We're getting some hot days this summer but nothing like what we're going to get into

starting tomorrow.

Today the mercury hit a scorching 35 degrees Celsius. Temperatures are set to rise even further this week and could even break
the all-time record.

Right now, we are facing our greatest threat in thousands of years, climate change.

For a long time, climate change was something that scientists were predicting that would happen in the future. But that's no longer

the case.

What we're doing right now is we're so rapidly changing the climate. For the first time in the world's history, people can see the

impact of climate change.

Greater storms, greater floods, greater heat waves, extreme sea level rise.

All of this is happening far faster than many of us thought possible.

Scientists across the globe are in no doubt that at the current rate of warming, we risk a devastating future.

It's difficult to see how the population of the world will actually feel it, so--

It's happening in your world. It's happening in my world.

Time is very short.

There's still time, but there isn't much time left.

The science is now clear that urgent action is needed.

We are at a tipping point. We can change history right now.

What happens now and in these next few years will profoundly affect the next few thousand years. What can be done to avert

disaster and ensure the survival of our civilizations and the natural world upon which we depend?

It's our future. And we can't just let it slip away from us.

Standing here in the English countryside, it may not seem obvious, but we are facing a man-made disaster on a global scale. In the

20 years since I first started talking about the impact of climate change on our world, conditions have changed far faster than I
ever imagined.

It may sound frightening, but the scientific evidence is that if we have not taken dramatic action within the next decade, we could

face irreversible damage to the natural world and the collapse of our societies.

We're running out of time, but there is still hope. I believe that if we better understand the threat we face, the more likely it is that

we can avoid such a catastrophic future.

Our climate is changing because of one simple fact. Our world is getting hotter.

We have temperature records going back over 100 years. There are dips and troughs. And there are some years that are not as

warm as other years. But what we've seen is this steady and unremitting temperature trend. Twenty of the warmest years on

record have all occurred in the last 22 years.

It's not just Met Office records that are showing this trend. Data from the US Climate Center Noah, the Japanese Met Office, and

NASA all show the same sharp rise in temperatures. When scientists first became concerned about these increasing temperatures,

nobody could be sure exactly what was driving them.

Four decades of research later on land and see and in the far reaches of our atmosphere, the evidence is now unequivocal.

What's striking is that warming trend cannot be explained by natural factors but is caused by human activities, in particular, our

use of fossil fuels.

The problem is that everything we do, our entire economy, from the moment you wake up in the morning and turn on the light or

look at your cell phone to the moment you go to bed at night, and even then because your cell phone is still drawing power at

night, I mean, we're all using energy all the time. And in the industrialized world, that energy is almost entirely fossil fuels.

We burn fossil fuels, coal, gas and oil, to power our energy generation, to heat our homes, to drive our factories, to power our cars

and our trains, and travel around the world.

And when we burn fossil fuels, it produces carbon dioxide as a waste product.

Carbon dioxide acts like a blanket. It absorbs the heat radiation from the Earth's surface. And that keeps the surface warmer than
it would be otherwise.

The problem is what we're doing now is we're adding extra carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. So we're increasing the

thickness of this blanket.

Before we started to burn coal, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 280 parts per million. It's now over 400

parts per million. And the planet gets warmer and warmer.

We have pumped so much carbon dioxide into our atmosphere that our world is now around 1 degree Celsius hotter than it was in

pre-industrial times. This warming is enough to bring about the raft of effects we call climate change.

1 degree Celsius global, it may not sound like much. But it's having a dramatic effect on our weather.

You warm up the planet, well, of course, you're going to get more intense and more frequent heat waves. You're going to dry out

the soils, so you're going to get worse drought.

We're seeing extreme heat in Southern Africa, Japan, North America, in the UK as well.

It is officially the hottest day of the year so far. The heat has been cooling some--

Often, the question is did climate change cause a certain event? And you can never really answer that question. But what

scientists do is to look at whether climate change made a certain event more or less likely or more or less intense?

Last year, we had a heatwave that was actually the Joint warmest on record, alongside 1976. And we've been analyzing this here

at the Met Office.

What that showed us was that the chances of that heat wave had increased by about 30 times. So it's now about 30 times more

likely that we had that heat wave then we would have had without climate change.
Today the mercury hit a scorching 35 degrees Celsius. So it doesn't mean to say that every single weather event is due to climate

change. But what climate change does mean is that with the baseline climate having changed, then the frequency of the extreme

temperatures is increasing. And that has a substantial effect.

