An amazing documentary that envisions how our world could be in 2040 if we took the Environment seriously. Don't do this for yourself. Do this for our children and grandchildren.
My name is Damon. And this is my daughter, velvet. Are you trying to plant dad? She's just turned four. Her days are spent in a happy bubble, created by my excellent wife, Zoe. Yeah?
She's lucky enough that her major concerns right now are numbers... Daddy. Mummy. Velly.
So how many pieces is that?
How to tell a knock knock joke... - Knock, knock.
- Who's there?
- Unicorn. - Unicorn who?
Unicorn jump over the rainbow.
Oh, that's who it is!
And the elusive art of sleep direction.
But soon she'll have to leave that happy bubble and face a rapidly deteriorating environment.
faster than the scientists predicted. We're seeing large waterfalls pouring off the side of the ice. It's an alarming acceleration. The need to address this is so urgent...
That it often overwhelms me. The simplest way I can explain our current predicament is to briefly channel my year nine science teacher and pretend our houseis the planet.
Carbon is a miraculous building block and for millions of years, our planet has been part ofa natural carbon cycle.
Some gets released, some gets stored, and if these thingsare balanced, then equilibrium is maintained.
But since the industrial revolution, we've broken the balance and have beendramatically increasing the release of the earth's stored carbon into our atmosphere.
For hundreds of thousands of years, we've hovered between about 180 and 280 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
But since the industrial revolution, that number has shot up over 40% to more than 400 parts per million, trapping heat in our atmosphere. More than 90% of the excess heat being trapped is absorbed by our oceans. The oceans also absorb much of the extra carbon dioxide, and so are now 30% more acidic than they were 150 years ago.
And this is impacting on biodiversity, as many sea creatures, such as oysters or clams,are struggling to make their shells. But the increased heat and overall energy in the system also leads to more intense weather events. Hotter air can hold more moisture, so rainfalls, storms, hurricanes, floods, even snowfalls can become heavier.
It is true that the climate has always been changing. It just hasn't changedthis rapidly in at least 50 million years. Unfortunately, the increase in heat also means that our polar caps and glaciers are rapidly melting, which causes sea level rise that threatens hundreds of millions of people
The earth is our collective home, but we're actually renting it from future generations. So we need to not only rapidly reduce our emissions...
Oi! Righto!
But also find ways to sequester or draw down the excess carbon dioxide that has already been put into the system. Many scientists believe that getting down to 350 ppm would be a terrific goal.
So I think we're all pretty aware that when it comes to predictions of the future, they're almost entirely negative at the moment. Any time you open your newsfeed or social media, there's some kind of doom and gloom story about the future of our environment.
And as a father, I... I think there's room for a different story. A story that focuses on the solutions to some of these problems.
So my plan is to go out and find some of these solutions and then create a visionof a different future for our daughter.
What about... I want to show her what the world would look like if the solutions I findwere implemented today.
So, what would the world look like in 2040 if we just embraced the best that already exists?
And that's my only rule. Everything I show her in this 2040, has to exist today,in some form.
I can't make it up.
I am calling this an exercise in what I call “fact-based dreaming…”
(Audio Available)
