Original subtitles

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING, 2015 ESTO LO CAMBIA TODO DOCUMENTARY BY AVI LEWIS NARRATOR NAOMI KLEIN

[ Wind whistling ]

-Can I be honest with you?

I've always kind of hated films about climate change.

What is it about those vanishing glaciers

and desperate polar bears

that makes me want to click away?

Is it really possible to be bored by the end of the world?

It's not that I don't care what happens to polar bears.

It's just that we're told that the cause isn't out there.

It's in us.

It's human nature.

We're innately greedy and short-sighted.

And if that's true, there is no hope.

But when I finally stopped looking away,

traveled into the heart of the crisis,

met people on the front lines,

I discovered so much of what I thought I knew was wrong.

And I began to wonder,

what if human nature isn't the problem?

What if even greenhouse gases aren't the problem?

What if the real problem is a story,

one we've been telling ourselves for 400 years?

This first struck me in the craziest place.

I was in a stately home in the English countryside

that looked an awful like downton Abbey.

[ Laughter ]

It was an invitation-only meeting hosted

by the world's oldest scientific organization...

The royal society.

Instead of ordering around the servants,

the people here were trying to order around the sun.

I mean the sun... in the sky.

- carbon emissions and so on.

-They were discussing a plan

to spray chemicals into the stratosphere

to turn down the temperature for planet earth.

-What you need to do is put a small number of particles

up into the upper part of the atmosphere.

And those particles will deflect just a tiny bit of light.

One garden hose to the sky could eliminate global warming

for the entire northern hemisphere.

-In other words,

let's solve the problem of pollution with more pollution.

-So, people are terrified about talking about this

'cause they're scared that it will prevent us

cutting emissions. - Right, and also

that it's sulfuric acid. [ Laughter ]

- It is. - You're burying the lede.

Is there any possible way this could come back

to bite us in the ass,

blanketing the earth in sulfuric acid?

'Cause I'm all for it.

-Here's the thing... This idea may be crazy,

but it's also totally logical within the story

that the royal society pioneered in the 17th century.

Here's how it goes.

The earth is not, as most people thought back then,

a mother to be feared and revered.

No.

Science had granted men godlike powers.

The earth is a machine,

and we are its engineers, it's masters.

We can sculpt it like a country garden.

We can extract from it whatever we want.

These scientists helped turn the mother into the mother lode.

This story is where the long road to global warming began.

When I realized that,

I stopped tuning out those sad polar bears

because unlike human nature,

stories are something we can change.

-In the shadow of the arctic circle

lies alberta, Canada's massive forest.

An expansive virgin timberland the size of New York state

undisturbed for 10,000 years...

Until now.

It's oil... up to three times what the Saudis have

in their backyard.

No drill can tap it.

It's a sticky, tar-like oil called bitumen.

And getting the black gold out of this useless goop

is imperative.

-I find it hard to look at the alberta tar sands,

this vast hole at the center of my country,

which is strange because it's pretty hard to miss.

It's the largest industrial project on earth.

When I do make myself look,

I feel like I'm seeing that old story reaching its crescendo.

For centuries, we've been treating nature

as a beast we have to break

and then force to do our bidding.

And this is what it's come to.

But that story doesn't just shape the earth.

It shapes people...

What they see and what they can't see.

-The land up here... Lots of muskeg,

lots of bog, very, very few inhabitants.

We've got a few native bands that are up here,

been here for years I imagine.

I wouldn't say it's a wasteland,

but certainly if the oil sands wasn't here, nobody

would even know where this land was on the big scale of things

because there would be nothing to come here for.

What they would of first is they would log off all the timber.

They bring dozers in,

and they strip the overburden, is what it's called.

So, they will strip all the sub-soil, the top soil,

and the Clay off of this.

-Canada has the third largest oil reserves in the world.

The vast majority of which are in the oil sands.

We're investing about $20 billion a year

in development of this resource.

That's expected to continue for the foreseeable future.

In terms of the capital

that's projected to be invest in the oil sands development,

something in the range of $150 billion to $200 billion

over the next decade or two.

If you look at the fact that oil's gonna produced

and used in any event, we believe we've got

a value proposition that's very attractive.

-I guess I'd describe the sheer scale of the work

that's going on

and what the mining companies are doing, it is fantastic.

I look at it this way.

We're cleaning up one of the largest oil spills on earth.

We take the oil out, we put back fresh new sand.

You give it 20 years after it's complete.

It comes up trees.

-The fact is the tailing ponds are being cleaned up,

and you'll to be able to drink from them.

You're gonna be able to fish from them.

The land will be brought back to its original state.

[ Crow caws ]

-When those British scientists first said

the earth is a machine and we are its masters,

it was really just a theory.

Humans still had to listen to nature's rhythms

and live within them.

Ships could only sail when the wind blew.

Factories could only run

where there was rushing water to power them.

But then something changed.

Engineers figured out how to take fossil fuels

from beneath the earth

and burn them on an industrial scale.

It was the merger of an ideology with a breakthrough technology,

and it changed the world.