In November last year when temperatures in Cairns, Australia hit 42 degrees, even creatures specifically adapted to heat were

unable to survive.

They're just everywhere. When we got here in the morning, that's the first time really we saw it. There were just dead bats as far
as the eye could see. There is a deafening sound of babies crying. And you just don't know where to start. So we just started

finding babies, basically.

A little farther, we have a little baby attached to its dead mom.

Like all species, flying foxes have ways of dealing with the conditions of their environment. But it seems their usual cooling

methods are no longer enough for the kind of temperatures Australia is now facing. Last year, temperature records were broken

across the country.

Scientists have shown that it's simply inconceivable that you would see these temperatures without the facts of climate change.

We saved about 350. The rest is dead. So over 11,000 died in that colony. And if you had two more events like we had, the species

is gone.

I've seen for myself that in addition to the many other threats they face, animals of all kinds are now struggling to adapt to rapidly

changing conditions.

Think of the equator. As climate change occurs, that central part of the world becomes increasingly uninhabitable.

If climate changes too fast, we're pushing them off the planet. In effect, we're causing extinction of species already. And that's

irreversible.

Scientists believe that 8% of species are now at threat of extinction solely due to climate change. This isn't just about losing

wonders of nature. With the loss of even the smallest organisms, we destabilize and ultimately risk collapsing the world's

ecosystems, the networks that support the whole of life on Earth.

What's been happening in recent years, it's really showing us what 1 degree Celsius really means, not just the wildlife but for

people, for their safety, for their livelihoods, and for their futures.

As temperatures rise, the threats we face multiply. Last year saw record-breaking wildfires take hold across the globe.

Firefighters are working around the clock.

To be seen, to be believed, Australia is seeing some of its worst fires in years.

We've seen wildfires break out in Greece. And even in the Arctic--

Wildfire sweeping across some of the coldest countries on Earth.

We've seen a tripling in the extent of wildfire in the Western US to California.

The fires that swept through California last year caused a $24 billion worth of damage. 106 people lost their lives.
We're not just talking about an inconvenience. We're talking about people's lives, their livelihoods, and their communities being

damaged.

The wildfires use an ignition source.

What? Big.

Maybe cigarette butts or lightning. And then you need the weather conditions that are conducive to that fire and that fire

spreading.

Do I go?

We don't want to be trapped in here.

Research has shown that the chances of having these very hot, dry conditions has increased as a result of climate change.

See. Do you see?

Oh, my God.

Keep going. Go slow. Easy, easy.

God. This is insane.

That was a dead-end road so we knew that it was our only option, to drive forward. And both sides of the road just completely

engulfed in flames.

The car is heating up. It's going to explode.

We'll be all right.

He's going, Dad, Dad, we're going to die, we're going to die. And I said, no, we're going to be fine, you know.

Oh, Jesus God, help us.

We'll be OK.

I stayed calm, though I think being a father, you're trying to keep your son calm too at that point.

So we can see each other. We'll go quickly.

We could hear trees literally exploding and falling all around us.

Please God, help us.

And a large branch went right over the top of the car. And the whole top of the roof was burning. And we didn't realize it. And there

was a tree down.

Dad, we can't get out.

That was the moment when I really thought that we might die.

Oh, my God.
Stop, stop.

We've got to get out of here.

I decided to put the car in reverse. I had to drive backwards through everything we had already passed through to the lakeshore.

And this one little boat was down there, watching the fire. And we were able to wave them in to help us get out of there. That to

me it was just a miracle.

But it's not just through extreme heat events that climate change is having an effect. It's changing our weather systems in other

ways.

This is a basic result of physics. With a degree Celsius of warming, there's more moisture evaporating off the oceans.

When there's more moisture in the air, you're going to get more rainfall. You're going to get superstorms and force flooding events.

We are seeing the impacts of climate change now play out in real time. They're no longer subtle.

You've had the worst rain in China, in Japan. You've had a deluge in Kerala.

The crisis deepens for hundreds of thousands in Kerala.

Whilst they can't all be attributed to climate change, last year's extreme weather events meant that millions of people needed

humanitarian aid.

