Original subtitles

[ominous music]

NARRATOR: The Earth is getting hotter.

Experts predict that in the next 25 years,

the global temperature will rise two degrees Celsius

above the norm, and our planet will reach a dangerous tipping

point, triggering unparalleled disaster.

From unbearable heat waves and uncontrollable wildfires

to extreme flooding and epic super storms,

from catastrophic earthquakes and devastating

volcanic eruptions to rampant disease,

starvation, and the wrath of rising seas,

scientists warn that mankind will be pushed to the brink

once we reach two degrees.

The magic number is two degrees centigrade.

That's when we lose control.

That's what the future looks like...

if not hell, then a remarkably similar temperature.

It will change the character of human existence

on this planet forever.

[thunder rumbling]

NARRATOR: This is Bozeman, Montana, 100 years from now.

The year is 2117.

The planet that has sustained human life for hundreds

of thousands of years is now unleashing everything

in its power to wipe it out.

For the 12,000 souls that call Bozeman home,

every day is a battle for survival...

a battle made all the more desperate

knowing from an American population that once numbered

320 million, they're the only ones left.

[clock ticking]

Experts agree that arise of two degrees Celsius

above the pre-Industrial Age average

will be the biggest threat to our existence

that humanity has ever faced.

When we start thinking about a world that is on average two

degrees Celsius warmer than it was before we began burning

fossil fuels, we're talking about monumental changes

to the Earth's climate.

We're really thinking about an entirely different world.

NARRATOR: And we're already halfway there.

We're now at a plus one degree above pre-Industrial

and increasing by a serious amount every single year now.

One degree, which is what we have so far,

is melting the Arctic.

It's one of the biggest physical features on Earth,

and it's being destroyed daily at one degrees.

That's not a good sign.

NARRATOR: Scientists warn that it's already affecting

the lives of millions across the nation,

nowhere more so than the forests of the American West,

where massive fires destroy more and more territory every year.

The Western United States has been experiencing a major ramp

up in wildfire.

The last 30 years, the area of forest

that we see burn in a given year is about nine times larger

than it was 30 years ago.

That's a gigantic increase in the area of forest

that we're losing every year to fire.

NARRATOR: As both summer and winter climates become hotter

and drier, forest fires are growing more frequent and more

powerful than ever before.

If you raise the temperature and you decline the rainfall,

then the wildfire threat will get worse.

And the wildfire season will get longer as well,

and that's the two things that people are really concerned

about.

NARRATOR: In recent years, California, Arizona, New

Mexico, and Utah have all seen the largest fires in state

history.

We're seeing fires that are in the multiple hundreds

of thousands of acres.

You can think about an acre is a football field,

and so a fire that burns 300,000 acres

is about 300,000 football fields.

Just think about how big that is.

If you're in the Southwest of the United States,

you might want to consider moving.

NARRATOR: Research teams are already

using advanced technology to help

put an end to the destruction, with an eye for today

and the future.

The key to fighting wildfires is understanding how big they are

and how they're moving.

In the past, that's meant time consuming, dangerous flyovers

or expensive satellite imaging.

But now, experts at InSitu commercial aviation

have developed new equipment that's cheaper, safer, and more

user friendly.

[music playing]

The Scan Eagle will provide live video footage of the fire

for the fire suppression crews.

So if we were doing a fire suppression mission,

we'd be pushing full motion video,

both infrared and standard video of the fire,

for the fire suppression crews.

NARRATOR: The Scan Eagle provides teams on the ground

with real time updates on fire location

and helps water drop crews pinpoint hotspots

for containment.

Its drone can fly up to 20 hours straight on just two gallons

of fuel.

With a wingspan of 10 feet and weighing less than 50 pounds,

the Scan Eagle can be launched and controlled

by just a single operator.

What you see behind us is the Scan Eagle Mark Four launcher.

It gets the Scan Eagle going from zero

to 50 knots in the space of a large pickup truck.

This allows us to operate in very remote areas that

are in the middle of nowhere.

NARRATOR: The Scan Eagle's compact launch and recovery

system is also a crucial component in fighting fires

across the Western United States.

So we use our launcher to get off the deck,

and then we use this to come back without using a runway.

It's called a Sky Hook, and it's a unique method

for recovering the Scan Eagle.

Instead of landing on a runway, we

use hooks on the end of the wing,

and then actually fly the aircraft right into the rope.

The rope slides down the wing, catches on the hook,

and basically yanks the aircraft out of the air.

This technology is gonna be a real game changer for fire

suppression.

NARRATOR: The Scan Eagle is one of many technological advances

that's being developed to ward off climate disasters.

But what happens if the Earth's temperature continues to rise?

What will America look like if we hit the point of no return?

It's the year 2042, and Earth's average temperature has just

reached two degrees Celsius above the pre-Industrial Age

average.

The consequences come quickly and without mercy.

The wildfires that have long threatened the West now

rage unchecked across Idaho, Utah, and Colorado,

consuming millions of acres of forest,

farmland, and city alike.

[music playing]

As you increase the temperature in the wintertime,

the amount of snow stored in the mountains goes down.

The soil dries out sooner.

And you have more dry wood to burn,

and things go pretty quickly.

Which means more and larger fires.

NARRATOR: From Yosemite to Yellowstone

to the Black Hills of South Dakota, our national parks...

once the living symbol of America's independent spirit...

are now a smoldering ruin of ash and dust,

stretching from the California coast

to the foot of Mount Rushmore.

[music playing]

The population of Los Angeles has more than

doubled as refugees from across the region flee the smoldering

wreckage of their own communities

to reach the relative safe haven of LA...

not that things are much better there.

To the North, the San Gabriel Mountains

have been burning relentlessly.

In LA, a city once famous for its smog, the air

is now so thick with ash that it's nearly impossible

to tell day from night.

Wildfires increase respiratory problems.

This is a huge issue out in the West.

You're breathing smoke.

People are collapsing in their apartments, in their houses,

and they're being pulled out by the emergency services.

But the emergency services are working outdoors in 105

or something like that.

And after a few hours of that, they're not really

functioning anymore, either.

This sort of stuff snowballs.

NARRATOR: The San Fernando Valley

lays empty as the growing population of nearly 20 million

crowds closer and closer to the coastline to escape the inferno

to the North.

