A Perfect Planet (2021) s01e05 Episode Script
Humans
Life flourishes on planet Earth
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thanks to powerful natural forces.
The weather gives us predictable patterns of rainfall.
Sunlight delivers energy to all parts of planet Earth's surface.
Ocean currents carry nutrients around the globe.
Volcanoes create and fertilise the land.
Together, these forces have helped shape our living planet.
But it's a fragile system.
All right, come on, let's get him in.
This baby elephant is dying of thirst.
Big swallow.
The latest casualty of our changing world.
Luckily, rescuers have found him, so he has a chance.
This young animal is likely a victim of a new force .
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one so powerful, it threatens the future of life on Earth.
For over 60 years, I've been privileged to witness the natural world in all its wonder.
But the planet I saw as a young man has changed beyond recognition.
Human activity is now so dominant, it's disrupting the forces of nature and the vital habitats that life needs to survive on Earth.
This is the most important story of our time.
So I've asked three world authorities from the front line to join me in telling it.
Humans used to be a species, just like any other on Earth.
But we've now become so populous and so destructive that we are the single most influential creature on Earth.
Everything around us is collapsing.
This is the planet that we're handing over to future generations, and the worst part, I'll tell you the worst part, to me, is that they're going to turn around and be, like, "Why did you not do something when you had the chance?" We are likely to lose over half the species of life on Earth over the next eight decades.
The last time we had an extinction event of this magnitude was 65 million years ago.
We are asleep.
We are not taking a look at the enormity of this event.
If you want evidence of how life is struggling to cope in our rapidly changing world .
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you need to look no further than here in Africa.
As we warm the planet, we create more extreme droughts and floods, making it increasingly difficult for many animals to survive.
One of our planet's most magnificent creatures is no exception.
Adult elephants drink around 200 litres of water a day.
When rains fail, as they did recently here in Kenya, watering holes quickly run dry .
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killing hundreds of them.
You can see the scale of the problem .
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by the dozens of orphaned baby elephants left behind.
These are the lucky survivors.
They owe their lives to Angela Sheldrick and her team, who rescue these young orphans.
Come on! Come on, little boy.
The orphans, when we find them, tend to be in a pretty sorry state.
They are not only physically damaged but psychologically, too.
Hey.
Hello.
They have suffered such a loss, losing their elephant family, their mothers.
Angela's team do their best to soothe that loss.
Come on.
The keepers replace a lost elephant family.
They provide the tender loving care and the nurturing that is so important for them to heal.
The keepers are there 24/7.
It is a very, very special relationship that actually does last a lifetime.
Despite the elephants becoming wild, they do never forget that love and kindness.
The orphans have to be bottle-fed eight times a day.
We raise these orphaned elephants to ultimately go back to their birthright .
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a wild and happy life.
You're such a clown! Come with me.
Go on.
Go on.
So far, Angela's organisation has released more than 150 orphaned elephants back into the wild.
But, to survive, they now need to live in managed reserves, where people top up water supplies when droughts return.
Over the years, we've seen an enormous change in the weather patterns.
Greater unpredictability.
The drier seasons are drier and longer.
It is the 11th hour now.
We have just one home, and we, as the dominant species, should take care of it .
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must take care of it.
It is our responsibility.
What I need to say to people is, this is not going to get better.
We are on a curve that's moving us with a series of events that's taking us into a new geological era in history.
To understand how humans are destabilising our perfect planet, we need to look into the deep past.
In Earth's long history, it's been through at least five mass extinction events.
Most were caused by cataclysmic volcanic eruptions.
It's not the lava or ash that wiped out life .
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but an invisible gas released by volcanoes called carbon dioxide .
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CO2.
The single greatest extinction event on the planet so far was caused by the superheating of the world.
Masses of volcanic activity pumped huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, massively raised the global temperature, and saw the destruction of around 90% of all life on Earth.
Humanity is now acting like a super-volcano.
We're releasing carbon dioxide at an even greater rate than the prehistoric mega-eruptions that extinguished life in the past.
Here's the problem.
Over the last two centuries, we dug up the burial grounds of a previous geological era in history .
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the Carboniferous era.
And we took those dead remains, in the form of oil, gas and coal, and we made the entire industrial civilisation based on these fossil fuels.
Almost every part of modern life depends on energy generated by burning these fossil fuels.
And that produces CO2 in huge amounts.
Globally, we now release 100 times more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than all Earth's volcanoes combined.
And by burning more fossil fuels, releasing more carbon dioxide, heating up the world around us, we have become one of the most powerful, destructive forces on the planet.
Carbon dioxide acts like a blanket, trapping the sun's heat.
This raises the temperature and so destabilises one of the most important forces on Earth - the weather.
Many animals rely on predictable patterns of rainfall.
But, as our world warms, our weather is changing.
For every one degree that the temperature goes up on this planet because of CO2 emissions .
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the atmosphere is sucking up 7% more water.
So we're getting more concentrated precipitation in the clouds .
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and more radical, extreme, unpredictable, out-of-control weather events.
NEWSREADER: Millions are bracing for a hurricane the likes of which we've never seen.
We're getting hurricanes that are devastating our ecosystems and killing human beings every year.
They're now over and over and over again every season.
This planet is more powerful than we thought.
More fires, more droughts, more floods.
And so this perfect planet of ours is now being thrown into a system of flux.
These extreme conditions are making it increasingly difficult for animals to survive.
And that is not just affecting wildlife.
New research suggests that, for every one-degree rise in global temperatures, a billion people will be pushed into near unliveable extremes.
And this could trigger one of the greatest human migrations in history.
We're about to have climate refugees, forced out of uninhabitable areas of the world, pushed up into Europe.
We are on the cusp of the biggest migratory pattern in human history.
We're going to see millions, tens of millions and, unfortunately, hundreds of millions of people migrating from areas that are no longer liveable in the next 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 years.
And people are frightened because this is outside of our frame of reference.
But there is hope.
In Africa, the Sahara Desert is advancing southwards.
But a remarkable project is aiming to stop it in its tracks.
The ambitious goal is to plant over one billion drought-resistant trees, like acacias.
Known as the Great Green Wall, once complete, a band of trees will stretch nearly 5,000 miles right across Africa .
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one of the largest living structures on the planet.
These trees stop topsoil blowing away, and their roots penetrate the ground, creating a network of channels that store water whenever rain falls.
Ten-year-old Korka is one of the first children to benefit.
It's only as I've grown up with these trees that I understand how important they are 12 million trees have already been planted here in Senegal, and with dramatic results.