Join the dots. It's happening. It's happening in your world. It's happening in my world. And let's be very clear about this. It is going

to get much worse.

Climate change goes far beyond the weather. Thousands of miles away and out of sight of most of us, another threat is building.

Earth's ice, frozen for millennia, is melting.

Earth's temperature has risen by what most people would think is a small amount over the past century, by 1 degree centigrade.

And that's too much for Earth's ice to withstand. In the last year, we've had a global assessment of ice losses from Antarctica

around from Greenland. And they tell us that things are worse than we'd expected.

The Greenland ice sheet is melting. It's lost 4 trillion tons of ice. And it's losing five times as much ice today as it was 25 years ago.

If you go to the Southern Hemisphere in the past, most of the models predicted that Antarctica would grow. That's not the case

Antarctica is losing three times as much ice today as it was 25 years ago.

In Antarctica, really small changes in ocean temperature, in particular, will melt a lot of ice. The ocean is only about 1/2 a degree

centigrade warmer than it should be, but that's melting colossal amounts of ice from enormous glaciers.

The water that melts from the ice sheets ends up in one place, and that's the oceans. And that's when it starts to affect people

around the rest of the planet.

Sea level has been stable for several thousand years. But if the ice sheets lose icebergs faster and faster to the ocean, and sea

level goes up--

We know that sea level has already risen by about 20 centimeters in the last 100 years.
Rising seas are displacing hundreds of thousands of people from already vulnerable coastal areas in the South Pacific, Indonesia,

Bangladesh.

The impact on families is going to be something that I don't think we could ever prepare for. In the United States, Louisiana is on

the frontline of this climate crisis. It's losing land at one of the fastest rates on the planet, at about the rate of a football field every

45 minutes.

The Isle de Jean Charles was once home to 400 people. But subsidence caused by oil and gas extraction, and now rising seas,

means that in the last six decades, much of it has disappeared.

Before this was all land. But due to sea level rise, slowly but surely, it's washing away. What we're looking at right here is where I

was born and raised in 1946. It's sad, very, very sad to see what happened to my mom and dad's home and where they raised us

at. I want to finish my life as well over here.

For the people on the Isle de Jean Charles, they're running out of options. And now what we see is just 10% of what used to be

there. We have been working with the state to move an entire community. This is the first time the federal government of the

United States has offered dollars for the relocation of folks due to climate change.

When it comes to relocation, this is the only place I've ever known that's home. I don't want to abandon it. I don't want to forget it.

A lot of people say that this land that we're living on won't be here in 20 years from now. And that's kind of hard to think about.

Like, where you grew up isn't going to be here anymore.

The residents of Isle de Jean Charles have been labeled as the first climate refugees in the United States. And that may be true,

but what we know for sure is that they won't be the last.

Sea levels are not only increased by melting ice. The world's oceans are expanding because they're getting warmer. Over 90% of

the increased heat trapped in our atmosphere has been stored in the oceans.

I've witnessed the devastating effect this is having. In the last three years, repeated heat stress has caused a third of the world's

corals to first bleach and then die.

Our generation is going to be responsible for the loss of one of the most majestic ecosystems on the face of the Earth. We're

literally watching the death of this natural wonder.

In many ways, what's happening now across the world doesn't come as a surprise. Much of what we're now experiencing,

scientists warned about over 30 years ago.

What we're seeing at the moment is exactly what we predicted.

What I'd like to do today is to start with Dr. James Hansen.

In the summer of 1988, I testified to Congress.

Number one, the Earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements.

I said I was 99% confident that this was a real physical effect of the increasing carbon dioxide.

The Earth is warming by an amount which is too large to be a chance fluctuation.

James Hansen was absolutely a pioneer in trying to reach the public and politicians. He played a major role, there's no doubt, in

putting climate change on the international agenda.

Those who think we're powerless to do anything about this greenhouse effect are forgetting about the White House effect.

The short-term response was pretty good.

We are the Lord's creatures, the trustees of this planet.

The politicians were saying the right things, that we should avoid dangerous, human-made changes to climate. It's just that the

policies needed to achieve that were never adopted.

There are many reasons we haven't acted on climate change. Science is definitely part of the story. The science is complicated.

