All language subtitles for Breath.Of.Life.2014.1080p.WEBRip.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX]

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[ engine roar ]

[ deep inhalations
and exhalations ]

This...
This is insanity.

I like to quote Albert Einstein.
He said, when he was asked,

what he thought
the basic difference

between genius
and stupidity was.

And he never even blinked.
He just said,

"Genius has its limits."

Could our way of life
collapse?

Could industrial
civilization collapse?

And I think it's
a genuine worry.

We have tremendous problems
generated by ourselves

and limited mental capacity
to deal with them.

There's no doubt in my mind,
none whatsoever,

that there are
catastrophes looming

for our children
and grandchildren

that are almost
unimaginable to us.

We've built this
magnificent structure,

set of structures,
that empowers us.

But you have to put
quotes around
that word

because we're not
really empowered.

If anything breaks
down in that system

or conversely
if we decide

the system
is unsustainable

and there are problems
in that system,

we're really stuck.

This is what I see as the
greatest threat to our future

where complexity and costliness
make it impossible

to solve our problems as
we've been accustomed to doing.

Each time we get a wakeup call,
as we now like to call it,

we wake up briefly
and then we go right back

to "I'll think about
that tomorrow."

There are huge concepts here.

Like what is reality?
What is truth?

We're three and four generations
away from the farm.

We've got people that think
that there's a machine

in the back of the Piggly Wiggly
that makes the food.

I mean, they have no idea.

You know, the West Coast
of this nation

has five days of food,
five days.

We are playing an
intrinsically dangerous game

because we are cutting
ourselves off from reality.

And that can come back
not just to haunt us,

but we can smack
into reality

in a very dramatic way
because it's unexpected.

To deal with climate change only
on the level of political theory

or on the level of scientific
facts is extremely superficial.

We have to investigate
what it is

in the deep structure
of the human mind

that just makes us unable
to move in the face of

cognitive intellectual insight
into the facts.

And even also in the face
of conscious experience

of the situation
we find ourselves.

As a species, we have evolved
under natural selection

just as all animal
species evolved.

And in our history, there was
never selective pressure.

There was never pressure
to think more broadly

in terms of either
time or space,

and so humans
didn't evolve to do so.

Yet that's precisely what
sustainability today requires.

Particularly, it requires us
to understand the distant past,

because the distant past
gives us lessons.

And it also tells us
how we came to be

in the circumstances
that we're in today.

And we have to understand how
to take the lessons of the past

and project them
into the future.

We have to anticipate what
the future is going to be like.

Humans don't tend to think in
terms of the long-term future.

They think in terms
of the immediacy
of their lives.

Obviously, if we're concerned
about the future of humanity,

the future of our planet,

we have to really think
in terms of the future.

We have to think in,
you know, the long-term.

Natural selection
doesn't do that.

Never has done that.

There is no foresight.

There is no
forethought,

no looking ahead
in nature.

The human species
is the only species

that has even the slightest
chance of looking ahead,

the slightest chance
of using foresight.

And we do...

and we are in a way
the best hope

for the future of the
world because of that.

But, nevertheless,
we've got strong relics

of our evolutionary
past.

It's a struggle
for us to break away

from the lack
of foresight,

the short-termness
which bedevils

the whole of the rest
of the natural world.

If you think about it,
history essentially tells us
where we come from

and why we are the way we are
to this day.

But it doesn't really
tell us where we're going.

We're in a world now
where the future matters.

And yet we're still wired
for the here and now.

Evolution has invented
many things.

It has invented emotions.
It has invented color vision.

It has invented the conscious
sense of selfhood.

And it has obviously
also invented self-deception.

We now have changed every
cubic meter of air and water,

And every hectare of land on
earth now has a human imprint.

We are moving into a new era.

And the question is:

Are we the kind of creature,

are we the kind of being
that can handle this new epic,

the anthropocene
that we have created?

Throughout history,
there's been conflict.

But actually humans
are really evolved

to get on with each other
in groups.

It's when those groups
are in conflict,

fighting over resources,

that you have the wars
and the battles.

And, of course,
you can always land grab
for more territory.

But what happens when
you run out of territory?

What happens when
you run out of land?

There's almost nothing
we can exploit
in terms of space

on this planet anymore.

We are exploiting time now.

We're destroying
the quality of life

of future human beings
on this planet,

and we know that we do it.

[ distant chanting ]

[ chanting in Hawaiian ]

The ainais our land,
the aina.

Why do certain groups,

even those who aren't
perpetuating a problem,

why are they taking action
to benefit future generations

in ways that would, say,

help them overcome problems
of climate change?

Well, the Hawaiian word ai
is to eat.

Mea aiis the food.

So ainais the land,
mea aiis the food.

And just this area alone here
we know could feed families.

It could feed a lot of people,
and once we get it going,

it's just maintaining it
and keeping it in production.

Whatever we put into the aina,
we put into our body.

So if you put poison
into the aina,

you're only going to put
poison into yourself.

If you put good mana,
good life force, into the aina,

you put it into yourself,
yeah?

So we are all connected:

the body and the aina.

So no matter where you are,
you always have aina.

You take care of your aina;
you malama aina.

You're taking care of your
ancestor, your ancestral lands,

because our ancestors are buried
in the aina,the bones.

So we always walk with them,

especially when you come
into a place like this.

They're all around us.

So it is our kuleana,
our responsibility,

to maka'ala,
to become aware,

and to raise awareness
of your kupuna

and of your ancestral lands,
which is inside here,

this whole kino,
the body and the ainais one.

People do things largely
because in one way or another

enhances
their own well-being,

it enhances their own
interests and welfare.

The difference is what people
do to enhance their well-being.

So kupuna,our ancestors,

they utilize aquaculture
and agriculture.

Yeah? And they integrate
the two.

So not only
we can farm the food,

but we can farm fish
along with the food.

If you live in a farming society

where there's all kinds
of things that, you know,

affect your survival chances,

future orientedness
suddenly becomes
a matter of life and death.

It becomes really important.

And we live
down over here.