And as more and more people are pushed into smaller and smaller

space, LA's once famously overcrowded freeways

have become makeshift shantytowns.

Tents now occupy the roads instead of cars,

and all available fuel is used in the firefighting efforts.

State and local officials have kept the flames from overtaking

Los Angeles itself, for now.

But as the planet continues to overheat,

the carnage of natural disaster will engulf the South, Midwest,

and East Coast.

America and humanity's worst nightmare has only just begun.

[ominous music]

Today, the planet is one degree warmer

than it was when we first began to measure

the global average temperature back in 1880.

Scientists warn that when we reach two degrees

above the pre-Industrial Age average,

it will set in motion a series of environmental catastrophes

that threaten to wipe out human life on Earth.

If we go to two degrees, the heat

triggers what they call feedbacks.

And those are natural processes that we can't turn off.

Once you get them going, they're going.

So you lose control, and after that, you're

trapped on an up escalator.

And it's carrying you up through three, four, five, six degrees.

It will happen here, not just can happen here.

I promise you, it will.

NARRATOR: As the Earth races towards the two degree tipping

point, one question looms large.

How did this happen?

Sometime in the 1700s, human beings

learned to burn first coal, then gas and oil.

And as they did, a cloud of extra carbon dioxide

began to accumulate in the atmosphere.

At first, it was a very small cloud.

And now, it's a very large cloud.

NARRATOR: In the 1700s, almost everything was made by hand...

from clothing and furniture to homes and buildings.

But in the 1760s, new inventions...

like the cotton gin, steam engine, and rolling mill...

made it possible to have large scale manufacturing.

Before long, coal powered factories

were producing goods at a rate never before possible

in human history.

The story that you don't often get from environmentalists

is that fossil fuels have been an enormous benefit

to humanity.

We've emerged from the medieval dark ages and permanent famine

and poverty to an era now where our kids can be expected

to survive into adulthood.

NARRATOR: This Industrial Revolution

reshaped civilization and ushered in the modern era.

But experts believe that it was also the beginning of society's

impact on the Earth's climate.

We industrialize.

We burn a lot of fossil fuels.

You get carbon dioxide out of it,

and it lingers in the air a long time because it's warming.

It's simple physics.

The question is, how much, how fast?

And the answer is faster than we thought and quite a lot.

NARRATOR: Carbon dioxide traps heat inside the atmosphere.

The more carbon dioxide there is,

the hotter it gets on Earth.

And all that extra heat has begun now

to do very remarkable things.

It's the heat equivalent of exploding nuclear weapons

every day in our atmosphere.

NARRATOR: It's the year 2050.

Global average temperatures now sit at two and a half degrees

Celsius above normal.

Wildfires are still wreaking havoc from California

to Colorado, and extreme temperatures threaten

to cause even more damage.

By the year 2050, certain parts of the world

are going to be so hot that they're actually

incompatible with human life.

NARRATOR: Many nations across the Middle East

and northern Africa have already seen mass evacuations,

as people flee desert cities whose daytime temperatures

regularly top 125 degrees Fahrenheit.

The next victims are those living in the American

Southwest.

What heat does is it's a stressor.

At first, your heart rate goes up.

You begin to breathe a little bit more,

a little bit of lethargy and confusion.

The brain begins to be affected, and that's

where things get very dangerous and we go

into the world of heat stroke.

Your body is getting so hot that all your biochemical processes

begin to malfunction.

And that is a true, true medical emergency

where death is imminent.

[flatlining]

NARRATOR: For those who remain in cities like Phoenix

and Albuquerque, spending more than a few minutes in the sun

is hazardous.

That has huge implications for workers, people that

are working in agriculture or construction,

when just being outside is not safe for them.

The amount of sickness and even deaths

that can occur in those situations is very scary.

Even sports events...

you know, you're not gonna be playing a lot of games outdoors

in the daytime at 105 or 110.

Now, that gets just more and more frequent.

NARRATOR: No more little league.

No more backyard barbecues.

No more 4th of July parades.

The risk of exposure to the scorching heat

is just too great.

So once you lose the ability to go outside,

you can imagine how different and how intolerable

life would quickly become.

NARRATOR: In order to survive, entire cities

have begun to shift their daily cycles to work at night

and sleep through the brutal daytime heat.

By the year 2054, the full effects of the relentless heat

wave and drought have forever changed

the once great American tourist destination Las Vegas.

This glittering oasis in the desert

was made possible thanks to a masterpiece of engineering.

For 120 years, the Hoover Dam which

generates hydroelectric power from the waters of Lake Mead,

has provided electricity for the bright lights of the Vegas

strip.

But now without any natural rainfall,

those waters are receding to perilously low levels.

The additional warming works to speed up evaporation,

and so droughts are thought to be sharper, more intense

than droughts of the past.

What people don't realize is that water

is fundamental to the production of energy.

We're using it to mine the fuels that go into the power plants.

We're using it to process those fuels.

And we're using it to run the power generation facility.

When there are cases where we're low on water,

you do see power plants reduce their generation

or shut down their operation.

That can have a ripple effect on the electricity grid,

and it can lead to brownouts, to blackouts.

So it can be of serious impact.

[sirens wailing]

NARRATOR: With no way to battle the extreme heat and no

reliable electricity to power its casinos, hotels,

and restaurants, a city that once hosted 40 million tourists

a year sees that number fall to zero.

And the world famous Las Vegas strip goes dark for good.

[horns honking]

Every aspect of our modern lives

depends on electricity, essentially.

If you want to know how important

electricity is, just to go out on a dark night.

Go and stand in some woods where your eyes

don't function anymore, and just see how you feel.

See how terrified you are.

Every rustle in the bushes could be something.

And if that light disappears and we find ourselves

in total darkness, we can't protect ourselves.

The light is really the number one concern because it's

what keeps us safe.

NARRATOR: In Vegas, bottled water

has become more valuable than money.

And within months, stores and warehouses

have been picked clean...

first by panicked citizens stocking up

on emergency supplies, and then by desperate angry mobs

hunting for anything to help them survive.

The cops are totally overloaded with emergencies

that are health related.

And it's dark.

You start to get looting, start to get home invasions.

