Antes Que Sea Tarde - National Geographic - Español Latino

My first visual memories are of this panel, framed above my cradle. I would see it every night before going to sleep. My father was a clandestine distributor of comics. He has always been a kind of Selig of counterculture, as I call him.

Having painted at the Warhol studio, being a partner of Lou Reed, he met Eric Crumb and all the great artists of his generation. I saw all kinds of eccentric images of a child, so I would see that painting over and over again. "The Garden of Delights" by Hieronymus Bosch. "El Bosco" was painted around the year 1500 and if you see those panels enough, they begin to tell a story.

In the first panel, there are Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Birds flying at a distance, elephants and giraffes and a lot of religious iconography. The second panel is when it starts to become more interesting. Capital sins begin to merge in their way of painting. There is overpopulation, deprivation and excess. And the last panel, which is the most distressing, especially from the perspective of a small child,

It's this hazy, twisted and decaying landscape. A paradise that has been degraded and destroyed. Man can be changing the climate of the world without wanting it with the waste of his civilization. The combustion of coal, oil and wood is releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It has been detected that the greenhouse effect is changing our climate. Guess how it affects the temperature? It increases it.

The climate change is already in our backyard. Official, 2012 was the hottest year. 2013, 2014, 2015. The hottest year on the globe. The hottest year recorded. These activities are what keep humanity away from the garden of... Ah, Mr. DiCaprio, it's a great pleasure to see you. It's a great pleasure. The pleasure is all mine. Over here.

We can move this. This can be adjusted. It's to control the height. Yes, that's right. For low leaders and high leaders. What specific message do you think is the most important? Climate change is coming too fast. We have seen some extraordinary and extreme climate patterns.

If we consider how vast the universe is, the planet Earth is just a small ship. If this ship sinks, I think we will all sink together. I know he has been a very efficient and committed environmentalist. That is why I really count on his leadership and vision.

We welcome the newly elected messenger of peace of the United Nations, Mr. Leonardo DiCaprio. Thank you, Mr. Secretary General.

I feel incredibly honored that you chose me as a peace messenger of the United Nations for climate change. I want to learn as much as I can about this matter. To see for myself exactly what is happening and what can be done. But everything seems to be beyond our control. As an actor, I pretend to live.

I often interpret fictional characters solving fictional problems. I think humanity sees climate change in the same way. We continue to receive catastrophic news about the environment every day. The problem seems to get worse and worse and worse. If you have a conversation with anyone about climate change, people are not interested. If the United Nations knew how I feel,

How pessimistic I am about our future. To be honest, they would say they were wrong about man. Hundreds of thousands took the streets of New York today demanding actions in favor of climate change. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called Leo a credible voice of the environmental movement, which is like calling Jeffrey Dahmer a credible voice of the stafado.

Leonardo DiCaprio has fallen naively into the global warming farce. Who better to educate world leaders on an invented climate change in a crisis that does not exist? ...of Hollywood with zero years of scientific training. Hello, how are you? Good, thank you. Nice to meet you. How are you? It's a pleasure. Likewise, nice to meet you. Hello! Nice to see you. What have you done? Nice to see you, friend. What a joy. I just started a new film...

that is located on the western border of the United States, at the beginning of 1800. It is the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. It has a lot to do with men who deprive the natural world, annihilate species and basically destroy cultures in the process. Wow, look at that. They are like buffalo skulls. Alejandro, it's crazy. Crazy, yes. Are they skin hunters? Do these people sell skulls? No, these people are selling skulls, yes. And what is this? Isn't it shameful?

It seems crazy. And the fact that they never thought about what the end of those animals was, we can only call it madness. If you can put that in the movie, it would be amazing. Very good. How about if I challenge you? Well... Go to the boat! Come here! I did not grow up surrounded by nature. I grew up near the center of Los Angeles. And my escape every weekend was to the Natural History Museum.

and from a very early age he was fascinated with species in danger of extinction. All these different animals, from the dodo to the passenger pigeon, which was the most beautiful bird on earth, to the Tasmanian tiger, also known as the tilacino, to the great alca, the quagga, the moa.

I remember the anger I felt when I read all those stories of how the explorers and colonizers annihilated entire populations and in the process, they decimated the ecosystem forever. The difference now is that knowingly we do it, but on a much larger scale.

If we want to fight against climate change effectively, we must start by knowing that most of our economy is based on fossil fuels, such as coal or oil and natural gas. Oil has a greater influence on the transport sector. Coal and natural gas have a greater influence on electricity. In the early 21st century,

To maintain our dependence on fossil fuels, we reach very risky and extreme new sources. We see this in things like removing mountain peaks from coal, drilling through natural gas, oil drilling on the coast and bituminous sand, which is the most devastating way of producing fossil fuels. They eliminate huge forests, water in streams and rivers is poisoned,

That has a serious impact on wildlife, native communities and requires a huge amount of energy just to get our fuel tanks. There is no clean fossil fuel. The headphones are hanging back, the volume control is right above the microphone. Who cut all this?

There is a mining company in the city that typically when people need to cut trees and develop a local mill, they process all the wood. This was covered with trees, everything was covered with trees. It started as a very small operation, like in the mid-1960s, very different from what it is today. Today they produce around 350,000 barrels of...

Petroleum, crude, synthetic here. There are a couple of them, Leonardo. There's Exxon. They recently started a new mine. And there's also Shell. So all the black stuff is bituminous sand? Yes, when you see them you can tell they contain petroleum. What happens in real time is that we take the sand and extract the petroleum from the sand.

We just pump steam to the ground, and when the ground heats up, it literally spills oil. It falls only from the sand, and that's all. It's a bit like Mordor. What? Mordor, from Lord of the Rings.

It's a huge operation, amazing. Of course, this is our mining operation. We will go to the extraction operation, to the improvement operation and the field operation, which is about 70 kilometers more or less. But the plants are connected by means of pipes. The truth is that the more I learn about this matter and everything that contributes to the problem, the more I realize how much I do not know, as far as I know about this matter.

