- 1 day ago
explores the economic costs and human impacts of global warming through three distinct journalistic stories as Jessica Alba and Climate Corps, Thomas Friedman in Egypt, Chris Hayes After Superstorm Sandy...
气候变化主题纪录片，由多位名人出镜调查全球气候危机及其社会影响, 对现状的抗议（Revolt）、灾后或转型期的修复（Rebuild）、迈向可持续未来的更新（Renew）...
气候变化主题纪录片，由多位名人出镜调查全球气候危机及其社会影响, 对现状的抗议（Revolt）、灾后或转型期的修复（Rebuild）、迈向可持续未来的更新（Renew）...
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LifestyleTranscript
00:09A few years ago, I started a company that makes household detergents, personal care products,
00:14and baby products. We do everything we can to make sure they're healthy and sustainable.
00:19And then as far as innovation goes, you know, we've been working on trying to do a fully
00:23vibrant animal diaper on my kids. But lately, I've been thinking about another way businesses
00:28like mine can affect the planet. It turns out the U.S. corporate sector accounts for more
00:34than half of the country's annual greenhouse gas emissions. Most of it comes from energy
00:40use, like all the electricity it takes to light, heat, and cool our 18,000 square foot office.
00:48But I found out that a group of passionate young problem solvers called Climate Corps is trying
00:54to turn things around. Their job, enlist corporate America in the fight against climate change.
01:02Each summer, they fan out across the country trying to help companies be more efficient,
01:08even places like this. But is it possible to cut energy use here without turning out the
01:27lights? Of all the images that emerged in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, these are perhaps
01:34the most iconic. New York City cast into darkness. In Lower Manhattan, the storm surge was 14 feet high,
01:43a new record, and a foot higher than it would have been if the sea level wasn't rising, mostly due
01:52to climate change.
01:56Good morning from New York, I'm Chris Hayes. Over two million people are still without power this morning,
02:01following Hurricane Sandy. But even this crazy storm couldn't keep the city down for long, or so it seemed.
02:08In Manhattan, where I work, the lights were back on in a matter of days. But in some parts of
02:16the city,
02:17far from the media spotlight, people went without power not for days, but for months. So if you really
02:24want to see how climate change will impact cities like New York, you have to go further out to the
02:30city's margins. Places like Far Rockaway. To keep the lights on, Donald Lawrence had to jerry-rig the family car.
02:52I use it for my dining room, my kitchen, one for each bedroom.
03:00I try not to use it all of them at once, just to make sure because you don't want to
03:05overload the
03:06system and trip it. You know what I mean?
03:12It is now January 25th.
03:20And we are still without light. We are still without hot water.
03:26Three months after Sandy, over 7,000 people were still without power.
03:33Some didn't even have heat during a frigid winter.
03:37And for many, that was just the beginning of a cascade of problems.
04:00I've covered the Middle East at the New York Times for decades.
04:03Lately, I've been digging into the roots of the Arab Spring. And it's led me to something completely
04:08unexpected. Bread.
04:35In Egyptian Arabic, the word for bread is aish. It also means life. And in Egypt,
04:41life has been precarious these last few years.
04:50When millions of Egyptians took to the streets in 2011, we heard a lot about freedom and justice.
04:56But bread?
05:03Bread was the first word in one of the most popular chants of the revolution.
05:08And I want to know why.
05:09Bread importance is one issue, not two issues.
05:13Bread is our life in Egypt.
05:18Ahmed Maher was one of the most important youth leaders in the revolution.
05:22And three years earlier, in 2008, when bread shortages helped to spark some of the first demonstrations
05:28against Husni Mubarak, Ahmed Maher was one of the organizers.
05:32In 2008, the lines like that, you can find hundreds fighting to get the bread.
05:42Really?
05:42Okay.
05:43Fighting, literally physically fighting?
05:44Fighting, like the streets like that, and there's no bread inside. And there is no flour inside.
05:49Five or seven persons killed while fighting about the bread.
05:53Over bread?
05:54Yeah, over bread.
05:55So if the people can't find bread, they will make a revolution.
06:00But why couldn't they find bread? Answering that question would lead me from Cairo
06:07all the way to Kansas.
06:16Oh, we love that.
06:17It's perfect.
06:19It's like they hung these lights for us.
06:21Every summer, over 100 business students from top schools are recruited to be part of something
06:27called Climate Corps. They have what might seem like an impossible task, not just making
06:32corporate America more environmentally friendly, but also saving them lots of money in the process.
06:40Climate Corps is the brainchild of the Environmental Defense Fund.
06:45The students are deployed to big companies across the country.
06:49They embed for 10 weeks, scrutinizing how the businesses use energy.
06:58Janice Young will be at Texas Southern University.
