods for salvation.
A big hole appeared
and it quickly began to fill up
with transparent icy water.
The name Baikal means "Stop the fire".
Ah, I think we're stuck.
- Yeah. There's like a crack in the ice.
- Yeah, we gotta film that!
Nature here is pretty tough.
And actually, to live here
you need some reasons, you know,
not like that's my faith, or my father
and grandfather were living here.
But you have to have your own reasons,
to live on this tough,
tough situation, tough conditions.
That's the price of the beauty.
I mean, sometimes this lake
is as quiet as a puppy
and sometimes it's trying to kill you.
I don't think Baikal belongs to humans.
It is the great white alone,
a transitional world,
like a sort of liminal space
to regenerate or disappear
and sometimes even come back.
It's one of those places
that can bring out the best
or the worst in humans.
For the rest of the planet lake Baikal
means the source of clean water.
The symbol of clean water.
For us it's something really gentle
and something that we take care of.
It's like a part of our home.
It's so huge and it's almost existing
forever compared with the humanity.
Amazing.
It's not only the main water source
for the planet.
It's also a great energetic resource.
And when I stay away
from the area for a long time,
I feel really empty.
And, you know, for most people
living here, it's like that.
Most of us, we define ourselves
not as much as Russians, but as Siberians.
And when I have some kind of sorrow
or some kind of huge problems,
I always come to Baikal
and actually speak to him
because it's a living creature.
I just put my hands in and say like,
"Hello father", like in this big meaning.
And it actually helps.
You have something extraordinary here.
You have the biggest
water reserve on the planet.
They say that with the water of Baikal,
you could give drinking water
to the entire planet
for at least over a year.
It's true, just because
only in the last couple of years,
we, I mean locals started to realize
what we had
because more and more you can see
in the media and news
that people are suffering without water,
water is gone.
The United Nations is warning today
of an approaching global water crisis
because of pollution, global warming
and over consumption.
2024 was the hottest year
in recorded history,
dating back almost 200 years.
All the way from Florida to California…
Heat wave is gripping parts of Europe…
But the temperatures could be deadly.
Expected to hit 45.
Western states are experiencing
the worst mega drought
in at least 1,200 years.
- Northern Greece
- Belgium, Germany, Italian cities.
Canada, U.S. and China.
In China, authorities are battling
one of the worst droughts
seen in more than 50 years.
And most of us
have turned a blind eye to it.
Year upon year science has predicted it.
Now each summer
we are living it and dying from it.
A quarter of the world's population
doesn't have enough water
to meet the demand
for drinking, agriculture, and industry.
Up to 3.5 billion people
live under conditions of water stress
at least one month a year.
With water being rationed
for agricultural and residential use,
finding water is like finding gold.
When I see foreign tourists bringing water
to Lake Baikal in the bottles,
I'm surprised because we never do this.
We just take a cup and drink water
directly from the lake.
You don't need to boil it,
it's really simple.
We are always smiling when we look at it.
But these smiles become less and less
because last year it was a huge situation.
We can't drink water from different parts
of the lake, because it's changed.
The chemical elements are different
in some parts of it
and this is because of people.
Human activity on its 636 km long shores
has increased.
And so has pollution.
Russia's Lake Baikal holds 20%
of the world's fresh water
and is home to species
unseen anywhere else.
But for how much longer?
The Siberian lake has seen
an unwelcome addition
to its roster of life in recent years,
a sticky green moose
that stretches for hectares,
a sign of increased pollution levels.
Of course I can see changes
and a lot of them are upsetting me.
If we close our eyes
to what is happening here,
more and more things like this
will happen.
The Soviet era Baikalsk Paper
and Pulp Mill
for 50 years dumped millions
of cubic meters of industrial waste
into the lake:
chlorides, phenol and sulphates.
6.2 million tons of toxic waste.
Baikalsk is an example
of ecological disaster,
because this city was built,
because of a factory,
the factory is closed
and the people just abandoned the place.
They have a huge territory,
abandoned territory that is in ruins.