This is the last
four farms

that are remaining
out of all this
area.

Polynesians developed a highly
complex society in Hawaii

that was sustainable
entirely on local resources.

They had no hope of getting
resources from outside.

And they didn't
need resources from outside.

The psychology necessary
for that future orientedness,

one way in which
it's cultivated

is through the development
of deep genealogies,

where you think about
your ancestors

going back through
numerous generations

and then project forward.

Our kupunahad it
figured out.

They had to. They had
to figure it out...

because we're
on this island.

There's no place to go.

Captain James Cook came.

Over one million Hawaiians
living in the islands,
one million.

After 2,000 years of living
out here in isolation,

they were one million strong.

Today we have about 1.2,
maybe 1.4 million
people today.

We import 90% of our food.

We're 90% dependent
on fossil fuels.

And we still get people
homeless.

Yeah.

Whatever we take,
we want to make sure

that the next guy
that come after us

enjoy the same things
we enjoy.

Common,
the psychological instinct

when faced with a problem

is to try to figure out
who the antagonist is

or who the perpetrator
of the problem is.

Ultimately, we all do things
that serve our own interests.

But the things that we do

have different implications
for people.

We're taught that
everything we do today

impact the next
seven generations.

The next seven, brah.

Just think about this:
What if...

there was no more barges,

no more boats,
no more ships,

no more airplanes
flying into Hawaii.

How many of you guys
think we're gonna survive?

Hawaii is an example of
how we have transformed
places and ourselves

from environments in which
humans and the environment
were symbiotic

to environments
that can only be sustained

by continual input
of outside resources,

all ultimately dependent
on fossil fuels.

Here we are in the wettest
state in the world...
-Yeah.

And we drink bottled water.
-I know.

We can consume
most anything we want,

and so we tend to think, since
we grew up in such a society,

that this is the normal
human condition.

In fact, it's not normal.

It's highly unusual
in human history.

And there are questions about
how long it can continue.

The golf course
takes a lot of water.

They own several springs
on their side, rivers.

It's the fertile resources
and the food producing areas

and the medicine areas

and all the upland areas
that they own

and really don't
probably have an idea

of what they have
under their control.

Our loko i'ais our food
stock, our refrigerator,

our cabinet,
our food source.

So we want to build
this wall.

We want to bring the rocks
back up to its...

to the highest point
of the highest tide.

That's what we want to do
is we want to farm the fish.

And we want to use a natural
life cycle of the fish...

so we don't overtake.

We are all
in the same canoe.

We're in the middle
of the Pacific Ocean

on these little islands,
these little specks.

No place to go.

As Hawaiians,
we understand that concept

that these guys are the ones
that are gonna live forever,

but our time is so short.

How would it change
if there were no legacy

of me, of you, of any of us?

I think that would
profoundly alter

the way we think about
ourselves, our lives,

and our place on this planet.

This is a pula pula.

This is the baby
that grows off of it

that we break off,
the oha.

And we're gonna plant this, and
it's gonna have its own family.

And it's gonna create
future generations.

So this just continues
to carry on and on,

and what we do is
we cut the leaf here.

We're still surviving.
We're still here.

So what are we gonna do
for the ones
that come after us?

And this is what we eat.

And this is what we plant.

So this part of the plant here
is called the ha.

And hais the breath,

the breath of life
that carries on,

so very symbolic
that this is our seedling

that we plant
over and over again.

[ deep inhalations
and exhalations ]

Sustainability,
to most people,

is a function
of what they value.

People will sustain
what they value.

They'll work to sustain
what they value,

which is always some function
of what they're familiar with.

We are, modern humans,
creatures of the
Enlightenment,

that great era
400 or 500 years ago

where humans discovered
their capacity
for reason,

where they blew away
myths and superstition,

where the earth
became disenchanted.

And so we recreated ourselves
as rational creatures

who could look around us,

assess the world,
study it,

evaluate it,
gather the facts.

and work out how
to transform the world,

how to change things
in our own interests.

A lot of us are raised to think
that we have incredible power.

I mean, we live
in an affluent society,

we have access
to all this technology.

we can sort of
go where we want.

We can get in our car,
we can get information.

But when you look at it,
we really don't have
a lot of autonomy

in the sense that we rely
heavily, almost entirely,

on other systems
for that power.

If one looks at
the dynamics of C02

and the latest facts
from physics,

it is very clear that...

the whole development
of the earth's climate

will unfold in an uncontrollable
and in a catastrophic way.

We have already
now waited too long.

It's also not something
that you can turn off

like a boiling pot of water
on your kitchen stove.

Even if you turn it off,

the development,
the dynamics in our atmosphere,

will continue for centuries.

Humanity lives in a severe
state of self-denial,

of self-deception,

of repression of facts
right now.

We just hope that
what the scientists are
telling us will happen,

we simply hope that it won't.

We're not enlightened creatures.

We're subject to the same type
of superstitious thinking

where our hubris overwhelms
our capacity to reason.

Somebody says, you know,
how much money are you
saving for retirement?

And you know, we can
show you with numbers:

Here's what a person
with your needs,
your requirements,

is going to need for
20 years of retirement.

How much are you saving?

Oh, you're not
saving anything? Wow.

Like more and more
Americans.

Okay, how do you try
to get through retirement?

Uh, they have no answer.

They understand
that they have no answer.

They understand they're
going to be in trouble

is as clearly they can
understand anything,

and yet they're not
changing their behavior.

Why is that?

It's because
our rational brain

is fully capable of
grasping an abstraction
like the future,

or the future
with no money.

You get that.

But the part of your brain
that motivates you,

the limbic,
the lizard brain,

that part has no conception
of the future. It can't--

It totally
can't understand anything
beyond the here and now.

So you can talk until
you're blue in the face
about a problem,

whether it's your lack
of retirement money

or the fact
that water supplies are
gonna be insufficient

for the number of people
we're gonna have--

any number of sort of
future-oriented
problems--

and part of your brain
is going,

"Yeah, yeah,
that's terrible,
that's terrible,"

And another part of
your brain is going,

"I don't hear you.
I don't care.