Wells are filling again, allowing crops to grow.
The green wall is so important because it gives us food and we can sell that food So far, only 15% of the Green Wall is complete, but it's already breathing life back into the land, stemming the exodus of people and keeping communities together.
And the trees do something else for our children's future.
As they grow, they remove carbon dioxide from the air.
Carbon is the very foundation of life.
Every plant absorbs it from the air .
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using it to grow.
When animals eat these plants, some of this carbon is locked away in the fabric of their bodies.
Together, these wild places, and the animals that allow them to thrive, take up over a third of the carbon dioxide we release.
All of these systems, and the life within it, are so important to protect us from a warming planet.
Some of the Earth's most important carbon stores are those rich in plant and animal species - the tropical jungles.
Forests are sponges.
They absorb enormous amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere, and they trap that inside.
Forests are about much more than just trees.
In order to thrive, a jungle needs bustling animal communities.
It needs insects to pollinate.
It needs mammals to spread the seeds from one part of the forest to another.
It needs this massive, tangled web of species interactions.
A jungle rich in animals stores so much more carbon than a forest with little life.
But many of the world's tropical jungles are under threat.
And none more so than the greatest of them all - the Amazon rainforest.
It's essential for the health of our planet, storing as much carbon as 25 years' worth of current emissions from all the cars in the world.
The Amazon rainforest is one of the keystones of our climate.
If we lose enough of the Amazon that it stops to function like that, then it's going to be an absolute disaster for civilisation, it really will.
But urban expansion, cattle ranching and mining means that the forests of the Amazon are being lost at a frightening rate.
It's not beyond the realms of possibility that we could deforest a rainforest, like the Amazon, so that trees cannot grow there and it turns into a savanna.
Every minute, an area the size of about two football pitches is destroyed by humans.
These amazing ecosystems around us - the oceans, the jungles, the forests, the mangroves - these are our greatest hope and our greatest buffers against a warming planet.
On the front line in the heart of the Amazon stands of the city of Manaus.
Here, urban expansion is eating into the jungle.
Celina Pinage works for IPAAM, the Amazonas Environmental Protection Unit.
Their mission is to save animals trapped in the city and to return them to the wild.
Normally we get around four or five calls a day We rescue wild animals like monkeys, caimans iguanas, hawks, snakes, sloths Today, Celina is rescuing a sloth.
It's the world's slowest mammal.
Many become trapped as trees are cut down to make way for houses.
Each animal has a value within the ecosystem We work to ensure that this value isn't extinguished Over 3,000 animals have been rescued in the past five years.
Each one of these creatures is needed by the forest - to disperse seeds, pollinate plants or, like this jaguar, to keep herbivores in check.
Whenever possible, Celina releases animals back into the protected areas of jungle.
I feel very sad to see the current situation in the Amazon The way it's being deforested how the animals are losing their habitat Where will these animals go? We don't just want to protect animals because they're interesting and they're beautiful.
They're an integral part of a functioning planet, and we need to keep them around.
So, how do we protect our remaining forests? Calculating their true environmental value could hold the key.
And a new cutting-edge technology is beginning to do just that.
It's led by a team from the Global Airborne Observatory.
They've developed a way to quantify exactly how much carbon the forest stores.
By firing high-powered lasers across the canopy, they can map the amount of carbon within each tree.
The trees showing up as red and yellow are the most carbon-rich.
These maps allow countries to see how valuable their forests are.
I truly hope that we aren't too far away from realising the intrinsic value of wildlife, of forests, but we're not there yet and, for the time being, governments need to be financially incentivised to keep forests standing and to not cut them down.
But what about areas of forest that have already been destroyed? In the Amazon, a revolutionary project is under way.
The aim is to plant a new jungle of 73 million trees.
But regrowing a species-rich forest has always proved difficult.
So the project has turned to the indigenous peoples of the Amazon, and young women like Milene Alves.
Within each seed is a future tree They will provide fruits and oxygen, and help keep the climate cool Milene's community has a unique knowledge of seeds.
It's enabled them to collect over 200 of the most important tree species from across the Amazon.
Since I've been a part of the seed network, my most memorable day was my very first planting I helped to mix these seeds Seeds collected by my mother, my father and my friends By mixing the seeds together, it allows them to create a super-recipe known as a muvuca.
In this mixture, there is enough tree variety to jump-start a new jungle.
Every year, around 20 tonnes of seeds are scattered over acres of burnt and degraded land.
After six years, they will have restored an area of forest the size of 30,000 football fields .
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the largest tropical restoration project in the world.
The best thing we can possibly do to mitigate the effects of a warming planet is to plant more trees and protect those trees that we have.
We can do this.
If we put them back, we are creating that stable climate that we need to survive, and it's such an easy thing to do.
Planting trees and saving wildlife is a vital solution on land, but it's only part of the story.
The carbon dioxide we produce is damaging another crucial part of our planet - the oceans.
Life cannot survive without them.
The reason we can walk out and live and breathe oxygen is because it's generated in the oceans.
The oceans produce up to 70% of the oxygen we breathe and feed over three billion people.
Just like our forests, the plants and animals here absorb vast amounts of carbon from the atmosphere.
And, when they die, it sinks down to the ocean floor.
The ocean is what we call a carbon sink.
Basically, it's a giant sponge that has forever been absorbing all the excess carbon from the atmosphere, taking it down to the depths and keeping it there.
The most vital life forms that allow the ocean to do this are some of the tiniest, microscopic plant-like organisms - phytoplankton.
Now, we don't pay much attention to the little teeny plankton, but plankton are the most important organisms for taking carbon dioxide and transforming it into oxygen for the planet.
Phytoplankton are the base of the food chain on top of which everything else survives.
The krill eats the phytoplankton, whales eat the krill, sharks eat the fish, and so on and so forth.
We need phytoplankton for everything else in the oceans to survive, to trap that carbon and keep our climate cool.
But some of these crucial phytoplankton are under attack.
Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the oceans have absorbed almost half of all our CO2 emissions.
But that has come at a cost.
When water absorbs carbon dioxide, it becomes more acidic.
But the problem when you have this acidification is that shells are made of calcium carbonate, and, as you have this increased acidity in the oceans, it starts to dissolve these structures.
That threatens anything with a shell.
Our increasingly warm, acidic waters are not only destroying coral reefs but decimating some phytoplankton, the amount of which has fallen by as much as 40% in recent years.
250 million years ago, the ocean also warmed and became more acidic, contributing to the mass extinction of around 96% of all marine life.
If we have less phytoplankton, the base of every food web, you lose so much more of everything else.