You start to get all sorts of ugly things happening.

This is human nature.

A lot of people are not gonna be doing well at this.

It is dangerous.

NARRATOR: Every southwestern city

that hasn't been abandoned, from Vegas to San Antonio,

has descended into anarchy.

Whether it's water, electricity, even transport,

we've come to expect 24 hour access worldwide

in the modern era.

And if those things start to break down,

it's law and order and social breakdown within hours.

NARRATOR: While the deadly heat waves cause chaos,

global temperatures continue to climb

and nature's wrath turns to America's heartland.

[ominous music]

Since scientists first started tracking the Earth's

average temperature in the late 1800s,

the top eight hottest years on record

have all occurred in the past decade.

We are currently living through the hottest years

that humanity has ever experienced

in our evolutionary history.

2016 is the hottest year in terms of the recorded

temperatures, as was 2015 and as was 2014 before it.

If we keep on seeing the increases that we've seen,

we're going to be off the scale within just a few decades.

NARRATOR: Many experts believe these rising temperatures are

the catalyst for an unprecedented string

of natural disasters that have battered America...

from super storm Sandy's assault on the Eastern seaboard

to raging wildfires out West to epic flooding down South.

All of these impacts that we're seeing

get worse the more that the temperature increases.

We've already warmed the planet one degree Celsius.

So all the impacts we already have experienced

are just at one degree.

NARRATOR: In 2016, a surprise storm pounded the Louisiana

countryside, dumping more than seven trillion gallons

of rainwater across the state...

three times more than the rains of Hurricane Katrina.

So in August of 2016, Louisiana

was hit by a very heavy rain event.

Didn't have a name.

It wasn't a hurricane.

It was just an event that dumped a large amount of rain...

enough to flood many of the rivers

around Baton Rouge and other parts of Louisiana,

including some parts that hadn't flooded

before in their modern history.

NARRATOR: Eight local rivers reached record levels

of flooding, destroying 146,000 homes

and causing well over $10 billion in damage.

Very, very extreme event of the type that nobody expected,

people weren't prepared for.

Climate change loads the dice, and it

seems to have done so in this case,

and to have inflicted great harm on the people of Louisiana.

NARRATOR: Experts believe that a warming climate intensified

a slow moving weather system over the Gulf of Mexico.

As the storm headed towards Louisiana,

the increasingly hot air sucked in water vapor

from the ocean, lakes, and rivers

before dumping it in one massive rainfall.

[thunder crackling]

Because warm air holds more water vapor than cold,

we see huge disruptions of the planet's hydrological cycle,

the way that water moves around the planet.

We see way more drought in arid areas.

And once that water has evaporated up

into the atmosphere, it comes down in much larger quantities,

so we see horrific floods...

floods on a kind of Noah scale happening, now, routinely

around the world.

NARRATOR: To combat the damage caused by flooding,

forward thinking architects at Water Studio in the Netherlands

have a plan.

At this office, we have a motto.

It says green is good, but blue is better.

And what we mean by that is that the next step is not on land.

It is on water.

Floating houses, floating offices, floating roads,

floating churches...

I think we can do a complete city on water.

NARRATOR: Fueling the team's development

is the theory that the massive influx of water produced

by torrential flooding can actually help preserve

modern civilization.

In our business, floating developments should not only

be beautiful, they also should be efficient.

But imagine that you have a city where

you have like 5% of the buildings on the water.

You can take these parts and bring them to another city,

and then exchange, for instance, a theater

and float in a school, and connect it

to the city on water.

So it brings flexibility.

The DNA of our next cities will be flexible.

Living on water is absolutely the future.

Embrace the water.

Don't see water as an enemy, but see it as your friend.

NARRATOR: One of the most important waterways

in US history is the Mississippi River.

Running from tiny Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota

to the Louisiana Bayou, it's been

a driver of economic prosperity, a lifeline to explorers

and pioneers, and an iconic symbol of American culture.

But experts warn, as massive flooding continues to increase,

the Mississippi is a ticking time bomb.

It's the year 2061.

After a deluge of colossal rainstorms,

the mighty Miss is under siege.

And the surge of water is flooding America's heartland.

The waterways of 31 different states, from the Rockies

to the Appalachians, all drain into the mighty Mississippi.

Now, that massive surge of water is flooding and drowning

an entire region.

Cities like St Louis, Missouri have

seen their yearly average rainfall triple from about 40

inches a year to well over 120.

There's nowhere for the water to go.

Your storm drains weren't built for that, so the streets flood.

They design beer glasses to hold a bottle of beer.

Take a glass.

Pour a beer into it, and it doesn't spill on your lap,

right?

If they suddenly double the size of the beer bottles

and you try to pour it in, you're gonna get a wet lap.

NARRATOR: Across the Midwest, roads and bridges

have begun to give way beneath the relentless downpour.

Major cities and rural communities

alike struggle to adjust to a new way of life.

By and large, we build cities to suit the amount of rainfall

we expect them to get.

We have not built cities to deal with really significant

increases in the average amount of rain

that they're having to deal with.

So you get to the point where a rainstorm is not

an issue of umbrellas.

It's an issue of crisis.

NARRATOR: Across the Mississippi floodplain,

thousands of acres of land and dozens of small towns

have been wiped off the map.

While Memphis, Tennessee holds on for dear life,

the barbecue joints of Beale Street

have been swamped under the rising river.

The spirited chords of blues and rock and roll that

made the city famous have been replaced by the deafening

white noise of rain on water.

Those who could abandoned the city when the river first

breached its banks.

For those who can't or won't leave,

the floods bring one calamity after another.

[ominous music]

That's the really scary thing.

Floods are the things that really kill people.

NARRATOR: In a cruel twist of irony,

the drowning city is also dying of thirst.

[music playing]

The water is not just a problem because it's too high.

It's also because there's not enough you can drink.

[music continues]

Assuming that the flooding has actually got into the water

supply, you don't want to drink water out of the tap anymore.

NARRATOR: Garbage floats freely throughout the flooded

streets...

stinking, rotting, and turning the water supply toxic.

You can be surrounded by water and not have a drop

to drink in a flood.

None of the water around you is safe

because it's got all sorts of stuff

in it just because it flooded through gardens and dumps

and everything else.