The first time I heard the term global warming, as it was called then, was almost after turning 20. I had the opportunity to sit face to face with then vice president Al Gore in the White House. He drew a picture of our planet on a blackboard and then drew the atmosphere around him and said: "This is the most important matter of our time." I had no idea what he was talking about.

He said: "All our modes of transport, boats, trains, planes, cars, the way we produce food, the way we build cities, almost everything releases CO2 dioxide and that leads to climate change. The polar ice caps will melt, the oceans will start to grow, there will be more patterns of dangerous weather, floods, droughts, fires. It sounds like a science fiction movie of a nightmare.

Except that everything he said is real and is happening right now. Wow, wow, beautiful. I just want to know how far we have come, how much damage we have done and if there is something we can do to stop it. Everything okay, friend? It's July 4th and we are in the middle of the Arctic.

Right now we are standing on the ocean. We are literally walking on the water. It is the northern tip of the island of Baffin, one of the hundreds of islands in the Canadian high Arctic. We are very high above the Arctic Circle. And if you put your hand in the water, you won't be able to keep it for more than five minutes. Except you, who are used to it. You hunt and fish here, right? Yes. What do you fish and hunt? In my territory, I hunt fish, seals,

narwhals, and now polar bears. - This is polar bear? - Yes. - Oh, I see. - Yes. And the ice here, have you noticed that it's decreasing? Yes, we used to have blue ice. Not light blue like this one, blue. Hard ice. Now we only have a kind of creamy ice, soft. It's ice, but it melts, it melts very fast.

It's faster than before. In 2040, you'll be able to sail over the North Pole. There won't be any frozen sea in the Arctic Ocean in the summer. We're burning so many fossil fuels that the ice will melt. The Arctic is like the air conditioning for the northern hemisphere. If it disappears, that will change the currents, it will change the climate patterns,

It will cause catastrophic floods and droughts. It is the most dramatic known transformation of a great environment. Look at this. They are here. There are about 10,000 to 12,000 narwhals in this region. The numbers are stable here. In other regions they are decreasing. It's impressive. Yes. They wait for the ice to open to go swimming and hunt their food. I can't believe it.

When I turned 25

I remember being asked to participate in a huge event in Washington for Earth Day. Temperatures rise, coral reefs die, and since a meteor hit Earth 65 million years ago, so many species of plants and animals had not been extinct in such a short time. I had the opportunity to interview the President of the United States. Why do you think this issue is constantly being overlooked? I think it's because it takes a lot of time for people to feel the climate change, and because...

That seems abstract now. At that time, it was a great pressure to say the word global warming. A couple of degrees of difference in today's temperatures may not seem like an emergency. At that time, everyone was focused on small and individual actions. I think we all must bring environmentalism to American consciousness. We all must... It was reduced to simple solutions, like changing a bulb. It seemed like something positive to do at that time, you know? Change your light bulb.

But it's very clear that we've already passed that point. Things are turning massively for the worse. We keep finding things that are not in the climate models, that were used to project the future. And that tells me that the projections for the future are very conservative. If the climate stays in the temperatures of the last decade, Greenland will disappear. Don't walk on the crack. It's unbelievable! Don't get close to the edge.

Look how violent it is! Those fast ones go incredibly fast! That water from the ice is going to the sea. If it is not balanced with a snowfall, the layers of ice will be smaller and the sea level will increase. That is actually our weather station. Is that a weather station? I imagined a huge igloo with all kinds of scientists doing experiments. It really looks like a decomposed pool equipment.

Tell me, how is all this connected? Well, everything melted. It was a hose of about 10 meters and now it's melted. One minute, tell me, this that lies here used to be directly under the ice? Yes, yes, that's right. This is the amount of ice that has melted. Yes, it's five years of defrosting. So all this distance is the thickness of the ice that has melted throughout the low Groenland in the last five years?

Yes, they are hundreds of cubic kilometers of ice that are no longer stored on the ground. They go straight to the sea over there.

Miami, New Orleans, Boston, and Long Beach, California, can be condemned to be victims of the rising sea levels. The south of Florida, as we know it, could be swallowed by the rising seas.

When you look for places that are more susceptible to the increase in sea level, especially in the United States, Florida is the key. And a lot of your campaign was based on making everyone understand what the risk was. We don't have the freedom or the time to debate climate change. If you don't believe in it, I always say bring the unconverted to us and we will make sure you accept that there is a big problem.

There's something called a sunny, flooded day. Imagine a beautiful sunny day and suddenly you see water coming out on the street. As the sea level increases, the water flows out into the streets through the drainage. If the city is under water, there is no future. And how do you fight that? What exactly happens in terms of prevention? We start by putting bombs. Come and see this. Ah, this is the bomb. Yes, we are in the process of building them throughout the city.

This street here is usually under water. In a high tide, you might need a canoe. And what we did was to raise this road. And you can see the difference. See how that area over there is leaning a little? So the main investment in these systems are the elevated roads and the electric pumps. Yes. It's a project of 400 million dollars in the whole city. And of course, we pay it with the city's taxes.

I put a tax that you can imagine is not something very popular for a politician. And this construction will make a big difference? Big difference. And it will buy you a lot of time. Yes, of course. I would say 40 or 50 years, more or less. Is that all? Yes. One of the things that always ask me, Mayor, what's going on after 50 years? What will happen? What you have to do is find solutions. And unfortunately we have a governor and a cabinet that do not believe that this is a serious matter.

Officials in Florida said Ellis forbade the use of the words "climate change". This policy began in 2011 after Rick Scott took office.

Nobody wants to talk about climate change, especially our senator from Florida, Marco Rubio, who does not believe that there is a climate change and is not interested in helping our state. I hoped he would give himself and give us federal funds for the last three years to make our cities viable. I do not believe that human activity is causing those dramatic changes to our climate in the way that those scientists portray it.

