BILL (over TV): Is the climate in this country really changing?
REPORTER (over TV): Yes, and not only in this country, Bill.
There are many lines of evidence, which show that the climate has slowly been
warming up during the 20th century over almost the entire Earth's surface.
MAN (over TV): Man may be unwittingly changing the world's climate through
the waste products of his civilization.
REPORTER (over TV): Over pollution unless checked could so warm the Earth in
200 years as to create a greenhouse effect melting the Arctic ice.
REPORTER (over TV): The temperature of the lower atmosphere will rise perhaps
to a greater extent than at any time since the end of the last ice age.
JAMES: This evidence represents a very strong case, in my opinion,
that the greenhouse effect has been detected and it is changing our climate now.
NARRATOR: The science is in: for decades, there's been scientific consensus that
climate change is real, is caused by humans and poses a threat to civilization.
CARL: Solving these problems requires a transnational
and transgenerational perspective.
NARRATOR: Starting at the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992,
the international community began working together to address the
greatest issue in human history.
REPORTER (over TV): 175 nations did sign a blueprint for the world's future.
It's a weaker blueprint than many wanted,
but the real test comes in the months and years ahead.
NARRATOR: Every year since 1995, the global community has gathered together
to negotiate a lasting agreement to reduce carbon emissions.
REPORTER (over TV): In Japan today, talks on a global climate
treaty went way into overtime.
REPORTER (over TV): The ink is barely dry on an historic agreement to fight
global warming and already its future is in doubt.
REPORTER (over TV): Big polluters like India
and China haven't signed on.
NARRATOR: Despite the failings of international climate negotiations and agreements,
advocates from cities, towns and states, along with businesses and universities,
continued their pressure.
REPORTER (over TV): Hundreds of thousands took to the streets of New York today.
NARRATOR: And renewable energy continued to grow.
REPORTER (over TV): You may want to consider a job in the clean energy industry.
It is growing and they need more workers.
NARRATOR: And in 2015, led by the world's largest carbon emitters,
the world came together in Paris.
REPORTER (over TV): It took two decades, but now a historic agreement on climate
change signed by nearly every nation in the world.
(speaking in foreign language).
MAN (over TV): We've written a new chapter of hope in the lives of
7 billion people on the planet.
REPORTER (over TV): The new deal will not end global warming,
but signatories have agreed to reduce their carbon emissions
and it's being seen as a turning point.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: The Paris Agreement represents the best chance we've had
to save the one planet that we've got.
(applause).
PRESIDENT TRUMP: In order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America
and its citizens, the United States will withdraw
from the Paris Climate Accord.
I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.
PEDUTO: It's the afternoon. I'm sitting in this room.
I'm looking over my phone and I get an alert and the alert says,
"I was elected to represent the people of Pittsburgh, not Paris."
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you.
PEDUTO: Read it twice.
Went into to my chief of staff's office and just yelled, "Pittsburgh?!"
And he's like, what are you talking about?
And I said,
and I started tweeting back that Pittsburgh was going
to stay in the Paris Agreement.
(inaudible).
EVA: In the aftermath of President Trump pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement,
Pittsburghers came out in thousands to say that we were going to take climate action
into our own hands and move forward as a city.
PEDUTO: And so we decided to show how policy at a local level will help
to change the world.
REPORTER (over TV): Mayor Bill Peduto signed an executive order today that requires
the city to follow the guidelines of the Paris Agreement.
NARRATOR: It wasn't just Pittsburgh that reacted to this announcement.
A movement was galvanized around the country.
REPORTER (over TV): Already this morning there is a new drive that's gaining steam to
stick to the U.S.'s commitments combating climate change despite President Trump.
NARRATOR: In the U.S., hundreds of cities, states, universities and businesses
joined the ranks of those already committed to the goals of Paris.
BROWN: Mayors and governors, we're here in the action on the field taking the kind of
steps that are needed to get the job done to preserve our climate.
NARRATOR: A revolution is underway to tackle our biggest sources of carbon emissions,
creating transformations in how people get around, build buildings,
grow food and generate electricity.
So while coal plants continue to close, clean energy is creating jobs,
growing the economy and lowering emissions.
PEDUTO (off screen): Despite the President's announcement,
we are still moving ahead in renewable energy.
There are now more jobs in renewable energy in the state of Pennsylvania than coal,
natural gas and oil combined.
CURBELO (off screen): I think the president has it wrong.
This isn't a zero-sum game where we either save the environment
or grow the economy.
We can do both at the same time.
BLOOMBERG: The American government may have pulled out of the Paris Agreement,
but the American people are committed to its goals and there is nothing Washington
can do to stop us.
NARRATOR: The solutions are at hand and it couldn't be soon enough.
The front lines of climate change are now in everyone's backyard,
from California to Iowa to Florida.
Climate change is not coming, it's already here.
CASTRO: I grew up in the heart of South Miami and when I was 10 years old,
I first started to get involved in surfing.
I remember coming out on South Beach early on when I started to surf and I remember
just seeing vast land of sand before you hit the beach and now you know I come back
to Miami and I continue to be shocked at how close the water is encroaching on South Beach.
I think we're going to have to adapt very, very quickly to the rising tides
and to the rising seas.
CLEETUS: Climate change isn't just about some far-off future.
It's actually happening all around us right now.
And here in the U.S. along the east and Gulf coast
of the country in particular, we have some real hotspots
where we're seeing even greater and faster rates of sea level rise.
MANN: In Florida, there isn't much elevation and so they are now dealing with perennial
flooding in Miami Beach, in Fort Lauderdale, from what they call king tides.
REPORTER (over TV): King tides are here and the rising floodwaters are creating
some trouble for drivers and residents.
REPORTER (over TV): Salt water seeping up through storm drains and over the sea wall,
soaking the streets of Miami Beach.