07:04Brendan Edgerton is headed to Office Depot.
07:07What's your name?
07:08Scott Miller.
07:08Scott, nice to meet you, Elena.
07:10I thought we were going to be this summer.
07:12And Scott Miller will be working with Caesars Entertainment.
07:16The major gases are carbon, methane, and nitrous oxide.
07:20But first, they're off to conservation boot camp.
07:23So you take the usage, multiply it by the emissions factor.
07:27An intensive week of training teaches them how to apply their business skills
07:31toward the goal of sustainability.
07:34And then, it's off to the trenches.
07:39Brendan chose Office Depot because it will be an enormous challenge.
07:43Brendan, how are you doing?
07:45How are you doing?
07:45All set up.
07:46Good.
07:46It's already one of the greenest retail chains in the country.
07:51They employ a five-person team dedicated to sustainability and have slashed CO2 emissions
07:57by over 43 percent, saving about 10 million bucks a year.
08:03You know, whenever I brought something up, they seemed to already have looked at it
08:07or it was in the works somehow.
08:12But now, Office Depot wants to go even further.
08:15They're hoping to become carbon neutral,
08:18which would mean the company would no longer be contributing to climate change at all.
08:23Brendan thinks he can help them get there.
08:29Scott's assignment is the crazy one.
08:32He's trying to save light and water in the world's capital of excess.
08:37When I thought of sustainability, when I thought of energy efficiency,
08:41I did not think Caesars or anything in Las Vegas.
08:52Hello?
08:54Is Mr. Reilich in here?
08:56And Janice is starting from square one in the heart of oil country.
09:00How are you doing?
09:01Pretty good.
09:01Nice to see you.
09:02Good morning.
09:02Nice to see you.
09:03Well, you want to give me like an overview?
09:06At an institution that's only just starting to think about sustainability.
09:11We were trying to cool this space so much.
09:14We were basically cooling Houston.
09:17This door is always open.
09:18That door is always open.
09:19That door is always open.
09:20The door that we came through is always open.
09:24Sometimes it just doesn't work that way.
09:26So do we have an energy efficiency plan?
09:30Kind of.
09:31So no energy efficiency upgrades have been done in this?
09:35Not really.
09:35Not really.
09:36So have there been any energy efficiency upgrades or projects done in here?
09:40Nope.
09:42I got a lot ahead of me.
09:52Far from Manhattan, there's a New York City where almost four million people survive near or below the poverty line.
09:59And if you grew up in New York like I did, you know that the further you go, often the
10:04poorer it gets.
10:05An hour and a half by subway from Midtown, Bar Rockaway is the last stop on the A train.
10:11The Rockaways are a thin strip of land between Jamaica Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.
10:17It's a poor community where many are already living on the edge.
10:31Even before Sandy, the Lawrences were barely hanging onto their home.
10:36Though three of the four adults in the house worked, $1,300 a month in rent wasn't easy.
10:43Then Sandy hit.
10:46The storm left them without power and heat.
10:50But it didn't stop there.
10:52What kind of work were you doing?
10:54I'm doing sales, an independent sales contractor.
10:57You had a job too, Latonya?
10:59Mm-hmm.
10:59Where were you working?
11:00I was working in the mall at Queen Center.
11:02But I mean, after the storm, the buses stopped running at 5.30, 6 o'clock.
11:08So I can't have any shift after 6 o'clock. There's no way I can't.
11:12You literally couldn't get home?
11:14I couldn't get home.
11:15Donald's wife, Melita, also lost her job.
11:18She had been working in a nursing home, but after the storm,
11:21all the patients were moved away.
11:23Your income is gone. Your income is gone.
11:25So the kerosene heater and then the keep the car running for the electricity,
11:28like what's that running you?
11:30I would estimate it to be somewhere around about $150 extra weekly for the gas.
11:37Now for the heat, each day it consumes one can of oil, $48 to be exact.
11:43$50 a day?
11:43Yeah.
11:44To keep the place heated?
11:45Yeah.
11:46It's about $450 a week you're now spending.
11:49But if you guys have $400 a month, $400 a week in rent, and $400 a week in heat and
11:57electricity...
11:58Right, you know, exactly.
11:59And you're making $300 a week.
12:01Right.
12:01There's no way to make the money.
12:02The math can't work.
12:03Right.
12:04What do you think is going to happen?
12:10I don't know.
12:12What I'm thinking is going to happen.
12:14I hope it doesn't happen.
12:19What are you thinking is going to happen?
12:24I think we're not going to make it out, and the marshal is going to come and put us out.
12:46The fact that there are families in New York spending winter without heat or power isn't
12:51just outrageous or unfair. It also reveals how unprepared our cities are for the impacts climate
12:57change is already having, never mind future effects.