Tell me, why do you think there is such opposition about science? I think it's politics. I think it has to do with the cabildo, industry... And I always say one thing, Leo, I say... Ah, the ocean is not republican or democratic, all it knows how to do is grow. We have knowledge that in the last 17 years there has not been an important warming recorded. It is supposed that there are 21 degrees today, it is freezing here. Speaking of global warming, where is it? We need heat.

It's about a solid consensus about humans causing climate change, as it is for any matter in science, such as gravity theory. 97% of climate scientists accept that the globe is heating up.

Our climate is also due to the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities. Unfortunately, we are facing a huge disinformation campaign to confuse the public. We have seen in the satellite data that there is actually no important warming since 1998. There is no warming, it has cooled down. If you really think global warming is the biggest problem we face, you are the most stupid being on the planet.

and maybe you could talk a little about your background, the studies you did. I was the classic math nerd in high school. I studied physics as a postgraduate and a decade and a half ago my colleagues and I started to investigate climate change in the distant past. We published a curve where there is a long-term cold trend and then suddenly an abrupt warming that has no precedent and was called the hockey stick because it looks like the leaf of a hockey stick.

And when I published that graphic, I had to prepare myself for a completely different life. Yes, and why? What did you do specifically for... I was defamed on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and Fox News that I was a fraud.

Other German scientists call him "statistic garbage". He has been called "statistic charlatan". He was attacked by congressmen. They throw spaghetti at the wall and wherever it falls is what they put on the chart. Death threats that were quite justifiable, so that the FBI at some point had to go to my office to investigate a envelope that they sent me and it had white powder. I received threats made against my family.

Those guys knew they couldn't win a legitimate scientific debate, they just needed to divide the public, and all that hatred and fear is organized and financed by a few. Fossil fuel interests, like the Koch brothers, finance a big echo chamber to deny climate change.

The reality is that many climatologists believe that science is not ready. Global warming is illusory. We have a global warming. It is easier to believe in a benevolent God, the child Jesus, than in a theory about global warming. Websites, news media and groups of experts found people with impressive credentials willing to sell those credentials to the interests of fossil fuels. Dr. Fred Singer, president of the Environmental Policy and Science Project,

Las ondas climáticas alrededor del mundo no muestran calentamiento de la atmósfera en los últimos 25 años. Tienes todas esas organizaciones con nombres rimbombantes como Americans for Prosperity o The Heartland Institute, que son grupos fachada fundados por intereses corporativos.

Americans for Prosperity is actually the facade group of the Koch brothers. It's an organization founded by David and Charles Koch. Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here. Welcome. And what will you do to receive your money? We expect a change in policies. Industrial Koch is one of the largest private properties with interest in fossil fuels in the world, and they do everything they can to protect that wealth. Would you give up all that industrialization or all that productivity that has brought us to

They have been making fun of him in Congress. We still hear that 2014 has been the hottest year recorded. Mr. President, catch this.

James Inhofe is perhaps the most prominent congressman who denies climate change. Global warming is the biggest deception that has been made to the American people. He is president of the Senate's environment committee. There are people who are so arrogant, who think they are so powerful that they can change the climate. Man cannot change the climate. It may not surprise you to know that James Inhofe is one of the largest recipients of fossil fuel money in the US Senate.

The fossil fuel interests have bought the House of Representatives and the Senate's Environment Committee. They can't approve an environmental project in Congress because it's controlled by fossil fuel funds that deny climate change and block any law that tries to deal with this problem. And how can they discredit scientists who have dedicated their lives to this matter? That's amazing to me. Sometimes it makes you want to have a drink, right? Of course, if I were a scientist...

Estaría por completo molesto cada día de mi vida. Estas personas se han entregado al esfuerzo de desviarnos del camino a un muy corto plazo por las ganancias de combustibles fósiles para que terminemos dejando atrás un planeta degradado. ¿Qué podría ser más inmoral que eso?

Even now, man can be changing the climate of the world with the waste of this civilization. Due to the waste of factories and cars every year of more than 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide, our atmosphere seems to be heating up. And is that bad?

Well, it is estimated that the increase of a few degrees in the temperature of the Earth will melt the layers of polar ice. The fact is that we have known about this problem for decades and decades, for almost half a century. Every day I send you a thousand times more energy than you use in a year. Is there anyone working to receive the direct energy of this old friend? Oh yes, but not even close. Roll 6B. Imagine the world of today.

if we had taken seriously the science of climate change at that time. ... an electric current but with sunlight as a source. Before, our engineers must build generators to spread it across acres, even square miles, to compete with the cheap coal and oil still available. Since then, our population has increased to almost 5 billion people and so on. And China recently surpassed the United States as the number one polluter in the world.

China is growing. China is the world's factory, manufacturing for all Western countries,

And a lot of the pollution from that industry is being poured into our backyard. And in this area that surrounds Beijing, apart from the Shandong Peninsula, the consumption of coal is equal to the total consumption of coal in the United States. In a not very large area. People are very concerned about this, especially when they understand better how much their health will be damaged. The health of their children, their family.

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People really want to be part of the solution. Now, environmental issues have become the main reason for massive protests. What we want to do is to demand responsibilities. That all the power plants and their emissions are totally transparent for people and to take them to public scrutiny.

I started a national data base of pollution with that in mind. So these are all the big factories in China. There are almost 9,000. The ones in red are not in accordance with the standards.

Every hour they must give people their monitoring data. People can check them on their cell phones and press the polluting factories to correct their violations. It is truly brilliant that they do not allow these companies to operate in the dark. And the media help a lot. Do Chinese media regularly talk about climate change? Constantly. If people are given the data, they are given power.

And this popular support helps to motivate China's policy of ecological growth. The government changed its plan for renewable energy. There is a giant that tends to solar and wind. That is the next step. China has one of the largest solar and wind companies in the world. Although China has some huge challenges, like the large population, it gives priority to wind and solar, more than to coal. If China can do it,

China still depends a lot on fossil fuels, but they seem to be in the transition to renewables much faster than someone had anticipated. And here the question is: Can less developed countries with a rapid population growth make the same transition? India is the third largest emitter of pollutants in the world.