"I'm only interested
in dealing with
the here and now,

and the here and now
looks great."

Well, the old adage in the West
is that...

whiskey's for drinkin'
and water's for fightin'.

When the storms come off
the Pacific Ocean

and they hit the Sierra Nevadas,
they're torn apart.

Our best storms come out of
Southern California anyhow,

when the air currents can get
between all the mountain ranges.

There's mountain ranges
all across the state of Nevada.

It's one of the most
mountainous states there is,

if not the most
mountainous state.

So by the time they get
all the way to eastern Nevada,

there's not much moisture left.

Our annual rainfall
is only about eight inches.

Water speculators
are buying all the ranches

all along the river,
the Humboldt.

They're just buying everything
up for the same reasons:

for water to go to the cities.

It's a little bit intimidating.

you know, you walk up there
and you sit down and...

Of course, when they had
the prehearing in Reno,

one whole side of the room
was full of...

$1,000-an-hour alligators,
or, you know,

lawyers for the Southern Nevada
Water Authority.

I don't know what they get,
but, I mean...

And a bunch of farmers

on the other side
arguing for their life,

for the next generation.

I wanted to draw as much
attention not to myself,

but to the plight,
to what was going on.

Thus, when they said
how long will it take you

to interview your witnesses,
how many witnesses you got,

and how much time also,

I put down all my animals,

all my horses, everything,

and then wrote down, um,

that it'd probably take 30 days
to interview 'em all,

which the lawyers should have
gone along with that,

because, you know,
they get paid by the hour.

We have this kind of defense
mechanism where we forget.

We deny that things
are difficult.

For example
in California now:

We are in our second
drought year

in what, pretty obviously,
is gonna be a drought cycle.

And people are beginning
to realize we have a problem.

What they don't realize
is that a thousand years ago,

we had droughts that lasted,
or drought cycles,
100 years or more,

when the snowpack
in the Sierra was 45%
of what it is today--

and today it's low.

I've talked to water experts.

Their biggest problem--
they deliver the water,

they're the people
in the trenches.

Their biggest problem

is people denying
that there are water shortages.

Every time they build
a new hotel,

what's the number one
theme they've got?

Water parks, water slides.

They've got a boat
floating in a moat.

They've got huge sprinklers,
or whatever those things are.

Water shows at night.

For God's sakes,
I mean, it's a desert!

Our civilization,
our society,

is facing a limit
to what we can do.

We haven't realized
that yet.

But there is this limit.

And we're crashing
against this limit.

And it is going
to be seen

how we fare
in this big transition

which will have to do
with the limits we face,

because really
we're going into it

without understanding
what we're doing.

A little bit of our
self model is conscious.

We can attend to it.
Most of our self model,

controlling the body,
is completely unconscious.

And, of course, one way
to put the question

is what is it
in the human self model

that now makes it
impossible to act

on the level of the species
as a whole?

So we behave in ways
that are rational,

even though we don't consciously
think about the causes

and the consequences
of our behavior.

We're highly programmed
to respond

to certain categories
of stimuli:

Rewarding stimuli,

and the more immediately
rewarding,

the more imminent
the reward,

the more compelling
we are.

And novel stimuli,

threatening stimuli,

sexual stimuli,

signs of anger
or aggression--

We have evolved to
attend to these things.

It's called
the mismatch hypothesis.

There's a time lag
between how the brain evolves

and how society changes.

At this point,
we're left with brains

that are similar
to what they were

on the eve of the Agricultural
Revolution 12,000 years ago,

and probably very similar
to the way they were

250,000 years ago,

but in a vastly
different environment.

We're very alert that we have
almost immediate responses.

Our bodies are programmed,
um...

either to find
a basic response

if we perceive a danger

or to engage in courtship
immediately

if we think there is
an opportunity for mating.

It's natural selection

acting in every generation:

Simply those that leave
many surviving offspring

leave lots of copies
of their genes.

Those that leave
few or no offspring

leave few copies
of their genes.

Organisms are
predisposed to survive

and to leave descendants.

It's scary to think
about what has happened

to the world population
over the last 300 years.

In the middle 1700s
was perhaps half a billion.

And it is now seven.

The world population has
increased by a factor of 10.

The way we live today
is really a product

of the last 200 years,

partly coming from
the Industrial Revolution,

but very largely coming from
the subsidies of fossil fuels

that have allowed us
to escape the constraints

of current solar energy.

And it's estimated
that humans living

under a solar energy regime

can achieve
a population density,

a stable population density,

of perhaps no more
than two billion people.

And the desire to have a higher
income is fairly intense,

even at the very high
income levels

that we have on average
in the United States

and Norway and other places
that I know well.

So that driving force,
I think, is there,

and will remain there.

We grow more and more complex
to solve problems.

This is an escalation dynamic,

and it's the same dynamic
as in an arms race.

In the world of complex systems,
to use a colloquial expression,

there's no such thing
as a free lunch.

Complexity always has a cost.

And, ultimately, the cost
is paid in terms of energy.

We've never had a year
like this

where it's been so dry
and so hot.

Wildfires, record rainfalls
other places.

If they think it's gonna
keep getting worse

on a relative scale
to what we've seen this year.

That's probably
what may happen.

And it's sort of a scary thing
to think about.

Our lawyer's
not the biggest liar.

Our weatherman's
the biggest liar.

He'll tell us we've got
an 80% chance of rain

and we get a sprinkle.

And we get a 30% chance
of rain we'll end up

with two inches of rain.
We're flooded.

I've just been so close
to breaking down and crying.

And this is what, you know,

is just really brings it on,
is this pasture.

I mean, there's really nothing
of value here for a cow to eat.

When these crops were
at this stage last year,

our wells were
out of water.

We were fighting
tooth and nail

just to try to keep
these crops alive

and keep 'em going
just to produce
any kind of crop.

You know, it takes eons
for topsoil to develop

from decaying vegetation.

One of my neighbors
made the comment

in his old rocky ranch

that he had about
one inch of topsoil

between him and starvation.