Suddenly, we were calling all the shots.

Ships sailed in any weather.

Factories could be built anywhere

and run around the clock.

The ultimate one-way relationship with nature itself.

But that kind of relationship takes its toll.

I've spent time in fort mcmurray,

the town at the heart of the tar sands boom.

It's a place that seems to run on anything

with the power to numb,

especially the most intoxicating drug of them all.

-We make about 4 grand a week,

and that's too much money, man... too much.

-I work half the year and make about $150,000.

-Grossness.

[ Cheering ]

-It's the money that brings everybody here.

In the long run, it's not because

I think everybody loves what they do.

-I'm not for fort mcmurray or against fort mcmurray.

I could give a shit really about what happens to fort mcmurray.

I could go get a job somewhere else.

Doesn't make a difference to me.

-They're losing a lot.

You look at the rate of divorce or separations

when people move out here to work, it's huge.

You see it in people's faces

because they're leaving their families behind.

But they're doing it for their family.

-A lot of people judge it, and they call it fort mcmoney.

Now, I wouldn't want to judge that, but...

Sorry, I just got to blow my nose.

-[ Laughs ]

-They're making astronomical amounts of money

that they can actually have $500,000 in the bank

five years later.

And they can go home with that and start a normal life

in their hometown where they're from.

-Yes, there's ups, there's downs,

but, hell, we're having a good time.

Like, I don't even know who this guy is,

and he's hugging me. - We don't even know him.

-Well, there's one story of a foreman

who on the exact day that he hit his five years,

he'd left a note in his camp room just, "see you later.

I'm done. I'm never coming back.

I have $1 million in the bank,

and I'll never see you guys again."

-If you plan on staying in a place forever

and your entire culture and history are here,

how does that change you world view?

I found some answers just a few hours away.

A different story about the land and our relationship to it.

This story doesn't have

government and industry on its side.

But it does have some other tools.

-Okay, crystal.

-When I was a kid up in the athabasca,

there was no industry up there.

All you saw was trees, and it was beautiful up there.

-We'll pick some sage.

-It's drastically changed in our territories.

That used to be all pristine boreal forest,

and it's cleared now, and all you see is,

you know, husky signs, shell signs.

When these people came over, they wanted to own the land.

We don't believe that.

That's why in this treaty, there's no talk about ownership.

We believe that the land owns us.

We're here just as visitors on this land,

so we can share it with you.

We can't give it to you, though.

-To alberta now, where there's a growing concern

over a toxic spill.

Distilled petroleum is still seeping out of the ground

after leaks at a site were discovered months ago.

Now, the spill his located north of bonnyville, alberta,

near the edge of a restricted military training site.

-Just in the past little while, like a month,

there's just been like one spill after the other.

You know, when I heard about the spill,

I was really hurt.

You know, and then I started getting information about...

Further information about the spill itself

and that it was a lot worse than what was being reported

and that it's actually a lake that's been affected.

-Hi.

-My name is crystal lameman,

and I'm a member of the beaver lake cree nation.

I got a report that there was a spill

out on the primrose site.

My understanding is that the water was affected.

-And it's not up to me, but if you go over

to that building over there, they'll talk to you for sure.

- Hi, guys. - Hi.

- You guys can't film in here. - Okay.

-You can't, okay?

-So, you've heard about cnrl oil spill.

-The spill.

-I understand you want to go and access.

We can do that, but there's a process.

- Okay. - I can't give you access.

-This is the beaver lake cree nation

traditional hunting territory,

and it's my constitutional right...

-I respect it. I can't give you access.

- to be able to go onto my traditional territory.

-I'm trying to tell you how we're going to get this done.

What we want to do is we want to try and facilitate this for you.

- Okay. - But you need to get ahold

of Mr. Dick Brinkley... Number one.

He's the range activities officer

and the first nations liaison officer

for the Canadian forces at 4 wing cold lake.

-Okay, so both of these people are at 4 wing.

- Just one person. - Dick Brinkley.

-I'm sorry. Did I miss something?

I'm sorry. Did I confuse you?

- No, you didn't confuse me. - Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm throwing out a lot of names and stuff.

-I know that you know that I have the right

to access our territory.

-I wish I had better news for you, but that's the process.

-No, eventually, we'll get in there.

- Oh, you will. - [ Laughs ]

- "Did I confuse you?" That's how he was talking to me.

Like I was just some dumb Indian.

-She did it right back.

-And they don't even know what it is.

It's not a pipeline leak,

and there's black spots all over the ground

just oozing out of the ground.

Our ancestors from beaver lake here

are buried in the southwest part of that lake,

and the spill happened in the southern part of that lake.

So...

-The environment...

It's suffering.

-My uncle al lameman... He was chief for about 35 years.

He started to notice decline in the woodland caribou,

which is one of the animals that we subsist on.

And it was directly linked to industry.

As long as the grass grows,

the rivers flow, and the sun shines,

we will always have an inherent right to the land.