The country faces a massive shortage and continuous blackouts. India has constantly said that its priorities are development and getting people out of poverty. We care about climate change, but the fact is that we are a country where access to energy is a greater challenge than climate change. We need to ensure that each Indian has access to electricity.

As far as I understand, there are 300 million people without electricity, without electricity here in India. That's equivalent to the entire population of the United States. How are you? I'm bothering you, but they've already... Yes, Sunita? What does she do?

Today, in the villages, the Indian villages, there are people who collect cow manure and prepare what is known as cow manure cake or uples in Hindi and burn it. And it is their only source of energy to cook, they will make their food on it. About 30% of homes in India still do not have access to electricity.

If we want to provide electricity to everyone, we must ensure that that electricity is affordable. India has a vast coal reserve. We are perhaps the third or fourth largest coal reserve in the world. Coal is cheap. Whether you like it or not, coal is cheap. You must think from that point of view. If you created the problem in the past, we will create it in the future.

We have 700 million homes that use biomass to cook. 700 million homes! If those homes turn to coal, you have to use a lot of fossil fuels, and it will be the end of the world.

If someone gives you those nice things and says, "Oh, the poor people of the world must use solar energy, why make the same mistakes as we do?" I always hear that from North American engineers. And I say, "Wow, you see, if it were so easy, I would like the United States to use solar energy, but they haven't. We have to keep our promises." We must practice what we preach, of course. I'm sorry to say this, but I know you're North American and please don't take it the wrong way.

But will its consumption really make a hole in the planet? I think that's the conversation we should have. I'll show you graphs from this perspective. Electricity consumption for an American in North America is equivalent to 1.5 of French citizens, 2.2 of Japanese citizens, 10 of Chinese citizens, 34 of Indian citizens and 61 of Nigerian citizens. Why?

Because you build bigger, you build more, and you use much more than before. The reality is that we must put the issue of lifestyle and consumption at the center of climate negotiations. Look, I can't not agree with you. How can I argue that? You're absolutely right, and I think so.

It's a very difficult argument to present to the Americans. We must change our lifestyle and I would also argue that it is likely that this will not happen. We are dependent and we want to solve the climate crisis. On the fact that, fortunately, renewables such as solar and wind will become cheaper and cheaper and the more money we channel them, the more we invest in them. In the end, that will solve the problem.

I see you're moving your head. Obviously... I'm moving it in the Indian style, which means no. Okay. Who will invest, Leo? Let's be realistic about this. Who will invest and how will they invest? We're making more investments in solar today. China makes a bigger investment in solar today than the United States. What does your country do that the rest of the world can learn?

They are a country addicted to fossil fuels. But if they are really decoupling, it is something we can learn. And it would be the leadership that we could show to our government, saying, if the United States can do it, and that country is doing it, despite all the pressures, we too. The sad thing about this is that it is not happening. And people like me are quite rich to resist the first blow of climate change.

But it's the poor people of India, the poor people of Africa, the poor people of Bangladesh who are impacted today by what I believe is the first sign of climate change. What did you plant here, Gigi? As far as you can see, we planted onions. So in February and March, which is when the harvest is lifted, they had half a year of rains in just five hours.

The half of the year of rains in 5 hours. So those crops were destroyed. Yes, destroyed. You break your back doing this. And then you get a rainy season that is absolutely the drop that the glass spilled. And we need countries that believe that climate change is real and urgent. It is not a product of imagination. The United States is the largest greenhouse gas emitter in history.

And there is no doubt that we are all benefited by fossil fuels. I know what I have. My footprint is perhaps much larger than that of the majority. And there are times when I wonder what it is to do the right thing. What actions should we take? There are more than a million people without electricity. And they want light, they want heat, they want the lifestyle we have had in the United States in the last 100 years.

If we are going to solve this problem, we all have the responsibility to set the example. And more than that, help the world in development, to transition, before it's too late. We have seen events that we never saw in the past. It's not about when all the islands are under water. It's long before there will be a crisis. And it's already happening. What we are facing right now are serious floods.

It goes to the fresh water tanks, which is where people get their water to drink. Have you talked to the people in the scientific community to give you a kind of deadline? Given the scenarios and projections suggested by science, our islands will be under water. And the question is, what do we do about it? For the moment, internally we are relocating the communities of certain parts of the island where the water does not reach.

But the long-term strategy is something that we have discussed internationally. Because we have to accept the reality that maybe we can't accommodate our entire population. We adopt a dignity migration policy. We buy a piece of land in Fiji so that if our people choose to migrate today, they can do it. They should do it as an option. I have grandchildren. I have 12 grandchildren.

I wish I could go quietly knowing that they will continue to have a home. We will face problems very soon with which we will not be able to deal alone. Throughout Palau we see the sea level increase towards the farms reaching the houses. This is incredible. This island was intact with houses in it how long ago?

How long ago? 12 years ago when you came there were people living here and in a period of 12 years this is the result. It's just a small image of a place. The nations of the small islands that contribute less to the causes of climate change are the ones that will feel the worst impact, the worst scenarios due to global warming. What we have done to the rest of the world is truly criminal.

It's not just the sea level growing. We take those coastal ecosystems that used to be dominated by an incredible abundance of fish and we ruin the whole system, reversing half a million years of evolution. Several million people depend on fishing in coral reefs virtually for all their proteins. One billion people.

Here we are in what was a very healthy coral reef. What's lost? You don't see anything swimming around here. Is it a dying coral reef? I think the reef has succumbed. We press the system hard and that is a serious enemy for coral health and their ability to grow. It causes the loss of the support of people. It causes famine.

This happens everywhere. Oh, yes, of course. I think the reefs as we know them will virtually disappear. The oceans are like a great storage memory because they absorb carbon dioxide. They collect about a third of the CO2 that we throw into the atmosphere. And because of that, they are a stabilizing force for the climate.