It is serious.
If we have less phytoplankton, we have less oxygen, which is what we need to survive.
And the oceans are being damaged in another way.
Research suggests that overfishing has removed as much as 90% of all large predatory fish.
And fewer fish means a marine system that stores less carbon.
Ocean species are dying at a rate that's so fast that, if it were human beings, we would absolutely be terrified.
But there is hope here, too.
When areas of ocean are protected, marine life can recover.
Here, off the coast of Gabon, they've created one of Earth's most ambitious networks of marine protected areas.
It's a hot spot for breeding whales and dolphins .
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and one of the most important of all marine predators .
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sharks.
Sharks prevent the species they feed on from becoming overabundant - an essential factor in maintaining our oceans' rich diversity.
When people think about poaching in Africa, they think about elephants and rhinos and hippos and these great, majestic creatures on land.
But there is poaching that's taking place at sea.
The reason that I call these fishermen poachers is that they are taking wildlife without licence.
Captain Peter Hammarstedt, who works for the conservation group Sea Shepherd, is patrolling the 20,000-square-mile marine park.
Prepare boats for launch, prepare boats for launch.
Thank you.
They've spotted a commercial fishing boat on the edge of the park which needs investigating.
The Gabonese government has joined forces with Peter's team to carry out boat inspections.
The vessel may have a licence to fish here, but it could be taking more than its quota and catching protected species, like dolphins and sharks.
When fighting a war to stop illegal fishing, the odds can seem insurmountable.
This boat's fishing nets have pulled up threatened silky and blue sharks.
Catching and keeping these creatures is illegal, so the fishermen must throw them back.
But many are already so badly injured, they will not survive the ordeal.
It saddens me greatly to see these incredible creatures being brutally manhandled as they're dragged across the deck, their fingers in their gills as they pull them.
Globally, each year, millions of sharks and over 300,000 whales and dolphins are accidentally killed by fishing nets, seriously injuring the health of the oceans.
It's the efficiency of these vessels that shocks me to the core .
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this sheer killing power of them.
And you can really see why the oceans are being sucked dry of life.
But the patrols are working.
In the past three years, they have arrested 50 vessels and inspected hundreds more.
Last year, we assisted the coastguard to arrest a vessel that was poaching sharks.
And, by arresting this one single ship, we were able to save the lives of 250,000 sharks.
Marine life here now has a chance.
Currently, around 5% of the oceans are protected, but there's a global campaign to raise that to 30%.
If we can do that, many of the planet's most vulnerable species could recover.
And a healthier ocean has the power to absorb more CO2.
We thought the ocean is this infinite space that is full of infinite resources .
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and this infinite capacity to withstand and tolerate everything that we throw at it.
And I think we do need to .
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stop and reconsider our strategies if we want to move forward.
Humans aren't just damaging life in the sea.
We're also disturbing one of its most important forces .
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ocean currents.
These transport essential nutrients to almost all marine creatures.
We're dependent on these large circulation patterns that go on in our oceans.
There's this continuous movement of beautiful cold water coming from the depths.
It's chock-full of nutrients, it's chock-full of productivity.
These currents begin at the poles.
Here, cold, salty water, which is more dense, sinks to the depths .
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and flows towards the tropics and beyond.
In the hotter parts of the Earth, warmer water rises and flows back towards the poles.
This creates a global conveyor belt that circulates nutrients, oxygen and heat around our planet, regulating Earth's climate and weather.
But it's now feared that our warming planet is destabilising the system.
As you have an increase in ocean temperatures, it has impacts on everything.
We have glaciers across the world and, as they melt, you have more of this fresh water just pushing into the oceans.
And this fresh water is less saline, it's less salty, and that tends to float at the surface.
And it's not moving.
You don't have this circulation.
It's causing a breakdown.
Many animals depend on reliable ocean currents, so, as they change, the effect can be disastrous.
This can be witnessed off the north-east coast of the United States, where it's thought to be triggering mass casualties of a critically endangered species.
The fact that they're even here just stuns so many people.
Bob Prescott heads up the emergency response team.
We have about 250 people that walk beaches.
They're looking for turtles in trouble.
NEWSREADER: This week's frigid conditions have stunned sea turtles and left them stranded on beaches throughout the north-east.
If you spot one, move the turtle above the high-tide line until a trained responder arrives.
Timing is everything.
If we can get to them within an hour of them washing up onto the beach, then we're going to be able to save 90-95% of them.
Here, off the coast of Boston, waters are warming faster than almost anywhere on Earth.
It's thought to be causing turtles from the tropics to swim further north than ever before for summer feeding.
But, when the cold autumn waters suddenly close in, the turtles go into shock.
These are very young turtles.
They're anywhere from one-and-a-half to six years old.
When we find them, they're hypothermic, their heart is beating at one to five beats a minute.
The blood is barely circulating.
For all intents and purposes, look dead.
The critically ill animals are rushed to the New England Aquarium near Boston.
It has a state-of-the-art ER unit for turtles.
We don't want to stress them any further, so we now treat the whole episode as sort of entering an ICU unit of a hospital.
This is critical care for some turtles.
He's pretty stiff.
I can't get his mouth open much more.
See, it's right there.
Oh, there we are, there we are.
When a turtle arrives, its condition is rapidly assessed.
How are you doing? The animals are given stabilising drugs and fluids, their lungs are cleared of water and sand washed out of their scratched eyes.
Got emergency meds.
The veterinary team must ventilate turtles that are close to death to help them breathe.
No response at all.
But it's worth it for an animal that might live another 50 years.
You want to save as many as you can.
And it is depressing at times, cos a lot of them don't make it.
You know, last year at Thanksgiving, we had 200 dead turtles.
When you're looking into its eyes, it's looking back at you.
There is a connection there.
And it gets stronger and stronger as they start to recover.
It can take months for the turtles to recuperate.
But, once they do, they'll make the first plane flight of their lives.
We have a big transport this morning - 44 ridleys and one loggerhead.
So we're going to start in 15B.
All right, let's get to work! They are part of the planet.
They're part of our very delicate web of life, if you will.
38, 41, 44 The bottom line for all of these turtles is to get them back out into the water.
We're doing great on timing, everybody.
A very exciting day, cos it just brings that turtle one step closer to being released back into the wild.
These mass casualties of our changing oceans are to be flown south to Florida and beyond.
The future of this species depends on these young turtles Ready.
All right! .
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which will be released into the warmer-water currents that they need to survive.
It's a very emotional day for everybody.