Economists had to look at well, OK, what are the costs going to be? And then technologists had to work out, well, what actually can

we do about it? And that's one of the reasons why it took a long time for governments really to put policies in place.

However, there was also resistance. Let's be honest about this. There are incumbent industries that then they knew about climate

change, but they didn't really want anything to happen.

Net income grew 17-- earnings rose to $10.9 billion.

The organizations that had the most to lose by acting on climate change were the fossil fuel companies. The most profitable

industry possibly in the history of mankind, making huge profits, they wanted to continue that.

$11.7 billion profit.

Many of those industries, basically the oil and gas industry, the fossil fuel industry, they undertook a quite concerted campaign to

confuse the science and confuse the message.

This is industry-funded and industry-driven. Fossil fuel companies engaged PR consultants who used exactly the same tactics that

have been used by the tobacco companies. And there's ample documentation.

The basic strategy is to cast doubt on the science.

There are too many complexities around climate science.

We keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record. It's a snowball. And that's just from outside here. So it's very,

very cold out, very unseasonal. So here, Mr. President, catch this.

The cycle of denial has worked. And even today, the president of United States says that it's not true.

All of this with the global warming and that-- a lot of is a hoax. It's a hoax. I mean, it's a moneymaking industry. OK?

In the UK, we have the Climate Change Act from 2008, which was the first law anywhere in the world to make a legally binding

target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But what we've also seen here is a number of people in politics who have decided,

really, to campaign against action on climate change.

There's plenty of evidence that warming we have-- bring benefits as well as, maybe, disadvantages.

The arguments have been, well, climate change is happening. But it may not be that serious.
What I'm concerned about is the extremely damaging and harmful policies, ostensibly to try and deal with the problem of global

warming.

They say we should just adapt to it rather than try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And of course, that's very attractive to

politicians because to decide not to do something is much more comfortable.

I think that many of us were willing to hear that message because we, too, depend upon fossil fuels for our lifestyle. So we're all

implicated in this economic system. But it's not like we're all equally responsible, right?

There's no doubt that seeding of doubt has slowed the transition to a clean energy economy.

We haven't entirely wasted the 30 years. But it would have been so easy to solve the problem if we had started gradually to make

fossil fuels more expensive and develop the technologies to replace them. But we didn't do that. And now there are consequences.

Greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise and the problem is getting harder to solve. The world's great forests play a vital

role in determining the balance of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.

Trees and plants absorb carbon dioxide, using it to build their leaves, stems, and roots. In this process of photosynthesis they have

sucked up and stored nearly a third of our emissions.

The main driver of climate change is greenhouse gas emissions. Forests are one of our ways out. They are like the lungs of the

planet. They are big climate regulators at a global scale.

July 23, 1972.

My work has always been about monitoring the land surface and forest.

Thrusting outward into space, we gain new perspective on ourselves.

Since 1972 till now, Landsat has been tracking and taking pictures of the Earth surface.

Circling the Earth, it offers an ideal means to monitor change.

And in 2008, the US government says it's open free of charge and accessible over the internet, millions of images automatically.

It's just this huge leap in capability. It was only then where we saw the whole planet.

And when you see the whole, it was a bit of a revelation. And yeah, the alarm bells go off. These warm orangey tones, that's forest

disturbance. That means forest was removed.

We didn't know that was going on. Colombia, Peru Paraguay, Bolivia, we can go anywhere and see actual forests being cleared. It

usually starts with logging. Rainforests are cleared and burned.

They then replaced it with soybeans, rubber, pasture for cattle. But one of the big drivers is palm oil. Palm oil is like a magical fruit.

We all have palm oil in our houses right now.

It's found in almost every good you can think about. It's in soaps it's in shampoo, it's in chocolate, it's in bread. It's even in crisps.

What we're doing, accidentally and inadvertently, is actually causing deforestation in other countries because of our demand for

this product.
That means the natural system is not working. Habitats are disappearing. But also when these high carbon stock forests that are

centuries old are cleared and burned, CO2 is added to the atmosphere. Those emissions go up and warm the planet.

When you look at our maps, our results are showing that it's accelerating. It almost looks like a contagion, you know. It looks like a

disease across the planet, I mean, the ever increasing pattern. If you continue this level of deforestation, we'll take it all. And our

ability to mitigate climate change and turn the story around becomes really vanishingly small.