And you have to protect it
with the grasses

and don't overgraze it.

And we're totally dependent
upon the rainfall.

Without dirt, I'm done.
I'm over with.

They might as well just go ahead
and call the people in,

tell 'em to dig me
a 6-foot hole,

put me in a box,
and call it good.

That's sort of the weather
mantra in central Texas:

Drought, drought, drought,
drought, flood.

The term that everybody
uses is just "brutal."

Where we would normally
see honey stores
and pollen stores

for them getting ready for
the upcoming wintertime,

there was nothing in there,

because all of the natural
water sources had dried up.

When drought affects
our natural pollinators,

it has a horrible effect
on our environment

and our food supplies.

It just sucks your soul dry.

Water is the new oil.

And it's become a commodity
just like oil rights

and mineral rights
used to be for Texas.

And the battle, the competition

is just going to
get more intense

as more and more people
move here

and it gets hotter and drier.
and stays that way.

Responding to climate change
in the area of farming

is another arena in which
society in the future

is going to experience
increasing costs

and diminishing returns.

We know that the consequences
of the industrialized world

are going to place a great
burden upon our children

and we have to do
something now.

But it does raise the question:

Even though we're aware
of all these consequences,

why are we still not radically
changing our behavior?

The fact that we're
culture-creating individuals

means that we create
our own sense of psychology

and our own sense of values

and our own sense
of what's important.

Wai waiin Hawaii
means values.

So you can see
this is our values.

This is what we value,
the wai wai,the water,

the source of life:

What is important,
What's gonna sustain us,

where the water's
coming from,

how the water is
managed and used.

They have a legacy of the land
that they inhabit,

and they think of themselves
as being part of the land,

continuous in the land,

and that, therefore,
they should--

what they do now really
defines who they are.

We're creating the world
that's creating us all the time.

What do we do
by way of reproducing,

to have a culture
that carries on in the future?

We don't just produce babies.

We send them to school.

And we instill in them
the norms of the culture

and the knowledge
of the culture.

The huge engine of
consumerism was driving

and became the economic
and cultural raison d'etre

of our lives as Americans.

And the American dream
became defined

as what you own,
what you have.

And you start thinking
there's something wrong
with the car I have,

or the house I have,

or the spouse I have.

I mean, there is this sense

that we're entitled
to the next best thing.

You know, we're socialized

and we're existing
in a cultural context.

That cultural context
shapes us and constrains us.

Strategic locations ensure
repetition.

And repetition creates
consumer remembrance,

driving home a message

not once, not twice,
but many times,

thus bridging the gap
between the manufacturer

and the consumer.

One of the universal
characteristics of children is

that they will reliably copy
the adults around them

in their actions
and their practices,

even when the actions
have no purpose whatsoever.

This suggests that,
within our brains,

there is a mechanism designed
to imitate others around us.

So we are kind of
the willing copiers,

the willing replicators
of this information.

And we can't help it.

We are relinquishing
more and more

of our day-to-day
decision-making

to the world
of the machine.

You go out on
the street today,

you're gonna see
half the people

walking around
are carrying

these little things
around,

their Smart Phone,

and they're following
the instructions

of their Smart Phone
as to...

whether to turn
right or left

at the next
intersection.

Because of the changes in
society created by the image,

we're moving further and further
away from the real.

And we're moving more and more
towards the image.

So an image-saturated society
has moved away from nature,

has moved away from,
say, realism.

We start to move away
from the connection

that we have with the world.

We feel like we're part
of the social reality,

the images that
we're surrounded with,

but we can't change anything.

As we grow up
from children to adults,

we identify with the groups
that we think we belong to,

and we behave accordingly.

I remember living in Oahu.

I went to a very good
private school,

went to a very nice small
private college on Oahu.

You know, I was just
caught up in the, um...

the fast lane to
make money, make money,

make money, make money,
and, uh...

and drive the nice car

and have the nice house,

and that's supposed
to make me happy
and fulfilled.

It leaves you sort of,
by definition, unhappy

because nothing--
no state you ever achieve
is gonna be permanent.

One way of looking
at the problem of...

of why we're wrecking
our world

is not to think of humans as
the drivers of what's going on,

but to think of the memes as the
drivers of what's going on.

So the whole way of thinking
memetically is to say

all the ideas, stories,

ways of doing things,
technologies

that we copy from person
to person are replicated.

So genes are one replicator

that's copied
by reproducing bodies.

And the memes, the buildings,
the wires, all this stuff...

they are replicators too.

So I wake up in the morning
totally stressed out,

smoking cigarettes,
about 30, 40 pounds
heavier,

um...just trying
to find out,

you know,
where am I going
with my life?

What will be my legacy?

What am I gonna leave
behind?

And then I see--I hear...

woosh, woosh.

Then I hear
the steersmen call.

"Hup, hu!"

Woosh, woosh.

They switch,
"Hup, hu!"

Woosh, woosh.

"Hup, hu,"
and you can hear
everyone's breath.

I can hear everybody
working together.

I could hear the sound
of the waves going.

And every time I heard
that "hup, hu,"

switching, changing:
to huli,to flip.

And that was the message
that I got that day

when I heard them
say, "Hup, hu."

Huis short for
the Hawaiian word huli.

Huli,to change,
to flip, to turn over.

It's unsettling
to think of oneself

as just an ephemeral process
that comes and goes,

that's built out of scraps
of the environment,

as well as the stuff in here.

Being a complicated,
powerful self

with lots of beliefs in things
that have to be defended

doesn't make us happy,

but it propagates the memes.

And I think this is
at least a part

of our awful tendency to be
unhappy with who we are.

Without even knowing,
just quit my job,
and came back home.

And I reconnected
with my elders.

And my elder said,
"Ah, hey, Vene,

I need you to go build
a fish pond."

And I'm like,
"Brah, a fish pond?

I don't even know
how to stack rocks."

And he's all, "Ke kahi ke haki."

Whatever you put in
is what you get out.

"You put in one hour,

"your wall
gonna be this big.

"You put in 100 hours,

"your wall
gonna be that big.