These are turtles that staff and volunteers at the aquarium have worked so hard to get them to that point.
Changes in the ocean currents won't just harm turtles.
With heat, oxygen and nutrients moving more slowly around the globe, the impact on all life could be dramatic.
I mean, we live in a world where just one domino in a large game of dominoes So you flick one piece, and you know what happens - everything starts to collapse.
And that's exactly what we start to see over time as these conveyor belts slow down.
Human activity is destroying the balance of our perfect planet .
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disturbing our oceans and disrupting our weather.
But can we prevent the damage we're doing? Now the human population's at 7 billion.
It's moving to 9 billion.
And the problem is we're already using the equivalent of one-and-a-half Earths.
It's not sustainable.
Around 80% of the energy we use still comes from burning fossil fuels.
It's what makes us so dangerous.
We can reduce CO2 emissions by consuming less or reusing some of our resources.
But the biggest saving we could make would be to stop using fossil fuels for our energy.
And there are many people who think that we could exploit the natural forces of the planet to enable us to do that.
The sun has not sent us a bill.
The wind has not invoiced us.
Coal, oil, gas, uranium - they're expensive.
The sun and the wind is free.
We live in a planet that's incredibly dynamic.
We all live in environments where there is some source of energy that we can tap into.
There's energy, there's power all around us.
And we need to start looking at these natural sources of energy that don't have that negative impact.
We have more energy than we'll ever know what to do with.
We can power the whole world with just a fraction of the solar and wind that we get every year - a fraction of it! We're not going to start needing less power any time soon.
We're just going to have to shift how we generate that power from non-renewables to renewables.
Volcanic heat.
So far, we've only tapped some 7% of its global potential.
Or the wind in our skies.
That could provide 30% of our energy by 2050.
And the power of the sun, which is virtually unlimited.
In areas where most life struggles to survive .
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there is plenty of space to gather the maximum solar energy.
The northern Sahara, home to the world's largest concentrated solar power plant.
Here, innovative technology is using mirrors to superheat a special liquid to around 400 degrees Celsius.
This heat is then stored in molten salt, allowing something not possible before - the ability to power steam turbines with the sun's energy during the night.
It creates green electricity 24 hours a day, feeding Morocco's growing energy needs.
And it has plans to supply Europe.
We need to make enormous shifts in our society.
This is starting, but it's happening just in small places.
It needs to happen everywhere, and it needs to happen much, much faster.
There's really no excuse.
The Earth has all of the power we need.
Our mission is not growth, growth, growth, but sustainability, and that our responsibility is to steward this planet.
That's the mission at hand.
But is this transition to a low-carbon society happening fast enough? In 2015, 195 of the world's nations pledged to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions.
To avoid planetary disaster, the goal was to limit the warming of the Earth to well below two degrees.
JOHN KERRY: Together, citizens of the world, we will work to save our planet from ourselves.
BARACK OBAMA: Today's a historic day in the fight to protect our planet.
LEONARDO DICAPRIO: You'll either be lauded by future generations .
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or vilified by them.
To get an accurate reading of CO2 levels in the Earth's atmosphere, you must be far away from the pollution of the cities.
So, in the heart of the Amazon, they built a 325-metre tower to do just that.
It's one of a number of towers around the planet collecting vital data, and the news is not good.
This year, CO2 levels in the atmosphere went up yet again, hitting another record high.
I think we are in a crisis.
I'm not going to mince my words.
We are in a crisis right now.
We are pushing the equilibrium that the planet used to be in in a way that may be unrecoverable.
And what the scientists are telling us is we will face a runaway cascade of environmental events feeding off each other, taking us into an unknown abyss that could lead to a very quick mass extinction of much of life on this Earth in a very, very short period of time.
Species are becoming extinct around 100 times faster than the normal rate.
So rapid is the loss that zoos around the world are taking drastic action.
They're collecting DNA from endangered species to build a genetic store of life before they go extinct.
At Edinburgh Zoo, a health check on a Diana monkey presents a valuable opportunity to collect a sample for the European network of biobanks.
We really feel the pressure to bank as many species as we can as fast as we can before it's too late.
Marlys Houck at San Diego Zoo receives DNA samples from all over the world.
She's taking them to a secure vault.
It's known as the Frozen Zoo.
It's hard to imagine, but there's probably more vertebrate life in that room than anywhere else on the planet.
We get samples every day.
It might be a tiger, it might be a bear, it might be a rare reptile.
Right now, we have over 10,000 individuals represented.
The living cells of our world's rarest animals are being stored here at minus-200 degrees Celsius .
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keeping their DNA viable indefinitely, just in case the worst happens.
There are multiple frozen zoos like this around the world and, with extinction rates so high, they might be needed sooner than we thought.
I hope that we never have to see extinction of some of these amazing species.
But, if we do, the samples in the Frozen Zoo might be the hope for bringing them back, so that .
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our children and grandchildren could once again see the actual animals.
Not knowing what the planet will be like when I'm an adult, not knowing whether it will be capable of sustaining life - that is a terrifying thing to face.
I think the planet that I've been born into is the most beautiful place that I could ever imagine.
It's full of amazing wildlife .
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and us - humans are incredible.
But we seem to forget that the place that we live in is finite and very vulnerable, and it seems to be dying before our eyes.
Since the age of ten, I've been hearing about our warming world, but nothing was really done at that time.
All I observed at that time was sort of mass apathy.
But what is positive is that the youth are standing up and are taking leadership.
CHANTING: Save our planet! Save our planet! Save our planet! We need more people to care.
We need more people to look at the facts and say, "I will do something about this.
" Whose future? Our future! Whose planet? Our planet! Whose future? So we need to think about how we interact with the natural world.
We need to view it not as a commodity but as a system that we are a part of .
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because we are inextricably linked to the natural world, and whatever happens to the oceans, whatever happens to the forests, whatever happens to the deserts, that will come back and it will happen to us.
Right now, we have the capacity and knowledge to stop the damage we are doing.
But what we don't have is time.
My inspiration and hope for the future lies with the next generation.
But we all have a responsibility to reduce our carbon footprints, harness the forces of nature for our energy and protect the natural world.
The survival of humanity and our fellow creatures on Earth depends upon it.
Do you want to be the last generation that signed the death certificate of humanity? Do you want to be the generation that sees the last elephant killed? Do you want to be the generation that sees the last fish fished out of the sea? Or do you want to be the generation and the individuals that turned it around? This is the single most serious moment in the 200,000 years that our species has been on this Earth.
I see reason to hope.
And I think we can.