MANN (off screen): These are seasonal high tides that have been there
for the eons and yet now when they
arrive in the fall they flood the streets of Miami Beach,
and that's because of sea level rise.
CASTRO: In fact, there is an image of an octopus that was found in a parking garage half
mile in from the beach and it's just showing that, you know, this is real deal.
LEWIS: The big focus in Miami Beach, I believe, is on adaptation.
They're spending $500,000,000 on pumps to keep the tidal water off
the streets during king tides.
So, you adapt to climate change by elevating roads,
putting that green infrastructure in,
slowing the worse effects from happening.
So that's getting a lot of attention because people see that as,
keep the water away from me kind of thing.
What they're not doing quick enough is addressing things like salt water intrusion and
when people talk about sea level rise being the thing that gets us out of here
because we're flooding, I wonder if it couldn't be freshwater vulnerability that
gets us out of here faster.
NARRATOR: The Everglades is a critical source of fresh drinking water
for nearly eight million people in southern Florida.
But as the sea rises, it's moving inland, pushing sea water into the aquifers
and the Everglades, and threatening the freshwater supply for the entire region.
CASTRO: A lot of people, when they think of sea level rise in the State of Florida,
they think encroaching on the coastlines, but because we're,
we're built on this porous limestone,
water can actually percolate up.
WANLESS: Once the water level's up, the water will just come through.
CASTRO (off screen): Come through, right.
WANLESS: And there's essentially nothing we can do to stop that.
That's a real problem because as sea level has risen,
we've been pulling harder on wells,
sucking harder, so we're sort of pulling salt water in from the ocean too, doing that.
CASTRO (off screen): It's almost, we're pulling up brackish water, essentially.
WANLESS (off screen): Yes, we've had to move the wells farther and farther inland.
I think probably within the next 30 years we'll have lost our fresh water
in South Florida.
MANN (off screen): Look at global sea level rise.
Here's another area of the science where, as we learn more,
we're discovering that we may be worse off than we thought,
the models may have under predicted the amount of sea level rise that we could see
by just the end of this century.
If you look at even a recent report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
they were looking at a worst-case scenario of a little more than
three feet of sea level rise by the end of the century, globally.
But now there's enough new science that's come in that tells us that the ice sheets
are losing ice faster, that there are processes that we didn't have in our models
and as we put them into the models, we're now learning that we could be in
for more than six feet of global sea level rise by the end of the century.
Even if we stop emitting carbon to the atmosphere now,
just because of the inertia of the system,
we will continue to see sea level rise for some time.
And if we continue with business as usual, if we don't do anything about our
escalating carbon emissions, there is nothing to prevent us from melting most of the
West Antarctic ice sheet and a large part of the Greenland ice sheet.
And if we go down that path then at some point in the future we could be seeing
20 feet of global sea level rise.
LUBBER (off screen): It's not happening ten years from now, it is happening now.
Floods are devastating communities, are devastating economies,
are taking away people's homes.
Think about Miami Beach.
We're still seeing building in those areas.
People want to live on the waterfront, but the economic signals are very clear.
Insurance companies don't want to ensure those places, uh, they're being redlined out,
meaning they're allowing people to fend for themselves or they're raising their
prices so high that you can't even get insurance.
NARRATOR: In the U.S., it's estimated that in about 25 years,
more than 300,000 homes and businesses valued
at $135 billion may be chronically flooded.
And by the end of the century, that number grows to two and a half million.
ROS-LEHTINEN: I represent communities that people would think they're pretty
conservative and yet now that they see the impact, the economic impact that sea level
rise and climate change has on their pocketbooks and the revenues that their cities
bring in, they're understanding that this is a conservative issue.
But many Republican public officials do not see the urgency in this because
it has been a partisan issue for a long time.
INHOFE: When you say that science is settled and the overwhelming scientific
analysis comes to that conclusion, frankly that is just not correct.
CRUZ: Climate change is not science, it's religion.
CLEETUS (off screen): Climate denialism, the sort of anti-science attitude
about what is clearly observable and which has
been supported by multiple lines of evidence
didn't happen by accident.
There has been a very well-funded, long-standing fossil fuel lobby that has
been spreading disinformation and trying to undercut any
attempt at climate action in the U.S.
GERRARD (off screen): To this day, Koch Industries,
a privately-owned fossil fuel company,
have been funding climate denial activities,
have been working as hard as they can to fight climate regulation.
REPORTER (over TV): The Koch brothers are among the nation's best-known
politically active families.
The billionaires' network of political action committees and advocacy groups
will spend $300,000,000 on campaign 2016.
TAYLOR (off screen): Most Republicans in the House and the Senate privately
understand full well climate change is real,
it's not this fiction, it's not a scam,
it's not concocted by liberal activists trying to destroy capitalism.
Uh, that it's a dangerous thing, that we're seeing its impacts now.
They're afraid of what it's going to mean for the future.
They just don't know exactly what they can do about it politically that won't cost
them their job through a primary challenge.
GERRARD: Climate denial is not limited to the federal government.
Some governors have engaged in some similar activities.
Governor Rick Scott of Florida, for example.
REPORTER (over TV): State's Department of Environmental Protection
banned some employees from using the term climate change or global warming.
This unwritten policy went into effect after
Republican Governor Rick Scott took office.
GERRARD (off screen): It's almost as if President Trump is following Governor Scott
and adopting the same kinds of tactics.
Almost all of his cabinet members have been out front in denying that
climate change is being caused mostly by human activities.
PRUITT: Thank you Mr. President.
Your decision today to exit the Paris Accord reflects your unflinching commitment
to put America first.
GERRARD (off screen): They have been going through various federal documents
and x-ing out the terms "climate change."
They want to slash the budgets of the scientific research agencies.
In every imaginable way,
the administration has been discouraging the use of science.