The problem is that the ocean cannot do this job, quite quickly, with this absurd rhythm of carbon dioxide emissions. Life will not disappear in the ocean. There will always be life in the ocean, but not necessarily the kind of life we want. We could go back to 3 billion years ago and have only mud. We are eliminating ecosystems that normally help us to restore the climate.

Wow, this fog is intense, don't you think?

Yes, the visibility is not very good. You can't see anything. It's terrifying. This is not natural. Everything is a fire. This is not natural, I assure you. I had never seen anything like this. Welcome to Sumatra. There are three large areas of tropical forests that remain in the world. The Amazon in South America, the Congo Basin in Africa, and the tropical forest of Southeast Asia that covers Indonesia. In Indonesia,

We see fires caused intentionally to be able to create palm oil plantations where the cheapest vegetable oil in the world is created. It is in cooking oils, processed food, cosmetics and detergents. This cheap consumer item gives companies enormous profits. Those rows below, this is how the palm oil plantations look from above. Yes, as far as you can see.

rows of palm oil have destroyed most of this forest is incredible we are in the last place on earth where there are still elephants, rhinos, orangutans and tigers living in nature what a beauty the palm oil industry expansion in Indonesia has taken over almost 80% of our forests Indonesia is one of the most corrupt countries in the world companies bribe the government to give them permission to start burning the earth

A forest on fire releases a huge amount of coal. Last year, in 2015, when the forest was on fire in Indonesia, it emitted more coal a day than the entire North American economy. And forest fires continue to happen, which are a danger not only for the people's livelihood, but also for the life of forest species.

I can't even understand how these forests should have looked like. Forests where the rhinoceros, the elephant and the orangutan would be populating them for thousands. These apes are a derivative of the forests lost due to the palm oil industry. They are effectively refugees from forests that no longer exist. Wow, that's a good grip. Yes, strong. I'm going to give you a fruit, don't be scared. Carrot or fruit? Of course the fruit, that's what they're looking for, huh?

There you go. Do you like carrots or not? It can't be. They're incredible. I always remind people who say, "Poor people, these are lucky survivors." What happened to all the orangutans? All the others are dead. And the reason why people cut down the forests to make palm oil plantations is because they keep buying things. People should know that what they do in their supermarkets, the decisions they make daily, affect places like the Leuser ecosystem.

If palm oil is in almost everything we buy, how is it supposed that the consumer avoids it? If these products have such a devastating impact, why don't governments put restrictions to prevent these large corporations from destroying the planet just so they can make money?

If you want something you can do without appealing to any high authority, like the government or whatever, I can't think of a simpler way out than changing your diet. You can start today. You're a scientist who studies the effects of agriculture on the climate, but you grew up raising cattle and taking them to the slaughterhouse, right? I'm a scientist, that's the important thing.

So, of all the reasons for tropical deforestation, the main one is meat. And meat is one of the most inefficient resources on the planet.

In the United States, 47% of the land is used to produce food, and most of it is used to grow cattle. The things we actually eat, like fruit, vegetables, nuts, is 1%. And most importantly, cows produce methane, and methane is a powerful greenhouse gas.

The way cows produce methane is by eating as much as they can. And when they are mashing, a lot of methane is erupted by the mouth towards the atmosphere. The atmosphere has much more carbon dioxide, but methane is much more shocking. Each molecule of methane is equivalent to 23 molecules of CO2. And of the methane existing in the atmosphere, almost everything is due to the cattle.

Compared to the emissions of other sources, what percentage of meat consumption are we talking about? About 10 or 12% of the total emissions of the United States is due to meat. It's alarming. But it's very easy to visualize a change in diet, even the smallest change, let's say, of meat to an alternative, could be chicken.

Even reducing the amount of meat you eat in half to a quarter could be an important difference. Yes, indeed.

You have thought that all of this is a possibility considering that meat is a part of our culture. Maybe not everyone is ready to eat tofu every day, I understand. But even if you only have a little meat between your teeth, if you change to chicken, you will have eliminated 80% of what you emit, depending on where you come from.

Let's face it, it's very easy to change your diet from one option to another. Yes, that's right. Take three. It's recording. Very good. Ready. While working on the Renaissance, which is about men fighting with the elements, we had a location on the Canadian snow belt. The irony was that we dealt with record temperatures that completely melted our set. The main concern would be that the water would get cloudy.

To finish the movie, we had to relocate almost to the other side of the world, just to find snow. The fact of having to come with 200 people in the middle of summer, in the winter of the south in Ushuaia, 14,000 kilometers from where I was supposed to be filming this three months ago, locating the ice, is because it melted. It was a very, very hot winter.

We came to the southern tip of our continent, besides the South Pole, to film this, because this is where the last snow is. I think from my point of view I was going to tell my son. I told him that this is strange. It's very sad, maybe for your children. Seeing snow would be a super eccentric adventure. Very few people will be able to see snow in the future. I feel like in a strange surreal film.

The truth is, I observe and think that when I have children, everything that we now give for granted, our planet and all its biodiversity and beauty, everything in the future will be different.

Each of the lights you see must be completely different. It must come from a different source of energy. We need to build all those different things. All the cars on the road need to be different. And this is a city. And if you move away from a huge map of the planet Earth at night, you will see electrification all over the world. And we fight against powerful interests in fossil fuels that basically want to continue doing business as always.

How is it possible to turn this around? The fossil fuel industry is the largest in the world, it has more money, more influence than any other sector. So the more you can be more popular by revealing yourself against it, the better. But I think the scientific fact of the matter is that we go with direct security to a level of damage and the sooner we act, the less damage will result.

Wow, impressive. That's a good robot. Wow. What's your vision for all this? The point of the Gigafabric is to reduce the cost of batteries so that they are cost-effective. Good. Batteries are critical for future sustainable energy. The sun doesn't shine all the time. Keep it in a battery. How will this help developing nations with huge populations that need that energy?