13:02But as bad as things are for the Lawrences, in some ways they're lucky. At least they still have a
13:08home.
13:09I can't stay at my house. It's not livable.
13:13Diane Allen's family weathered the storm from the rafters of this house.
13:17Water rose six feet and left the house unlivable.
13:22The flood damage and mold are so bad, the walls will have to be knocked down. The entire place gutted.
13:31Diane also worked out of her house.
13:35So when Sandy washed ashore, she lost not only her home, but her only source of income.
13:42For the past month, Diane, her husband, and her five-year-old son, Nashawn,
13:46have managed to squeeze in with relatives. But that's just temporary,
13:50and repairs here will take months. They need to find a place to live.
13:58Hi, good morning. My name is Diane Allen. I'm calling from the FEMA hotel list.
14:03I'm calling to find out if you have any vacancy with a room that can accommodate three to four people.
14:08FEMA and the city are providing hotel rooms to those left homeless by the storm.
14:12Now, do you have a waiting list? Okay, so I should call you every day.
14:18But with about 6,000 families displaced, there simply aren't enough to go around.
14:23Hi, good morning. I'm calling from the FEMA hotel list. Do you have any vacancy?
14:28Not until the 14th. Now, do you have a waiting list? You don't have a waiting list.
14:35Okay, thank you very much. Have a good day.
14:39Oh, my God.
14:44Nobody has vacancy.
14:46If Diane can't find one, the next stop for her family could be a homeless shelter.
15:04Wheat's an amazing crop. You give it just a little bit of water and a half a chance,
15:07you can raise some grain. But the one thing you can't do is make it rain.
15:15Right here, we have wheat that was really impacted by the drought.
15:19Very, very little grain. There's three kernels in that head.
15:26But the other thing is, there's so few of plants. In a foot there, there's, what, four or five heads?
15:34And in a good field, you'll have four or five heads in an inch, and they might have three times
15:40as much grain in them.
15:41And that's all drought-related. End of story.
15:45I came to Kansas because it's the number one wheat-producing state in America,
15:50and because it's one of the places where Egypt gets its wheat.
15:55It turns out that Egypt depends on other countries for about half of its wheat supply.
16:01Tom Giesel and his brother have spent their entire lives here, and lately, something's changed.
16:07And it was like somebody flipped a switch. And it quit raining, it got warm, and it just stayed that
16:13way.
16:14How long has that been going on?
16:16Three years ago in August is when it turned out here.
16:19Mm-hmm.
16:20We live in a, in the High Plains, we live in an area of extremes.
16:23It can get extremely hot, extremely cold, extremely dry, extremely wet.
16:26So people are desensitized to the extremes.
16:28It's easy to say, I've seen that.
16:31Yeah.
16:31But when you see these incremental shifts that move forward, like, you know,
16:36the overnight temperatures rising just a little bit, along with the daytime temperatures.
16:41And you've experienced that?
16:43Yeah, and that's important.
16:44For example, corn pollination.
16:46Because it pollinates, it does a lot of pollination at night when it cools off.
16:49Well, if you're not getting these cool temperatures.
16:51Everything needs a rest.
16:53Animals, plants, everything.
16:54And nighttime affords that rest.
16:57It's cool.
16:59Everything just settles down.
17:00But we're not cooling off at the nights the way we used to.
17:03And also, the drought.
17:05I mean, it just flat got dry.
17:07It was dry at night.
17:08It was dry at day.
17:09It was dry in the winter.
17:10It was dry in the summer.
17:11Last year, we harvested wheat starting in May 28th.
17:18Before, all-time record before was June the 6th.
17:21Harvest was done in Kansas almost by the time it normally started.
17:24But it's those changes and those type of things that I see happening that I think are really
17:30indicators that we're shifting and we're moving in a certain direction.
17:37The United States Department of Agriculture declared this drought the biggest disaster in its 150-year history.
17:45But for Egypt, this U.S. drought was just a small part of a much larger trend.
17:50In 2010, a series of disasters all across the globe caused wheat prices to double in the months before the
17:58revolution.
17:59In Canada, the problem was too much water.
18:02Record rainfall destroyed a quarter of the wheat crop there.
18:06Meanwhile, China's bread basket experienced its worst drought in 60 years.
18:11And in Russia and the Ukraine, drought and the worst heat wave in centuries.
18:16For Egypt, this was the biggest blow because Russia is Egypt's number one supplier of wheat.
18:23The extreme heat has turned millions of acres of wheat into dust.
18:27Today, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced a ban on grain exports.
18:31It seems crazy that this many disasters could strike in a single year.
18:36I want to know what scientists think is going on.
18:50I want to know what scientists think is going on.
18:50Welcome. Welcome to Caesars Entertainment, the Empire.
18:53This property is, uh, six and a half million square feet.