We will always be able to hunt, fish, and forage

the same as we did yesterday,

the day before that, and the day before that,

and we'll be able to do that tomorrow,

the day after that, and the day after that.

What makes our lawsuit different than other lawsuits

is that we're not taking on one oil company.

We're taking on the Canadian government.

[ Telephone beeps ]

[ Telephone rings]

-[ Clears throat ] It's dick Brinkley.

-Hi, dick. This is crystal lameman calling.

Hello? - Who's this again?

-My name is crystal lameman,

and I'm a member of the beaver lake cree nation.

- Uh-huh. - I'm also sitting here

with one of the leaders of the beaver lake cree nation.

We would greatly appreciate the opportunity to just go out

and be able to put our minds at ease

over what is happening out there currently.

-Well, [clears throat] Ma'am, you don't have access agreement.

And in fact, your band is in litigation right now

regarding access as well as compensation.

So in reality, there's nothing I can do for you

from that point of view.

-How do we go about getting an access agreement?

-That's what the litigation is supposed to settle, ma'am.

I would direct you to speak to Albert environment.

A. E. R. - I know who a. E. R. Is.

-Right.

- Okay, very good. - Okay.

- Thank you. - Thank you.

[ Telephone beeps ]

-So that's our answer.

If we lose this litigation, we will never have access.

-What can one person do?

I see pictures on video or on TV,

and all this land is just no trees, no plants, nothing.

It's just like barren waste.

You know, my great-grandchildren have to live with that.

-That why what you're doing is so, so important

[ voice breaking ] And why you have to keep going.

You can't quit.

I can't even tell you how I felt yesterday

driving away from there, being denied by a moniyaw...

"you can't come in here.

You have to ask this one up there for permission

to go inside there."

[ Speaking cree ]

-Mm-hmm.

-You have to keep going.

[ Both speak cree ]

No matter what.

[ Men chanting ]

-When I spent time with crystal and saw what was happening

to the land here, I remembered a phrase

debated by the U.S. government in the 1970s.

It was suggested that some places

may have to be sacrifice areas.

If we're going to keep digging up fossil fuels,

those places will just be destroyed.

What they didn't say is that the people

who live on those lands get sacrificed, too.

But a strange thing happened as the fossil fuel economy

spread over the world.

The sacrifice zone got bigger and bigger.

It started with the places considered

the middle of nowhere.

And then one day, I watched it come to the place

that sees itself as the center of everywhere.

-This was the moment when Sandy struck.

90-mile-an-hour winds slicing through New York streets.

3/4 of a million people have been forced to evacuate.

-All those years we imagined that we had freed ourselves

from nature's bonds, that we were the boss,

there was a part of the story we couldn't yet see.

Our machines were filling the atmosphere

with greenhouse gases.

[ Siren chirps ]

Could it be that we're not the masters after all,

that we are just guests here,

and that we can get evicted for bad behavior?

-Fuck.

-When the weather hit, it was a wake-up call.

It was really like, "wow!"

You know, people holding on dear for life,

holding onto the Poles, the gates.

You know, the water pushing them out they houses.

The wall cave in.

It is really, really crazy.

-I put everything in the first floor.

Nobody ever told me that the flood insurance go

from the second floor up.

The whole first floor went, everything.

I don't have even one penny in my pocket.

[ Sniffles, sobs ]

-We are doing everything that we can, and it's not enough

because the size of this problem is too huge.

We're not supposed to be here.

I'm not supposed to be trying to rescue people

that are stuck in apartment buildings,

dying because of lack of medication.

-Areas that are the hardest hit are the most marginalized,

are the poorest communities,

some of the poorest communities in New York City, right?

There is like hundreds and hundreds of people

that are trapped up in these buildings.

And there's no attention for them.

There's no clinics. There's no care.

-We have a disaster where we're supposed

to have agencies tasked with addressing these needs.

Just like Katrina, it's not woefully inadequate.

It's a travesty.

Fema... useless. Red cross... useless.

And they said there's no apartment numbers,

so how am I supposed to know where these people are?

-Well, listen, the only thing we can do is...

There's an address with no name. - I know,

but he has an open wound, so let's get to him.

-I know, but how about we talk to the surveyor?

- Is this the same person? - So call the surveyor.

You shouldn't be doing this. You're a doctor.

Get someone who can call these people.

Call Aaron. That's what I need.

I need someone who can call Aaron.

-Once we get a contact, I will go there

or we'll get them in.

-It's okay for her to take it.

-In the wreckage of Sandy, I realized something.

We're slowly seeing that the story

we've been telling ourselves

about our dominion over nature...

It isn't quite right.

Nature canhit back.

But this realization is coming at the worst possible time.

A crisis like this cries out for collective action,

for people coming together to change course,

for governments to have our backs.

But for the last three decades,

that idea has really taken a beating.

-There seems to be an increasing awareness

of something we Americans have known for some time...

That the 10 most dangerous words in the English language are,

"hi, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

-Since the 1980s, we've been told that the state

just needs to get out of the way,

that the market should be allowed to let rip.