But also, it's coming up out of the sewers.

Once that water gets contaminated,

it takes a very long time to decontaminate.

And how much bottled water do you actually

have in your house?

The answer is not very much.

NARRATOR: There's a saying among the southern towns

along the Mississippi that anything is possible,

if the good lord is willing and the creek don't rise.

Now, during what is billed as the Great Flood of 2061,

the raging river rises higher every day.

But small bands of Memphis natives

fight tooth, nail, and sandbag to keep their city

from total annihilation.

Families crowd into second story rooms and attics,

hoping higher ground will keep them safe.

The strength of those holding out hope in Memphis

is an inspiration to communities across America locked

in their own battles for survival

against a planet turned deadly.

But as global temperatures continue to soar past the two

degree tipping point, nobody and no place

is safe from the wrath of destruction.

[ominous music]

Across America, experts believe the effects of a warming planet

are already being felt, from the massive forest

fires of California to extreme flooding across Louisiana.

As global average temperatures continue to climb,

scientists warn that the Earth is approaching

a tipping point...

two degrees Celsius above the pre-Industrial Age average.

And once we cross that threshold,

the consequences will be grim.

Think about your own body.

If your temperature spikes up two degrees,

you begin to feel sick.

It's a sign that something's wrong.

We're on a path to see the planet's temperature spike

up seven, eight degrees Fahrenheit in the course

of this century.

That's the kind of fever that lands you in the emergency

room.

[flatlining]

NARRATOR: As powerful rainstorms across the nation

grow more severe, the rising floodwaters

have led to an unexpected, but no less dire problem.

One of the bedrock principles of public health

is that our bathroom is here, our food is here,

and we live over here, right?

We keep them separate, and that keeps the germs away.

With an extreme precipitation event, that's a lot of water.

And frankly, it turns that whole system into a blender.

So now, our bathrooms are being muddled with our drinking

water.

What does that do?

That creates disease.

NARRATOR: Lack of clean water and growing mosquito

populations are leading to outbreaks of relatively

new diseases like Zika, which has spread North from Brazil

and has already caused more than 200 cases of infection

in the southern United States.

So these aren't just developing countries

with poor resources.

These are major, well-resourced urban environments

where we're seeing this.

Flooding causes standing water, and we know mosquitoes breed

in standing water.

So that's another increased risk, the proliferation

of vector borne diseases.

[music playing]

When we say vector, that means they're carried

by a mosquito or a tick.

NARRATOR: Flood conditions and warmer temperatures

are also reviving diseases Americans haven't seen

for generations.

Very old fashioned epidemic diseases like cholera

and dysentery come with flooding.

Yellow fever, malaria, Lyme disease.

Dengue virus, Chikungunya virus.

These are all viral diseases that are debilitating.

Frankly, the old and infirm and the very young

can die from this.

[sirens wailing]

NARRATOR: Today, mosquito borne malaria

is responsible for a million deaths a year across the globe.

And scientists at Intellectual Ventures Laboratories

in Washington state are turning to cutting edge technology

to help slow the spread of disease carrying insects.

What's a good way to kill flying pests?

A technology like pesticides is indiscriminate.

It kills all the insects.

That includes the honeybees that we want to pollinate things.

It includes butterflies and all sorts of other stuff.

What if we could actually judge, is this a good insect

or is this a bad insect?

We came up with the idea of using

little computerized systems that could spot flying insects

in the air, target them with lasers,

and shoot them out of the sky.

Seems like science fiction, but we've actually

gotten it to work.

NARRATOR: The system works by establishing an invisible net

between two towers.

Anything that wanders into that plane

is picked up by the state of the art cameras, which then trigger

lasers to shoot and kill the mosquitoes.

We can even be selective and only shoot

the female mosquitoes because male mosquitoes don't bite

people.

It's only the females that do.

With our system, we can tell is this a male

or is this a female by the wing beat frequency.

NARRATOR: These laser towers are both intelligent and extremely

effective.

From initial acquisition to bug lying dead on the ground

is about 100 milliseconds.

That gives us 10 bugs per second that we can kill.

Never ceases to put a smile on my face to see mosquitoes

get shot by a laser and die.

NARRATOR: While this cutting edge idea is still

being developed, the goal is to set up laser stanchions

in populated areas, creating mosquito free safe zones.

This is creating what we call a photonic fence.

If you take that technology and scale it up a bit,

you could protect a hospital or you can protect villages.

This area is now mosquito clear.

NARRATOR: Mosquito killing lasers

offer the promise of hope in the battle against the growing

threat of disease.

And in the year 2069, it'll be a much needed resource

as the global average temperature now hits three

degrees Celsius above normal.

Winter no longer exists.

And without cold air to kill them off,

mosquitoes start to wreak havoc.

[thunder crackling]

Mosquitoes are very temperature sensitive.

That's why in the winter, at least in the Northeast,

there's no mosquitoes.

So in a warmer climate, historically those warm weather

months might be this long in a certain spot.

Now, they're becoming this long.

NARRATOR: Unchecked, the mosquito population explodes.

Making their way North, they attack the East Coast

without mercy, spreading infection and death

in their wake.

All these bugs that carry these diseases are gonna

be creeping out of the tropics and entrenching themselves

in big population centers that have never had to see this

before.

NARRATOR: Philadelphia and Baltimore, America's fifth

and 25th most populous cities, are rocked by wave

after wave of diseases traditionally found

in tropical climates.

[buzzing]

Take malaria for instance.

We know malaria is the scourge of humanity, right?

For anyone who's ever had it, they're miserable.

They're chronically sick.

It's a debilitating disease.

Not only are more and more people

going to be dealing with this, but now their families

are gonna be forced to leave their jobs to take care

of them.

And the health care system, wherever you are,

is gonna be more taxed from these increased illnesses.

NARRATOR: The dense urban populations of American cities

are proving to be the perfect environment for disease

to spread and mutate.

Entire neighborhoods are decimated seemingly overnight.

Human to human transmission leads

to real outbreaks of epidemics because we live crowded

together.

NARRATOR: As disease carrying mosquitoes ravage the Eastern

seaboard, the epicenter of this terrifying outbreak

will soon be America's most populated city,

overrun with infection and disease.

