An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power Page #2

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that we've got to act

on the climate crisis.

But it's not happening

fast enough.

If I said

there weren't times when

I felt this was

a personal failure on my part,

I'd be lying.

So where

is all that water going?

I'll tell you

where some of it's going.

It's going into the streets

of Miami Beach, Florida.

High tides continue

to bring a flood of frustration.

Fort Lauderdale gets the award

for the "something you don't

see every day" video.

Fish swimming on Cordova Road.

Experts say in 30 years or so,

a drive along Ocean Drive

could be a drive in the ocean.

Downtown Miami could be awash.

We're showing you

an area that hasn't been

actually fixed at all,

as you can tell.

And then, on Wednesday,

we're gonna show you

some of the areas

that used to be like this,

but now we raised the road

and put in pumps.

We've seen dramatic results.

It's so much better.

So you raised the road with

saltwater-resistant materials?

Yes.

And what level of sea level rise

is this designed

to protect against?

We are building in about

a foot of sea level rise.

And I'm sure the projections

are gonna continue to move.

Kinda hard to pump the ocean.

That's why

we've got to raise above it.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Yeah, it's not easy.

It's not easy.

This is not a simple fix.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

You can only raise so much

before you change

everybody's lives around here.

Yeah.

Scott and I grew up here.

This wasn't the case

40 years ago.

So if anyone wants to argue

that it's not happening...

It's happening.

It's happening.

It's coming out of the manholes,

coming out of the drains.

And this is while the pumps

are operating at full capacity.

This is a stopgap measure

at best.

Look, it's coming out

into the street there.

Well, I've got to go onstage

in about 15 minutes.

- So...

- Right.

Show me where

the new slides are,

and then try to

fix these videos.

Put them on a stick,

and I'll try

to download them to my computer.

Okay.

I thought those boots

were gonna be high enough,

but they weren't.

All right.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I am so excited to be here

and so excited

that you are here

for this training.

I'm a little bit late

getting here

because I got up early

and put on some wading boots

and went over to

a couple of the streets

that are filled up

with water this morning.

Miami, in terms of

assets at risk,

is the number one city at risk

in the entire world

for sea level rise.

This is a major crisis.

Projected sea level rise

in South Florida,

possibly seven feet

or more in this century.

By population,

the top ten cities at risk:

Kolkata, Mumbai, Dhaka,

Guangzhou, China, et cetera.

West Africa.

A lot of people at risk there.

And, of course,

the low-lying islands,

the Maldives have an enormous

amount at risk.

Kiribati has

already purchased land

to move its entire population.

And again, this is from

the city we're in right now.

I mean, I just wonder

how the governor

sloshes through this and says,

"I don't notice anything.

Do you notice anything?"

So, Florida...

- Florida.

- ...is a challenge, and so...

- I can confirm that.

- Okay.

So, that's the big question

we have.

I cover the climate,

environmental stuff

all the time,

and you have a state

with a governor

who wouldn't even

meet with scientists

- to talk about climate change.

- Yeah.

How do you move forward on it?

In order to address

the environmental crisis,

we are gonna have to

spend some time

fixing the democracy crisis.

Because big money

has so much influence now,

our democracy has been hacked.

Large contributors

call the shots.

Have you ever thought about

running for office again?

I've used this line before,

so forgive me,

but I am

a recovering politician.

And the longer I go

without a relapse,

the less likely one becomes.

So, I just wanted to say,

we'll probably do, sort of,

three buckets of stuff.

- All right.

- So, there's...

- Is one of them climate?

- Yes, climate.

Yes. One of them is climate,

one of them is sort of

broadly like how politics

are different now

than they were,

- say, 15 years ago.

- Sure.

Citizens United...

I'm interested to hear

your thoughts on that.

- Okay, yeah.

- And then some 2016 stuff.

Okay. But I'm not gonna...

You can decline.

I know you're not gonna...

I'm not gonna commit news.

Yes, I know.

But I'll try to get you to.

Okay.

But we will talk about climate?

Yeah, yeah, yeah!

I got to feed the beast,

Mr. Vice President.

Sometimes it seems to me that

the climate crisis is simply

not getting the kind of

coverage in the media

that it should.

You have a

Republican Party right now...

Historically large field, right?

There's no one on climate...

Yeah, it's odd, isn't it?

...in the entire lineup.

Since when did the United States

abandon its traditional

world leadership role?

Especially at a time when,

just this past week,

the President of China says,

"Okay, we're going to adopt

a cap and trade program,"

"and we're reducing

our CO2 emissions,"

"and we want to create jobs"

"in solar and wind

and efficiency."

This is the most serious

global challenge

we've ever faced.

No other country

can play the role

that the U.S. can play.

Do you think that we're reaching

that tipping point

to the point that

it's not going to be

any more denial?

We are at a turning point.

And we can successfully

reach an agreement

in this big global negotiation

in Paris

at the end of November

to have a real meaningful turn

in the right direction.

At what moment did you decide

that you wanted to leave

politics aside and actually

move into this, uh,

new career that you have?

Well, to be honest,

that decision was one made

by the Supreme Court

of the United States.

I enjoyed politics,

but this is a mission

that I have dedicated myself to.

And there's a hunger

for information

about what's happening,

why it's happening,

and how we can fix it.

I usually start

with a black screen.

And, trust me,

after only

two or three times through,

you will associate your own

way of telling each story

with the picture,

and it'll come so easily.

The way the memory works...

Ten years ago,

I made the decision

to launch a training program,

so that anyone

who wanted to learn

the skills to communicate

to thousands of others

could come and get trained.

...'cause really,

all we're trying to do

is get the first stage going,

which is just waking people up.

There were only 50

of them in the beginning.

But I look back

on that first training

and it makes me smile,

because they were real pioneers,

in my way of thinking about it.

This is the first picture

that any of us ever saw

of the Earth from space.

It was taken

on Christmas Eve, 1968,

during the Apollo 8 mission.

And this was the first time

that human beings

left near-Earth orbit

and went far enough into space

to see the planet whole,

floating in the void.

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