The Last Hours of Humanity: Warming the World to Extinction

"Last Hours" is the first in a series of short films that explore the perils of climate change and the solutions to avert climate disaster.

Until now, most of the discussion about
global warming has been about its

destructive impact on the climate,

about melting sea ice, about the potential
for massive crop failure,

and about the millions of refugees who will
have to flee from rising sea levels.

And, while these things are
terrifying in their own right,

no one, except for a small group of
people in the scientific community,

has been recently talking much
about the E-word: Extinction.

Well it's time we started talking
about extinction,

because if we continue
on the path we' re on,

if we continue pumping fossil fuels
into the atmosphere,

it won't just mean the end
to the Arctic sea ice,

or the end miles of shoreland.

It could mean the end of most
large complex life forms on Earth.

That would include us.

The possibility that global warming could
lead to a mass extinction,

like our planet has seen
five times in the deep geologic past,

is the subject of our new documentary:
Last Hours,

which we're proud to present
in it's entirety, tonight,

right here on the Big Picture.

Consider this:

Nearly all life on Earth
could go extinct

because of man-made climate change.

LAST HOURS

It's hard to imagine
Earth without life.

We take life for granted

but life has not always flourished here.

The Earth has experienced
dramatic loss of life,

or what we call mass extinctions,
five times

over the course of geologic history.
Each one of these events,

has resulted in the loss of more than
half of all life on Earth.

And the largest and
most devastating of all

was the Permian mass extinction.

Almost all life on Earth disapeared.

A mass extinction is, in essence, just the greatest
crisis that life on Earth is has ever suffered.

By the end of the Permian mass extinction,

ninety-five percent of all
life on the planet was dead.

And why is this important today?
Because today

a sixth extinction is underway.

One that will test the survival
of, not just human civilization, but

possibly of the human species itself.

And it bears a horrifying
resembelence to

several previous global
warming driven events,

like the Permian mass extinction.

I think it is certainly extremely significant that

a lot of the main crises in the past
are associated with global warming,

and so, with obvious implications
for the present-day.

When we think of extinctions, we think of
the dinosaur killing K-T mass extinction,

which was triggered by a sudden
catastrophic collision with a meteorite.

But the most deadly force
behind all extinctions isn't from outer space.

It's from underground, underwater
and under the ice,

where trillions of tons of carbon lies in
wait, in the form of frozen methane.

If this methane melts and
is released into the atmosphere,

it will produce a sudden and
massive global warming.

During the Permian mass extinction,
greenhouse gases were released

by volcanic eruptions in an area,
that is today called the Siberian traps.

These, along with the heat
from the lava flow itself,

warmed the atmosphere of the Earth,
by at least 6º Celsius.

that much global warming took a huge toll
on land, animals and plants.

But, far worse,
it warmed the oceans enough

that methane, frozen deep
under the sea, melted

and was released into the atmosphere.
That enormous realese of methane,

a powerful greenhouse gas, pretty much
doubled the level of global warming,

and killed off over 95% of all life,
both on earth and in the seas.

It's a kind of a scary thought

but...

maybe one of the best
geological analogues

for this kind of rapid changes in climate

and CO2 in the atmosphere,

that we're going to witness now, and for
the next few centuries potentially,

is this End Permian time when

ahm... as you know, that culminated in

one of the the largest mass extinctions
that we know of.

And of course, looking at these ancient
events shows us times of global warming.

And the atmosphere doesn't care whether
the carbon dioxide comes from

a human activity or from a volcano.

It has the same end effects.
The numbers have a similar

from some of the giant lava flows in Siberia.
The amount of carbon dioxide released

is very similar to those of...
from fossil fuel burning,

carbon dioxide released, like we're
doing, decade after decade, today.

Today, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
is above 400 parts per million,

a level not seen any time in the history
of human life on Earth.

We are increasing CO2 levels
in the atmosphere,

at rates far greater than
any of the most rapid

events that happened in the deep
geological past.

There is no precedent, for what we are doing
to the atmosphere. It is an uncontrolled experiment.

As you warm the environment,
that causes the release of more carbon,

which is either methane or carbon
dioxide, into the atmosphere.

That, in turn, increases the rate of warming,
which releases even more carbon

and you can see how this
begins to cause a so-called

positive feedback, or just uhn...
ever-increasing amount of heating.