18:57Six and a half million square feet?
18:59Of air-conditioned space, yeah.
19:00Wow.
19:02Try to make it as efficient as possible, you know, maintain the guest experience.
19:06Sure.
19:07Caesars wants to reduce its carbon footprint without scaling back on the luxuries.
19:12It sounds like a contradiction.
19:14And Scott, who used to work on Wall Street, will need all his business smarts to pull it off.
19:20So the flamingo, actually, this is, this is one where we've had our first test
19:24lighting up, uh, Donnie and Marie there.
19:27So the first test didn't go so well.
19:29It was a little, we had a little bit of dark patches.
19:31And so we set that back and we'll...
19:33Is that a technical issue or like with the actual lights or is it, can we over,
19:38oh, is that what I'm going to be...
19:39That's what you'll be figuring on.
19:41Got it.
19:41Figuring on how to do that.
19:42Getting ahead of the game here.
19:43Yeah, flamingo at every single property because we've got them everywhere, so...
19:47Oh, wow.
19:47Over-the-top lights are just one of Las Vegas' many extravagances.
19:52What about the millions of gallons of water spouting into the air in the middle of a desert?
19:58It turns out Scott sees an opportunity there too, something no one else seems to have noticed.
20:10Meanwhile, Brendan's idea to help Office Depot become carbon neutral is to use renewable energy,
20:17especially solar.
20:20Here in Florida, you know, we have a great roof that would be fantastic for solar panels.
20:26But the electricity rate's pretty low and there's not any state incentives.
20:30And so it makes it still relatively cost prohibitive for a business like this.
20:33But even if solar does save money in the long term, there's another hurdle.
20:39Office Depot rents many of its buildings.
20:41So is it worth investing the money to install solar panels on a building you don't own?
20:47Brendan knows it'll be hard to make the numbers work.
20:49So he starts looking for other ways to save energy.
20:53All right, everybody got a lunch? You guys ready to get started?
20:56When you look at a recycling bin...
20:58Janice, on the other hand, is starting with something that seems basic,
21:01but could actually have a huge impact.
21:04She explains that recycling just five aluminum cans
21:07saves enough energy to power a laptop for 24 straight hours.
21:11And yet Americans throw out more than 30 billion cans every year.
21:16And there's a lot of students with an attitude of, I don't care, like today.
21:21You know how many cans of soda I pick on the streets of the campus?
21:25As far as recycling, we really don't have very many.
21:27Um, we have a recycling bin that's centrally located on campus.
21:30But as far as in classrooms, the cafeteria, things of that nature,
21:34we don't have anything that can be easily accessed for students, you know, to use.
21:39Thank you very, very much for being here today.
21:41And I'm so excited to work with all of you.
21:43I'm really, really excited. So thank you.
21:46Don't forget to recycle.
21:51After I said at least twice to recycle, I noticed there were lots...
21:57Lots and lots of aluminum cans and water bottles in the trash can.
22:03Janice is discovering that her real challenge is changing how people think.
22:07I am interviewing all of the department heads to kind of pilot this energy efficiency project.
22:16People are a lot more informed about going green.
22:20But there's a difference between being informed and actually doing it.
22:25So if we get this sub-metering for the campus, which means that you can track it yourself.
22:31And she thinks there's another reason she's meeting resistance.
22:36I've even gotten some comments like, you know, this isn't a white school.
22:43So good luck with that. That's not going to happen.
22:47And I hear that weekly.
22:52So that's what's very difficult, is that getting people to see that they can participate
22:59and why it's important, but it's how it's not a white issue.
23:05Sustainability, climate change, energy efficiency, all those things are a culture or behavior.
23:11Meaning that people have a tradition of maybe recycling or investing in energy efficiency upgrades
23:17and they see the importance culturally.
23:19Well, in our case, in terms of Texas Southern University,
23:23it's just not the culture. It's not a priority.
23:49I think this is just for show.
23:52It's 10 days before Christmas.
23:55They're not done.
23:57For Diane Allen, weeks of couch surfing has turned into months.
24:02It's especially hard on her young son.
24:05I don't even know if I should say welcome to my home because this is not really my home.
24:17She still hasn't found a hotel with room for her family.
24:20And now she's just been told it will be three more months before the house she rents is livable again.
24:28They said I won't be back here until about March 15th.
24:32March 15th is a long way.
24:36Everything is done. Nothing.
24:39It's so sad to be here.
24:43Nothing.
24:45This breaks my heart because I'm still out of vacancy till March.
24:54Where are my kids supposed to have Christmas?
24:57Where are they supposed to enjoy birthdays?
24:59Today's my baby's birthday.
25:00We should be in here cooking and cutting cake.
25:11We shouldn't have to be going through this.
25:13It's not our fault.