And it's already covered
with forest and grass.
Scientist are concerned
about what could happen
if nothing is done
with the stocks of waste.
It could be like the second Chernobyl
or something like that.
We can lose the lake.
- Can you hear that drum?
- Yeah, it's a very cool sound!
Every, I don't know, two, five years,
different teams try to solve the problem.
But unfortunately, the project was closed.
No one was told anything.
I think that the economy is pretty tense.
The biggest issues
are for the biggest programs,
which need a lot of money.
They have the biggest influence
from the war.
So there are a lot of young men
from Siberia leaving for war?
We can see a lot of people
at the airport or rail station
going to the war
or coming back from the war.
But for our normal lives,
it's still the same.
A lot of people are volunteers.
Their families suffer because
they don't have any other work to do
except fishing, for example.
They just need to take care
of their families, it's simple.
And they have been living here
like for five, four or more generations.
I think that most of these people
think that they are victims.
The system is guilty,
the government is guilty,
the environment changes,
everything like that,
we are small people.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine,
300,000 Russian soldiers
have died or been injured,
many of them conscripts.
For soldiers from Siberia
and Russia's Far East,
which is home to many ethnic minorities,
the price has been overwhelming.
The BBC found
that six of the ten Russian regions
with the highest mortality rates
in Ukraine
are located in Siberia and the Far East,
and that men from Buryatia
are 75 times more likely
to die than men from Moscow.
Our complex world
and human constructed systems
are far from equilibrium.
We are losing our natural order
just as fast as our planet is.
Our destiny is interlocked with hers,
at least for human eternity.
Our planet is 70% water,
we are 70% water.
It has trickled down to us
from the cosmos.
Some of the water we are drinking
has been around since life started here,
4.6 billion years ago.
Water never dies and it keeps on going
through us, all of us
again and again and again.
Water is a human right
and the common development denominator
to shape a better future.
But water is in deep trouble.
Water scarcity is the next big challenge.
Experts have predicted that future wars
would be fought over water.
For years,
wars were waged for stability,
but soon, this stability
will depend on one thing,
how well the region
tackles climate change.
These kinds of stresses
can contribute to violent conflict.
Take a look at this video,
here you have the Chinese
and Indian militaries beating each other
over a barbed wire high in the Himalayas.
So disputes between India and China
have been getting worse this year.
Especially since
that deadly border clash in June.
There's a lot at stake here.
Water.
China is planning the world's
most complicated super dam.
A project this size could change
the geopolitical power balance
across South Asia.
How can something we all share
and keep on sharing become so divisive?
The fight for blue gold,
more and more militarized zones.
We see the trend rising everywhere.
It gets worse every day.
Ukraine blames Russia for blowing up
the strategic dam overnight.
It's one of six dams on the Dnieper River
and supplies vital drinking water,
power, and cooling for the nearby
Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
There are no gaps, when there is
no war on planet Earth.
Humanity is always fighting.
Sometimes this war is much closer to us.
Sometimes this war
is not too close for us.
Kashmir is claimed
by both India and Pakistan in full
and has seen a decades-long insurgency
against Indian rule that has claimed
tens of thousands of lives.
Tensions between the two countries
are escalating
following the killing of 26 people.
In the aftermath of this attack,
Delhi suspended
what is known
as the Indus Water Treaty
that ensures water
for about 80% of Pakistani farms.
Pakistan says it will regard
any attempt by India
to limit its water supply
as an act of war.
Some rivers could swell up like this,
some could go completely dry,
which means essentially
it's endless chaos and complete
unpredictability for Pakistan,
which is what India wants.
Either our water will flow
from the Indu river
or their blood will!
Are water wars our only possible future?
Or can we treat and manage
our greatest connector,
what unites us all in a different way?
I can't be worried because
I'm drinking water from the Lake Baikal.
This is Lake Baikal's water
directly from the lake
and I want my sons to do the same.
So it's really important for me.
Do you think that we're going to be able
to resolve our real problems?
