WEBVTT 00:00:12.051 --> 00:00:19.389 All right, all right. Listen up. listen up. 00:00:19.389 --> 00:00:32.234 Very few people can ever say that they are in the single most important place they could possibly be 00:00:32.234 --> 00:00:38.953 doing the single most important thing they could possibly be doing. 00:00:38.953 --> 00:00:44.268 That’s you, here, now. 00:00:44.268 --> 00:00:54.195 You are the movement that we need if we are going to win in the few years that we have. 00:00:54.195 --> 00:01:04.803 You have the skills now. You are making the connections. And there is no one else. It is you. 00:01:04.803 --> 00:01:16.626 That is a great honor and that is a terrible burden. There is no one else. 00:01:16.626 --> 00:01:27.305 The science is the easy part in this, grim, but easy. 2010 was the warmest year on record. And it was warm. 00:01:27.305 --> 00:01:34.110 We were on the phone one day with our 350 crew in Pakistan and one of them said, “It’s hot out here today,” 00:01:34.110 --> 00:01:38.675 and I was surprised to hear him say it because it’s usually hot in Pakistan during the summer. 00:01:38.675 --> 00:01:47.648 He said, no it’s really hot . We just set the new, all time Asia temperature record, 129 degrees [53.9 °C]. 00:01:47.648 --> 00:01:57.901 That kind of heat melts the arctic. That kind of heat causes drought so deep across Russia that the Kremlin stops all grain exports. 00:01:57.901 --> 00:02:07.454 That kind of heat causes the flooding that still has 4 million people across Pakistan homeless tonight. 00:02:07.454 --> 00:02:15.628 It’s tough, it’s grim, but the good news at least is that it’s clear, the science. 00:02:15.628 --> 00:02:21.874 We have a number: 350 parts per million. 350, the most important number on earth. 00:02:21.874 --> 00:02:30.370 As the NASA team put it in January 2008, “any value in the atmosphere greater than 350 parts per million 00:02:30.370 --> 00:02:38.197 is not compatible with the planet on which civilization developed and which life on earth is adapted.” 00:02:38.197 --> 00:02:45.484 Getting back to 350 pars per million will be very very tough, the toughest thing human beings have ever done, 00:02:45.484 --> 00:02:50.771 but there is no use complaining about it, it’s just physics and chemistry. 00:02:50.771 --> 00:02:56.922 That’s what we have to do. 00:02:56.922 --> 00:03:06.619 But if the scientific method has worked splendidly to outline our dilemma, 00:03:06.619 --> 00:03:11.983 that’s how badly the political method has worked to solve it. 00:03:11.983 --> 00:03:17.718 Think about our own country, historically the biggest source of carbon emissions. 00:03:17.718 --> 00:03:27.099 Last summer, the Senate refused to even take a vote on the tepid, moderate, tame climate bill that was before it. 00:03:27.099 --> 00:03:37.585 Last week, the House voted 248 to 174 to pass a resolution saying global warming wasn’t real. 00:03:37.585 --> 00:03:42.354 It was one of the most embarrassing votes that Congress has ever taken. 00:03:42.354 --> 00:03:55.273 They believe that because they can amend the tax laws they can amend the laws of nature too, but they can’t. 00:03:55.273 --> 00:04:06.036 I’m awful glad a few of you went up to the visitors gallery to talk some sense to them last week. 00:04:06.036 --> 00:04:17.509 Even the White House. Two weeks ago, the interior secretary, who spoke here two years ago, Ken Salazar, 00:04:17.509 --> 00:04:24.638 signed a piece of paper opening 750 million tonnes of coal under federal land in Wyoming to mining. 00:04:24.638 --> 00:04:32.579 That’s like opening 300 new coal fired power plants and running them for a year. That’s a disgrace. 00:04:32.579 --> 00:04:41.356 But you know what. We understand the physics and chemistry of political power. 00:04:41.356 --> 00:04:47.000 In this case, it’s not carbon dioxide that rules the day: it’s money. 00:04:47.000 --> 00:04:53.640 Many of you are in the District of Columbia for the first time and it looks clean and it looks sparkling. 00:04:53.640 --> 00:05:09.235 No, this city is as polluted as Beijing. But instead of coal smoke it’s polluted by money. 00:05:09.235 --> 00:05:24.951 Money warps our political life, it obscures our vision, but just like with physics in chemistry there is no use whining. 00:05:24.951 --> 00:05:30.974 We know now what we need to do and the first thing we need to do is build a movement. 