I think we humans, we are incredibly intelligent animals, and we can, and we will, if we set our minds to it.
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thanks to powerful natural forces.
The weather gives us predictable patterns of rainfall.
Sunlight delivers energy to all parts of planet Earth's surface.
Ocean currents carry nutrients around the globe.
Volcanoes create and fertilise the land.
Together, these forces have helped shape our living planet.
But it's a fragile system.
All right, come on, let's get him in.
This baby elephant is dying of thirst.
Big swallow.
The latest casualty of our changing world.
Luckily, rescuers have found him, so he has a chance.
This young animal is likely a victim of a new force .
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one so powerful, it threatens the future of life on Earth.
For over 60 years, I've been privileged to witness the natural world in all its wonder.
But the planet I saw as a young man has changed beyond recognition.
Human activity is now so dominant, it's disrupting the forces of nature and the vital habitats that life needs to survive on Earth.
This is the most important story of our time.
So I've asked three world authorities from the front line to join me in telling it.
Humans used to be a species, just like any other on Earth.
But we've now become so populous and so destructive that we are the single most influential creature on Earth.
Everything around us is collapsing.
This is the planet that we're handing over to future generations, and the worst part, I'll tell you the worst part, to me, is that they're going to turn around and be, like, "Why did you not do something when you had the chance?" We are likely to lose over half the species of life on Earth over the next eight decades.
The last time we had an extinction event of this magnitude was 65 million years ago.
We are asleep.
We are not taking a look at the enormity of this event.
If you want evidence of how life is struggling to cope in our rapidly changing world .
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you need to look no further than here in Africa.
As we warm the planet, we create more extreme droughts and floods, making it increasingly difficult for many animals to survive.
One of our planet's most magnificent creatures is no exception.
Adult elephants drink around 200 litres of water a day.
When rains fail, as they did recently here in Kenya, watering holes quickly run dry .
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killing hundreds of them.
You can see the scale of the problem .
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by the dozens of orphaned baby elephants left behind.
These are the lucky survivors.
They owe their lives to Angela Sheldrick and her team, who rescue these young orphans.
Come on! Come on, little boy.
The orphans, when we find them, tend to be in a pretty sorry state.
They are not only physically damaged but psychologically, too.
Hey.
Hello.
They have suffered such a loss, losing their elephant family, their mothers.
Angela's team do their best to soothe that loss.
Come on.
The keepers replace a lost elephant family.
They provide the tender loving care and the nurturing that is so important for them to heal.
The keepers are there 24/7.
It is a very, very special relationship that actually does last a lifetime.
Despite the elephants becoming wild, they do never forget that love and kindness.
The orphans have to be bottle-fed eight times a day.
We raise these orphaned elephants to ultimately go back to their birthright .
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a wild and happy life.
You're such a clown! Come with me.
Go on.
Go on.
So far, Angela's organisation has released more than 150 orphaned elephants back into the wild.
But, to survive, they now need to live in managed reserves, where people top up water supplies when droughts return.
Over the years, we've seen an enormous change in the weather patterns.
Greater unpredictability.
The drier seasons are drier and longer.
It is the 11th hour now.
We have just one home, and we, as the dominant species, should take care of it .
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must take care of it.
It is our responsibility.
What I need to say to people is, this is not going to get better.
We are on a curve that's moving us with a series of events that's taking us into a new geological era in history.
To understand how humans are destabilising our perfect planet, we need to look into the deep past.
In Earth's long history, it's been through at least five mass extinction events.
Most were caused by cataclysmic volcanic eruptions.
It's not the lava or ash that wiped out life .
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but an invisible gas released by volcanoes called carbon dioxide .
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CO2.
The single greatest extinction event on the planet so far was caused by the superheating of the world.
Masses of volcanic activity pumped huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, massively raised the global temperature, and saw the destruction of around 90% of all life on Earth.
Humanity is now acting like a super-volcano.
We're releasing carbon dioxide at an even greater rate than the prehistoric mega-eruptions that extinguished life in the past.
Here's the problem.
Over the last two centuries, we dug up the burial grounds of a previous geological era in history .
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the Carboniferous era.
And we took those dead remains, in the form of oil, gas and coal, and we made the entire industrial civilisation based on these fossil fuels.
Almost every part of modern life depends on energy generated by burning these fossil fuels.
And that produces CO2 in huge amounts.
Globally, we now release 100 times more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than all Earth's volcanoes combined.
And by burning more fossil fuels, releasing more carbon dioxide, heating up the world around us, we have become one of the most powerful, destructive forces on the planet.
Carbon dioxide acts like a blanket, trapping the sun's heat.
This raises the temperature and so destabilises one of the most important forces on Earth - the weather.
Many animals rely on predictable patterns of rainfall.
But, as our world warms, our weather is changing.
For every one degree that the temperature goes up on this planet because of CO2 emissions .
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the atmosphere is sucking up 7% more water.
So we're getting more concentrated precipitation in the clouds .
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and more radical, extreme, unpredictable, out-of-control weather events.
NEWSREADER: Millions are bracing for a hurricane the likes of which we've never seen.
We're getting hurricanes that are devastating our ecosystems and killing human beings every year.
They're now over and over and over again every season.
This planet is more powerful than we thought.
More fires, more droughts, more floods.
And so this perfect planet of ours is now being thrown into a system of flux.
These extreme conditions are making it increasingly difficult for animals to survive.
And that is not just affecting wildlife.
New research suggests that, for every one-degree rise in global temperatures, a billion people will be pushed into near unliveable extremes.
And this could trigger one of the greatest human migrations in history.
We're about to have climate refugees, forced out of uninhabitable areas of the world, pushed up into Europe.
We are on the cusp of the biggest migratory pattern in human history.
We're going to see millions, tens of millions and, unfortunately, hundreds of millions of people migrating from areas that are no longer liveable in the next 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 years.
And people are frightened because this is outside of our frame of reference.
But there is hope.
In Africa, the Sahara Desert is advancing southwards.
But a remarkable project is aiming to stop it in its tracks.
The ambitious goal is to plant over one billion drought-resistant trees, like acacias.
Known as the Great Green Wall, once complete, a band of trees will stretch nearly 5,000 miles right across Africa .
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one of the largest living structures on the planet.
These trees stop topsoil blowing away, and their roots penetrate the ground, creating a network of channels that store water whenever rain falls.
Ten-year-old Korka is one of the first children to benefit.
It's only as I've grown up with these trees that I understand how important they are 12 million trees have already been planted here in Senegal, and with dramatic results.
Wells are filling again, allowing crops to grow.