25:14And there's no help.
25:29When you're living near the poverty line, you feel the effects of a disaster like Sandy more directly than most.
25:36Maybe you don't have an emergency fund in your bank account or credit cards to take up the slack.
25:41Your friends and family may not have extra room for you when you lose your home.
25:47Whatever the case, the storm's effects aren't just a question of science and sea levels.
25:51They're also a matter of wealth and privilege.
25:55Craig, Craig, you walk out of a sumo wrestler? How's a sumo wrestler walk?
25:59We often say that the biggest reason to worry about climate change is what it will mean for our kids.
26:05But when it comes to my own daughter, I know I don't have to worry as much as some.
26:09Because she's already won the lottery, simply by being born into a family with resources,
26:15she's far better insured against the worst the world has to offer.
26:26But many people in Far Rockaway can't count on good fortune and deep pockets.
26:41Sometimes they have to scream out loud just to get anyone to notice.
26:45That in their neighborhood, the storm isn't over yet.
26:51I'm ready to fight.
26:53I'm ready to fight.
27:03You see, the problem here is that we're only seeing the beginning of climate change.
27:08The amount of warming we've seen so far doesn't tell us where it's going to settle down.
27:13In 2010, a string of disasters across the globe upended the world's grain supply
27:18and fanned the flames of political chaos in Egypt.
27:21I'm in Oxford to meet with two climate scientists who've been studying one of these disasters.
27:26Welcome to the observatory.
27:28Great to be here.
27:29I've never been here.
27:30You could say that Oxford is one of the birthplaces of climatology.
27:34They started the continuous temperature measurements in 1774.
27:39So this, in this place, one of the longest continuous temperature records in the world.
27:45Those records show the temperatures are rising.
27:48And now, Freddy Otto and Miles Allen are using complex computer models
27:53to determine if those rising temperatures are increasing the odds of extreme events.
27:57Absolutely.
27:58Take us through, you know, something like the Russian heat wave,
28:01because that heat wave wiped out a whole wheat crop,
28:04which also diminished the global wheat production, which raised bread prices,
28:09which ended up in a bakery in Cairo with some poor person
28:13either having to pay much more for their bread or not getting any at all.
28:16What can we say about how the climate helped contribute to that chain of events?
28:22There's a strong link between rising temperatures and the risk of heat waves.
28:26So we can make a clear case for the risk of that heat wave which occurred in Russia
28:34and other heat waves that have occurred around the world
28:36being increased as a result of human influence on climate.
28:40Take this dice, for example.
28:42To demonstrate that risk, they asked me to roll the die
28:45and to imagine that six means heat wave.
28:48Six. Give me a two, baby.
28:52Six.
28:56Six.
28:59Four.
29:00Okay. Three sixes and a four.
29:02Either I'm really lucky or that dice is loaded.
29:06That's right. And we can work out how much the dice is loaded.
29:09With a computer, you can ask what would the world have been like
29:13if we hadn't raised greenhouse gas levels.
29:15We get a clear message on heat waves, big heavy loading of the dice, a bit like this dice.
29:19It doesn't quite come up six every time, but it's an unambiguous signal.
29:22We've loaded the dice already in terms of heat waves.
29:26We've loaded the dice towards heat waves.
29:26Interesting.
29:27So far, climate change has caused global average temperatures to rise by 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit
29:33since the Industrial Revolution, which might seem small, but according to Miles and Freddy's research,
29:38that increase made the Russian heat wave three times more likely.
29:43We've never done this particular experiment before of taking a huge amount of fossil carbon
29:49and dumping it in the atmosphere in the sort of geological equivalent of the blink of an eye.
29:53The way we dump CO2 in the atmosphere at the rate we do this now, we'll in very short time
30:00have doubled and then doubled again the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
30:05And their biggest fear is that things could turn out even worse than their models predict.
30:10What really worries me about this is we are going into climate territory,
30:15which we've never been in, and we don't have therefore any information
30:18about what it'll be like apart from what we get out of these models.
30:21And there's even more frightening news, not just for Egypt, but for the whole world.
30:27This is a map of the temperature outlook over the next 85 years.
30:31If we don't take aggressive action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the planet could warm by more than
30:379 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. And at those temperatures, scientists project that
30:43yields for some crops will drop by 25 percent. How worried should we be? I found out about someone
30:51who's made a fortune predicting the rise and fall of commodities like wheat, and he is terrified.
31:07And he is terrified. And he is terrified. And he is terrified. And he is terrified.
31:07Time is really racing, like every week. And I have to make the most of every day, every hour,
31:13every person that I meet with. As the summer winds down, the Climate Corps fellows race to find
31:19efficiencies and improvements anywhere they can.
31:29Scott discovers a big one in the fountains.