ROS-LEHTINEN: It's hard for us to move any kind of legislation because if we have
the administration against us, it's just really difficult.
SUH: This administration clearly has the environment in its bull's-eye and is clearly,
and systematically, going after every single environmental statute and
regulation as well as the federal government's ability to address climate change.
CURBELO (off screen): And what I would tell my friends in public office
is we need your leadership, both sides of the aisle.
Doesn't matter if you're Republican, Democrat, Independent,
you have a role to play here and those of us who are from Florida should
be even more active and aggressive in pursuing these policies because you know
what's bad for jobs and the economy?
Sea level rise and coastal flooding and saltwater intrusion into the Everglades
where our drinking supply rests in South Florida.
That will really devastate our region.
It actually won't allow us to live there anymore.
WANLESS (off screen): I think somewhere later in this century,
Miami as we know it is going to be unlivable.
So in reality, in South Florida, we're just going to be leaving.
We don't have the problem.
You, up in Orlando.
You better set aside your groundwater resources and you better plan for us.
You really better plan 'cause we are coming.
It's not if we don't do something, we may be coming.
We will be coming.
NARRATOR: A recent study showed that by the end of the century,
as many as two and a half million people from southern Florida
may be displaced due to climate change.
And many of them could be headed to Orlando.
The city is not only preparing for these impacts of climate change,
they're also doing their part to fight it,
despite federal inaction.
ISAAC (off screen): The message around climate has been so hard for
ordinary people to plug into.
It's been big and scary and something that's happening far away and
something that I personally can't do anything about.
And that's not true.
It is big and scary.
But there are things we can do and we can impact policy in our communities
that can make a big difference.
Yeah, if everybody could take a seat.
So, I want to say welcome and thank you for being here.
When we founded the First 50 Coalition, our goal was to make our city one of the
first 50 in the nation to commit to 100% renewable energy by 2050.
DYER (off screen): A lot of greenhouse gas emissions come from cities
so after the current administration withdrew us from Paris,
there had been a number of cities that stepped
up to the challenge on renewables and just kind of galvanized us at the local
level that we had to pick up the sword and charge forward.
SPEAKER: Good afternoon, I'd like to welcome you to the August 8th meeting
of the Orlando City Council.
We're going to...
ISAAC: So we went to the city council to get a commitment to 100% renewable energy by 2050;
we were hopeful.
Every single person in that room was in support.
I don't think that's ever happened at a city commission meeting before,
where absolutely everybody is in favor of something.
DYER: All those in favor of the motion indicate so by saying aye.
Those opposed, and so the motion carries unanimously.
(applause).
ISAAC: And they voted yes!
REPORTER (over TV): The City of Orlando has committed to running on
clean renewable energy by 2050.
ISAAC: And that was the whole reason we started is we needed a win.
We need a positive momentum.
We needed to say this is the kind of community we could be.
NARRATOR: Commitments to renewable energy are being made around the country.
More than 75 cities throughout the U.S. have already committed
to using 100% renewable energy by midcentury.
To help make this happen cities are developing innovative solutions.
CASTRO: One of the things that we're doing in Orlando is testing floating solar,
what we call floating voltaics.
There's 9,000 man-made ponds, that have been created to capture storm water from the
streets and we've started to test out in some of these ponds how to put floating
solar on top of them.
We've also turned on one of the largest installations that we have,
it's a 12-megawatt community solar farm, and it was literally over decades
a landfill where we were turning coal ash after being burned and burying it.
And we realized that after that was capped,
that that was a prime spot for us to put solar up.
We're also transitioning our downtown bus rapid transit system to
100% electric zero-emission buses.
Another high priority is the energy-food nexus.
We're shipping food all around the world, all around the country,
15 to 1,800 miles per person, per plate, per day.
And in fact, people have done research that food systems contribute
as much as a third of global climate change.
So we were like, all right,
one, we need to localize it, as local as possible.
Two, we need to use zero-emission transportation to build,
maintain and distribute that produce to the end users, markets and restaurants.
And that's the epiphany that we had with Fleet Farming.
PERRY (off screen): So starting out, we're going to go ahead and
have a group that's going to harvest and
a group that's going to turn a plot.
CASTRO: There's 40 million acres of lawns across this country that are absorbing
a lot of the water resources, that we're spraying a lot of fertilizers on and causing
other problems and that we could convert into edible landscapes that
can produce our food in our neighborhood.
Not just local but hyper-local.
PERRY: Ok so I'm going to go ahead and show you how to harvest.
Basically, a homeowner pays a startup fee.
We farm their front lawns with the help of the community during
our biweekly swarm rides.
We ride bikes out and we teach the community how to farm these front lawns.
CASTRO: It's a win-win situation across the board.
The homeowner who provides the land is actually getting all of that produce
free of charge as much as they want.
The excess that's grown, we're harvesting and we're taking it to market.
PERRY (off screen): We got some heirloom carrots, watermelon radishes and beets.
WOMAN (off screen): Awesome!
CASTRO (off screen): Now we're scaling.
We're in West Oakland, California, we're operating in Jacksonville,
we have two branches in Orlando, so we're pretty excited.
NARRATOR: The pioneering efforts in cities like Orlando are essential to achieving
the goals of the Paris Climate Accord.
Orlando itself is not only bracing for an influx of people from southern Florida,
but because of major hurricanes, which devastated the Caribbean in 2017,
refugees from U.S. territories have already arrived.
REPORTER (over TV): 215,000 people have arrived in Florida alone.
Many survivors are flying to Orlando International Airport
where there's a resource center.
CASTRO: Since Irma and Maria, we've seen now 300,000 people flee to our city and
that's been a big challenge in terms of education for the kids, putting them into schools,
finding reliable, affordable housing for them and then of
course finding them jobs to sustain their families.
EMMANUEL: We have a lot of loved ones who came to the United States.