I mean, all the environmental challenges
we're going to have to face
if we keep on fighting?
No, I don't think so, I think
we will find a solution to any problems,
even for war problems,
if we start to communicate,
if we start to look for balance,
if we start to listen to each other
in dialogue.
I think that's the best weapon
for humanity, dialogue.
And you know this way is darker.
It's weird.
Wildfires raging near Russia's Lake Baikal
have destroyed forests
and scared away tourists
at the peak of the summer season.
When you think of Siberia
you likely don't think about wildfires,
Afterall Siberia is one
of the coldest places on the planet.
The blazes have been fuelled for months
by extreme heat,
which scientists say
is a result of climate change.
Gigantic infernos burning across Siberia
on an unprecedented scale.
A climate catastrophe.
NASA satellite imagery has shown
that smoke from the fires
has wafted from Siberia
and the Far East
all the way to Alaska
and along Canada's west coast.
The carbon emissions are nearly
as much as 36 million cars
they admit in a year.
The first time I came to Siberia
was in the summer of 2017.
The fires had just happened
and were still active in some places.
It still smells like burning, doesn't it?
The sound of silence was dark,
like the forest.
Once in a while you could hear
this eerie crackling under your feet.
It was endless.
Even the sky,
when I would lift up my head,
just seemed like a continuation
of those woody spears.
There was nothing hopeful
about that wasted land.
And that's something I can never forget.
At the time when I was here,
they were so violent
that the NASA said they actually affected
the weather pattern.
Everything was grey.
I remember the moment when it started.
I was actually here in the sandy bay
with a group
and that happens because of us.
Of course forest fire
is something very natural
and it happens just because
of a thunderstorm whatever,
but now it happens
like hundreds times more frequently.
Do you remember
the silence of this forest?
Yeah, I remember the scary silence
of the sound of insects
eating the bark of the trees.
It feels like you can shoot
a horror movie here.
It's really a huge amount of the area
which got burned around here.
And that is one of the most famous
and one of the most beautiful places
around Baikal.
And since then, we've seen forests burn
all over the planet.
It's a growing problem.
Deadly wildfires
are sweeping through Australia.
30,000 people ordered to evacuate.
13 million acres burned.
Raging wildfires are slowly but steadily
taking over the world.
In Palermo, Italy, people made
terrifying journeys to get to safety.
All the way from Australia and the Amazon
to Siberia and Scandinavia.
The Amazon rainforest continues to burn.
The aftermath of the savage fire
which ripped through Sardinia,
there was considerable damage
to 500 beehives with 30 million bees.
Where we're standing you should
be able to see the Statue of Liberty
as long as it's not a cloudy rainy day,
but right now it's very difficult
to make out so
and you can smell it too
so all of this of course
is because of those wildfires
burning in Canada.
Wildfires in Canada are creating
dangerous air quality conditions
and officials are warning
that it could affect people
with breathing issues
who are more at risk.
Prolonged drought
set up extreme conditions
that have fuelled those devastating
Los Angeles area wildfires,
conditions compounded by climate change.
There is no doubt
we're transitioning to a new era
characterized by more frequent
catastrophic wildfires,
the so-called mega-fires.
In a way, the new age of wildfires
is actually helping us
understand the real fight,
which is global warming.
Fires actually have a way of making heat,
often an invisible threat, very real.
These mega fires carry across the world
the rage of our changing planet,
in a way that is impossible to ignore
because extraordinary fires
are definitely here to stay.
Is this the spot?
- Is that very far, Dasha, from the
- We can manage it, don't worry.
How do you manage to overcome
the feeling of catastrophe?
Because you're travelling so much
to the places that have
some environmental problems
and you're always speaking about that.
It's through you and all the other
Earth Protectors that I meet
that I feel empowered,
that I keep my spirits high,
because that's the hope.
The hope is that there will be
more and more people
in the next generation who have accepted,
who are embracing the fact
that we are going to need to adapt
to a new world and everything
that will come with it.