[ominous music]

[buzzing]

As Earth's average temperature continues

to climb towards the two degree tipping point,

the northernmost reaches of the globe are becoming a target.

The permafrost, large areas that have been covered in icy tundra

since the end of the last Ice Age almost 12,000 years ago,

are now melting, unlocking the frozen remains

of ancient creatures.

Carcasses of animals that died 5,000 years ago or 500 years

ago in the permafrost.

NARRATOR: As the land thaws, the centuries old corpses

begin to rot, unleashing a new wave of disease stretching down

from the North.

We had an incident in northern Russia

in 2016 where an animal thawed out of the permafrost,

and it had anthrax, which is a very nasty disease indeed.

One of the local folks who had handled it got anthrax.

Epidemic diseases do not tend to vanish of their own accord.

If it was around before, it'll probably

be surviving somewhere way off a deserted part

of the woods or something.

All those diseases come back.

NARRATOR: As the planet continues to warm,

scientists point to this event as a portent of things to come.

It's the year 2071, and America's population

has cratered from 320 million strong down to 200 million...

more than a third of our nation decimated over decades

of fire, floods, and disease.

The chaos began when the Earth's average temperature rose just

two degrees Celsius above the pre-Industrial Age average,

triggering a domino effect of ecological disasters.

Now, with the average temperature three degrees

Celsius hotter than normal, mosquito borne viruses

from the flooded Midwest and old world plagues

from the melting permafrost in the North

have unleashed an onslaught of disease and pestilence

across the mega cities of the Eastern seaboard.

So one of the most intuitive things

that we know from a warmer world is

that when the world is warmer, tropical and subtropical

diseases will spread.

We think being modern means you don't have

to worry about the kinds of diseases that carry people away

and drop lots.

They're still there.

We haven't eradicated any of them.

It's just waiting for the surfaces to break down.

Don't be surprised.

NARRATOR: At the epicenter of this terrifying outbreak,

the city that never sleeps is now

locked in a living nightmare.

One thing leads to another.

The heat causes an enormous burden on the electricity

supply, which crashes.

We've got a city here that's stricken.

There's people in trouble everywhere.

They can't get out.

They can't move around.

There's no power.

The streets are flooded.

And not only that, but there's disease

and some people have medical emergencies.

Who do we treat first?

Knowing that if we go for them first, somebody over here

is not gonna make it, it gets very serious.

Because actually, we're choosing who lives and who dies now.

[music playing]

NARRATOR: In the 1300s, the Black Plague

struck over 60% of the population of medieval Europe.

That's 50 million people killed in one terrible, seven year

span.

In the year 2074, three years after the outbreak started,

the infection rate in New York City has reached 80%

and it shows no signs of slowing.

Dysentery, cholera, all that stuff...

it can spread very fast.

So there, you have to get on top of it

in terms of isolating people immediately.

NARRATOR: In an effort to limit the spread,

all public transportation has been shut down.

The subway system with more than 800 miles of tracks lay silent.

New York's 13,000 taxis are officially out of commission.

Hospitals are overrun with patients showing

symptoms of over a dozen, once rare, tropical diseases.

Officials from the Centers for Disease Control

work around the clock to identify and neutralize

new strains and mutations.

Now, these populations that have never

had to prepare for it and never had the historical experience

with it are now susceptible.

We also don't have any drugs to treat Dengue or Zika

or Chikungunya, so there's no drugs

available to treat the viruses and there's no vaccine.

NARRATOR: As the number of patients

quickly outpaces the number of hospital beds across the city,

the army has turned Central Park into a mobile field clinic.

[ominous music]

But with medical resources growing more scarce by the day

and doctors increasingly unable to identify, let alone cure,

the onslaught of diseases, most who fall ill no longer

bother to seek treatment.

Lots of people will get ill, and lots of people will die.

NARRATOR: Entire apartment buildings

have become makeshift quarantine zones...

modern day leper colonies where the sick and dying gather,

hoping to spare their loved ones from suffering

the same cruel fate.

And as the Earth's temperature climbs towards four degrees

Celsius past the tipping point, the true horrors

have only just begun.

[ominous music]

The Earth is currently one degree Celsius hotter

than the pre-Industrial average, and experts

warn that if we hit the two degree mark,

there's no turning back.

The problem when you start getting warming that's

over two onto three or even four degrees warming

is that it triggers all sorts of things,

what we call positive feedbacks, that are really scary.

Pretty much every climate scientist

who works in this field for a living

is terrified of that possibility.

We're dealing with a moving staircase, an escalator that's

dragging us all up into the higher levels of temperature.

And the United States is not exempt.

It will be happening in American cities.

NARRATOR: Experts urge that signs of imminent disaster

are all around us.

Just over the last decade, the climate related disasters that

have hit the US...

the severe drought in the West, the pervasive wildfires

in Texas, super storm Sandy in the Northeast...

it would be a tragic mistake to say this was just

a fluke of history, thank god we won't have that again.

This is exactly the kind of combination

that we should be expecting more and more of.

NARRATOR: The most infamous and devastating storm

in recent American history was 2005's Hurricane Katrina.

More than 1,200 lives were lost to the intense winds

and terrible flooding, not to mention the $108 billion

in damage.

More than 450,000 residents of New Orleans

were forced to abandon their homes and evacuate.

It was the largest one time population

migration in US history.

Experts warn that as the Earth's temperature rises,

the threat of more frequent and more powerful hurricanes

grows more dire every year.

That heating of the ocean surface

basically provides an energy source that feeds hurricanes

and feeds tornadoes, feeds large storms

and feeds large rainfall events.

Basically, you're just ramping up the energy so it just

becomes this battery, if you will,

that's charging up with more and more power.

Put that much energy into the system,

and what do you expect out?

Bigger and better hurricanes.

NARRATOR: Hurricanes are classified by wind speed,

with category one storms reaching at least 74 miles

per hour up to category five with sustained winds of 156

miles per hour and beyond.

For all its horrors, when Hurricane Katrina

made landfall, it was only a category three storm.

In the year 2086, with temperatures

now three and a half degrees Celsius above the norm,

the latest threat is the rapidly warming ocean.

[thunder crackling]

The Atlantic and Gulf Coasts are regularly

pounded by super storms that reach category five, six,

and seven...

more than twice as powerful as Hurricane Katrina.