The advantage of solar and batteries is that you can avoid building electricity plants. You could be in a remote village and have solar panels that charge a battery pack and that provides electricity to the entire village without having to put thousands of meters of high-voltage cable all over the place. It's like what happened with telephone lines against cell phones. In many developed countries there are no more telephone lines, they went straight to the cell phone.

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When the Gigafactory is complete, it will have the largest surface in the world. Counting the multiple levels, it could be almost a billion square meters. But Tesla can't build 100 Gigafabrics. And it would make the big difference if companies that are much bigger than Tesla did something like that.

If the big industrial companies in China, the United States and Europe, the big car companies also did this, collectively, we would accelerate the transition to sustainable energy. And if the government puts the rules in favor of sustainable energy, we could get it very quickly. It is really fundamental, unless a price is set for coal. I think we will never be able to make the transition we need in time. Yes. Correct? The only way to do that is to put a tax on coal.

Very well, tell me about the carbon tax, which is what you say is the miraculous solution for climate change. To record the carbon would be to impose a tax on any kind of activity that puts carbon in the atmosphere.

When you record something, you raise the price. People tend to consume less. That's the number one lesson in economics. You teach economics at Harvard and you literally wrote a book about contemporary economics, right? Yes, I did the course for many years. I could still write a manual. And to be clear, you worked with many influential Republicans. John McCain, Mitt Romney, and you worked with George Bush when he became president. I was president of the Council of Economic Advisors.

And why haven't we recorded the coal yet? Politicians don't always do what teachers want. The basic idea is to record the bad activities that have negative effects on other people in society. And if we raise the price of cigarettes by recording them, people will consume less. Climate change involves several negative effects and costs.

Un impuesto al carbón obliga a la gente a tomar en cuenta esos costos. Creo que apelar a la responsabilidad social de la gente es muy, muy difícil porque la gente tiene vida complicada y no puede pensar en el cambio climático cada vez que toma una decisión, aunque quiera. Cada vez que enciendes tu auto, debes pensar, oh, oh, ¿qué le hago al clima? Grabar el carbón lo que hace es guiarnos en la dirección correcta.

Let me understand this. Are you a Republican who wants more taxes? Well, something important to keep in mind is that if you record the coal, you can turn and cut other taxes. For example, the retention tax. It's an exchange of taxes more than an increase. And if it is possible to try to record the coal now, given the current political situation?

Because half of the people in office still don't believe in climate change. Yes we can! During his campaign, President Obama didn't want to say "carbon tax" due to the polls. If we want to change the president's point of view about recording the carbon, we need to change the public's point of view about that.

Think about gay marriage. I remember Obama was against it. I'm not in favor of gay marriage. When did it change? When the polls started to change. I think same-sex couples should be able to get married. Politicians, whether they are elected leaders or actually elected followers, do what people want. We must pray for the Americans. When they are convinced, politicians will align very quickly.

President Obama and representatives from nearly 200 countries are trying to reach an agreement to monitor global warming. In December, the world will meet at the Paris Climate Conference and we will see if we can or cannot bring together the collective political will to reach an ambitious and comprehensive agreement. This is a critical year.

Leo, how are you? Thanks for your time. I really appreciate it. The last time we hugged, there was, did you see? It was everywhere. Very dangerous. Is that serious? Of course you remember. You must remember. I had forgotten. Nice to see you, Secretary.

After decades of failed negotiations, what makes this negotiation different from the others? I remember the recording of George Bush, father, saying what we learned about this thing called global warming. We come to Rio proud of what we achieved and committed to extend the record of American leadership on the environment.

because we had climate summit after climate summit and we saw very little action. Well, I'll tell you why this is different and it really is. Last year, President Obama could stop in Beijing with President Xi and announce the reduction of desired emissions to Paris. And guess what?

When the two largest economies in the world and the two largest emitters in the world stand up and make a statement like that, it is to create an impulse that had never existed. Many things are joining. Practically, the complete measure of the negative impact of climate change is also joined. What happens now is that you have massive populations that are moving as a result of the climate. And the refugees are now filling the capital.

or you have huge fights over the water, which can cause wars. And any extremist philosophy could appeal to people if it has no place to live, no way of living, and that's when people are vulnerable. If someone thinks that I'm joking, about this is happening today. The greatest fear about all this is to leave this planet in a better way than it was given to us, and that's not what we do today.

Today I spend most of my time understanding how we can ensure a prosperous future for humanity in a situation where we are beginning to reach the limit of what the planet can withstand. And I have the privilege of directing something called Earth League, which is a scientific network of the Earth system. It is tried to gather all the knowledge we have to understand our future on Earth.

We are in an average of 4 degrees of warming this century and we have not been in a warming of 4 degrees worldwide in the last 4 million years. So that's not a place we know very well. Very well, give me a kind of description of how

Could the world be if we don't act first? Well, to begin with, the last 12,000 years, temperatures are almost miraculously stable. In fact, average temperatures vary only in less than 1 degree Celsius during that entire period. This perfect planet with a perfect atmosphere... Yes, exactly. And then it moves in an increase in temperature. And now where are we? Well, today we are approaching 1 degree Celsius.

And with just 0.85 degrees, we see the predicted impacts faster. This storm is so big and enough. 60 million Americans will feel its power. It's a historic drought. The coral reefs of the world begin to collapse even before 2 degrees. And it is predicted to reach 1.5 to 2 degrees. We are now. It is a problem that happens. It is a problem that will happen.

At 3 and 4 degrees we will have heat waves that will make many regions of the world no longer habitable. Agriculture will collapse around Ecuador. That would take us beyond being able to feed humanity responsibly. What makes scientists nervous is that we can get to the point where the earth takes over and starts to reinforce the warming. That's what we call the key point and the most obvious is Greenland.