That's what I'm very interested in today
cause I don't think
we will make it as a species
if we don't go through
some sort of systemic change.
That's my hope.
No birds.
I love this place.
Are those people skating?
Yes. Usually,
it's from Irkutsk to Listvyanka.
Like a three or four days trip.
And they have their…
They take everything with them,
they try to make the trip like that.
I don't know anybody who skates like that…
- You mean like travelling?
- Yeah, like travelling.
I've never heard of that done.
And as Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine
once said,
when a complex system
is far from equilibrium,
small islands of coherence
in a sea of chaos
have the capacity to shift
the entire system to a higher order.
Words worth remembering, dear listeners,
especially in turbulent times.
Olkhon Island is another amazing place.
It's a unique spiritual place,
and it's the biggest island
of the Lake Baikal
and the only island where people live.
When you're coming to this place,
to Shaman Rock in the early morning,
you can easily imagine
how the world was before people.
Like you can really easily
imagine the Earth before humanity.
A bit of crackling noise.
He speaks and the crackling starts.
We should check the contacts
and fix them so they don't move.
One, two, three, four, five,
eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve,
thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.
When technology is in contact with me,
it acts up.
We should have chosen another shaman.
Once, a plane was stopped because of me.
The electronics went crazy.
We, shamans, believe
that everything has a spirit:
grass, a simple stone, trees, animals.
Shamanism is a very ecological religion.
I'm a child of ethnic Buryatia.
Before becoming a shaman,
I was deeply secular.
I stepped over others to build my career.
There was no talking about spirituality.
Then something happened.
I got shaman sickness
and ended up in a coma.
I woke up in intensive care,
rethought my entire life.
We exploit the land:
its subsoil, forests, everything.
We keep taking more,
it's a predatory approach.
There is this old saying:
"We don't live on the land
of our ancestors,
we borrow it from our children".
We revived a black
horse, set his soul free.
He became the island's guardian.
We set him free.
A wild, unbroken horse
that will keep the island safe.
Yeah, perfect.
You know, I wanted to do like an arch.
Do you see the installation?
I want to put it behind it,
like a little alcove. You know?
- Smell this one.
- I love it.
It smells like good medicine.
- Like that?
- Yeah, like that, straight facing me.
Yeah, a little bit more on the side.
Yeah perfect, slide it down.
You can put it like going down, there.
Perfect.
Humanity should strive for harmony.
It comes from within, from the soul.
If you, me, our loved ones,
all understand this,
it will be possible
to change and improve everything.
Take a little bit of the snow away.
That's on
Yeah, exactly.
You said we're
a spiritually poor generation.
I agree.
Our parents missed a lot in this sense.
Now we're trying to bring it all back.
A bit more toward the side.
This is a time of spiritual renaissance.
I wish it could spread,
like a handshake passed on.
To give us hope for a turning point
and restoration.
Love
True love never really suffers
of inflation.
It's coherent,
and we always need more of it.
Lots and lots of it.
Can small loving initiatives,
these small islands of coherence,
as scientists say,
have influence
over a much bigger system?
Could they actually help shift
the chaotic and entropic world we are in,
manage to divert us
from the doom of a Big Bang
and guide us towards systemic change?
I'm pretty sure that any nation,
any country has its own Lake Baikal.
Maybe smaller, maybe not so famous,
but its own.
And the message is to start with that.
Sometimes people
do something bad for the nature,
not because they don't care,
because they haven't thought of that.
And when you actually explain,
when you actually give the message,
you change the world,
like there's a very, very slight movement.
It's actually our contribution
to the saving of the environment
of our region
and maybe some other places too.
The connection between countries
is much more important than fighting
for the water or for the other sources.
We just need to communicate,
we just need to listen to each other.
That's why we just need
to find the balance between us,
because we're already fighting.
I hope so that the following 50 years
are going to be a peacetime.
They say that by connecting
these three simple dimensions
you can create your own island of change:
understand where you've come from,
realize where you are now,
and visualize where you want to be headed.
Your father loves you.