31:36A tiny weather vane, when placed in the right spot, can detect when it's too windy
31:42and automatically lower the height of the fountain to keep the water from blowing away.
31:48If applied across hundreds of fountains, the water savings could be substantial.
32:06Today, we're going to take a look at the Office Depot distribution center, looking at their
32:11operations there, and overall building energy consumption. One of the more interesting elements
32:17of it is the Kiva robotic system.
32:25They all speak to each other, and they kind of move on a grid.
32:29They can see each other, so obviously there's no collisions or anything like that,
32:34making it a lot more efficient and quicker of a process.
32:38I feel that it probably won't be as easy to identify opportunities,
32:42but there's always a chance to tighten things up.
32:46With 35 million square feet of building space,
32:50and more than 20 million orders going out the door every year,
32:53that's millions of chances to save a little energy.
32:57And I don't think we've ever really looked at
33:00efficiency of either the motors or, you know, the timing.
33:05I mean, maybe, maybe we could turn half these belts off.
33:10So Brendan gets to work.
33:12These are T8s, 32-watt T8s.
33:15To see what he can find.
33:20Start with the furnace.
33:24We're actually going to be looking at technology called LED,
33:28and transitioning another type of lighting fixture called metal halide.
33:33This is 1,000 watts.
33:35The LED fixture is only 400 watts.
33:38It's 60% less energy to achieve the same amount of light.
33:44Jesus.
33:46It seems like those are more evenly lit on the LED versus the HAD.
33:53I totally agree.
33:55Not only is this going to dramatically reduce energy consumption,
33:59but it also enhance the look of the structure.
34:02Each hotel has dozens of these fixtures,
34:05and literally millions of other kinds of lights.
34:09Even more mind-boggling, it's estimated that downtown Las Vegas has 15,000 miles of neon tubes.
34:17Imagine if every one of those lights was just a little more efficient.
34:22Suddenly, changing a light bulb doesn't seem so trivial.
34:26Let me check the rack lighting over here that we talked about.
34:29And then all of these, they're all on plug that cuts off completely at night,
34:34so there's no vampire loads.
34:35You guys have a lot of stuff installed already, making it real hard on me.
34:39Yeah, it's kind of...
34:39And sometimes, even a company famous for its energy efficiency
34:44just needs to turn the lights off when it leaves the room.
34:47Are those on occupancy sensor or just on and off?
34:49They're just on and off.
34:50Okay.
34:51I haven't seen anyone up there, but probably shouldn't be on.
34:56We could head off the worst effects of climate change
34:59if American companies started reducing their carbon emissions by just 3% a year.
35:05Office Depot is already exceeding that.
35:07Now, we just need more and more companies to get on board.
35:17This is the point where a lot of companies hit a roadblock and turn the other way or sit tight.
35:28As the summer draws to a close, it's almost time to present their findings to the people in charge.
35:50After more than two months of searching, Diane finally manages to find a hotel room.
35:56You should be practicing what you have to say in front of the class tomorrow.
36:00You hear me?
36:03Hurricane Sandy caused the...
36:06What's that word again?
36:07Coastal barrier.
36:09Coastal barrier to...
36:11Come over.
36:12Come over and break?
36:14No, come over into the street.
36:16And come over into the street and Hurricane Sandy destroyed our home in New York.
36:28We're here.
36:28Hi, good evening.
36:29Could you tell me between where and where your hotel is located?
36:34She's about to join the ranks of the more than 3,000 New York City families
36:38living in hotels since the storm.
36:44We're here.
36:45Come on, pumpkin.
36:48Hi.
36:49We're here.
36:50Come on.
36:51Let me help you.
36:52Come on.
36:57Well, it's a beautiful place.
36:59It's far, but it's our room.
37:13You said, okay, initial at the top.
37:15Yeah.
37:15Sign my name at the bottom.
37:19Let's go, Nashawn.
37:22Let's go, sweetie.
37:23Let's go.
37:24You can sleep.
37:31Okay.
37:36This is my room and my moment that I've been waiting for.
37:40Two months.
37:42Two months.
38:08Poppy.
38:11Poppy.
38:12Good morning.
38:14Time to get up.
38:17Come on, sweetie.
38:18Let's go.
38:21Come on.
38:23Diane feels lucky to be here, but it's still not easy to make a single room in a hotel
38:29feel like home.
38:34In and out.
38:36Put this one on.
38:38Okay.
38:40Let's go.
38:42I don't like how it made that noise.
38:44Come on.
38:44The hotel provides breakfast for a certain amount of time in the morning from 6 to 10.
38:50We're here for that.
38:52Lunch, he gets at school.
38:54We don't really too worry.
38:55We're adults.
38:56And then in the evenings while he's at school, I'll prepare meals at my friend's house.