And went to different states.
But there are still some in Puerto Rico who wish to leave and come here.
CRISTAL: There was a lot of devastation throughout Puerto Rico.
Still there are other areas that still don't have electricity.
It's a long time to be living day-to-day.
Not knowing what you're going to eat.
Not being able to sustain your children. Because you think about them.
They don't understand the situation,
as much as you try to explain it to them.
LUBBER (off screen): The hurricane season of 2017,
we saw flooding that has absolutely devastated
Puerto Rico, Houston, Texas, hundreds of billions of dollars'
worth of damage to people's lives, their homes.
REPORTER (over TV): Hurricane Harvey barreling into the Texas coastline as
a category four storm with 130 mile-an-hour winds.
REPORTER (over TV): It's not just a little bit of rain.
Look at this, feet of rain is what we're communicating, not inches but feet.
CLEETUS (off screen): There are now studies that show that the extreme rainfall that
accompanied that hurricane was made much more likely because of climate change.
MANN: Those warm ocean temperatures meant that there were record amounts of
moisture within that storm, moisture that was available to produce the worst flooding
event on record in the United States.
REPORTER (over TV): For a third brutal day, torrential rain,
people rescued from flooded homes.
WOMAN (over TV): There's water everywhere. We have nowhere to go.
I have all my children. I lost everything.
I have nothing but the clothes on my back.
MANN (off screen): These storms are now about 20% more destructive because
of the overall warming of the ocean,
which thus far is less than a degree Celsius.
Imagine what two degrees Celsius gives us?
REPORTER (over TV): The Caribbean has just been getting hammered.
Here's storm number four in just weeks.
REPORTER (over TV): The winds are going to be devastating.
CRISTAL (off screen): We were left without electricity or water.
We had to find water, food, gasoline,
transportation and communication.
CLEETUS (off screen): These types of extreme weather
events exacerbate already existing challenges so in the case of
Puerto Rico the electricity grid had been under-invested
in for a very long period of time.
And then this hurricane came along and pretty much decimated it.
And that meant not just that people lost power but when they lost power,
people lost lives.
NARRATOR: Puerto Rican officials originally put the death toll at 64.
But nearly a year later, raised that estimate to almost 3,000 people when
accounting for the extended loss of electricity and the lack of food,
water and healthcare after the storm.
Yet in the face of tragedy, a remote town of 18,000 in the mountains of Puerto Rico,
showed how renewable energy can be a life-saving solution.
MAN (off screen): We are transmitting live from Casa Pueblo Radio AM 1020,
the station that kept you informed both during and after Hurricane Maria.
We continue with listening to some beautiful music on Casa Pueblo Radio,
the big hitter of Puerto Rico.
DEYA (off screen): Casa Pueblo is a community-based organization.
We're actively working to change our energy landscape in Adjuntas.
Everything in Casa Pueblo runs on clean energy.
The radio, the production of our brand of coffee.
We have cinema theater run on solar power.
So our installation from being, let's say 10% solar power in 1999
now is fully solar power.
After the hurricane, the whole energy system collapsed in Puerto Rico,
but not in Casa Pueblo.
In Casa Pueblo we opened right away and it was used as an energy oasis.
MARTINEZ-SANCHO (off screen): Everyone saw Casa Pueblo as the place to look for help
because power was not anywhere around.
I remember coming to Casa Pueblo and see how many people will do the line
for the solar lamps.
At least we could give them an option, a space, to solve their problems.
DEYA: If you look around, most of the suffering is related to the energy component:
food storage, medicine, medical treatment,
so we decided to do the solar urgency system for 10 houses,
with special needs, to give a small solar system and
enough energy to run special equipment like the dialysis machine
or the respiratory machine.
And that's Maria's house.
DEYA: How did Hurricane Maria affect your life?
MARIA: With respect to my health, it's been very difficult.
I am a dialysis patient and a survivor of open-heart surgery.
It's a bit difficult because I didn't have electricity
to use my dialysis machine.
I began to swell up because of the toxins in my body.
DEYA (off screen): When Casa Pueblo approached you
and first proposed the possibility of installing a solar power system
in your home, what did you think at the time?
MARIA: For me, it was a great gift,
a great joy.
Because I was able to have solar power for my machine and get my dialysis.
Thanks to God, yes.
DEYA (off screen): In Puerto Rico,
we have to move away from fossil fuel because
it's damaging our island, our nature and others.
So we are pushing for energy self-sufficiency for the country,
but in order to do that, the first level is to reach that goal, at a local level,
at a community level, to build from the bottom up and to teach others in other parts of
Puerto Rico that we can free our self by engaging in these alternative
that are within our reach.
LOCKE (off screen): Renewable energy is a core strategy for building resilience
right now in the Caribbean.
I think it's in every circle of conversation and dialogue, whether you be at the highest
levels of government or at the local community level.
And so several islands including the Virgin Islands, Dominica and many others are
using the recent hurricanes in the Caribbean as a catalyst for replacing 20-century
fossil fuel grids with 21st century renewable grids.
These islands do not want to be referred to as the victims of climate change
and instead are really the ones bold enough to provide the solutions.
NARRATOR: Although Caribbean countries and other small island nations collectively
produce less than 1% of global greenhouse gases, some are an important testing ground
and a model for the future of clean energy.
Scientists say that we must scale up renewables to meet the Paris targets.
But how fast we must act, and what technologies we use, are the critical questions.
TAYLOR (off screen): We have to reduce the global consumption of
fossil fuels by about 80% by the year 2050 and completely
remove them from the global economy only
a couple of decades thereafter.
And then figure a way to get greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.
That is a huge challenge.
ROBERTS: If you map out what it's going to take to hit those targets,
you basically have two broad choices and which of those choices you choose
probably depends on who's making your model.