"You put in
1,000 hours,

"your wall
gonna be this big.

"You put in
10,000 hours,

your wall gonna be
this big."

Yeah, hi kumu,
I understand now.

Hiki no,just do it.

Evolution is blind.

There is no goal as such.

It just is the set of attributes

which are best suited
to the changing environment.

We adapt mainly
to conditions
as they are.

So we become socialized.
We self-domesticate.

We select for those
behaviors and traits

which are the best
and most conducive
to living in groups.

All my friends, like even
some of my family members,

are like, wow, why...

why you building
a rock wall?

You're not even
getting paid.

Are you crazy?
Why would somebody
want to do that?

To try to explain
why so many people can act

counter
to their self-interest,

I think you have
to talk about

the power of them
being deceived.

One avenue to deceiving
someone

is to manipulate their system
of self-deception.

Any state or authority that
has to control the behavior

of large groups
of human beings

or any company that wants
to market a product

and control
consumer behavior

has to somehow
lock into

these mechanisms
of self-deception.

If you want to sell
something to people

that they actually
do not need,

you have to tweak
their preferences.

You have to tweak
their wishes.

You have to lure them
into some perception

that this act of
shopping, for instance,

or this act of voting
will give meaning
to their life...

Because they understand
intuitively

that we're all animals
seeking social status.

The larger idea that we
can have whatever we want,

we can feel, you know,
whatever way we want.

that we can achieve
the state of happiness
we want

simply by consuming,

that idea,

the signal
that we're receiving

and always will receive,

is that that's always
going to be possible.

We've gotten so used to this
idea of continual progress

and feeling better
at each juncture

that we don't even
question it anymore.

The propagandists,
the perception managers,

know that they are
creating reality

for tens of millions
of people.

"You reality-oriented people
don't understand.

We create a new reality."

And then there's also
the version of the Monopoly game

in our economy,
which is all about competing

to see who can collect
the most toys,

but also the biggest number on
their financial asset statement.

This is induced
self-deception now--

I'm being victimized--

and my greed
is being played upon.

We all want money.

And we'd all love the scheme

which, if repeated,
could get us even more money.

You know,
"We are doing God's work,"

which you may recall...
[ laughs ]

is a phrase from the head
of Goldman Sachs.

And I suspect
he truly believes that

because that's what the culture
tells him and affirms.

Our brains are designed,
by evolution,

to just reinforce
what we already believe.

But why would that be?

In part, I think there's
an evolutionary reason for it,

is that deep beliefs

like religious beliefs
or political beliefs,

ideological, cultural,
social beliefs--

these are all wrapped up
in our tribe, um...

the sort of unity
of the tribe.

This is what we stand for.

Ain't that the way
great empires work?

Newsreel announcer: They are
dug in and heavily fortified.

We are literally destroying
the source of our own existence

and think we are getting
richer as we do it.

So everyone,
left, right, up, down,

thinks that they accept
propaganda

as long as it's their propaganda
for their cause.

On climate change,
the whole problem is magnified

by the fact that business groups
that have strong self-interests

in one or another position
set up so-called think tanks--

call them self-deception...

call them deceit
and self-deception tanks--

whose business is
to generate information

in support of
a predetermined position.

Now that ain't
how we do science.

We're not supposed to have
a predetermined position.

The whole point is to have
no predetermined position

unless it's something that's
already been well established.

And then you build on it.

So the tobacco industry
used to have some group

that busied themselves
trying to show

that tobacco was good for you,
it didn't cause cancer.

It's nonsense.

What's the level
of consciousness

of the various actors
in the system?

The levels of CO2
we produce are increasing.

But don't worry.
Norwegian oil

is still the cleanest
on the market.

Whatever that means.
I don't even know
what this means.

Norway is the fifth
largest oil exporter
in the world.

But people think
of themselves
as little Norway.

[ speaking Norwegian ]

"Norway is
a little country"

is a common expression.

And this is just this way
of sort of saying,

well, we're backwards people
who are very nature-loving.

We're very environmental,
and...

and you know, what does
this have to do with us?

Is the whole world
getting together? No.

Americans, I think,
like to point
the finger at China

and say, "Oh, you know,
we're not so bad

"because look
at the Chinese.

"They're the fastest
growing economy,

"and they're the ones
that are really--

It's not us.
And there's nothing
we can do anyway."

And we do that
personally,

but we also do that
as a collective.

"I'm only gonna change
if you're gonna change."

If I don't think
that you're changing,

it's not fair for me
to change.

We want things to be fair.

We mutually use perceived
inequity to do nothing.

It would be much easier if you
really didn't have to change

most of the rest
of your life--

you just had
to switch products.

Like you'd like to keep
eating Twinkies,

but you'd like them

to be made with
organic ingredients.

An organic Twinkie
is still a Twinkie.

We are really looking at
swapping a few ingredients,

maybe changing the packaging,

or maybe changing where we get
one of the ingredients.

But we don't really want
to change the larger system.

But it's like, hey, don't
interfere with my fantasy.

It's the way
that we construct
this double reality

of it being not real:

knowing about
climate change,

but still seeing it
as not real.

This is
a cultural practice

that kind of holds
everything in place

and makes it
so we don't act.

Just like with, you know,
counseling between individuals,

one of the first things you do
is learn that if you just blame,

you're going to turn the other
party into a defensive entity,

and the conversation's
going to go nowhere.

Mana.

Some of us have good mana.

Some of us
have not so good mana.

A huge amount
of what we do today

is enjoy
something now

while deferring the cost
into the future.

I mean, that's how so many
of our systems work.

That's how the system
of credit works.

People seem to be
very unwilling

to trade secular goods
for sacred goods.

So, for example,
if you were to ask

how much could I buy
your children off you for?

Or how much payment
will you accept
to take away your freedom?

Things which we see as sacred
we're not willing to trade

for monetary
or material goods.

Our wealth
comes from energy.

And so credit
becomes in effect
a lien on future energy.

When we take on debt,

we are promising
to repay it with
future energy.