39:02And bring it on over.
39:05No lipstick for you.
39:07Have a good day.
39:07May the good Lord bless you and keep you safe.
39:09I love you.
39:10I'll see you this afternoon.
39:11Bye.
39:12Have a good day.
39:14Great.
39:23But just as things seem to be looking up, Diane finds out the landlord at her old place in
39:29Far Rockaway is raising the rent from $600 to $900 a month, far more than she could possibly afford.
39:40Now she has to apply for rental assistance from the city.
39:43It's something she didn't need before the storm.
39:47Suddenly, it's all starting to feel like too much.
39:51I'm here to speak to someone.
39:54Especially when she thinks about the impact it's having on her son.
39:58I'm still in the displaced hotel with the comfort inn and suites.
40:19What are you telling him about what's going on?
40:22Well, the night that we had to come here, he broke down.
40:28He broke down because he said that I'm taking him away from his brother.
40:35I was taking him away from his friends.
40:37It hurt my heart because he don't really understand why we're moving all about.
40:43You know, I don't really think he understands the situation.
40:48And I try to hold things together.
40:51It's easier when you can tell a person that it's going to be okay when you know that it's going
40:58to be okay.
41:00And how do I know that it's really going to be okay when we're still going?
41:07through the channels and we don't know what the outcome is.
41:21The spiritual drain on these folks who are scratching and clawing and fighting
41:28and hanging on by their fingernails, literally hanging on by their fingernails to this dream,
41:33this American dream.
41:34And at the moment where it seems possible, where they maybe have kept themselves in some sort of tenuous
41:40equilibrium, the storm hits.
41:44And I just, it's like, what do you want them to do?
41:47What do we as a society, what do we want these people to do?
41:49And what are we doing to protect them if and when they fall, when there's some natural disaster,
41:55which there are going to be many more of in the future, right?
42:11What we've seen in the last three years is a persistent pattern of a bad grain growing weather.
42:16It's just been a statistical fluke unless you believe that climate change is changing the odds,
42:23which looks to be much the more reasonable argument.
42:29Jeremy Grantham has been called an investment genius. He co-founded GMO, an asset management firm that
42:37manages over a hundred billion dollars. He's famous for predicting the dot-com bubble of the 90s and the
42:43housing bubble that led to the great recession. He's also an expert on global commodities like wheat,
42:48and that's where he sees signs of something far more dire than the next stock market slide.
42:54Well, my job in investing is to think of what are the more important ideas.
42:59Climate change, global warming is probably the single biggest issue that faces our generation and the
43:05next generation. So how can you avoid it? You've made your clients a lot of money or saved them a
43:10lot
43:10of money by anticipating bubbles from the dot-com to real estate. Is there another bubble right now related to
43:17climate that we should be worried about that you're warning your your clients about? Unfortunately,
43:23it doesn't feel like a bubble because the glorious thing about bubbles is they break and they go away
43:27and it goes back to normal. This is going to do anything but that. It's going to get worse and
43:33worse,
43:33and so I think of it more as the very foothills of a major problem. We tend to think of
43:41what happened
43:42with the Arab Spring in 2010 as an entirely political event. People rising up against dictatorship,
43:48but actually around it was a huge climate story. Why is that so impactful on Egypt?
43:55Well, Egypt has for at least two or three years been my biggest worry. Wheat is nearly 30 percent of
44:04their
44:04entire calorific intake. It doesn't matter that the Egyptian government pays for it and subsidizes it.
44:10And they can only feed half of the 80 million they have now themselves. And however much they juggle
44:18the funds around, the Egyptian government just simply doesn't have enough money to feed and provide
44:24the energy for 84 going on 100 going on 140 million people. So all of this is the real backdrop
44:32to the
44:32Arab Spring? And it's all the backdrop to climate change. So you're saying you've got an incredible
44:37cost push and then the weather turns against you. That can be the kind of thing that tips you over
44:44the edge. And it may well have done that year.
44:51If you have a situation where you're spending 30 percent of your family income on food and energy,
44:57and then in a matter of four or five years, it doubles and triples and quadruples on you,
45:03you're likely to be fairly desperate and desperate people take to the streets.
45:17That's exactly what has happened in Egypt, Syria, with its terrible droughts.
45:27The most immediate problem on a 20-year horizon is food. We have a real food problem without climate change.
45:35It's just a most unfortunate element to come in and up the ante even more.
45:43I think the biggest risk is that it will destabilize such a series of poorer countries that
45:49that in turn destabilizes global politics and that comes home to unsettle the future for the US.
45:56This is not a coincidence. We're only a severe drought or two away from
46:03the near collapse of Egypt.
46:08This is our last best chance. Climate change dominates everything.
46:14All the rest is in vain unless you get climate change right.