If you're an oil company,
like Shell for instance just came out with a scenario that shows
in the short term continued rise in fossil fuels and then
around mid-century this plunge in emissions and then,
the crucial bit, in the latter half of the century,
implementing technologies which will involve capturing and burying megatons of
carbon, what they call negative emissions.
But maybe we shouldn't bet the future of the human race on a gigantic mega-project
that we have not started and do not know if we can do.
Maybe that's not a good gamble.
But if you look at the scenarios that show us hitting our targets without
negative emissions, it involves in the short term a very substantial,
rapid decline in carbon emissions, which means you've got to start
deploying the technology you have as fast as possible.
MANN (off screen): So we need to be putting our foot on the renewable
energy acceleration pedal
because if we can act at the municipal level, at the city level, at the state level,
then we can actually make a sizable contribution towards reducing our carbon emissions.
NARRATOR: Renewable energy is being embraced as a real alternative to fossil fuels.
As their costs plummet, the movement continues to grow and many in America's
heartland are reaping the benefits.
(mooing).
HOGG (off screen): Iowa is a very beautiful state.
Contrary to what most people think, it's not flat.
It's got rolling, beautiful hills, it's a very green state in the summer.
We have great communities;
we have great people, very friendly.
JOHANNSEN: Politically, Iowa's been really interesting.
It's been a purple state for a really long time.
It voted for Al Gore, George W. Bush,
voted for Obama twice and then went for Trump.
HOGG: People like to be independent, self-reliant.
Agriculture is the backbone of the state.
It's just an incredibly important industry, economically, to our state,
but it's much more than economics, it's about culture and it really is something
that we take great pride in.
YODER: I have probably a herd of 60 cows, with 50 milking at any time.
It's a hard way to make a living and a good way to raise a family.
I was born in Kalona here.
My parents and grandparents were all farmers.
MCKENNA (off screen): Kalona is a small community.
You know, when I took the job I really didn't know much about the history
of the background here.
You know, people don't move from here.
They know their cousins and their cousins' cousins.
So you've got to watch who you talk to.
Everybody knows everybody.
We're a small rural electric co-op.
The co-op's owned by the people and we have 620 customers.
This is the shop of the hundred-year-old co-op.
Yeah. These are just all our customers.
HOGG (off screen): Rural electric co-ops were a creation of the
New Deal to make sure that
electricity would be extended to people in small rural communities where previously
they didn't have electricity.
In Iowa, rural electric co-ops provide electricity for about one eighth of
the state's population and Warren has taken his rural electric co-op and
been a solar energy leader representing a conservative community in Iowa.
MCKENNA (off screen): Initially we took an early vision to cut our outside energy
purchases by 25%.
Solar kind of popped into the picture in 2008.
We wanted to sell one panel.
If you wanted one panel, you could call us and we'll just try this.
Well, in the first week the flyer went in the bill, we sold twice the number of
panels that we planned for.
So with Leighton, some solar had started to build out around him and he decided,
hey, this would work.
So he tried one array and then next thing you know they're putting in two or three
and those aren't cheap arrays.
When you're a farmer, you spend that kind of money, it has to work
and that's why they come here.
YODER (off screen): We use a lot of electricity on a dairy farm.
You use it to cool the milk for the cows.
You use it to run the milking machines and a lot of motors that you have.
We have it fixed here with our little cooperative that it pays you to have solar energy.
You're always looking to cut some more costs so you have some profits left over.
Most people are green, that kind of green.
MCKENNA (off screen): You get this "A-ha" moment when somebody comes in,
that's what you, your perspective,
you think they're very, very conservative politically and
yet then they buy into this.
Once our solar started to grow around here,
Ryan from the henhouse had approached us on solar.
MILLER (off screen): Here at Farmers Hen House we're a specialty egg company,
so we produce and distribute organic and free-range eggs.
We process anywhere from 900,000 to a million eggs a day, which is a lot.
Energy is one of our large costs of operation, but all the power all the time it's
100% from us here and is completely solar.
When the solar field was first built it was the largest solar field in Iowa.
MCKENNA (off screen): Locally we generate 20% on average for the year with solar.
A lot of Sundays we're 100% solar.
HOGG: Warren has worked with that community and they are leading the way.
Other rural electric co-ops have stepped up and have invested in solar power.
NARRATOR: Across the country, from North Carolina to Texas, nearly 200 rural electric
co-ops have embraced renewable energy and it's paying off.
And solar is not the only renewable that's being adopted in Iowa.
Wind energy has become a real powerhouse.
Iowa currently gets 37% of its electricity from renewables.
If every other state did the same, the reduced emissions would get the
U.S. nearly all the way to its 2025 Paris goals.
BYERS: Iowa is number one in the country in terms of percentage of electricity
that's generated by wind.
And we've had major investments by our utility companies.
Just in June of 2018, MidAmerican Energy announced an additional $900 million
in wind generation investment here in Iowa.
And with that investment, that raises their total investment
in wind energy to almost 13 billion.
So all these massive investments in wind energy have been significant drivers
in terms of attracting the tech industry.
Within the last few years, Microsoft and Facebook created data centers in this region
and just most recently Apple announced a data center investment
here in Central Iowa.
JANOUS (off screen): A single data center is about the size of four football fields
and they consume a lot of energy.
One of the things that led Microsoft to Iowa was the renewable energy resource
that's available there.
JACKSON (off screen): Clean power these days is actually cheaper in a lot of places.
So it was really important for Apple because our goal is to make sure that this is
sustainable in every way.
And economic sustainability is one of those ways.
LUBBER (off screen): There are hundreds of companies saying we are going
to build our goals around staying in the Paris Agreement
to address climate change and go into 100% renewables.
There are also hundreds of financial leaders and investors who are putting
nearly a trillion dollars' worth of commitments into clean energy and clean
transportation, in innovative technologies.
