Before the Flood Page #2

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was called back then,

I was in my early twenties.

I had the opportunity to sit

down one on one with then

Vice President, Al Gore

in the White House.

And he drew a picture of

our planet on a chalkboard,

and then he drew the atmosphere

around it, and he said,

this is the most important

issue of our time.

I had absolutely no idea

what he was talking about.

He said all our modes of

transportation, boats, trains,

planes, cars, the way

we produce our food,

the way we build our cities,

almost everything we do releases

carbon dioxide, CO2, and that

leads to climate change.

The polar ice caps will melt,

the seas will start to rise,

there will be more dangerous

weather patterns, floods,

droughts, wildfires.

It sounded like some nightmarish

science fiction film.

Except everything

he said is real

and it's happening right now.

Wow.

Wow.

Beautiful.

I just want to know

how far we've gone,

how much damage we've done, and

if there's anything we can do

to stop it.

You all set, mate?!

So it's the 4th of July,

and we're here in the

middle of the Arctic.

Right now we are

standing on the ocean,

we are basically

walking on water.

This is the northern

tip of Baffin Island,

one of the hundreds of islands

in the High Canadian Arctic.

We are way above

the Arctic Circle,

and if you put your

hand in the water,

you would not be able to stand

it for more than 5 minutes,

except you who are a badass.

You hunt and fish here, right?

Yeah.

What do you, what do

you fish and what do you hunt?

In my territory I

hunt fish, seal, narwhal,

and polar bear.

- Is this polar bear?

- Yup.

Oh, well there you go!

And the ice here, since you've

been around has it been

decreasing?

We used to have

a solid ice, blue.

Not light blue like this, blue.

Hard, ice.

Now we usually have a, kind

of ice cream type of ice.

It's ice but it's,

when it starts to melt,

it melts pretty fast.

Much faster than before.

2040, you will be able

to sail over the North Pole.

There's going to be no sea

ice left in the Arctic Ocean

in the summer.

We are burning so many fossil

fuels that the ice is melting.

The Arctic is like

the air conditioning for

the Northern Hemisphere.

If it goes away, that's

going to change currents,

that's going to change

weather patterns,

that's going to make floods and

droughts more catastrophic.

It's the most dramatic

transformation of a large

environment ever.

Look at this.

They're right here!

There are about 10,000

to 12,000 narwhals

in this region.

The numbers are stable here,

in other regions are declining.

Wow.

That's awesome.

Yeah, they are

waiting for the ice to open up,

to swim in, so they

can catch the flounder.

I can't believe what

they sound like, it's amazing.

They're like purring.

You know, I don't

want to be in a planet

without these animals.

He's the

chairman of Earth Day 2000,

Leonardo DiCaprio.

When I was 25 years old,

I remember being asked to

participate in this huge event

in Washington for Earth Day.

Temperatures are rising,

coral reefs are dying,

and not since a meteor hit the

earth 65 million years ago,

have so many species of plant

and animals become extinct

in such a short time.

I even got a chance to

interview the President

of the United States.

Why do you think this issue

is so constantly overlooked?

I think it's

because it takes a long time

for the climate to change in

a way that people feel it,

and because, uh, it seems

sort of abstract now.

At the time, it was

this huge push to get the word

out on global warming.

Now a couple degrees' difference

in today's temperatures

may not seem like an emergency.

Back then everyone was focused

on small, individual actions.

We all have to, you know, bring

environmentalism to the American

consciousness.

And it boiled down to simple

solutions like changing

your light bulb.

It seemed like a positive

thing at the time, you know.

Changing your lightbulb.

But it's pretty clear that we're

way beyond that point now;

things have taken a

massive turn for the worst.

We keep finding things that

aren't in the climate models

that are used to

project the future.

So that, that tells me that the

projections for the future are,

are really conservative.

If climate stays at this

temperature that it's been

in the last decade, Greenland

is, is going away.

Don't walk into the crevasse.

Oh my God!

Don't get too close to the edge.

Look at how violent that is.

These rapids are going

so incredibly fast.

This meltwater is

making its way to the sea.

If that's not balanced by

snowfall then the ice sheet gets

smaller and sea level rises.

This is actually our

proper climate station.

This is a climate station?

I was imagining a massive igloo

with all kinds of scientists

doing experiments.

It really does look like

broken down pool equipment.

How, what does this connect to?

Well, this is all melted up now,

this was a hose that

went down 30 feet,

and now it's melted out.

Wait a minute, so this,

that's lying here used to

be straight down under ice?

Yeah, so we made.

So that's the amount

of ice that has melted.

Yeah.

This is 5 years of melt.

So this entire length

is the thickness of ice that has

melted throughout all of lower

Greenland in the past 5 years.

Right.

That's hundreds of cubic

kilometers of ice that's now

no longer stored on land.

It's gone into

the sea over here.

Miami, New Orleans,

Boston and Long Beach,

California may be doomed

to fall victim

to ever-rising sea levels.

South Florida as we

know it could be washed away

by risings seas.

When you look at

places that are the most

susceptible to sea level rise,

especially in the United States,

Florida is the key one.

And a lot of the, your

campaign was based on um,

giving people an understanding

of what's at risk here.

We don't have

the liberty or the time

to debate climate change.

If you don't believe

in it, I always say

bring your unconverted to

us and we'll make sure you agree

that there is a major problem.

We have this thing called

sunny day flooding.

Picture a beautiful sunny day,

all of a sudden you see water

coming up on the street.

As the sea level rises,

the water's coming up,

backflowing into our

streets through our drains.

If the city is underwater,

there's no future.

How do you combat that?

Exactly what's going on as far

as prevention is concerned?

We started putting in

pumps, take a look at this.

Oh, this is the pump!

Yup!

We're in the process of

building all across the city.

This street right here used

to be fully underwater.

During high tide you

may need a canoe.

And now what we did was we

raised this road and you can see

the difference, see how that

area there kind of goes,

slopes down a little bit.

So the main investment

is in these systems right here,

raising the roads and

the electric pumps.

Yeah, this is a

400-million-dollar project.

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