00:05:30.974 --> 00:05:36.890 We will never have as much money as the oil companies so we need a different currency to work in, 00:05:36.890 --> 00:05:40.400 we need bodies, we need creativity, we need spirit. 00:05:40.400 --> 00:05:58.896 350.org has been like a beta-test for that movement. It began with youth here at Power Shift four years ago. 00:05:58.896 --> 00:06:07.018 It’s now spread around the planet. In the last two years, there have been 15,000 demonstrations in 189 nations. 00:06:07.018 --> 00:06:18.689 CNN called it the most widespread political activity in the planet’s history. But it needs to get bigger still. 00:06:18.689 --> 00:06:25.683 On the first Earth Day in 1970 there where 20 million Americans in the street, one in ten Americans. 00:06:25.683 --> 00:06:31.140 That’s the kind of size we need. 00:06:31.140 --> 00:06:35.064 And so, on September 24 we need your help. September 24 is the next big day of action. 00:06:35.064 --> 00:06:40.590 We’re calling it Moving Planet and in those 189 nations, people will be in motion. 00:06:40.590 --> 00:06:53.966 Much of it will be on bicycles, because the bicycles is one of the few tools that rich and poor both use. 00:06:53.966 --> 00:07:00.792 Who here knows how to ride a bike? 00:07:00.792 --> 00:07:08.664 All right, September 24, I cannot wait to see the pictures. 00:07:08.664 --> 00:07:15.905 We are not going to wait for the politicians to move, we’re going to create the future that we need ourselves. 00:07:15.905 --> 00:07:23.710 But that movement doesn’t just need to be bigger, it needs to be sharper too, more aggressive. 00:07:23.710 --> 00:07:30.418 You know what, at Copenhagen we got 117 nations to sign on to that 350 target. 00:07:30.418 --> 00:07:38.478 That was good, but they were the wrong 117 nations. They were the poorest and most vulnerable nations. 00:07:38.478 --> 00:07:48.718 The most addicted nations, led by our own, weren’t yet willing to bite the bullet, so that’s where we’ve got to go to work. 00:07:48.718 --> 00:07:57.193 That work, to deal with that money pollution, that work starts Monday at ten o’clock in Lafayette Square, 00:07:57.193 --> 00:08:06.195 across from the White House and next to a place called the US Chamber of Commerce. 00:08:06.195 --> 00:08:20.875 The Koch Brothers are high peaks of corruption, but the US Chamber of Commerce is the Everest of dirty money. 00:08:20.875 --> 00:08:25.986 It boasts on its web page that it is the biggest lobby in Washington. 00:08:25.986 --> 00:08:31.270 In fact, it spends more money lobbying than the next five lobbies combined. 00:08:31.270 --> 00:08:35.855 It spent more money on politics last year than the Republican National Committee and 00:08:35.855 --> 00:08:45.839 the Democratic National Committee combined and 94% of that went to climate deniers. 00:08:45.839 --> 00:08:55.777 We cannot stop their money, but we can strip them of their credibility. They claim to represent all American business, 00:08:55.777 --> 00:09:01.536 but they don’t. 55% of their funding came from 16 companies. 00:09:01.536 --> 00:09:06.969 They don’t have to say who those companies are, but it’s easy to tell when you watch what they do. 00:09:06.969 --> 00:09:13.146 They spend their time lobbying to make sure the planet heats up as fast it possibly can. 00:09:13.146 --> 00:09:22.236 They sent a legal brief to the EPA last year, saying that they should take no action on climate change, because if the planet warmed, 00:09:22.236 --> 00:09:29.890 humans could alter their behavior and their physiology to deal with the problem. 00:09:29.890 --> 00:09:37.573 I don’t even really know what that means, alter your physiology. Grow gills? I don’t know. 00:09:37.573 --> 00:09:55.081 But I can tell you this. I am too old to change my physiology and you all are too good looking. 00:09:55.081 --> 00:10:04.114 But I will adapt my behavior. Every day now I will roll out of bed and go to work fighting them. 00:10:04.114 --> 00:10:12.893 Hell, I will go to bed at night and try to dream up new ways to fight. 00:10:12.893 --> 00:10:20.688 We’re going to adapt our behavior all right. We’re going to adapt our behavior now to fight on every front. 