And those are people who aren't making economic commitments because they think
they're going to lose money.
They're in it to make money and that's a good thing.
This is about building our economy.
BYERS: People in Iowa are very proud of what's happened with the wind energy industry and
what it's meant in terms of our ability to diversify our economy and we've really
focused on making this a place where people want to be and have great opportunities.
FAITH (off screen): Pretty much all through high school it's kind of
you're given a little bit of a negative aspect on
like college cause you're told you're going
to have so much debt, you're going to have to be getting loans,
you're going to have to be paying for all of this and
you're probably not going to get a job right as soon as you're done with college.
But as far as like wind energy,
my loans will be covered because as soon as I'm
out of school I'm almost guaranteed a job.
DAN: We have a two-year program and it results in an associate in
applied science degree in wind technology.
And my daughter, Faith, is actually interested in technology fields and
so she made the decision that wind was where she wanted to be.
She's always been one of those people that likes excitement
and likes to do things that are a little bit different.
FAITH (off screen): I have a few friends that are girls that are
getting interested in it because I hype it up a lot.
DAN: We're going to go ahead, and we have the tower shut down right now,
we're going to go ahead and plan to bring our bags up the tower.
Make sure the equipment's all safe and stowed.
JESSIE: I'm passionate about renewable energy and a cleaner earth and job growth
is 100% so that's job security.
It's just everything about this field seemed to kind of fit with me and my lifestyle.
Going up our turbine the first time was a little nerve wracking,
but you just kind of power through it and you get so used to it
and then once you get to the top, it makes it so worth it.
DAN (off screen): If the United States had an energy goal of 20%
of our energy nationwide being drawn from wind energy,
we'll need about 230,000 people supporting this industry
and we just broke over 100,000.
This is an opportunity that hasn't been available in America for a long, long time.
Our students are walking out with a two-year associate in applied science degree
and they're making $50-90,000 right out the door.
It's very rare that you have anything on an industrial or utility scale that doesn't
really have a downside, so we create lots of jobs, we're really good for the
environment, and we produce the kind of energy that gets us to that next best idea
because we can do what the coal-fired and gas-fired plants do without
having all the nasty side effects.
GRASSLEY: There's just no way that I would have predicted all of these things about
wind energy would turn out to be so good for jobs in rural America.
It's projected in a few years we could have 17,000 jobs connected
with wind energy in Iowa.
NARRATOR: In 2017, there were approximately 10.3 million people employed
in the renewable energy industry worldwide.
Nearly 800,000 of those jobs were in the U.S.,
which is 15 times more than coal mining jobs.
This trend is in part due to the plummeting cost of renewables,
but despite the continuing growth in this sector,
the Trump administration aims to prop up fossil fuels including coal.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Today I'm taking bold action to follow through on that promise;
my administration is putting an end to the war on coal.
REPORTER (over TV): Well the Trump administration is expected to announce a plan
today to roll back rules on coal-fired power plants in an effort to
revive the coal industry.
CLEETUS (off screen): The Trump administration is now trying, in all sorts of ways,
to prop up the coal industry, and by the coal industry, this is not about coal workers,
this is about coal CEOs and their profits.
MURRAY: The world needs our coal and we will do just fine if we get rid of the
regulations and get the government out of picking winners and losers.
HOLDEN: Bob Murray, the Executive of Murray Energy, one of the biggest coal
companies in the country, has sent over multiple documents to the White House and to
various agencies basically laying out what he wants
to happen in the regulatory world.
And one of those memos he had sixteen recommendations, including exiting the
Paris Agreement, and the administration has either started or completed nearly
everything on that list.
CLEETUS: This is deeply harmful to the interest of the American public and while
there is some attention to it in the media, what I'm worried about is that so many
of these things are happening under the radar.
NARRATOR: While the Trump Administration works to boost the fossil fuel industry,
climate change resulting from the burning of those fuels is increasingly being felt,
including in Iowa, the breadbasket of the world.
HOGG (off screen): We have got to safeguard our farms from
climate-related disasters in the future.
Iowa is the food reservoir for the world.
When there are people who have crop failures and they're facing very serious problems,
we're very proud of the fact that we have surplus to export.
And it's a really important role that we play in the world.
What happens if we can't keep up with production because of climate related catastrophes?
Big drought, big flood.
If we were to have a catastrophic multi-year crop failure in Iowa,
it would be utterly devastating for the world and we've seen more than a 40%
increase in large precipitation events in Iowa,
and we had the flood of 2008 here in Cedar Rapids.
REPORTER (over TV): 20,000 people have been evacuated from the area.
More than 400 city blocks are still underwater.
HOGG (off screen): 15 inches of rain over the entire Cedar River Basin over two weeks.
And we had a flood stage of 31 feet, more than 10 feet higher than any previous flood.
It's just unheard of.
Other communities, up river, it was worse.
SWINTON (off screen): So, okay.
This is the marker I wanted you to see.
This is a marker that we put up for the flood of 2008.
This is how high the water got.
Now I'm, I'm six feet tall, so this shows ya.
This comes up to my, to my shoulders and this is how deep it was.
VANCE: This was the garage, the closet, there's a electrical panel and furnace.
We had six and a half foot of water on the main level of the house for over a week.
Stuff that was in our bedroom wound up in the garage and stuff that was in the garage
wound up in the bedroom and then lots of it just floated away
and I imagine that's in Louisiana now.
Yeah, it's kind of spooky being in here.
In 2008, I wasn't going to rebuild my house and then everybody said, well,
that'll never happen again.
It's never happened in 150 years, so we did, but then in 2016 it did it again.
REPORTER (over TV): Right now thousands of Iowans have packed their belongings and
evacuated and can only hope that their home is spared by the rising floodwater.
VANCE: It's kind of like playing poker and I lost.
SWINTON (off camera): We basically had two 500-year floods within eight years.