Trees are now being cut down and burnt at such a rate. But nearly a third of our carbon dioxide emissions are caused by

deforestation.

It sucks. I'm a pretty lighthearted, optimistic guy. But just looking at these data, you're just looking at the stories, it's like, you

know, I'd like to see some evidence of really strong, strong kind of unified political response that was more than an aspiration on a

kind of piece of paper, right? That would be cool.

Looking ahead to the future, we know that if we continue releasing carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, temperatures will keep

rising, and the consequences will get progressively worse. But do we know how much worse?

There are thousands of scientists around the world in almost every single country working to understand what will happen in the

future if we don't act, and we don't do more. So we use really powerful climate models which are numerical representations of the

whole of the Earth system-- the oceans, the land, the atmosphere, and the ice on the planet.

And then we drive it with increased carbon dioxide based on predictions of the future, and then we see what the model does. They

predict that if we carry on as we are now where CO2 continues to increase, we would hit 1.5 degrees global warming by-- between

2040 and 2050.

We're on course to go through 1.5 degrees in just a few decades time. And the models differ slightly as to exactly when. And not

long after that, we're on a trajectory to go to 2 degrees.

Whilst we don't know exactly what a two-degree warmer world will look like, there's growing evidence about the consequences of

crossing this threshold.

We know that with increased storms, increased floods, droughts, and heat waves, production of food will be more problematic.

It really becomes difficult to see at such levels of warming how are we going to maintain our agriculture such that the population of

the world can actually feed itself.

And ensuring people have access to clean, safe drinking water will become much more difficult.

Developing countries that are at the frontline of this battle.

Those parts of the globe which will suffer the most and the soonest are not those parts of the globe which have actually loaded all

those carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the first instance.

But you have to understand this is also a crisis for the world. The fact is that if the poor are suffering today, then the rich will also

suffer tomorrow.

As we look further into the future, predicting how our climate system might behave becomes more complex. This uncertainty in

climate projection, not least because we don't know what our generation when we're older is going to be doing and what the future
generations are going to be doing.
But based on our current trajectory, the various models predict that by the end of the century, our planet will be somewhere

between 3 and 6 degrees hotter.

Even if we are looking at the bottom end of predictions, that's still really bad.

Over 600 million people live in coastal areas that are less than 10 meters above sea level.

Some models predict if we don't do anything to curb climate change, then we could be looking at 80 centimeters to a meter of sea

level rise by the end of the century.

So sea level is dangerous for us in the UK as indeed elsewhere. The main impacts of what might seem a gradual rise of sea level is

the risk from storms, surges of sea that we've never seen before.

If we lose all our coastal cities, we've got a different planet, and we've got an economic situation which is out of control.

While there's a lot we understand about what the future might hold, the big fear is that there may be other more extreme dangers

lurking beyond those we already know about. Scientists call these tipping points.

The tipping point is where in a part of the climate system, just a little bit of extra warming could nudge it into a different state and

irreversible change.

At the moment, it is our ongoing emissions that are driving global temperatures up. But if we cross tipping points, that could spiral

beyond our control.

If we imagine a map of the world, it turns out that there are climate tipping points dotted all around it. Greenland and West

Antarctica could be tipped into irreversible meltdown. There are major ecosystems that we could tip into an alternative state. For

example, triggering a climate-induced dieback or the rainforest turning into a savanna.

Once you've crossed a tipping point, that's it. You've triggered a catastrophic change. It's going to carry on getting even hotter

because you've triggered something that you can't undo.

One of the potential tipping points scientists have identified involves a greenhouse gas locked underground.

We know that there's large amounts of methane stored in the permafrost in the Arctic. And we're worried that as that permafrost

starts to actually unfreeze, the methane trapped underneath will start to bubble up.

A few bubbles down in there. And we look down into the ice. We see white pockets of gas. We can see that there are bubbles in

the surface layer, and then there's a whole column of bubbles that stacks up.

When this ice sheet melts, the gases are released into the atmosphere. And you can actually hear the gases coming out. Let's

have a look. These flares that we're doing demonstrate that the bubbles contain methane. It's a very potent greenhouse gas.

Methane is 21 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2. So you can imagine a large amount of gas burping out of the

permafrost, actually causing the acceleration in the global warming that we see already happening.