A tropical cyclone, hurricane, is basically

an engine that draws heat out of the warm ocean

and pumps it up into the cold upper atmosphere.

The hurricane's rocket fuel is the warm surface layers

of the ocean.

If we get peak wind speeds over 170, 200 miles an hour,

that will be a category six.

When those come onshore, where they hit the coast

it's really ugly.

[ship horn blaring]

NARRATOR: Savannah, Georgia remains America's third largest

port, handling more than three million containers

with $63 billion worth of cargo each year.

But in the spring of 2086...

[thunder crackling]

[wind howling]

the first category seven hurricane ever to make landfall

in the United States savages Savannah and the Georgia coast.

240 mile an hour winds decimate Savannah's historic squares

and plantations.

Masses of flying debris are powerful enough

to knock down buildings that have stood through hundreds

of years of American history.

A storm surge of nearly 40 feet swamps the coast.

And when it retreats, it drags the mangled remains

of Savannah's port infrastructure into the sea.

You get inundations that will wash away docks and really

cripple ports for long periods of time.

Vast majority of the goods that are shipped out of this country

and shipped into this country come through the ports, 95%

at least by bulk.

And when you cripple a major port,

you really have given the whole economy a whack.

NARRATOR: Even the experts are caught off guard

by the size and ferocity of a category seven hurricane.

Nearly 20,000 lives are lost in a single day of devastation.

Savannah is the first American city

to be wiped off the map by a new breed of super storms.

But as the warming planet continues to soar past two

degrees, it won't be the last.

[ominous music]

As Earth's average temperature continues to climb,

weather conditions around the globe

have grown increasingly volatile.

And experts believe it's made our planet

and our country prone to more frequent and more powerful

natural catastrophes.

What we're seeing is extreme weather and extremes

in weather, so droughts, heat waves, crazy rainstorms,

hyper energized storms.

These are all things that have a significant impact on the way

we live our daily lives.

NARRATOR: One of the biggest threats

we face comes from the rapidly warming oceans, where hotter

water creates larger, more powerful storms.

[music playing]

In October of 2012, super storm Sandy

pounded the Atlantic coast.

From Florida to Maine and as far West as Wisconsin,

the hurricane force winds unleashed its wrath

on 24 states, leaving millions without electricity for days

and inflicting over $70 billion in damage.

Among the hardest hit areas was New York City,

as a storm surge of more than 13 feet

flooded the streets and subways and paralyzed the city's eight

million plus residents.

We're already seeing extreme weather events

that nobody was predicting.

For the people of New York, that means Hurricane Sandy.

NARRATOR: Sandy was the second most destructive storm

in American history, and scientists believe

that rising global temperatures played a key role in Sandy's

devastation.

But new technology offers some hope

that we can stop these super storms before they get started.

At the headquarters of Intellectual Ventures

in Washington state, scientists are developing

cutting edge techniques to make hurricanes less powerful.

We've come up with a way where we

can weaken the strength of the storm

and also likely divert it away from land.

What you want to do is mix some of this surface layer

of hot water with the colder water that's underneath it.

NARRATOR: Hurricanes are powered by warm ocean water.

The hotter the water, the stronger the storm.

So the team at Intellectual Ventures has a simple plan.

Make the ocean water colder.

So, is there a way that we could actually

make that happen?

Well, surprisingly, there is.

This is what we call a Salter Sink,

and it looks like a hula hoop connected to a trash bag.

A Salter Sink is effectively a pump.

Down here is cool water.

Waves splash over the top of this.

Now, every time a wave splashes up over the top,

it puts water inside there.

That pumps hot water down into the ocean.

And as it comes up, it mixes and it changes its temperature.

NARRATOR: This clever invention works like a giant pump,

pushing the warm water down and bringing the cold water up.

The deeper you get below the ocean surface,

the colder the water becomes, effectively sucking the power

from the hurricanes.

One of these Salter Sinks that's 100 yards across put out

in this hurricane alley area for every one to 10 square miles

of ocean can dramatically reduce the temperature at the surface.

This kind of approach allows us to still have storms.

We can even give those storms names.

But we get many fewer storms, and the storms that we get

are less destructive.

NARRATOR: Though researchers have yet

to build the first full scale prototype,

they estimate each would cost as little as a few thousand

dollars.

If successful, they could play a pivotal role

in battling future hurricanes.

2089... it's been nearly 50 years since the global average

temperature crossed the two degree threshold,

triggering a series of ecological disasters.

Now, temperatures have skyrocketed to four degrees

Celsius above normal, and the warming oceans

are creating supercharged hurricanes, the likes of which

we've never seen before.

Coastal cities from Boston to Charleston to Miami

are leveled by 150 mile an hour winds and 30 foot storm surges.

And America no longer has the resources to pick up the pieces

and rebuild.

The government will say, you know,

we are no longer going to support people

who live in this area.

Some of these cities are not gonna rebuild.

You're not gonna rebuild that area.

It's flooded too many times.

Too low, this will happen again, stupid...

get out.

[music playing]

NARRATOR: By the year 2095, more than 80 million Americans

have fled the Eastern seaboard, seeking refuge

from the constant hammering of massive super storms.

But what awaits them inland is no less deadly.

The skyrocketing global temperatures and warming ocean

water combine to speed the melting of massive glaciers

across the Arctic region.

One of the fascinating things about climate change

is that it doesn't only involve the atmosphere and the oceans.

It also involves the solid Earth.

NARRATOR: Glaciers weigh tens of millions of tons,

and all that weight keeps the ground

beneath them locked in place.

When glaciers melt, the Earth below is suddenly

free to move and shift.

That means more frequent and bigger earthquakes.

Take that ice away, and those faults will move very, very

quickly and very violently.

NARRATOR: As a brutal wave of devastating tremors and quakes

rock the land...

[creaking and shattering]

nowhere is hit harder than the earthquake capital

of the United States, Alaska.

Alaska is the place where there's

the biggest link between melting ice and earthquakes.

NARRATOR: More than one out of every 10 earthquakes on Earth

occur in Alaska, as it sits at the confluence of at least

six major fault lines.

As the tundra thaws, the quakes are only getting worse.