Consequences of a default

or even a serious prospect
of default

by the United States
are impossible to predict

and awesome to contemplate.

So the system of debt relies
on goodwill and on trust.

It relies on the assumption

that we will continue
to have goodwill and trust

in the future.

But if energy
becomes more difficult
to obtain in the future,

then the loans
we've taken out today

are going to become harder
and harder to repay

and the financial system
will simply collapse.

As the financial system
collapses,

food will no longer
be moved to the cities,

food will no longer
be moved across oceans,

goods will no longer
be moved across oceans,

and there's a serious risk

that our entire societies
would collapse.

The United States has borrowed
a huge amount of money.

And one has, of course,
taken it for granted

that that money
will be repaid,

that the U.S. will actually
pay all of the money

it has borrowed
from its citizens,

from the Europeans,
and from the Chinese.

One-third of all the money
is borrowed from the Chinese.

And who will have to pay?

Well, it is, of course,
the young.

For 224 years,
the policy of Congress

and every president
has been we pay our bills.

We tend to go into debt
against the future.

In a way, we're doing that
with the atmosphere.

We're just drawing out
future credit

that we may have to pay back.

Then it's kind of a death
by a thousand cuts.

We're going to change
the chemistry of the ocean.

We're also changing
some circulation patterns

of the ocean that affect
fisheries and things like that.

Those have the potential
to really ripple

through our whole,
our whole even social system.

For every unit of heat

that has gone into the
atmosphere from global warming,

25 units have gone
into the ocean.

[ speaking Hawaiian ]

Catch a wave, baby.

Oh, yeah, feel this?

This is what I'm talking
about right now,

riding the wave.
Kainalu.

There's a wave
in the heavens, the wind.

There's a wave
in the ocean, the wave.

And there's a wave in
the earth, the lava.

Kainalu.

Be like the wave.

Hup, huli!

The fossil fuels that we burn,

as they settle out
into the ocean,

are changing the chemistry
to the point that,

within the next 50 years,

the ocean may not be able
to sustain plankton,

the very base
of the food chain,

because the acidity eats away
at the exoskeletons

of a lot of the different
types of plankton.

So the fact that,
in the last few years,

the effect that humans have had

on the very ocean
that sustains us...

is dramatic
to say the least.

The Pacific Ocean

is 68 million

square miles.

68 million square miles.

It covers up one-third
of our planet.

It's over 20 times the size
of the United States.

Chlorofluorocarbons
and other greenhouse gases

do not know
political borders.

They just travel
around the world.

There is no place

that humans have not
left their impact.

And 99% of what
we buy and use today

is obsolete and trash
six months from now.

In every single trial
we did,

3,000 miles
across the ocean,

the one shocking thing

I could bring back
to my friend is...

there's not one place
in the ocean

that just had ocean
and ocean creatures
left in it,

that plastic
is everywhere.

Somewhere along the way,

we have been smokescreened
and clouded by conveniences.

So easy, convenient.

The ocean is downhill
from everything.

There is no away.

It's petroleum-based.

It absorbs
other chemicals.

It releases
other chemicals.

But it works around,
and it's not biodegradable.

It doesn't break down
in time.

It is photodegradable.

But all that means is
that wave action and light

break it down into smaller
and smaller bits.

It doesn't go away.

And then every night,
these little creatures,

the myctophids,
little lantern fish,

come up
from the deep water,

they feed on what's
supposed to be
plankton,

and then they make
their way back down
during the day.

Well, they're
feeding on plastic

because that's
what's there--

that's what's
everywhere--

And that literally,

they make up about
50% of the biomass.

Everything eats them.

We're plasticizing
the ocean creatures

from tiny to huge whales,
all the way through.

And we're plasticizing them
from the inside out.

For sometimes products
that we've maybe used

for five minutes
or ten minutes,

the fact that
a plastic water bottle

can last 200 years?

We can look at ways
to change,

but that's not enough.

Recycling? Great idea.
It's not enough.

So then comes
the unfortunate part where...

you run into reality.

That's an aspect
of self-deception

we always
have to bear in mind.

Whatever we put inside there,
we put inside us.

Sure, global warming
is going on now,

and the consequences
are not beautiful,

but somehow this damn thing
will be solved.

Well, maybe somehow it will.

Any uncertainty--

and there's a lot of uncertainty
about the future--

it tends to engender
unreasonable optimism

about what will fill
that bit of uncertainty.

So right now,
if there's uncertainty

about our climate models
right now,

people are going to latch
onto that uncertainty

and assume the best.

Optimism is a good thing.

Too much optimism
is a bad thing.

Sometimes having
misperceptions,

having wrong images
about reality,

seems to be adaptive.

We believe we can put
more memory on a chip,

that we can build
a more efficient car,

w can build a better house,
is a good thing.

But optimism can go too far

when we think every
problem can be solved,

that there isn't really
a problem at all.

Probably the same thing
about the future,

which is probably
what I'm doing.

I'm assuming the best.
I'm assuming

that technology will be
able to fill these gaps

in such a way
where we won't have

a total environmental
collapse

which will lead
to resource wars

and shrinking
of the human population.

System destruction means

that climate change
becomes so bad that...

large areas of the planet

become impossible
for humans to survive

and agriculture
is destroyed

and lots of people
die of starvation.

You know, these kinds
of things are part
of the models.

We have to tell
these things.

If we do,

people say that we
are catastrophists,
which is fine,

but we still have to
tell these things.

But the problem is that,
when we tell these things,

people don't react.

They're scared,
they tend to retreat

and say, "No more of this.
It's so horrible,

so awful that we don't
want to hear it."

It takes complex,
expensive technologies

and much investment of energy
to get energy.

Today we live in
the most complex societies
that have ever existed.

And we are far beyond the level
of complexity that can be
sustained through solar energy.

We really are reliant
on fossil fuels

and to a certain extent
also on nuclear power.

You can show that
with many wars people start,

like my own people
have started terrible wars

and brought great suffering
over humanity...

In the beginning, if you look
at the internal records,

the idea is always,
"Aw, come on. Piece of cake.