In Greenland, for the first time, all its surface is melted to the extent that instead of being a white surface, it becomes dark and suddenly instead of being a freezer, it becomes a heater. Because of the fact that ice can no longer be formed. It only changes color. Only the color of the ice changes. Suddenly all those reactions begin to act. Methane stays under the frozen surface, it melts it to the extent that it begins to be released.

And that heats the planet even more, which releases more methane. Correct. And that if we don't act immediately. Yes, if we continue the same, but at the Paris Climate Summit that we will soon have in December, if the world leaders unite appropriately, a window will open, but very little, to return it to a stable planet.

The last time we had a climate summit, you couldn't say that there would be clean energy solutions of high technology, but now in Paris we can say that. In fact, we have the proof. If you wake up in Germany on Saturday morning, you will probably receive 30% of your solar or wind power. And not only from a few electricity companies, but from almost two million citizens generating it at home.

Today, Denmark produces almost 100% of the electricity it needs from the wind. 100%! It's totally renewable. And remember that when you invest in wind and solar, you actually have free electricity forever.

Ladies and gentlemen,

They are here today with the purpose of writing the script for a new future. The destiny of our planet is in their hands.

Soy una chica de una pequeña isla con grandes sueños, la isla de Majuro en las Islas Marshall. Cuando tenía seis o siete, mi abuelo me contó de cómo el hielo en el Polo Norte y el Polo Sur se derretiría, y luego de eso, el agua subiría y pronto inundaría nuestras islas. Este acuerdo es para los que cuya identidad, cuya cultura, cuyos ancestros, todo su ser está ligado a sus tierras.

This agreement will make the world ready for the impact of climate change that is already here and also for those of us who know that this reality is inevitable. Almost a quarter of a century of global climate talks come at this crucial moment in Paris. There are 195 countries saying that they will do everything in their power to change.

Seeing that the reaction is positive, I declare that the Paris Climate Summit has reached a complete agreement. There is no doubt that this agreement is a great step forward. But will it be enough?

The Paris Agreement requires the climate to remain below 2 degrees Celsius while the 1.5 degrees are achieved. There is no mention of the carbon tax. There is no mention of any fine. There is no provision of forecasts, sir. We just have to have faith that all those countries will keep their word. How likely is that? It is an unreachable deal, so the Congress has already voted to reject it.

The fact that we have a reduction of 26 to 28% in CO2 emissions, that's not going to happen. I direct the committee that has jurisdiction over the Environmental Protection Agency. Hello, nice to see you. Thank you very much. Are you okay? Of course. Very good. Let's go. The Paris Agreement ended...

Being a historic agreement, not because it will take us where we need eventually, but for the first time will make all countries verify the steps and objectives that they will take. Create architecture that will allow us to finally deal with this problem seriously. So you are happy with what came up? I was glad to put architecture in place. The objectives that were set in Paris are not quite close.

of what scientists tell us we should do to solve this problem. But if we use the next 20 years to apply existing technologies to reduce carbon emissions and then start slowly turning valves while new technologies emerge to have more and more ambitious goals every year, then we will not completely reverse the warming that is now inevitable.

but we can stop it before it becomes catastrophic. And it is no secret that you have been under great opposition to try to implement some of your climate change initiatives. There are some friends on the other side. So, someone who comes to office and does not believe in the science of climate change, has the capacity and power to dismantle everything for what he has worked? Even if someone were trying to deny climate science,

La realidad tiene su forma de, ya sabes, golpearte en la nariz y no pones atención. Y creo que el público empieza a darse cuenta de la ciencia, en parte porque es irrefutable. Yo...

I admire your optimism. Yes. But if you start to see science, see what happens in Antarctica, and scientists saying that there are sections of ice that guarantee 4 to 6 meters of increase in the oceans, which would be catastrophic for the future. You are the leader of the free world, you have access to information that most people don't have. What do you fear for the future? A large portion of the world's population lives...

near the oceans. If they start to move, then you start to see a shortage of resources, a competition issue between populations. That is the reason why the Pentagon has said that it is a national security issue. It is not just an environmental issue, it is a national security issue. Look, in addition to just the sadness that I would feel if my children

Ya no pudieran ver un glaciar como yo lo vi cuando fui hasta Alaska. Ese es el lado romántico, es el lado de dar un paseo con mis hijas y quiero que puedan verlos, o mis nietos, quiero que vean las mismas cosas que yo vi mientras crecía. Aún si no fuera sentimental por eso. En términos muy realistas, debes preocuparte por las implicaciones de seguridad nacional en esto y la capacidad para...

the existing world order as we understand it to survive the kind of damage that scientists predict if we don't act. That's why we have to act now. Because if we keep pressing, encouraging, and more importantly, keep educating the public, there's no reason why we don't solve this on time. Thank you for your time, Mr. President. You're welcome. Thank you for your good work. I appreciate it very much.

I realize that in the scientific community we don't do the best job, really, of communicating this threat to the public. But when we see with our own eyes how thin the atmosphere of the world is, a tiny layer of onion around the Earth, it's all the oxygen we breathe, it's CO2, everything we burn goes there. It's an amazingly fragile layer.

I knew intellectually how the Earth system works because that's what I've been doing for 20 years. Seeing how the atmosphere and the ocean, all the elements of the system work together, so I understand it intellectually. But it's like being an ant trying to see how an elephant looks climbing all over the elephant. But when you're in orbit and you can see 2000 kilometers in any direction, I must tell you that it's like a revelation.

Seeing all the cities at night, millions of people working, doing something. Seeing the side of the day of the world, seeing the natural systems, the hurricanes. Huge giant wheels on the oceans.

I felt...

Un inmenso cariño por el planeta, ¿sabes? En lo que nunca pensé cuando vivía en la superficie. Y también me encariñé con la gente. Es como separarte de tu familia y volver. Y, uh, le deseo lo mejor.

Just before Christmas, they told me I have pancreatic cancer, phase 4, and it's spread. Not just in one place, and it's likely I won't be around for a long time. There's a very small chance of surviving. So that's what motivated me to think about what's important to do and how I can contribute with the time I have left.