If you look out across the millions of lakes in the Arctic, you start to wonder just how much methane all of these lakes could

release.

The future looks alarming indeed. But it's not without hope. There is still time if we act now with determination and urgency. What

do governments, industries, nations, and we as individuals, need to do to change our course?

At the 2015 United Nations Climate Summit in Paris, for the first time ever, nearly every country in the world came to an

agreement. It set an objective to hold temperatures below 2 degrees and try to limit warming to 1.5.

If we want to try and keep the global climate to 1.5 degrees, we have to halve our carbon emissions by 2030 and then hit zero

carbon emissions globally by 2050.

This poses a huge challenge as emissions must be cut from almost every part of the economy. But 25% come from how we

produce electricity and heat. And alternatives are already within our grasp.

It's actually not that complicated. We need to shift our energy system away from fossil fuels that produce greenhouse gases and

towards renewable energies that don't.

Every country has got a different resource. In Norway, you've got an awful lot of hydropower. If you're in India or Morocco, there's

lots and lots of sun. The problem was that renewables were much more expensive than fossil fuels.

But what's happened recently is rapid falls in the price of renewable energy.

Solar power has led the way with this.

Germany went first with many of the key technologies in solar. And China really picked up the baton.

There's tremendous technological innovation taking place around the world. Solar power is now the cheapest form of newly

installed electricity in more than 60 countries.

We're seeing a huge growth in renewable energy. Despite entrenched fossil fuel interests, they've been unable to stop that

transition. And we've got to do even more.

In the UK for a long time, we've been considering future energy sources. It used to be 10, 20 years ago that nuclear power offered

a relatively cheap way through. And the one really good advantage of nuclear is that it doesn't produce emissions. But what's

become clearer recently is that some technologies are performing better than others. And increasingly, that's been about wind.

Here in the UK, we are building some of the biggest offshore wind turbines in the world. The bigger the turbine, the more wind can

be captured. Just one revolution of these blades can power a house for a day.

With the increased capacity, wind resource is about to become as cheap and much cheaper in the future than fossil fuels.

So far, around 30% of the UK's electricity comes from renewable sources. If that is to continue to grow, we will need to develop

parallel systems to keep our energy reliable and store what we produce.

The bit that comes next, that means that we have to decarbonize industry. And we're going to decarbonize the transport sector.

And that means using things like electric vehicles, battery-powered vehicles, potentially even hydrogen-powered vehicles.

We know what we have to do. We really have to get on and do it.

And this is the political decision, the brave decision, that needs to be taken. Do we incur a small cost now-- not insignificant cost,

let's be clear on it-- or do we wait and see the need to adapt? And the economics is really clear on this, that the costs of action are

dwarfed by the cost of inaction.

If we take this path now, we could potentially buy ourselves time to crack some of the most challenging sources of emissions like

aviation.

One of the major barriers to obtaining electric flight is the power that we can get from batteries today. But we are seeing strides

being made and seeing a reduction in the weight of these batteries.

Recently, the world's first fully electric plane made it across the channel.

This was a single passenger, 60-kilowatt power jet. Now we're trying to retrofit a 20-ton aircraft and get it flying. We'll be replacing

one of the engines with an electric motor driving a fan.

We're going to take these hybrid electric systems and test them in the air, test them in flight, at different altitudes and different

temperatures. And this is going to give us the key to understand how we might integrate these systems for future aircraft designs.

To limit warming to 1.5 degrees as well as reducing the amount of carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere, we need to find

ways to reduce the vast amount that's already there.

There's a great deal of interest in the kind of technologies that we might have that could actually remove carbon dioxide from the

atmosphere. Now the first thing to see is we already have these technologies, and they're called trees.

If we reforest and rewild vast areas of the world, then we can lock up huge amounts of carbon that is currently in the atmosphere.

In the future, there are other technologies that might work like direct air capture.

This is one of the world's first carbon collectors. Air is sucked into the collector. Inside, there is a filter unit that absorbs CO2. The

CO2 sticks to the filter. And then it's dissolved in water. And under high pressure, we pump it down to 1800 meters. It is the same

as the depth of the Grand Canyon. And there, it enters the bedrock.

This is a core taken from deep within the ground at the site where we injected our CO2. It's basalt. Water just flows through these

pores and react with the rock. So the white that we see here is the CO2 turned into stone. So it's not affecting our atmosphere.