"We'll just walk in there.

After four days,
we'll have this done."

Then after four days into it,
there's a sudden surprise.

This is taking longer
than we thought.

Our technological
superiority doesn't help.

And I think to have the idea,
"Ah, one way,

"we're gonna find a way
with climate change.

"These scientists
are gonna find something.

"But only--if we only get
our act together soon.

"We will manage.

Nothing was really that bad
in the past of mankind."

That is fully delusional.

And this growth
must continue

these next 10 years.

Those 13 million new jobs
must be created.

And right now,

the promise looks
very good.

With technology comes cost.

This crop is bringing
the same money it brought

in the 1970s.

And in the early 1970s,
you could buy a new tractor

and a new pickup
for less than $10,000.

Now our tractors cost
$200,000 or more.

Our vehicles are costing
$40,000 to $50,000 apiece.

And we're bringing
this equipment out here.

We're spending that kind of
money to wear them out.

Many societies collapsed
in the past.

And they collapsed for reasons
that we can see operating
in our own society today.

Like the Romans,

they never
really understood

that their military
system was based

on the support they had
from agriculture,

and that means that,
if your land has been
ruined by erosion,

you cannot support
so many troops.

And if you cannot
support so many troops,

you cannot defend
the empire

or attack other countries
to rob them,

which was the way
Roman wealth was built,

by robbing the neighbors,

which is normal
in human histories.

You know, we can move.

I mean, if it becomes
too warm somewhere,

we can move to a cooler place.

But most of us cannot move.

From what I understand,
in ancient Hawaii,

it was always about, uh...

about the aloha.

Alo,meaning to be present,
yeah, face.

It also means to be
grounded to the earth.

And hais
the breath of life.

So aloha is to offer
that breath of life.

So aloha is a way of life
for us as Hawaiians.

What you got to do is
kaheha.

You know, us Hawaiians,
we don't pray like this.

It wasn't till
the missionaries came,

make us guys pray like this.

Us guys,
we pray like this.

What we're witnessing now
is really the final phase

of the great
European Enlightenment

when all of the advances
of material acquisition,

of scientific progress,
of technological conquest,

are now collapsing in
on themselves.

We have become
a planetary force.

This is as profound a transition
as civilization itself.

Originally the U.S. ended,
you know, at Louisiana.

And then there was
the Louisiana Purchase.

And then we stole almost
half of Mexico.

And so there was always
this wild land out there

waiting for us to settle,

agriculturalize,
i.e., plant crops,

have herds of animals--

domesticated
instead of wild.

So bison get replaced
by cattle.

And then you build this
massive industrial system

in prime temperate-zone land

that you've cleared
the other inhabitants out of.

By deciding
that they didn't count,

that they were simply
part of the wildlife
of those continents,

why, it was free land, ready for
European populations to exploit.

That enabled us to imagine

that we had a vast increment
of carrying capacity
for homo sapiens.

I call that
the Age of Exuberance.

We exuberantly expanded into
this seemingly limitless
carrying capacity.

That was one of the reasons
why we became so great--

the receding frontier.
We always had the options

to make up for any current
problems, if you will,

by just settling more land.

Well, of course, at some point
you reach California.

There are no more Indians
to extinguish and so forth.

We live in a culture now,
many of whose norms and values

and ideas were formed
by that Age of Exuberance,

by the myth of limitlessness.

This has instilled in us
a way of thinking

that we will always
have abundance,

that we will never be
constrained by resources.

Say to someone,
"Well, we're gonna run out

of iron or steel in
such and such a year,"

and they'll say,
"Oh, well, maybe we can get it

from the moon."

Well, Jesus God Almighty,

it costs a ton of money
to send two people to the moon,

much less an iron ore
collecting expedition.

Early after Hiroshima,
we began thinking,

ah, now that we're
in the Atomic Age,
there are no limits.

We've got all this new energy.
We can do all kinds of things.

And we didn't think
what are the limits
that are going to exist

even in an age
of abundant energy?

We've become accustomed
to ignoring

or breaking through
the limits

to human progress.

After all, progress
is what defines us.

But here's where we get
into total absurdities
in conventional economics,

with economists
literally telling us,

if we have enough money,
we don't need nature.

If I have a piece of technology
lying around in my apartment,

I use it,
whether I need to or not.

It kind of begs out, "Hey, look,
I'm a piece of technology.

"I cost something...

Use me, please."

The same thing is true
in my opinion

for amassing
large sets of armaments.

It's like technology
is sitting around

and saying, "Hey, use me."

We're dreaming to think
people will change.

And that's in a way
why the hopes lie--

the hopes and the fears
lie with something else.

That may be technology.

Barrier? What barrier?

We can geo-engineer
the planet.

We've transformed
every other environment.

Why can't we transform
the planet as a whole?

You name it, we can set
the planetary temperature

wherever you like.
That's the plan,

and it's a very serious plan

that quite a number of clever
and influential people

are pursuing right now.

Perhaps the foremost
geo-engineering technology

is known as
sulfate aerosol spraying.

And the idea is
to mimic the effects

of large volcanic eruptions.

And the way they would do it--

there are a number of ideas.

One would be adapt
a fleet of aircraft

by fitting them
with special tanks and nozzles

and sending them up
on a regular basis

to spray sulfate aerosols

or the precursor chemicals
into the stratosphere

and simply spray these chemicals
out behind them.

They would form
into sulfate particles.

And pretty soon, within days,
weeks, certainly months,

the Earth would be surrounded

by this fine haze
of sulfate particles.

This isn't solving
climate change.

It's merely suppressing
one of the symptoms.

Carbon dioxide
will still be present

and probably growing
in the atmosphere.

The oceans
will continue to acidify.

Who's gonna have their hand
on the global thermostat?

This is not a problem
with our societies.

It's not a social problem
that needs resolution.

It's a technological problem.

So geo-engineering

is really the techno fix
to end all techno fixes.

The question is,

will it be the techno fix
that ends the world?

What are we?
What are we becoming?