Now we're thinking, well, now we need to do something because these 500-year floods
aren't happening every 500 years.
They're happening with more frequency.
The rain is so much heavier, so rather than get four or five-inch rains,
now we'll get a 14-inch rain.
TAKLE: What's causing most of our flooding is driven by the fact that the Gulf of Mexico,
where we get a lot of our moisture in the spring and early summer,
is getting warmer.
The more we heat the atmosphere,
the more we evaporate water from the oceans.
When we increase the amount of water in the atmosphere,
to the atmosphere, that's like fuel.
That's like gasoline almost and that's what leads to the intensity of these heavy
rain events that we're seeing now.
VANCE (off screen): I don't think I'm going to be leaving anytime soon.
Especially in times like this you need a support system and family
and friends have been that.
You know, they've stepped up way beyond my own expectations.
They didn't need to take time out of their life to come and help set rafters
or stuff but they did.
HOGG (off screen): It is amazing to this day that nobody died in the flood and
that's actually kind of a testament to Iowans.
People want to be involved.
People want to take tangible action.
They want to help, and I've said since that, we have to have the same spirit
of the sandbag about safeguarding our people and our property from future disasters,
and that includes getting our arms around this climate problem.
The flood of 2008 raised the awareness of climate change in Iowa and I hope we don't have
to wait for everybody to feel the disaster before we decided to take action as
a country on climate change.
NARRATOR: The earth's average temperature has risen approximately
one degree Celsius since the Industrial Revolution,
which has created the impacts being felt today.
The Paris agreement aims to keep global average temperature
well below 2 degrees Celsius.
But current international pledges won't get us there.
So without increased commitments and fulfilling them,
we could see a projected rise of as much as 3.2 degrees by the end of the century.
But if U.S. states, cities and businesses cut U.S. emissions by 2% a year,
they would achieve more than a 75% reduction by 2050.
This would put the U.S. on track to meet its goals under the Paris agreement,
helping avoid a world dangerously altered by climate change.
MANN: You know, what does the world start to look like?
We don't have to use our imagination because Hollywood
has already given us those depictions.
Some of the dystopian visions of the future that Hollywood has provided are
not unlike the actual scenarios that national security experts
are gaming out as a worst-case scenario.
GOODMAN: We know that climate change is a threat multiplier
for instability around the world.
We've seen that it's even now a catalyst for conflict in various regions of
the world across the Middle East, across Africa, across parts of Asia.
We're seeing increased instability and unrest fomented by extreme storms,
lack of water, too much rain, drought.
All of these factors are affecting the stability of the planet
and people where they live.
REPORTER (over TV): More than 103 million Americans are under heat alert.
MANN (off screen): We've seen devastating heat waves in recent years,
not just around the country but around the world.
REPORTER (over TV): In India, more than 2,000 people have died from the extreme heat.
MANN (off screen): These are things that we predicted decades ago and
now in every sector of our lives,
climate change constitutes an existential threat.
And people everywhere are dealing with it on the front lines.
HYATT (off screen): When I was in my 20s, I got into the business as a farrier.
And so, went to horseshoeing school and have been doing it ever since.
Good boy. Good boy.
I feel like I work for the animal first and the owner second,
so I have an obligation to take care of them.
HYATT (off screen): I was coming back from LA with my helper when we first heard
about the fire and driving
into Santa Paula and I could see it.
FIREMAN (over radio): We have a fire that's established behind multiple residences.
Actually the fire is right near the power lines there.
FIREMAN 2 (over radio): Engine 31 is fighting that fire right now.
FIREMAN 3 (over radio): You're going to need other resources to head west.
MAN (off screen): Holy (bleep).
Get out of here. Go, go. Get out. It's time to go.
HYATT (off screen): We thought we had all this time to get in,
get the animals out and we thought we probably
had at least an hour.
Well, I was wrong.
I called my daughters and asked if they could meet me at the house.
I needed all the help I could get to make sure we got all the animals out.
I have a three-horse trailer and I had seven horses there.
The first load of horses, I got my girls' ponies out and my boyfriend's horses out.
Took them to the fairgrounds where everyone would evacuate their animals to.
This fire happened so fast, hundreds of horses needed to be evacuated.
There was just a mass exodus of animals.
I'd remember telling the girls, if we can't get the horses out,
just get them across the bridge and let them go.
At least they have a chance.
I kind of just had to not think about it and think okay, they're going to be fine.
They're going to be fine.
We got back to the mouth of the canyon and the fire is going over the road.
I just had to trust that everything was going to be okay.
A gal who was still out in the canyon saw my three horses trotting up the road
in the smoke and she was able to get my horses in her horse trailer.
HYATT (off screen): Not a lot survived that fire.
It was, it burned so hot that everything just liquified.
To not be able to save anything was just really hard.
Generations of collections that, you know, that my, my grandfather started.
That just broke my heart.
You know each month that goes by it gets, it's supposed to get a little easier.
But um.
NARRATOR: As average global temperatures have risen due to climate change,
so has the number and frequency of large wildfires.
Since the 70s, the wildfire season has grown from five months to almost year-round.
Scientists suggest this is in part due to the increased melting of sea ice in the
Arctic that is changing the Northern Hemisphere Jetstream, which has veered north in the
Western U.S., intensifying drought and dry conditions in California.
BROWN: The drought dries up the soil, dries up the vegetation,
so now the moisture that used to prevent forest fires is now turned into
an accelerant of forest fires.
REPORTER (over TV): The fires are creating their own weather.
Firenado spinning at 150 miles per hour, forcing immediate evacuation.
NARRATOR: Such severe wildfires leave barren landscapes in their wake that
are less able to absorb rainwater,
creating an elevated risk of floods and mudslides.
MAN: Oh my God!