The green wall is so important because it gives us food and we can sell that food So far, only 15% of the Green Wall is complete, but it's already breathing life back into the land, stemming the exodus of people and keeping communities together.
And the trees do something else for our children's future.
As they grow, they remove carbon dioxide from the air.
Carbon is the very foundation of life.
Every plant absorbs it from the air .
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using it to grow.
When animals eat these plants, some of this carbon is locked away in the fabric of their bodies.
Together, these wild places, and the animals that allow them to thrive, take up over a third of the carbon dioxide we release.
All of these systems, and the life within it, are so important to protect us from a warming planet.
Some of the Earth's most important carbon stores are those rich in plant and animal species - the tropical jungles.
Forests are sponges.
They absorb enormous amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere, and they trap that inside.
Forests are about much more than just trees.
In order to thrive, a jungle needs bustling animal communities.
It needs insects to pollinate.
It needs mammals to spread the seeds from one part of the forest to another.
It needs this massive, tangled web of species interactions.
A jungle rich in animals stores so much more carbon than a forest with little life.
But many of the world's tropical jungles are under threat.
And none more so than the greatest of them all - the Amazon rainforest.
It's essential for the health of our planet, storing as much carbon as 25 years' worth of current emissions from all the cars in the world.
The Amazon rainforest is one of the keystones of our climate.
If we lose enough of the Amazon that it stops to function like that, then it's going to be an absolute disaster for civilisation, it really will.
But urban expansion, cattle ranching and mining means that the forests of the Amazon are being lost at a frightening rate.
It's not beyond the realms of possibility that we could deforest a rainforest, like the Amazon, so that trees cannot grow there and it turns into a savanna.
Every minute, an area the size of about two football pitches is destroyed by humans.
These amazing ecosystems around us - the oceans, the jungles, the forests, the mangroves - these are our greatest hope and our greatest buffers against a warming planet.
On the front line in the heart of the Amazon stands of the city of Manaus.
Here, urban expansion is eating into the jungle.
Celina Pinage works for IPAAM, the Amazonas Environmental Protection Unit.
Their mission is to save animals trapped in the city and to return them to the wild.
Normally we get around four or five calls a day We rescue wild animals like monkeys, caimans iguanas, hawks, snakes, sloths Today, Celina is rescuing a sloth.
It's the world's slowest mammal.
Many become trapped as trees are cut down to make way for houses.
Each animal has a value within the ecosystem We work to ensure that this value isn't extinguished Over 3,000 animals have been rescued in the past five years.
Each one of these creatures is needed by the forest - to disperse seeds, pollinate plants or, like this jaguar, to keep herbivores in check.
Whenever possible, Celina releases animals back into the protected areas of jungle.
I feel very sad to see the current situation in the Amazon The way it's being deforested how the animals are losing their habitat Where will these animals go? We don't just want to protect animals because they're interesting and they're beautiful.
They're an integral part of a functioning planet, and we need to keep them around.
So, how do we protect our remaining forests? Calculating their true environmental value could hold the key.
And a new cutting-edge technology is beginning to do just that.
It's led by a team from the Global Airborne Observatory.
They've developed a way to quantify exactly how much carbon the forest stores.
By firing high-powered lasers across the canopy, they can map the amount of carbon within each tree.
The trees showing up as red and yellow are the most carbon-rich.
These maps allow countries to see how valuable their forests are.
I truly hope that we aren't too far away from realising the intrinsic value of wildlife, of forests, but we're not there yet and, for the time being, governments need to be financially incentivised to keep forests standing and to not cut them down.
But what about areas of forest that have already been destroyed? In the Amazon, a revolutionary project is under way.
The aim is to plant a new jungle of 73 million trees.
But regrowing a species-rich forest has always proved difficult.
So the project has turned to the indigenous peoples of the Amazon, and young women like Milene Alves.
Within each seed is a future tree They will provide fruits and oxygen, and help keep the climate cool Milene's community has a unique knowledge of seeds.
It's enabled them to collect over 200 of the most important tree species from across the Amazon.
Since I've been a part of the seed network, my most memorable day was my very first planting I helped to mix these seeds Seeds collected by my mother, my father and my friends By mixing the seeds together, it allows them to create a super-recipe known as a muvuca.
In this mixture, there is enough tree variety to jump-start a new jungle.
Every year, around 20 tonnes of seeds are scattered over acres of burnt and degraded land.
After six years, they will have restored an area of forest the size of 30,000 football fields .
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the largest tropical restoration project in the world.
The best thing we can possibly do to mitigate the effects of a warming planet is to plant more trees and protect those trees that we have.
We can do this.
If we put them back, we are creating that stable climate that we need to survive, and it's such an easy thing to do.
Planting trees and saving wildlife is a vital solution on land, but it's only part of the story.
The carbon dioxide we produce is damaging another crucial part of our planet - the oceans.
Life cannot survive without them.
The reason we can walk out and live and breathe oxygen is because it's generated in the oceans.
The oceans produce up to 70% of the oxygen we breathe and feed over three billion people.
Just like our forests, the plants and animals here absorb vast amounts of carbon from the atmosphere.
And, when they die, it sinks down to the ocean floor.
The ocean is what we call a carbon sink.
Basically, it's a giant sponge that has forever been absorbing all the excess carbon from the atmosphere, taking it down to the depths and keeping it there.
The most vital life forms that allow the ocean to do this are some of the tiniest, microscopic plant-like organisms - phytoplankton.
Now, we don't pay much attention to the little teeny plankton, but plankton are the most important organisms for taking carbon dioxide and transforming it into oxygen for the planet.
Phytoplankton are the base of the food chain on top of which everything else survives.
The krill eats the phytoplankton, whales eat the krill, sharks eat the fish, and so on and so forth.
We need phytoplankton for everything else in the oceans to survive, to trap that carbon and keep our climate cool.
But some of these crucial phytoplankton are under attack.
Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the oceans have absorbed almost half of all our CO2 emissions.
But that has come at a cost.
When water absorbs carbon dioxide, it becomes more acidic.
But the problem when you have this acidification is that shells are made of calcium carbonate, and, as you have this increased acidity in the oceans, it starts to dissolve these structures.
That threatens anything with a shell.
Our increasingly warm, acidic waters are not only destroying coral reefs but decimating some phytoplankton, the amount of which has fallen by as much as 40% in recent years.
250 million years ago, the ocean also warmed and became more acidic, contributing to the mass extinction of around 96% of all marine life.
If we have less phytoplankton, the base of every food web, you lose so much more of everything else.
It is serious.