And it's not the first time that America's 49th state

has felt the power and devastation of a massive quake.

[music playing]

In 1964, just five years after Alaska joined the Union,

it was struck by a devastating earthquake that reached

9.2 on the Richter scale.

In four excruciating minutes of shaking,

much of downtown Anchorage was leveled.

The shockwaves registered as far south as Texas and Louisiana.

It was the largest earthquake in American history,

and the second largest ever recorded on Earth.

In the year 2095, as the Alaskan glaciers melt,

a massive 10.0 earthquake unleashes chaos

on a level far beyond what anyone could imagine back

in 1964.

In Anchorage, the only warning is a brief, eerie silence

broken by the howling of dogs across the city, who

can hear the high frequency compression wave as the fault

line slips.

A minute later, the Earth begins to roll and tumble.

[ominous music]

After 10 brutal minutes of shaking, nothing in Anchorage

is left standing.

The great quake of 2095 is unlike anything mankind

has ever seen.

But 1,500 miles south of the ruins in Alaska,

the planet unleashes an even more terrifying display

of its power.

[ominous music]

Across the globe, average temperatures

have been steadily rising since the dawn of the Industrial Age.

And experts believe as the Earth gets hotter,

our weather is becoming more extreme and more

prone to disastrous events.

[music continues]

In the spring of 2010, a massive volcano in Iceland

began a three month eruption that

sent ash spewing as far away as Russia,

and grounded 10 million flights across Europe.

It was the largest air travel disruption since World War II.

Gigantic clouds of ash also blocked sunlight

for nearly a week, fueling a widely held scientific theory.

When volcanoes erupt, they emit special gases

that are converted into atmospheric haze.

Now, this atmospheric haze literally

blocks sunlight from coming to the Earth's surface.

And when this happens, global temperatures are impacted

and they get colder.

NARRATOR: Today, researchers are finding new solutions

to harness the positive impact of volcanoes

without the devastation that comes with eruptions.

[music playing]

To eliminate global warming, we

have to reduce the amount of light from the sun by about 1%

How could we do that?

Well, it turns out volcanoes give us a clue.

NARRATOR: When volcanoes erupt, they

send thousands of tons of microscopic particles

into the atmosphere.

These particles reflect sunlight away from the Earth

and can help cool the planet's surface.

We can't actually cause a volcanic eruption every year.

That would be silly and destructive,

and actually, we don't know how to do that.

It may sound crazy, but we think we can solve global warming

by just running a hose up to the sky.

NARRATOR: Researchers at Intellectual Ventures

Laboratory have proposed the Stratus Shield, a man made

system for releasing reflective microparticles

high into the atmosphere to simulate a volcanic eruption.

The idea centers around a powerful hose 15 miles long

that would extend from the ground into the sky.

Here, we see the top part of that hose.

These V-shaped things are giant balloons.

This hose stretches all the way down to the ground.

We have a bunch of sulfur that's piled up.

That sulfur is then converted to sulfur dioxide

and pumped on up.

Up 10 to 15 miles high, we have these spray stations

where an aerosol spray of tiny particles is created.

NARRATOR: The theory is that by adding these particles

to the stratosphere, it would reflect 1% of the sunlight that

hits Earth back into space.

Not enough to be noticed by the human eye,

but researchers believe enough to cool the planet.

Just two small pumping stations

doing this in the northern and southern hemisphere

could solve the problem for all of Earth.

NARRATOR: In the year 2100, the temperature on Earth

has spiked to four degrees Celsius

above the pre-Industrial average.

And volcanoes that have lain dormant for centuries

are ready to unleash their fury.

Four degree rise in average global temperature,

you're really over the edge now.

I mean, if at two degrees you've got problems,

you've got a nightmare at four degrees.

NARRATOR: America has already been savaged by an onslaught

of natural disasters.

Our once booming population of 320 million

has been reduced by almost half.

The country is overrun by hundreds of thousands

of migrants fleeing for their lives

as entire cities are wiped off the map.

Lots of people are experiencing what can only be

described as security crises.

They're seeing their livelihoods threatened,

their agricultural production thrown into doubt,

and literally having their homes burned before their eyes.

NARRATOR: As rising global temperatures unleash hell

on Earth, the next victim is the hub of the Pacific Northwest.

[ominous music]

Seattle's iconic Space Needle threatens to tumble down

at any moment as violently shifting tectonic plates rock

the city with tremors on a daily basis.

But an even greater danger lies in the distance.

Looming 14,000 feet over Washington state's West Coast,

Mount Rainier last experienced a major eruption in 1895...

long before major cities and towns were built in its shadow.

200 years later, the glacial ice around Mount Rainier

has become too thin to contain the magma within.

If we decrease the pressure where there used to be ice,

then some extra melting can occur in the mantle.

And when it melts, it will generate magma.

And that magma will then move up into the crust,

and it will feed volcanoes and feed eruptions.

[ominous music]

NARRATOR: With little warning, the massive volcano erupts.

Lava pours from the Earth, annihilating anything

within 10 miles of the peak.

Small towns like Puyallup and Sumner are buried within hours.

And Seattle, one of the last remaining population centers

in the country, is about to be destroyed.

In the year 2111, the global average temperature

soars five degrees Celsius above normal.

From flooding and disease in the East to the volcanic eruptions

of the Pacific Northwest, America

finds itself a nation of refugees...

small rural villages which survive by hunting, fishing,

and subsistence farming.

But what little food remains is running out.

Across the nation, the few remaining crops begin to fail.

Crops are doing pretty well when it gets warmer and warmer.

And then, there's a critical temperature at which they just

start to tank.

People can't grow crops in places

where their family for generations has grown crops.

NARRATOR: Animal populations begin

to die off, both on land and in the sea,

triggering a worldwide crisis.

So you would have a global food shortage.

We'd have people commandeering ships of grain

on the high seas, people banning the export of their food

to other countries in order to protect their own citizens.

Governments would fall in response to this.

How long does it take you to get from civilization

to the state of nature?

And the answer is a week with no food.

As time passes, more and more people are feeling desperate.

They're frightened.

They're willing to risk their lives for very little things

like a couple of tins of beans because the baby needs food,

and there's no other way.