For climate change, this is an epic case of bad timing

because the government wasn't just missing in action

during Sandy.

It's missing in action during the crisis

that will create a lot more sandys.

-Why is it that governments, when they know what's happening,

why don't they do something about it?

You have to ask... well, they're not doing something about it

because there's some countervailing forces there.

And those governments are acting in those interests,

so who are these countervailing forces?

Who's lobbying them to have weak targets?

Who's lobbying them to make sure

that there is no global agreements?

And more importantly,

if the government isn't gonna stand up to them, who will?

-This is my family's farm.

My parents bought it in the late '70s,

and this is where I've lived my whole life

besides going off to college.

It is a really special place... Right on the yellowstone river.

Basically, what we're doing with it now is we raise meat goats.

Mike and I did some research, and we found that goats were

the perfect solution for weed control.

-Come on, girls.

[ Goats bleating ]

-I feel like Montana is one of those places

that doesn't get much attention paid to it.

And yet, it's the epicenter of a lot of our energy development.

-There are those people that come to places like this

and say, "well, it doesn't look like many people live here,

so that means we can do whatever we want here."

I feel like they've just put a bull's-eye on us.

I feel like they want to get

every single last ounce of it out of the ground.

And they're desperate.

[ Horse snorts ]

-When Mike and Alexis showed me around their part of the world,

I just couldn't believe how many fronts they were fighting on.

They were trying to stop a pipeline from the tar sands

and a vast new project

to unlock billions of barrels of shale oil.

They were also working with the nearby northern Cheyenne tribe

to block a cluster of massive new coal mines

and a railroad to carry the coal out.

There was only one thing I could think of to call all this...

A fossil fuel frenzy.

-If everything that's proposed

right now in Montana goes through,

we're gonna be a commodity colony...

- Mm. - For the rest of the country

and the world.

-Hey, Naomi, it's Alexis.

You're not gonna fucking believe this.

I woke up this morning and came down to do chores

and let the goats out.

And I walked down, and the river's flooded.

And there's oil everywhere.

-Crushing news arrived over the weekend

from a beautiful part of this country in Montana

near yellowstone national park.

An oil spill that we now know may be larger

than first feared.

-One theory is the flood eroded the soil covering the pipeline,

allowing debris to strike it,

causing the pipeline to rupture.

-So they're saying right now that 750

to 1000 barrels of oil were leaked.

-I never ever thought that this was a possibility.

-It got the Gulf.

It's getting us now.

And eventually, it will get everybody.

-This is just... I mean, the fact

that we're still finding jars like this back here

on day eight, you know, kills me.

-We were gonna live here for the rest of our lives.

Try to make the farm something that we could do full time.

And we were careful to protect the land.

We were careful to protect it so that it could support us.

Everything just changed.

-Under my administration, america is producing

more oil today than at any time in the last eight years.

Over... [ Cheers and applause ]

That's important to know.

Over the last three years,

I've directed my administration to open up millions of acres

for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states.

We're opening up more than 75%

of our potential oil resources offshore.

We've quadrupled the number of operating rigs

to a record high.

We've added enough new oil and gas pipeline

to encircle the earth and then some.

So, we are drilling all over the place right now.

-That's not only a problem

if you happen to own a goat ranch by a river.

Pictures help.

Almost every world leader agrees that if we're going

to avoid truly catastrophic climate change,

there's red line we cannot cross.

We need to restrict warming to no more than 2 degrees celsius.

Beyond that, the earth's systems start to unravel.

Think of it like a budget.

If you want to stop the climate from going crazy,

you can burn a certain amount of fossil fuel and that's it.

Here's the big problem.

If you look at how much oil and coal and gas

companies already have in their proven reserves,

you'll notice one thing.

It's up to five times as much as the entire carbon budget

for the earth.

If we let them dig it all up,

we're cooked.

If it stays in the ground, we have a chance.

[ Bell ringing ]

[ Ringing continues ]

[ Man vocalizing ]

-Some people when they touch the ground,

all they feel is dirt.

But those of you and those of us who know

when you put your hand on that earth,

you should feel something pushing back.

-They tell us these destructive plans are part

of the march of progress.

The next wave is the coordinated plan

to transform our ancestral lands into a hub

for the global exportation of coal.

I just wanted to say

that yakama nation supports your efforts,

and we will stand behind you and beside you

and support you in any way that we can.

Thank you.

[ Applause ]

-Basically, this whole thing is gonna be strip-mined.

Then, they're just gonna pull off the overburden,

which is what they call the dirt, and haul it away.

-Look at it.

Look at how beautiful it is here.

Bottom line... greed.

-It's a movement that isn't just what's native American.

It's not.

It's for people who care about the land,

who care about where our country's going,

where the world is going.

And we need to be heard.

Hey, that way is not working.

We have to deal with it.

I'm a firefighter. I am not some rich person.

I am not some government official.

And I have to deal with this.

I have to deal with what you're doing to the world,

to what you're doing to the climate.

[ Speaking Cheyenne ]

My name is Vanessa braided hair.