If we have less phytoplankton, we have less oxygen, which is what we need to survive.
And the oceans are being damaged in another way.
Research suggests that overfishing has removed as much as 90% of all large predatory fish.
And fewer fish means a marine system that stores less carbon.
Ocean species are dying at a rate that's so fast that, if it were human beings, we would absolutely be terrified.
But there is hope here, too.
When areas of ocean are protected, marine life can recover.
Here, off the coast of Gabon, they've created one of Earth's most ambitious networks of marine protected areas.
It's a hot spot for breeding whales and dolphins .
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and one of the most important of all marine predators .
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sharks.
Sharks prevent the species they feed on from becoming overabundant - an essential factor in maintaining our oceans' rich diversity.
When people think about poaching in Africa, they think about elephants and rhinos and hippos and these great, majestic creatures on land.
But there is poaching that's taking place at sea.
The reason that I call these fishermen poachers is that they are taking wildlife without licence.
Captain Peter Hammarstedt, who works for the conservation group Sea Shepherd, is patrolling the 20,000-square-mile marine park.
Prepare boats for launch, prepare boats for launch.
Thank you.
They've spotted a commercial fishing boat on the edge of the park which needs investigating.
The Gabonese government has joined forces with Peter's team to carry out boat inspections.
The vessel may have a licence to fish here, but it could be taking more than its quota and catching protected species, like dolphins and sharks.
When fighting a war to stop illegal fishing, the odds can seem insurmountable.
This boat's fishing nets have pulled up threatened silky and blue sharks.
Catching and keeping these creatures is illegal, so the fishermen must throw them back.
But many are already so badly injured, they will not survive the ordeal.
It saddens me greatly to see these incredible creatures being brutally manhandled as they're dragged across the deck, their fingers in their gills as they pull them.
Globally, each year, millions of sharks and over 300,000 whales and dolphins are accidentally killed by fishing nets, seriously injuring the health of the oceans.
It's the efficiency of these vessels that shocks me to the core .
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this sheer killing power of them.
And you can really see why the oceans are being sucked dry of life.
But the patrols are working.
In the past three years, they have arrested 50 vessels and inspected hundreds more.
Last year, we assisted the coastguard to arrest a vessel that was poaching sharks.
And, by arresting this one single ship, we were able to save the lives of 250,000 sharks.
Marine life here now has a chance.
Currently, around 5% of the oceans are protected, but there's a global campaign to raise that to 30%.
If we can do that, many of the planet's most vulnerable species could recover.
And a healthier ocean has the power to absorb more CO2.
We thought the ocean is this infinite space that is full of infinite resources .
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and this infinite capacity to withstand and tolerate everything that we throw at it.
And I think we do need to .
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stop and reconsider our strategies if we want to move forward.
Humans aren't just damaging life in the sea.
We're also disturbing one of its most important forces .
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ocean currents.
These transport essential nutrients to almost all marine creatures.
We're dependent on these large circulation patterns that go on in our oceans.
There's this continuous movement of beautiful cold water coming from the depths.
It's chock-full of nutrients, it's chock-full of productivity.
These currents begin at the poles.
Here, cold, salty water, which is more dense, sinks to the depths .
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and flows towards the tropics and beyond.
In the hotter parts of the Earth, warmer water rises and flows back towards the poles.
This creates a global conveyor belt that circulates nutrients, oxygen and heat around our planet, regulating Earth's climate and weather.
But it's now feared that our warming planet is destabilising the system.
As you have an increase in ocean temperatures, it has impacts on everything.
We have glaciers across the world and, as they melt, you have more of this fresh water just pushing into the oceans.
And this fresh water is less saline, it's less salty, and that tends to float at the surface.
And it's not moving.
You don't have this circulation.
It's causing a breakdown.
Many animals depend on reliable ocean currents, so, as they change, the effect can be disastrous.
This can be witnessed off the north-east coast of the United States, where it's thought to be triggering mass casualties of a critically endangered species.
The fact that they're even here just stuns so many people.
Bob Prescott heads up the emergency response team.
We have about 250 people that walk beaches.
They're looking for turtles in trouble.
NEWSREADER: This week's frigid conditions have stunned sea turtles and left them stranded on beaches throughout the north-east.
If you spot one, move the turtle above the high-tide line until a trained responder arrives.
Timing is everything.
If we can get to them within an hour of them washing up onto the beach, then we're going to be able to save 90-95% of them.
Here, off the coast of Boston, waters are warming faster than almost anywhere on Earth.
It's thought to be causing turtles from the tropics to swim further north than ever before for summer feeding.
But, when the cold autumn waters suddenly close in, the turtles go into shock.
These are very young turtles.
They're anywhere from one-and-a-half to six years old.
When we find them, they're hypothermic, their heart is beating at one to five beats a minute.
The blood is barely circulating.
For all intents and purposes, look dead.
The critically ill animals are rushed to the New England Aquarium near Boston.
It has a state-of-the-art ER unit for turtles.
We don't want to stress them any further, so we now treat the whole episode as sort of entering an ICU unit of a hospital.
This is critical care for some turtles.
He's pretty stiff.
I can't get his mouth open much more.
See, it's right there.
Oh, there we are, there we are.
When a turtle arrives, its condition is rapidly assessed.
How are you doing? The animals are given stabilising drugs and fluids, their lungs are cleared of water and sand washed out of their scratched eyes.
Got emergency meds.
The veterinary team must ventilate turtles that are close to death to help them breathe.
No response at all.
But it's worth it for an animal that might live another 50 years.
You want to save as many as you can.
And it is depressing at times, cos a lot of them don't make it.
You know, last year at Thanksgiving, we had 200 dead turtles.
When you're looking into its eyes, it's looking back at you.
There is a connection there.
And it gets stronger and stronger as they start to recover.
It can take months for the turtles to recuperate.
But, once they do, they'll make the first plane flight of their lives.
We have a big transport this morning - 44 ridleys and one loggerhead.
So we're going to start in 15B.
All right, let's get to work! They are part of the planet.
They're part of our very delicate web of life, if you will.
38, 41, 44 The bottom line for all of these turtles is to get them back out into the water.
We're doing great on timing, everybody.
A very exciting day, cos it just brings that turtle one step closer to being released back into the wild.
These mass casualties of our changing oceans are to be flown south to Florida and beyond.
The future of this species depends on these young turtles Ready.
All right! .
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which will be released into the warmer-water currents that they need to survive.
It's a very emotional day for everybody.
These are turtles that staff and volunteers at the aquarium have worked so hard to get them to that point.