When we start talking
about geo-engineering,

about taking control of
the Earth's system in totality,

we really are behaving
like the sorcerer's apprentice.

And we all know
what happens in the end.

The powers that we
attempt to master

are vastly more powerful
than we imagined.

It's just a pale blue dot,
as Carl Sagan called it,

floating out there in space.

We're trivial compared
to the universe.

The idea that there's
an inevitable progress

and people are able
to learn from mistakes

and elevate everything
to a higher level...

is just a myth
we believe.

The water comes
from Pu'u Kukui,
from this mountain,

and it averages about
400 inches of rain.

It is considered one
of the wettest spots
on the planet today.

Probably
the wettest spot.

See, the streams
are all drying up.

And these waters
are diverted

to the sugarcane fields

and to all the hotels
and businesses

and the homes.

There's no more water
for taro.

And they're trying
to tell us guys
that our taro needs help...

we need GMOs to help us out.

[ scoffs ]
We don't need no help.

We need water.

It's not gonna be us
local people that will
be farming on the earth.

It will basically be
a middle to upperclass
population

that will be able
to be on those lands,

which is fine,

but there are people
that don't have.

And we need to find ways
that we can both have

and both be happy
and coexist

and be able to manage
our resources
at the same time.

200 years ago, every individual
was required to ask

in almost everything that you
did, every action you took,

every step you took,
you were required to ask:

Is this sustainable?

Because if it wasn't
sustainable, you had to stop.

Only the rich could afford
to behave as if the world--

as if sustainability
didn't matter.

Everyone else had to
build that in

to everything they did.

And that was a mark
of a person who survived,

because if you didn't pay
attention to sustainability,

you died.

It's said
that there is no city

more than three days away
from a revolution.

And that's because
of food supply.

Our industries have perfected
just-in-time delivery

so that everything is produced
and delivered to industries

and to your stores
just as it's needed.

No one keeps stockpiles
anymore

because it's too expensive
to keep stockpiles.

It's inefficient.

But what this means is that our
production and delivery systems

are highly vulnerable
to disruption.

Now it climbs up
the East Coast.

And then it veers in
as it meets a storm

coming down from Canada.

And it was appalling.

There's no heat.

There's no electricity.
You cannot read.

There's no television.
There's no Internet.

You take a double shot of
whatever you take a shot of

and you climb into bed
at 8:30

and pray your way
through the night.

Future superstorms
will be even more damaging

than Hurricane Sandy.

Hurricane Sandy was,
in some respects,

a preview of coming attractions.

We are so heavily
dependent on electricity.

Our lives--I don't want
to say are deformed by it,

but they're certainly
organized by it

and dependent on it,

so if you suddenly
take it away...

Whoa!

We are basically under
the control of totally
unhuman systems.

And everybody doesn't
want to step up

and say, "You know what?

We might have made
a slight mistake."

No, sir. We're just
gonna keep stumbling on.

Their milk? It comes
from the grocery store.

Their meat? It comes
from the grocery store.

Their clothes?
They come from the mall.

People just don't
have any concept

of how much energy
it takes to grow food.

All of these challenges
are going to require

increasingly complexity
and costliness

at the same time
that our energy basis

for funding complexity
is decreasing.

It's inevitable that
our societies in the future

will become less wealthy.

We will be unable to grow
in complexity any further,

and that means unable to solve
the problems of the future.

Republican and Democratic
presidents

and Treasury secretaries alike

have universally understood
the importance

of protecting one
of our most precious assets:

the full faith and credit
of the United States.

If major nations were
to default on their debts,

this would cause the credit
system to freeze up.

Trust would evaporate

and credit would evaporate.

And this whole system
relying on credit

would then become
impossible to sustain.

I often use the metaphor
that, for me,

life is like riding
in a train

where you're facing
backwards.

You always see reality
after it's passed you.

It's like our biological past
haunts us,

and we're just unable to see
the responsibility we have

for all the future generations
to be born on this planet.

And we will also see how
the whole development

slides from our control,

because it actually
is beyond our control.

Certainly there are
aspects of our way of life

that we don't want to lose.

In the past, people
might have a life expectancy

of about 40 years.

And out of every five
children born,

probably three of them would
have died of childhood diseases.

We don't want to go back
to that way of life.

So I don't know: How do you
manage population growth?

I don't know.

How do you make it rain?

A collapse is too gruesome
to contemplate

and it's something that
we don't want to experience.

We would have a situation where
hundreds of millions of people,

perhaps billions of people,
would die from starvation,

from disease, from conflict.

And this would all happen
within a period

of perhaps
two to three months.

If you walk through the pasture
every day

observing the grass
and the birds and the wildlife,

you become pretty attuned
to the situation.

We're living in
a delicate deal

and in the big picture
of things,

if I manage this ranch
for 70 years,

it's just a minute particle
in the big picture of time.

And it's my goal to take
care of it and pass it on.

[ speaking Hawaiian ]

Aloha.
[ continues in Hawaiian ]

The everlasting breath.

The leaf, the lau
that sustains us...

that sees all the changes,

and yet still growing
in between the freeways

and the development.

So easily we forget about
where our food comes from,

where our water comes from.

That's what it is,
as Hawaiians.

That's a very sacred saying.

No e au,
it's a wise saying.

The ainais always chief.

Our time...
so short.

Once the ocean gets too acidic,
we're done.

The thing that is important
in one's own life

is to face the facts
and not to judge oneself.

We hear the calling,
a lot of us.

If not,
we're not gonna survive.

We're not gonna
make the journey.

We're not.
Our canoe will sink.

And that's how we look
at the Islands,

that we are in a canoe,

that we have to make decisions
based on everybody else.

The core of all morality,
the first step:

To make the decision,

I will at least try
not to fool myself.

Beyond the horizon,
the unknown:

That's where
we all come from.

And we live in what we
call ao,or the light.

We live in the ao.

And our time will sunrise
and then our time will sunset.

And so what we gonna do?

What are we gonna
leave behind

for our generations,
our descendants?

What they gonna say about us?

How do we want to be
remembered?

We are all part of this.

♪♪

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