I requested this informal conference

on behalf of the northern Cheyenne homesteaders.

Last night, over 200 cheyennes, three affiliated tribes,

the oglala lakota nation, yakama nation,

gathered in lame deer to oppose any development

of the otter creek and tongue river valley.

-When Vanessa requested an informal conference

under an extremely complicated mining law,

I think the state of Montana shit a brick.

-I want you to know that many people don't see

any difference between your agency and arch coal,

and that is the truth.

-All of a sudden,

a bunch of people in the northern Cheyenne reservation

are learning very quickly how to navigate these laws,

this bureaucracy.

And it scares the shit out of them

because the minute people understand how to do that,

they lose.

-You don't want cheyennes to take over public meetings,

then listen to us.

If you don't want anger, then hear us.

[ Applause ]

-Thank you very much, miss braided hair.

-We're only all just here momentarily.

We're gonna make our journey some day,

but we would like to leave some tracks

for other people to follow.

Come on in, welcome. Hey.

Henry. - Vanessa.

-Vanessa, nice to meet you.

Come on in.

My hope, my dream,

my vision is seeing first nation communities

becoming energy independent before mainstream america.

Today's gonna be awesome.

Spirit of the sun is out there

giving warmth, bringing everything back to life.

And we're just part of that.

We're part of bringing our nation back to life.

-[ Speaking indistinctly ]

-Solar power was always part of being a native's way life.

Everything followed the [ Speaking lakota ]

The life-giving force of the sun.

It ties in with our culture, our ceremonies, our language,

our songs.

So we understand it.

Oh, it just...

You can see their eyes light up.

You can see their inner spirit.

I can almost tell what they're thinking.

Everybody's healthy and humming with good energy.

-For a relatively brief period in human history,

fossil fuels let us believe that we could break free from nature

and enslave it.

As I watched the Cheyenne at work, I wondered,

what if renewable energy is more than just a technology?

What if it's the rebirth of that other story?

One that all humans used to know.

Renewables tell us that we can't escape or control nature.

We have to work with it.

We have to pay attention

to where the wind blows and when the sun shines.

-Okay, thanks.

- Ready? - One, two, three.

[ Electricity hums ]

Whoo!

[ Cheers and applause ]

-Nice.

-You know, I'm just lost for words.

You guys could probably tell that,

but you've all done really good this week.

So impressed.

I'm so happy for you guys.

And our boys will offer you an honoring song.

[ Men vocalizing, chanting ]

-You don't take and take and take and take.

And you don't consume and consume and consume.

You take what you need, and then you put back into the land.

I believe it in my heart this has to happen.

-What in the end will save this place is not the hatred

of the coal companies or anger,

but love will save this place.

-For me, it's basically an ethical problem we have.

Take as much as possible

and don't care about the consequences and go away.

And leave a desert behind.

You see all the dimensions of the problem here...

How the environment is treated,

how the citizens are treated.

We have to realize what is the core problem,

then we can fight it.

-What is the core problem?

-Do you want me to state in on camera?

-Yeah.

-Yeah, I would say it's the economic system.

Capitalism, I guess.

-You're not sure if you should say that on camera?

-No. [ Laughs ]

I don't know if it helps the struggle.

-In Greece we have made

for some guinness book records lately.

The sharpest austerity ever... More than 25% of our gdp

and deficit-cutting measures in three years.

And hundreds of fractional changes

decided and implemented...

-We are under a very heavy economic crisis

in Greece right now.

This is not a Greek crisis either.

Just one instance of a global economic crisis

that started in 2008.

And the worst thing is that the remedy for the economic crisis

we have right now is a model of growth

that will be even more destructive for the environment.

-What is being advertised as the way out of this is

exploit whatever you have right now.

Sell off whatever you have right now,

whether this be natural resources.

We will not sell the acropolis, but this is it.

We stop there.

So Greece is open to anything.

Gold mining and oil drilling in the aegean sea

and all over.

It's the same in Spain. It's the same in Italy.

-In the name of the crisis, we have no alternative

but giving away our land, our forests, our water,

polluting our seas in order to create wealth.

So you have a definition of wealth

as something that you can take out of the earth,

not as something that is created by the people.

-As I watched the struggle over a gold mind in Greece,

I saw that familiar pattern...

Nature as machine, man at the levers.

But I also realized something else.

In this story,

the economy is supposed to be a machine, too.

Under the right conditions, we're told,

it will created wealth, lift all boats, drive progress.

But this machine needs perpetual growth.

If it slows down, you have to feed it more.

Use anything and everything as fuel.

Cut loose whatever it's carrying so it can drive on ever-faster,

ever-leaner.

I began to wonder if austerity isn't just a rebranding

of that old story of domination,

a way to keep this sputtering machine going...

Squeeze the earth, squeeze the people.

[ People chanting in Greek ]

-In the past five years, the Greek people have risen up

a lot of times against this policies.

The coal miners overthrow the governments

that opposed these programs.

They didn't want us to overthrow the polices.

[ Chanting continues ] So people feel

that they're living defeat after defeat.