46:27At the end of their 10 weeks, the Climate Corps fellows have to pitch their ideas to the top
46:32executives at their companies.
46:38How much will the head of a casino care about light bulbs?
46:41It's in front of the CEO. It's in front of senior folks at Caesars Entertainment. It's in front of a
46:48senior person from the Environmental Defense Fund. I've given presentations before, but I think
46:53this is by far the most important presentation of my life.
47:05Does climate change only affect those who have the money? We have to think about the broader context.
47:10Environmental justice affects us all. So the things that I wanted to explore the most was savings,
47:16because that's something we all can benefit from. How can we invest something small that will
47:21eventually pay for itself and that will save not only the campus money, but also help reduce our carbon footprint?
47:29The first thing we looked at was daylighting controls in the dining hall. $3,700 in savings just for that.
47:36Another element, the dock lamps. Each loading dock has currently an 80 watt incandescent bulb.
47:44So looking at just changing them to LEDs, a net present value, almost $8,000. But we estimated for $43
47:51,000, over $10,000, $207,000, $41,000, $469,000.
47:58All right, there we go.
48:00This is...
48:04...a metal halide.
48:06Pros, low cost.
48:09Cons, extremely inefficient.
48:10Basically, you have 150 of these surrounding the flamingo.
48:15If you could pass around this light, uh, this flashlight, that is a single LED, uh, diode in there.
48:22It is very, very powerful.
48:25It also lasts a lot longer.
48:2850,000 plus hours for a savings of 81% on energy.
48:35And finally, last but not least, we installed a pilot program here at Caesars Palace.
48:42If I reduce the speed of a motor that's pushing water by 10%, I reduce my energy consumption by 27%.
48:52This solution costs $2,100.
48:54The savings potential is 1.5 million kilowatt hours in Las Vegas per year.
49:01Okay, great.
49:02Why does it take you to solve this versus the vendor who sells this product convincing us through traditional commercial
49:08means that this was a good idea?
49:10Especially around here, we've been desperate to find these sorts of innovations.
49:17Makes one wonder why we didn't find it.
49:19But look, I'm delighted we did.
49:21The fact that these efficiencies are not being found is exactly why Scott's here.
49:26If Caesars takes his advice, they could save up to $350,000 a year just off their energy bill.
49:33So thank you guys again for being here today. I really, really appreciate it.
49:37For Janice, on the other hand, just getting people at TSU to start thinking about energy use feels like an
49:44accomplishment.
49:47A lot of the things he recommended are going to be implemented on the energy efficiency side.
49:53On the renewable side, what Brendan has done is helped us along the way.
49:58Brendan's efficiency recommendations could save Office Depot over $6 million a year and slash its greenhouse gas emissions by over
50:0616,000 metric tons annually.
50:14It's like taking a quarter million cars off the road and far from costing companies money.
50:25It's actually saved them more than a billion dollars.
50:45In May, after living in a hotel room for more than four months,
50:50Diane's family finally moves into a subsidized apartment, far away from the Rockaways.
50:57But every so often, she has a reason to go back.
51:01Today is the celebration of my grandbaby.
51:06We're having a baby shower. Yes, I'm going to be a grandmother.
51:10There's a lot of people out there.
51:20Oh, hi. How are you?
51:24Great.
51:26Some people I haven't seen since the storm.
51:29Hello, Destiny.
51:31What kind of half a hug is that?
51:33Congratulations on your graduation.
51:35No macaroni?
51:37After seven months of struggle...
51:38Come on, guys. Time to eat.
51:40Life looks a little more normal for Diane and her family.
51:45But they'll never get back what they've lost.
51:48The home they knew and loved.
51:50The community they were part of.
51:54Less vulnerable parts of New York didn't have to face outcomes like this after Sandy.
51:59But as sea levels rise and storm surges intensify, the effects will reach further inland and further up the economic
52:07ladder.
52:09And what happened here in the Rockaways may prove to be just an early glimpse of what climate change has
52:15in store.
52:16Welcome to Germany.
52:19Next time on Years of Living Dangerously.
52:21This city was the first city really to run out of water.
52:25Close to 60% of all rural conflicts.
52:28The main cause is water.
52:30Could Yemen run out of water?
52:31No, I couldn't.
52:31Yes, possibly.
52:32Heat deaths can look like heart attacks, respiratory problems, even diabetes.
52:37Doctors often don't make the connection.
52:39Zero heat-related deaths.
52:40Oh, I think we're very much under-reporting them.
52:42Is the most dangerous thing about global warming the heat itself?
52:48At the foot of the Himalayas, one of the lowest-lying countries, Bangladesh, is geographically cursed.
52:55Below that, all will be underwater.
52:57Climate change affects the whole world, but we are in the eye of the storm.
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