NARRATOR: As starvation begins to cripple what's

left of America's population, global temperatures

continue to climb higher and faster as they have ever

since we crossed the two degree tipping point.

This is irreversible change on a global scale,

and it gets worse every second.

NARRATOR: And the final calamity is already underway as America

itself begins to drown beneath the rising seas.

[ominous music]

Since researchers began recording the Earth's

average temperature more than 135 years ago,

eight of the 10 hottest years have

occurred in the last decade.

As the world continues to heat up,

climatologists point to signs from pole

to pole, including the massive glaciers receding

in the Arctic.

Ever since about the beginning of the 21st century,

things have started to accelerate in Greenland.

Ice is already melting faster than it was just a few decades

ago.

And we are very certain that those speed-ups will continue

to happen.

The ice is being melted from above by the warm atmosphere.

And even more dramatically, the ice

is being melted from below by the surface ocean, which

is also increasingly getting warmer.

The ice sheet in Greenland locks up a tremendous amount

of sea level rise.

If all of Greenland were to melt tomorrow,

it would raise sea levels by about 23 feet.

It's like a giant sleeping beast, and we're poking it

and it's starting to wake up.

NARRATOR: In the year 2113, as millions of tons of ice

around the poles melt faster and faster,

entire cities are disappearing beneath the waves,

from Los Angeles to our nation's capital.

Five foot sea level rise...

Galveston, Texas 70% flooded, New Orleans 90% flooded,

Miami Beach...

I really hate this...

90% flooded.

At 12 feet of sea level rise, Atlantic City is gone.

It's 100% flooded.

The beach is inland of where the city was.

20 feet of sea level rise, and Cambridge, Massachusetts

is 80% underwater, New York City is 40% underwater.

And Sacramento, though it looks a long way inland,

is 60% underwater.

NARRATOR: And the worst is yet to come.

Antarctica's huge.

If we dropped it onto the lower 48,

it would cover the entire lower 48.

And the ice is up to two miles thick.

There's enough ice on it that if it all melts,

the water level rises 200 feet.

[ominous music]

NARRATOR: By 2117, Earth is now six degrees Celsius hotter

than it was a century ago.

The entire Antarctic ice sheet is melting and crumbling

into the ocean, pushing the unrelenting water

higher and deeper into our coastline cities and beyond.

After a 200 foot rise in sea level,

our nation itself is unrecognizable...

as is the American population, now just a few thousand souls

battling to survive.

[music crescendos]

Bozeman, Montana, the 22nd century...

fortunate twists of geography, timing, and ingenuity

have made it the last outpost of life in America.

Sheltered by Idaho's Sawtooth Mountains

to the West and the Canadian Rockies to the North,

the city has survived the epic tide of water flooding

from the Pacific Ocean 800 miles away.

Bozeman's elevation keeps temperatures just cool enough

to grow heat resistant beans, potatoes, and beets.

And that's all anyone's had to eat since the last sources

of meat...

rats and squirrels... died out.

But for a planet that has sustained human life

for hundreds of thousands of years,

it's only a matter of time.

The Earth is now unleashing everything in its power

to wipe out humanity.

[ominous music]

Today, our planet is one degree warmer

than it was when we first began burning fossil fuels

in the 1800s.

And the skyrocketing temperatures

show no signs of slowing down.

Experts predict that at the current pace,

we'll hit two degrees Celsius above the pre-Industrial Age

average in less than 25 years.

The magic number is two degrees centigrade.

That's when we lose control.

We're idiots to find out what two degrees will do,

but we're probably gonna find out.

That's what the future looks like...

if not hell, then a remarkably similar temperature.

NARRATOR: Climatologists warn that once we cross the two

degree mark, it will trigger a domino

effect of natural disasters...

a downward spiral that will threaten to end life on Earth

as we know it.

[music playing]

Imagine in the year 2042, as the temperature on Earth

reaches the two degree threshold,

extreme heat and uncontrollable wildfires

ravage the American West.

By 2061, floods drown the Midwest and usher

in a devastating outbreak of disease.

In 2086, Earth's average temperature

ticks up to three and a half degrees above normal.

Hurricanes twice as powerful as past storms

level the Eastern seaboard.

By 2095, the global temperature has risen four degrees,

and melting glaciers trigger epic earthquakes

and volcanic eruptions.

At the dawn of the 22nd century, Earth's average temperature

hits five degrees Celsius above normal.

Crops die out.

Mass starvation sets in.

And finally in 2117, as we reached the six degree mark,

the Arctic shelf crumbles into the sea

as the oceans rise up to 200 feet and swallow the country.

The only survivors are in Bozeman, Montana, whose unique

geography has made it the last outpost of civilization.

But for these doomed refugees, there

is only so long they can hang on.

As the soaring temperatures become unbearable and food

impossible to grow, each soul takes their last breath

until there is no more life in America.

It's an apocalyptic scenario that is hard to fathom,

and one experts believe can be prevented long before we reach

two degrees.

It's spectacular when you see the lights of all of our cities

from high above, whether you are in an airplane or even more

dramatically from the International Space Station.

But attached to every light, there's a source of energy.

And most of that energy, 80% of that still,

is coming from fossil fuels.

So just there, you've got a sort of visual encapsulation

of the whole problem.

Global warming is a defining long term threat of our moment

in history, and we are the first generation, the first group

of people living on this planet who understand

that the road we're on leads to big trouble

and that we still have time to avoid it.

This is affecting us today.

We have the opportunity to fix it now.

At some point, we're going to lose that opportunity.

It's time to act.

We need a World War II style mobilization

to deal with climate change.

It would be difficult, but everything big and useful

is difficult. And it would not be anywhere near as

difficult as somehow trying to deal

with the financial, human, and physical mess of a planet

that we've let overheat.

We're all in it together.

Either we all make it, or none of us make it.

[music playing]

[ominous music]

[ominous music]

Since scientists first started tracking the Earth's

[ominous music]

Across America, experts believe the effects of a warming planet

[ominous music]

[buzzing]

[ominous music]

The Earth is currently one degree Celsius hotter

[ominous music]

As Earth's average temperature continues to climb,

[thunder crackling]

[ominous music]

[thunder crackling]

[ominous music]

Since researchers began recording the Earth's

[thunder crackling]

[ominous music]