Even one victory

could make a huge impact on the psychology of people.

And that's why the other side

doesn't want to allow even a single victory

because this could be the turning point.

[ Gunfire ]

[ Explosion ]

[ Explosion in distance ]

[ People chanting in Greek ]

-And what's going on inside?

What's happening inside with your friend?

[ Indistinct conversations ]

[ Applause ]

[ People chanting in Greek ]

-Ultimately, this movement is not fighting

to just stop the specific mine.

This is a no that has to be said before a yes.

And this yes is something much bigger.

The local communities,

the people who have a constant relationship with the land,

they want their children to live on this land.

So how do we protect the commons?

We create local institutions that make the rules,

that can set the limits.

It's about communities taking back the power

on important decisions.

-They kill.

These factories, these coal-fired factories kill.

-The average person in sompeta has realized,

has made the connection between the struggle

to save their wetland and this larger devastation

that this country is rapidly, rapidly heading for.

This mindless pursuit of double-digit growth,

it requires infrastructure,

raw materials, land, forest, water, the coast,

coal on a grand scale.

-India, a nation in overdrive.

The world's fastest growing free-market democracy.

This surge in growth and developments taking place

across the economy has thrown up new opportunities.

Invest in India's infrastructure.

-Growth... it's the closest thing we have to a global deity.

When this story was first written centuries ago,

frontiers were opening up all around.

Nature seemed infinite.

Now we know better, and yet our global economy is

still based on growth without limits.

When I visit some of the poorest parts of the world,

it's obvious that people have a right

to far more than they have now.

But the only plan on the table

seems to be the western model of growth,

a throw-away culture that sucks up

and sacrifices more and more of the natural world.

Is this really the fastest way to end poverty?

And if it is, why are so many people

on the front lines so skeptical?

-If you look at the environmentalism of the poor,

there is urgency there.

There are such million pollution mutinies

that are happening across the length

and breadth of this country.

These are essentially people who are fighting for their survival.

Their well-being comes out of land, comes out of water,

comes out of the resources that they get out of nature.

And they know that this modern development

that has been promised to them essentially

is a model of growth,

which is of intensive use of the same resources,

but it is very, very poor in providing jobs.

They understand that this development

that is coming will actually make them poorer.

[ People shouting indistinctly ]

[ People screaming ]

[ Gunshot ]

[ Gunfire ]

[ Man shouting in native language ]

[ People chanting in native language ]

It is that battle in sompeta,

which to my mind is a battle which challenges

every environmental movement of the world.

It is not a local movement.

It is the core of the new environmentalism

that we need to grow.

It is the environmentalism of the poor.

[ Chanting continues ]

The current growth model will create wealth for some

and poverty for the others.

It will create unemployment.

It will create climate change.

So you need a different growth system.

-When I ask people why they feel hopeless about climate change,

I often get one-word answer... China.

But here's the thing... When I first went to China,

I saw that the fastest growing economy in the world

is literally choking on that growth.

The story is failing them, too.

-There's always this image of China as first,

this emerging economic power,

and they're the biggest emitter today of carbon dioxide,

and they're consuming more and more resources

and eating more meat.

So it's this sort of image of China

as this gorging machine.

-It's so easy for officials or experts to say,"

China needs to grow, China needs to grow,

China needs to be stronger."

Previously, the environment issues are just peanuts.

We can deal with them when we become rich enough.

And then we had this historical moment

of smog disaster.

It totally changed the landscape

of environment discussion in China.

-[ Speaking Chinese ]

-You know, when you wake up in the morning,

and you cannot walk out in the street,

cannot walk out, because you can't breathe...

People are saying, "no, this cannot be.

This cannot be the way

society in the world is supposed to be about."

-Air pollution has really become a very big topic

in China and with the rising middle class people in China.

You know, after their living standards in many ways

have improved a lot,

now start to ask, "when can we buy clean air?"

[ People chanting in Chinese ]

-Thousands surrounded the party headquarters in ningbo...

[ Chanting continues ]

Protesting against government plans

to build a new multi-billion chemical plant.

-You have a very vibrant environmental movement

at a grassroots level in China.

[ Chanting continues ]

There are so many demonstrations in relation

to environmental pollution right at the local level.

There are many pressures on the government,

to take more environmentally friendly policies.

Not because of some ideological change,

but because of pressure from the ground

and because of pressure from nature itself.

[ Chanting continues ]

-[ Speaking Chinese ]

[ Car alarm blaring ]

-If China wants to do something,

it has the organizational capacity.

10 years ago, it hardly produced solar panels.

Today, it is the biggest solar panel producer in the world.

-In a very short time,

solar panels became so affordable.

And the exported solar panels in the country

have made the access to solar energy

much more meaningful for many, many countries.

-90% of buildings in solar valley are installed with solar.

95% of hot water is from solar.

In China, 20 years ago,

when my colleagues and I traveled city to city

to promote solar,

at that time, our Chinese people don't have hot water.

When we gave them solar, it's new life, new choice.