At the end of 2012,
the World Bank issued a report

warning governments
around the world

that a 5 degree
temperature increase is likely,

unless drastic action is taken to curb
carbon emissions.

And the six degree increase was,
according to some scientists,

all it took to pass a tipping point,
during the Permian mass extinction.

There's a virtual
scientific consensus

that 6 degrees was all it took
to initiate the PETM.

In both cases, it involved
massive releases of methane.

We know that in the bottom
of the sea floor,

large parts of the ocean margins have
methane in the solid-phase

and what happens is... that ahn

when you change the temperature, it
can dissociate or even, think of it as, melting this

this frozen methane phase.
And so the idea is that,

during some these events,
we have some triggering, or inicial cause,

that forces the ocean temperatures to warm,
especially in deep parts the ocean.

And, then, that associates or melts this

solid methane phase,
which then goes into gas,

which can get into the ocean
and into the atmosphere.

Methane is way worse than carbon dioxide.

It's innert right now, in the soil.
It's not affecting anybody in any way.

When you warm it,
it becomes a gas.

Then it starts acting immediately
as a greenhouse gas.

So this is an immediat and very short term
threat to planetary civilization.

The risk is, so called, runaway
greenhouse, which is

the self-correcting mechanism
cease to kick in,

and you heat by little bits,
then you release methane

that then causes excess heating, and you
realese more methane, and so it goes on.

That's... probably the biggest
issue that we face.

Sea level changes, the big one, too, a very
expensive one to manage, but

that methane the release from the tundra...

once that gets under way,
we reach a point where

we lose the option of having an
effective mitigation strategy.

We can always abandons coastlines

but if we activate enough of the carbon reservoir
in the terrestrial biosphere,

that becomes unmanageable.
That's kind of a no...

unfortunately kind of a doomsday scenario,
that our trajectory is pointed to.

Most disconcerting,
the Arctic ice sheet,

that keeps the carbon stable,
is melting rapidly.

In July 2013, the Arctic lost
41 000 square miles,

an area half the size of Kansas,
every single day.

And scientists have witnessed
kilometer wide columns of methane gas

bubling up from the ocean floor,
suggesting the tipping point

to runaway climate change
is dangerously close.

While it appears we've already passed the tipping point
for a ice-free Arctic in the summer

other tipping points could be centuries, generations,
or just years down the road.

The big danger about tipping points is
that you can only recognize them

when it's too late
to do anything about it.

So why should we risk
these catastrophic events?

In the case of climate change,
our planet's life support system is at stake.

So it is our obligation to take
every precaution to stop it.

We must begin to reduce
carbon emissions dramatically.

Yet, at this moment, we're facing a crisis
of world leadership.

Powerful fossil fuel corporations are
fighting to monetize

trillions of tons of carbon they own,
that are still underground.

The world community,
global citizens, governments,

leaders, NGOs and corporations
must come together

step forward
and take decisive action.

Let's continue the research
but let's not wait

until we pass more tipping points.

This is the most urgent of times
and a most urgent message.

Please forward this
to as many people as can.

A number of people have endorsed this film ,
including former Vice President Al Gore,

who said that carbon pollution,
from burning fossil fuels,

is changing our climate
and transforming our world,

from more destructive and more frequent
climate-related extreme weather events

and rise in sea levels, to climate refugees,
crop failure and water scarcity,

the consequences are profound.
Al Gore said Last Hours expertly explains

how we got here and what will happen
if we don't work together to stop it.

It is a needed and urgent call to action.

Kumi Naidoo, the international director of
Greenpeace International, said that

Last Hours is a captivating,
extremely compelling, appeal

meant to awaken politicians and business
leaders to take climate change action

and stop runaway catastrophic
climate change.

Few films have managed to capture
the sense of urgency as well as Last Hours.

In the context of science telling us

that emissions need to peak by 2015
and then come down

and with politicians doing little
to reflect this urgency

this is a much needed asset
for the climate movement.

And Maggie Fox, president and CEO of the
Climate Reality Project

praise Last Hours saing that,
in the 18th century, Edmund Burke wrote:

"Those who don't know history are
destined to repeat it."

Many years later, Last Hours makes clear

how much we have to learn
from our planet's history

to truly understand the potent threat
of trapped methane.

This film acts as
a call to action on climate

that we must heed.
The stakes couldn't be higher.

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