Technologies like this may be able to help us in the future. But to meet emission targets, action is needed now. Can what we do as

individuals make a difference?

So the average UK person has got a carbon footprint of, roughly, 13 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per person per year. And

that's of everything that they buy and do, traced right back down the supply chain. And we can pick a few things to start with that

will make a really significant difference.

We should be making our homes as energy efficient as possible.

That can be as simple as getting a house insulated so you waste less energy, which by the way, will save you money.

Everything that we buy, even if we can't see it, has a carbon footprint, from smartphones to clothes to furniture

We have all become completely used to buying things produced using fossil fuels. A lot of the time, we really don't know that.

Take a washing machine mainly made out of metal. And that starts off with a mine. And ore is going to be taken to the blast

furnace to extract the metal. An enormous amount of fossil fuel is going to be used.
And then parts are turned into components, more emissions again. Lastly, it's shipped all over the world to arrive at your local

shop. So we need to think about buying less physical products. When we do so, buy higher quality and then make it last.

We've been such a wasteful world, especially in the more developed parts of the world. You actually can be far less wasteful and

not affect the quality of your life at all.

Food is about a quarter of our carbon footprint in the UK. If we take three steps, then we can cut that in half. First step, just to eat

everything that we buy. In the UK, we waste an enormous proportion of our food.

And second, avoid air-freighted food which is about 100 times as impactful as putting it on a boat. And suddenly, it becomes a

carbon disaster. Lastly, the most important thing to do is to reduce our meat and dairy consumption, especially beef and lamb.

The problem is not traditional farming techniques. The problem is with intensive farming.

It takes a lot of resources to rear an animal. And cows and sheep are especially high impact, because they ruminate, which means

they burp up methane. And the science on this is absolutely clear-cut. Our studies have shown that if we take these three steps,

we could knock perhaps even two tons off the average UK person's carbon footprint.

These things really do matter. They only get you part of the way. But again, if we don't have them, we won't make the final target.

What happens next is up to us all. I truly believe that together, we can bring about the transformative change that is needed.

But your influence really kicks in is the way that you push for the cultural change that we need to see and the political change that

we need to see.

People being able to make their voice heard really matters.

You should not underestimate your own power or underestimate your own significance to change people's minds and change

people's behavior.

When I was younger, I had lots of plans of becoming different things, everything from an actor to a scientist. But then, my teachers

in school told me about climate change. That was an eye-opener to me. The more I read about it, the more I understood how

dangerous it was for everyone.

I stopped going to school. I stopped talking because I was just so sad. And then that made me very concerned. One day, I decided

that this was enough. I wasn't going to accept this anymore. My future and everyone else's future is at risk. And nothing is being

done. No one is doing anything. So then I have to do something.

So I sat myself down on the ground outside the Swedish parliament. And I decided that I wasn't going to go to school. The first day,

I sat all alone. And then at the second day, people started joining me. I wouldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams that this will

happen. It happened so fast.

Now hundreds and thousands of pupils follow you up by not going to school. You are on the front pages of the most influential

newspapers and magazines.

I thought that nothing was happening. And no one was doing anything. So then I have to do something. And I want to be able to,

when I grow older, to look back and say that I did what I could back then.

[SHOUTING]
What do we want?

Climate justice.

When do we want it?

Now.

It is amazing that tens of thousands of children all around the world have done the same thing as I did, saying that why should we

go to school if there's no future. And why should we learn facts one of the most important facts don't matter?

I've learned that you are never too small to make a difference. And if a few children can get headlines all over the world just by not

going to school, then imagine what we could all do together if we really wanted to. Change is coming, whether you like it or not.

Today was a day led by the children in dozens of protests across the country.

We want change. We want change.

We still have time to turn everything around to pull the emergency brake and to take action. But that's a short period of time isn't

going to last for long.

There's a message for all of us in the voices of these young people. It is after all their generation who will inherit this dangerous

legacy. We now stand at a unique point in our planet's history, one where we must all share responsibility, both for our present

well-being and for the future of life on Earth.

Every one of us has the power to make changes and make them now. Our wonderful natural world and the lives of our children,

grandchildren, and all those who follow them depend upon us doing so.

[MUSIC PLAYING]