It's maybe the only choice.

-So, is China a model when it comes to climate change?

Clearly not.

More like a battlefield.

On one side, solar panels.

On the other side, smog.

We're told that the growth machine is self-correcting.

There's a brutal phase

when the earth and people are poisoned,

but then it naturally gives way

to clean skies an a better life for all.

But it turns out we didn't move beyond pollution.

We just moved the pollution.

This smog, much of it is from factories making goods

for my home and yours,

and now there's so much pollution,

it isn't just a threat to China.

It's a threat to life on earth.

So maybe it's not east versus west.

Maybe it's all of us against the logic of domination

and growth at any cost.

Capitalism versus the climate.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

-Good morning, everyone.

All right.

I hope breakfast is good.

It's a beautiful day in Washington, D.C.

My name is Joe bast.

I'm the president of the heartland institute.

It's my pleasure to welcome you

to the sixth international conference on climate change.

-We began addressing climate change

because we observed that the science on the issue

was being selectively reported and, we thought, misrepresented

in order to advance a liberal political agenda.

-Gallup poll, 111 countries, April of this year.

The majority of the human race

does not see global warming as a serious threat.

Celebrate. [ Applause ]

Celebrate.

Climate legislation is dead

for the foreseeable future in the United States.

So what happened? How did it die?

Scientific crap. [ Laughter ]

And I actually got this off Anthony watts' website,

this photo.

Scientific crap.

No, you don't need to go

into phd dissertations on what happened.

There it is.

Life was nasty, brutish, and short

when we were in Harmony with nature.

Most of mankind pretty much was that way

until the carbon-based energy revolution.

Long live coal. God bless coal.

It's one of the most moral energy choices

the world has ever seen.

-The heartland institute

is the leading group in the world casting doubt

on the overwhelming scientific evidence for climate change.

They've been addressed by heads of state

and U.S. senators and have been bankrolled

by some of the richest people on earth.

[ Laughter ]

Heartland was founded as just another free-market think tank.

And then, they found their niche.

-Sustainability is a marxist concept.

It has nothing to do with living the simple life

and not wasting stuff.

It's everything do to with redistribution of wealth,

of a power grab,

of unelected bureaucrats deciding your life.

-And my question is this...

To what extent is this entire movement

simply a green trojan horse

whose belly is full with red marxist socio-economic doctrine?

-100%.

-If you want more trees,

use more wood because using more wood sends a single

to the marketplace that trees have value.

If you want more elephants, market they're ivory.

-So, here's the truly weird thing about heartland.

I actually think they're right.

Not about the elephants, not about the science denial,

but about something more basic.

The think tanks behind this conference

have spent 40 years pushing a model of extreme capitalism.

You've seen it all around you.

You're soaking in it.

Corporations are deregulated, set free to scour the earth

for the cheapest workers and the most pollutable air.

Governments wither, the middle class dissolves,

and profits soar.

What the heartlanders understand is that if climate change

is taken seriously, it changes everything.

-If human activity is causing climate change,

then almost anything could be justified

in terms of a government response.

[ Bell tolls ]

-At least one country seems to agree.

Only it isn't a tiny marxist holdout,

and they're not living in mud huts.

It's the largest economy in Europe.

[ Lamb bleats ]

In Germany, the government intervened big time.

They spent billions to get people to build huge numbers

of wind farms and solar arrays all across the country.

The result is one of the most rapid energy transitions

anywhere in the world.

Today, 30% of the entire country's electricity

comes from renewables.

Emissions are coming down, and employment is going up.

400,000 jobs have been created.

But this didn't happen because the government

just saw the light.

In fact, the German government still pushes austerity

and polluting policies both at home and elsewhere.

This shift had a very different cause... the people.

They didn't wait for a leader.

They did it on their own.

First, they fought against nuclear energy.

When they turned the tide, they fought for alternatives.

And in the process, they sparked a true power shift.

Hundreds of cities and towns

have taken the electricity grid back from private corporation

and now run it themselves, often through Democratic cooperatives.

Looking at this, I kept asking myself...

What does this mean for the rest of the world?

How can we all bring this energy revolution home?

I've spent six years wandering through the wreckage

caused by that 400-year-old fantasy

that we could treat nature as our machine.

But now I see another story taking root,

starting from a whole other premise.

And it's emerging even in the most unlikely of places.

-The environmental impacts of the development

in the oil sands is absolutely barbaric.

Put 2 and 2 together, and you feel physically,

directly responsible for affecting

somebody else's health downstream.

I do not support shutting down

the tar sands tomorrow... By any means.

I have way too many friends

whose families rely on that resource.

What I support... and I know the majority of my friends

up there do support... Is a transition

over to a renewable energy source.

Now, the exciting thing about that is

that the renewable-energy industry

would employ exactly the same workers

that the oil sands does...

Pipefitters, boilermakers, electricians.

Using some of the money that is made up there,

we can build wind,

we can have solar powering our country

where it makes sense.

There's absolutely no reason to not make the transition.

We need to take serious action very quickly as a society,

and we don't have time to be silent.