Changes in the ocean currents won't just harm turtles.
With heat, oxygen and nutrients moving more slowly around the globe, the impact on all life could be dramatic.
I mean, we live in a world where just one domino in a large game of dominoes So you flick one piece, and you know what happens - everything starts to collapse.
And that's exactly what we start to see over time as these conveyor belts slow down.
Human activity is destroying the balance of our perfect planet .
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disturbing our oceans and disrupting our weather.
But can we prevent the damage we're doing? Now the human population's at 7 billion.
It's moving to 9 billion.
And the problem is we're already using the equivalent of one-and-a-half Earths.
It's not sustainable.
Around 80% of the energy we use still comes from burning fossil fuels.
It's what makes us so dangerous.
We can reduce CO2 emissions by consuming less or reusing some of our resources.
But the biggest saving we could make would be to stop using fossil fuels for our energy.
And there are many people who think that we could exploit the natural forces of the planet to enable us to do that.
The sun has not sent us a bill.
The wind has not invoiced us.
Coal, oil, gas, uranium - they're expensive.
The sun and the wind is free.
We live in a planet that's incredibly dynamic.
We all live in environments where there is some source of energy that we can tap into.
There's energy, there's power all around us.
And we need to start looking at these natural sources of energy that don't have that negative impact.
We have more energy than we'll ever know what to do with.
We can power the whole world with just a fraction of the solar and wind that we get every year - a fraction of it! We're not going to start needing less power any time soon.
We're just going to have to shift how we generate that power from non-renewables to renewables.
Volcanic heat.
So far, we've only tapped some 7% of its global potential.
Or the wind in our skies.
That could provide 30% of our energy by 2050.
And the power of the sun, which is virtually unlimited.
In areas where most life struggles to survive .
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there is plenty of space to gather the maximum solar energy.
The northern Sahara, home to the world's largest concentrated solar power plant.
Here, innovative technology is using mirrors to superheat a special liquid to around 400 degrees Celsius.
This heat is then stored in molten salt, allowing something not possible before - the ability to power steam turbines with the sun's energy during the night.
It creates green electricity 24 hours a day, feeding Morocco's growing energy needs.
And it has plans to supply Europe.
We need to make enormous shifts in our society.
This is starting, but it's happening just in small places.
It needs to happen everywhere, and it needs to happen much, much faster.
There's really no excuse.
The Earth has all of the power we need.
Our mission is not growth, growth, growth, but sustainability, and that our responsibility is to steward this planet.
That's the mission at hand.
But is this transition to a low-carbon society happening fast enough? In 2015, 195 of the world's nations pledged to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions.
To avoid planetary disaster, the goal was to limit the warming of the Earth to well below two degrees.
JOHN KERRY: Together, citizens of the world, we will work to save our planet from ourselves.
BARACK OBAMA: Today's a historic day in the fight to protect our planet.
LEONARDO DICAPRIO: You'll either be lauded by future generations .
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or vilified by them.
To get an accurate reading of CO2 levels in the Earth's atmosphere, you must be far away from the pollution of the cities.
So, in the heart of the Amazon, they built a 325-metre tower to do just that.
It's one of a number of towers around the planet collecting vital data, and the news is not good.
This year, CO2 levels in the atmosphere went up yet again, hitting another record high.
I think we are in a crisis.
I'm not going to mince my words.
We are in a crisis right now.
We are pushing the equilibrium that the planet used to be in in a way that may be unrecoverable.
And what the scientists are telling us is we will face a runaway cascade of environmental events feeding off each other, taking us into an unknown abyss that could lead to a very quick mass extinction of much of life on this Earth in a very, very short period of time.
Species are becoming extinct around 100 times faster than the normal rate.
So rapid is the loss that zoos around the world are taking drastic action.
They're collecting DNA from endangered species to build a genetic store of life before they go extinct.
At Edinburgh Zoo, a health check on a Diana monkey presents a valuable opportunity to collect a sample for the European network of biobanks.
We really feel the pressure to bank as many species as we can as fast as we can before it's too late.
Marlys Houck at San Diego Zoo receives DNA samples from all over the world.
She's taking them to a secure vault.
It's known as the Frozen Zoo.
It's hard to imagine, but there's probably more vertebrate life in that room than anywhere else on the planet.
We get samples every day.
It might be a tiger, it might be a bear, it might be a rare reptile.
Right now, we have over 10,000 individuals represented.
The living cells of our world's rarest animals are being stored here at minus-200 degrees Celsius .
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keeping their DNA viable indefinitely, just in case the worst happens.
There are multiple frozen zoos like this around the world and, with extinction rates so high, they might be needed sooner than we thought.
I hope that we never have to see extinction of some of these amazing species.
But, if we do, the samples in the Frozen Zoo might be the hope for bringing them back, so that .
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our children and grandchildren could once again see the actual animals.
Not knowing what the planet will be like when I'm an adult, not knowing whether it will be capable of sustaining life - that is a terrifying thing to face.
I think the planet that I've been born into is the most beautiful place that I could ever imagine.
It's full of amazing wildlife .
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and us - humans are incredible.
But we seem to forget that the place that we live in is finite and very vulnerable, and it seems to be dying before our eyes.
Since the age of ten, I've been hearing about our warming world, but nothing was really done at that time.
All I observed at that time was sort of mass apathy.
But what is positive is that the youth are standing up and are taking leadership.
CHANTING: Save our planet! Save our planet! Save our planet! We need more people to care.
We need more people to look at the facts and say, "I will do something about this.
" Whose future? Our future! Whose planet? Our planet! Whose future? So we need to think about how we interact with the natural world.
We need to view it not as a commodity but as a system that we are a part of .
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because we are inextricably linked to the natural world, and whatever happens to the oceans, whatever happens to the forests, whatever happens to the deserts, that will come back and it will happen to us.
Right now, we have the capacity and knowledge to stop the damage we are doing.
But what we don't have is time.
My inspiration and hope for the future lies with the next generation.
But we all have a responsibility to reduce our carbon footprints, harness the forces of nature for our energy and protect the natural world.
The survival of humanity and our fellow creatures on Earth depends upon it.
Do you want to be the last generation that signed the death certificate of humanity? Do you want to be the generation that sees the last elephant killed? Do you want to be the generation that sees the last fish fished out of the sea? Or do you want to be the generation and the individuals that turned it around? This is the single most serious moment in the 200,000 years that our species has been on this Earth.
I see reason to hope.
And I think we can.
I think we humans, we are incredibly intelligent animals, and we can, and we will, if we set our minds to it.