00:10:20.688 --> 00:10:25.401 I’m sorry if that sounds aggressive, but there we are. 00:10:25.401 --> 00:10:31.118 Twenty-two years ago, I wrote the first book about climate change and I’ve gotten to watch it all, 00:10:31.118 --> 00:10:35.429 and I know that simply persuasion will not do. 00:10:35.429 --> 00:10:42.219 We need to fight. Now, we need to fight non-violently and with civil disobedience. 00:10:42.219 --> 00:10:54.727 You will hear from my friend Tim DeChristopher in a moment and more to come, 00:10:54.727 --> 00:11:02.281 but if you’re going to go that route, one thing you need to make sure that you manage to get across 00:11:02.281 --> 00:11:10.058 in your witness is that you are not the radicals in this fight. 00:11:10.058 --> 00:11:15.991 The radicals are the people who are fundamentally altering the composition of the atmosphere. 00:11:15.991 --> 00:11:23.753 That is the most radical thing people have ever done. 00:11:23.753 --> 00:11:34.516 We need to fight with art and with music, too. Not just the side with our brain that likes bar graphs and 00:11:34.516 --> 00:11:40.082 pie graphs, but with all our heart and all our soul. 00:11:40.082 --> 00:11:48.359 Tomorrow or tonight, you need to go down behind Hall B downstairs and help them build the art work for Monday morning. 00:11:48.359 --> 00:11:55.218 We need to fight with unity. We need to have a coherent voice. 00:11:55.218 --> 00:12:05.179 That’s why, last week we joined with our friends at 1Sky to build this bigger, stronger 350.org. 00:12:05.179 --> 00:12:16.235 We need to speak with one loud voice, because we are fighting for your future. 00:12:16.235 --> 00:12:21.808 So far, we’ve raised the temperature of the planet one degree and that’s done all that I’ve described, it’s melted the arctic, it’s changed the oceans. 00:12:21.808 --> 00:12:35.554 The climatologists tell us that unless we act with great speed and courage that one degree will be five degrees before this century is out. 00:12:35.554 --> 00:12:41.731 And if we do that, then the world that we leave behind will be a ruined world. 00:12:41.731 --> 00:12:49.118 We fight not just for ourselves, we fight for the beauty of this place. 00:12:49.118 --> 00:13:01.224 For cool trout streams and deep spruce woods. For chilly fog rising off the Pacific and deep snow blanketing the mountains. 00:13:01.224 --> 00:13:18.344 We fight for all the creation that shares this planet with us. We don’t know half the species on Earth we’re wiping out. 00:13:18.344 --> 00:13:32.652 And of course, we fight alongside our brothers and sisters around the world. You’ve seen the pictures as I talk: these are our comrades. 00:13:32.652 --> 00:13:45.562 Most of these people, as you see, come from places that have not caused this problem, and yet they’re willing to be in deep solidarity with us. 00:13:45.562 --> 00:13:50.612 That’s truly admirable and it puts a real moral burden on us. 00:13:50.612 --> 00:13:56.662 Never let anyone tell you, that environmentalism is something that rich, white people do. 00:13:56.662 --> 00:14:02.284 Most of the people that we work with around the world are poor and black and brown and Asian and young, 00:14:02.284 --> 00:14:14.155 because that’s what most of the world is made up of, and they care about the future as anyone else. 00:14:14.155 --> 00:14:23.180 We have to fight, finally, without any guarantee that we are going to win. 00:14:23.180 --> 00:14:31.724 We have waited late to get started and our adversaries are strong and we do not know how this is going to come out. 00:14:31.724 --> 00:14:40.769 If you were a betting person, you might bet we were going to lose because so far that’s what happened, but that’s not a bet you’re allowed to make. 00:14:40.769 --> 00:14:53.576 The only thing that a morally awake person can do when the worst thing that’s ever happened is happening is try to change those odds. 00:14:53.576 --> 00:15:09.108 I have spent most of my last few years in rooms around the world with great people, many of whom will be refugees before this century is out, 00:15:09.108 --> 00:15:13.821 some of whom may be dead from climate change before this century is out. 00:15:13.821 --> 00:15:21.532 No guarantee that we will win, but from them a complete guarantee that we will fight with everything we have. 00:15:21.532 --> 00:15:30.354 It is always an honor for me to be in those rooms. It is the greatest honor for me to be with you tonight. 00:15:30.354 --> 00:15:39.755 No guarantee that we will win, but we will fight side by side, as long as we’ve got. Thank you all so much.