-As I listen to lliam, I felt the old battle lines...

Jobs versus the environment, economy versus the planet...

Melting away.

But just like in Germany,

governments won't make this shift

without huge pressure from below.

-Thank you, guys!

We have completely encircled the white house.

[ Cheers and applause ]

-All around the world, people aren't

just writing to their politicians

politely asking them to do the right thing.

They're taking direct action... Demanding it.

On the front lines, they call it blockading.

The idea behind it is simple.

We're in a hole, and before anything new can grow,

we have to stop digging.

As the drilling rigs and pipelines

crisscross the earth,

so does blockadia, connecting communities along the way...

The metal pathways of dirty energy confronted

by this new web of resistance.

-It's the first night being here in this pipe.

[ Police radio chatter ]

-[ Speaking native language ]

-And I've noticed something else.

At the forefront are the people from the sacrifice zones,

the very ones who have been written off

for hundreds of years, the keepers of that other story.

-If this pipeline goes through,

your government will further assist

in the raping and pillaging of the lands of my ancestors.

[ Cheering ]

Then, they'll promise to give us back what was never theirs

in the first place.

[ Cheering ]

Don't be fooled by their ideology

of what reclamation is.

Reclamation is me standing here with the 99%.

We're here today to say we never went anywhere,

and nor do we plan to.

[ Cheering ]

-When you see communities who are thrown into the front line

because an environmental or political

or economic issue is imposed on them,

you see the incredible transformation that happens.

[ People chanting indistinctly ]

They become stronger. They stand up.

And you're like, "isn't this incredible?

Isn't this the society we want?"

[ Cheers and applause ]

-Okay, one last confession...

I've been to more climate rallies than I can count.

But the polar bears...

Mm, they still don't do it for me.

I wish them well,

but if there's one thing I've learned,

it's that stopping climate change isn't really about them.

It's about us,

the us we've been told we are...

Selfish, greedy, short-sighted...

And the us we could be... Able to take care of the earth

and take care of each other long into the future.

-People are starting to realize

that this is no longer an Indian problem.

And that's the good thing

because they're starting to realize

that if you drink water and you breath air,

this is about you.

[ Cheers and applause ]

-We are all...

[ Crowd chanting, "we are all! We are all!" ]

- part of this movement!

[ People chant "part of this movement! ]

-There is a challenge of climate change

which we cannot solve by tinkering in band-aid solutions.

There are limits.

Let's celebrate the limits.

Let's enjoy the limits

because we can reinvent a different future.

[ People chanting indistinctly ]

-That's what I see fighting to be born.

It's a movement connecting the dots

between the carbon in the air and the economic system

that put it there.

And it's proving that the bold shifts

that will lower our emissions

can also, at the same time,

raise our quality of life

with more meaningful work, greater equality,

and no more sacrifice zones.

It's telling us to stop pretending we can control nature

and start acting like we arenature.

To me, that doesn't sound like a loss.

It sounds like a homecoming.

So, here's the big question.

What if global warming isn't only a crisis?

What if it's the best chance

we're ever gonna get to build a better world?

-Henry red cloud told me once

that sometimes you have to take little steps,

and sometimes you have to run like a buffalo.

And I think the earth is telling us

we have run like a buffalo right now.

♪ It isn't nice to block the doorway ♪

♪ it isn't nice to go to jail ♪

♪ there are nicer ways to do it ♪

♪ but the nice ways always fail ♪

♪ it isn't nice, it isn't nice ♪

♪ you told us once, you told us twice ♪

♪ but if that's freedom's price ♪

- ♪ we don't mind ♪ - ♪ we don't mind ♪

- ♪ whoa ♪ - ♪ we don't mind ♪

- ♪ we don't mind, we don't mind ♪ - ♪ whoa ♪

♪ we don't mind ♪ - ♪ we don't mind ♪

♪ we don't mind ♪

♪ we don't mind, we don't mind ♪ - ♪ oh, no, no, no ♪

♪ we don't mind ♪ - ♪ ooh-ooh ♪

♪ ooh-ooh ♪

-♪ it isn't nice to block the doorway ♪

♪ it isn't nice to go to jail ♪

♪ there are nicer ways to do it ♪

♪ but the nice ways always fail ♪

♪ it isn't nice, it isn't nice ♪

♪ you told us once, you told us twice ♪

♪ but thank you, buddy, for your advice ♪

♪ but if that's freedom's price ♪

- ♪ we don't mind ♪ - ♪ we don't mind ♪

- ♪ ooh-oh-oh ♪ - ♪ we don't mind ♪

♪ we don't mind, we don't mind ♪ - ♪ ooh, we don't mind ♪

-♪ we don't mind we don't mind ♪

♪ we don't mind, we don't mind ♪

- ♪ whoa, no ♪ - ♪ we don't mind ♪

- ♪ we don't mind ♪ - ♪ ohh ♪

[ Woman rapping in foreign language ]

[ Mid-tempo beat plays ]

[ Mid-tempo beat fades out ]