This is a model of simulation of the Earth. Good.

Wow.

This is the way to do it. This is the way to see what really happens. This is the Gulf Stream. Look at this. It's like a movement of the ocean. It looks like a great piece of art. It is, right? The biggest impact would be here. The Gulf Stream. Yes. And do you see this stream? The emptying of the melted ice in Greenland will stop this conveyor belt and the Gulf Stream will slow down, stopping the heat transport from here to there. And Europe will freeze.

Because there is a lot of heat transport from the tropics through the North Atlantic that keeps Europe hot. That is to say that Europe will cool down? Yes. The great misunderstanding about climate change is that everything gets hotter. Yes. Wow. And this is the most advanced precipitation satellite in the world. This is very important because we believe that the greatest impact of climate change is the movement of the precipitation stripes from the equator.

So we're already seeing signs of drought. And that causes more drought in places that are already too hot. Yes. And there are many papers written in the State Department of how that continuous drought helped in the conflict of the Syrian Civil War, Darfur, Sudan, all those places with a shortage of water and food. Is it all over the planet or...

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Almost predicted a persistent drought in the dustbin and here in 50 years. But we are seeing the worst drought in 900 years here now. It will come before we thought. We talk about this will happen in the period of a few decades. What apparently are bad news constant. No, but a lot of people are confused with the matter. The facts are crystalline. Ice melts...

The Earth heats up, the sea level rises. Those are facts. Instead of saying, "Oh, for God's sake, it's useless," say, "Very well, there's a problem. Let's be realistic. Let's find a way out." And we can get out. If we don't burn fossil fuels now, the planet will keep heating up for a while until it cools down again.

Are you saying that if we do the right thing... Yes. We can do a lot. We're going to heat it up or we're going to... It will turn off and it will start to cool again. Could the Arctic ice increase again? Once it starts to cool, yes. So there's really a possibility of repairing this trajectory in which we're going. Of course. How interesting. Yes. There's hope.

I see you have an incredible positive attitude, despite everything, and it's amazing. Yes, that's right. I'm basically an optimistic person. I have faith in people. I really have faith in people. I think that when people come out of the mist of confusion in a matter, or at the beginning they're not so sure about the matter, and they really appreciate, at a certain level, the threat, and they're informed of what is the best action to deal with that,

They go and do it. And what seemed almost impossible to face, well, it becomes possible. I still think of that painting that hung on my cone. The story of the Garden of Delights, in fact, begins outside the painting, where the Bosco painted a view of our Earth on the third day of creation. It's like he wanted to show the fragility of our planet, painting the Earth and its atmosphere in a glass sphere.

This is our home. It is being destroyed. And that harms us all. Pope Francis officially published his Encyclical on the Environment. The document requires an immediate action to stop global warming and a cry for justice for the poor. The human action that has been deviated and contradicts reality until it is damaged. There is hope that we can recognize that there is always an exit.

that we can always redirect our steps, that we can always do something to solve our problems. Even so, we can see signs of things that are reaching a breaking point. This is a direct message from the Pope and it is something very important. Thank you for dedicating this private audience to you. One of the most important spiritual leaders on the planet. Ah, DiCaprio.

He makes a call to the world community to accept the modern science of climate change. A pope had never done something like this in history. Welcome, Leonardo. Your Holiness, thank you for dedicating this private hearing to you. Being able to spend time and sit down with the Pope was a very deep experience. This is a book by Hieronymus Bosch, the Boschian,

I hung it on my cradle when I was little. A present. You should never forget it. Thank you. There was definitely urgency in his voice. He said that in relation to the Paris conference, he felt that it was a step in the right direction, but certainly not enough. He believes that we all need to talk about this matter as strongly as we can and that we must act immediately. But more than anything, he said that we must pray for the human race.

After everything I've seen, it's obvious that we no longer live in that first impolite Eden of the image. We are in the second panel, and that the forest called the human being before the flood. And what obsesses me the most in that last panel, the one that has dark, carbonized skies, a planet left in ruins, the question is: Can we change the course of time?

If this were a movie, we could write the ending of the script and we could devise an exit from this disaster. But real life doesn't work like in a movie. And we can't pretend that we know how this will end. The only thing we can do is control what we will do next. How to live our lives, what we consume, how we get involved and how to use our vote to ensure that our leaders know that we know the truth

about climate change. The last speaker of this ceremony is the best actor awarded by the Academy and Peace Messenger of the United Nations, Mr. Leonardo DiCaprio. Thank you, Secretary General, for the honor of directing me to this body and thank you to the distinguished climate leaders gathered here today who are ready to take action. As a peace messenger, I have traveled around the world in the last two years

I have seen cities like Beijing, drowned by industrial pollution, ancient boreal forests in Canada that have been torn down, and forests in Indonesia that have been incinerated. In India I met farmers whose crops were literally washed. In this country I witnessed the increase in sea level flooding the streets of Miami. In Greenland and the Arctic I was stunned to see that ancient glaciers disappear quickly.

beyond the predictions of the scientists. Everything I've seen and learned on my trip absolutely terrified me. It terrified me to think of the shame that each one of us will feel when our children and grandchildren look back and realize that we had the means to stop this devastation, but there was simply no political will to do so. Yes, we have achieved the Paris Agreement.

More countries have come together to sign this agreement today than for any other cause in the history of humanity. And that is a reason for hope. But unfortunately, the evidence shows us that it is not enough. A massive change is required immediately. One that leads to new collective consciousnesses.

a new collective evolution of the human race inspired and enabled by an urgency of all of you. We can congratulate each other today, but it will mean absolutely nothing if you return to your countries and fail to press beyond the promises of this historic agreement. After 21 years of debates and conferences, it is time to declare no more talks, no more excuses,

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To believe what I say Starling from the sky We will all be just like we lead Don't wanna say too low In your, in your eyes In time We're the same, we're the same Don't wanna say Starling from the sky

I just need a minute to watch you. I just need a minute to watch you.