NARRATOR: The mudslides, combined with almost 9,000 wildfires that burned through
California in 2017, took 65 lives and cost nearly 12 billion dollars in damages.
Thousands of people were left without homes as the fires destroyed over a million acres
and 10,000 structures throughout the state.
MANN: California is on the front lines of dealing with the devastating impacts of
climate change.
The interesting thing is they're also on the frontlines of solving the problem.
ROBERTS (off screen): It's got one of the most ambitious renewable mandates,
50% by 2030,
and one of the most ambitious emission reduction goals and you know,
it's leading on electric vehicles.
It's leading on electricity storage.
I think California is kind of giving other states a model to rally around,
but the state is still funded by fossil fuels.
GARCETTI (off screen): A lot of people think of Los Angeles
as Hollywood, Tinseltown.
They think it's an entertainment capital, which it is now,
but we weren't built because of the entertainment industry.
We were an oil town.
The third largest oil field in America is right underneath us right now.
SARMIENTO: California across the country and around the world is seen
as a climate leader, as an environmental leader.
However, what we're seeing on the ground is continued approval
and permitting of fossil fuel projects in local communities.
GUZMAN (off screen): I've basically lived in Wilmington my entire life.
We have the oil field located right next to my house and right across the
street from my grandma's house.
Me and my brothers and like the neighborhood kids,
we grew up like right next to this oil field,
we'd literally climb this tree when we were little, we didn't know what it was.
So we would just play in there.
Living next door to this, we experienced a lot of sulfuric fumes.
There's like a thickness in the air.
And I realized like, oh, it's the fumes from the oil rigs.
Sometimes you get headaches.
I remember when we were younger, my brother would get nosebleeds for no reason.
And my grandma, she has a heart condition.
I just, I don't want anyone else or anyone else's children to have to live near that.
SARMIENTO (off screen): What we see here are historically disadvantaged and
low-income communities of color impacted by toxic industries.
We have high rates of asthma; we have high, high rates of cancer.
We have high rates of leukemia.
In the neighboring baseball field, we have seen a leukemia fundraiser poster go up one
time after another and that's nothing any community should have to go through.
Everyone has the right to breathe clean air.
NARRATOR: A recent study found that people who live within 500 feet of oil and gas wells
have an 8 times higher lifetime risk of cancer.
Another study found that more than 17 and a half million people throughout the
U.S. live within a mile of oil and gas infrastructure.
ROBERTS (off screen): California is trying to juggle these things.
They want the revenue from the fossil fuel sales, because if they keep it in the ground
as the activist keeps saying, that's a huge chunk out of the state budget,
which would harm renewable energy efforts.
Right? So there's a real dilemma.
BROWN (off screen): Most of the oil resources must be left in the ground.
Now the question is how do we get there and how do we do that?
And I think we can but we can only do it by accelerating the alternatives and
changing the lifestyles and the way our economies are currently constituted.
GARCETTI (off screen): You see increasingly here in LA,
kind of a vision of the future,
but also the challenge of the future.
And, and for us that means our response has to be comprehensive as well.
Probably what we're best known for is our soul-crushing traffic.
We're the car capital of America, if not the world.
GERRARD (off screen): Because of the history of smog in Los Angeles,
California has been allowed to have stronger fuel economy standards for motor vehicles.
But the Trump administration is moving to weaken the nationwide standards for
motor vehicle emissions and is also moving to take away California's
ability to set its own standards.
REPORTER (over TV): The Trump administration is moving towards cutting
tougher fuel standards, and challenging California which sets the toughest fuel
standards in the country that 12 states currently follow.
BROWN: The emissions from transportation, cars and trucks is going up and the
federal government at the same time is now attacking our standards and is attempting
to weaken them, and in effect,
add more climate pollutants to the atmosphere.
So that's a very bad idea and we're going to fight that,
and I think we'll be very successful in stopping that.
FABER-O'CONNOR (off screen): Transportation is about a third of our total
greenhouse gas emissions in Los Angeles,
and we know that in order to meet our climate goals and really uphold the
Paris Climate Agreement, we have to decarbonize our transportation sector.
GARCETTI (off screen): We now are looking to rebuild the most ambitious public transit
system in the country.
So voters passed a permanent tax on themselves that will build
a new fifteen rapid transit lines.
And I think most people don't know how important Los Angeles and Long Beach
are to this nation's economy.
They account for about 40% of all the seaborne goods that come into America.
Those huge ships that feed our stores come in right here to Los Angeles,
and each one of them is the equivalent of tens of thousands
of greenhouse gas emissions.
But we're taking aggressive actions.
We want to go to zero emission ports.
We see the technology in trucks coming, we see the new locomotives that are looking
at pure electric power, and we're building out the infrastructure for these large
ships to be able to plug in and go off of electric power.
GARCETTI (off screen): And then the third thing is,
we're trying to make sure everybody is a part of the solar economy.
FABER-O'CONNOR: We have taken the bull by the horns.
We're the number one solar city in America.
Just in the city alone, basically on rooftops,
we have enough solar to power over 82,000 homes.
And equally important, we're making sure that we have programs that aren't just for
the wealthiest of our residents, but everybody.
So there's solar equity throughout Los Angeles.
ANDRADE (off screen): Growing up,
my role models were out there on the street, you know,
especially in east LA, it's one of the largest gang-populated areas.
So of course I'll be running around the streets at night, little teenager,
little kid, not knowing any better.
I had everything: guns, drugs, just getting in trouble, using.
If I wasn't selling drugs, it's me robbing people or stealing from homes,
breaking into them.
And that's how it all started.
May 10th, 2004, I went to prison for 10 years.
I was 18 years old.
Two strikes, I didn't expect to get home.
So when that day finally happened, where, hey, you're getting released,
to me it was surreal.
This is finally happening, like I made it, you know, like God, after all this time.
You know, I had nieces born, nephews born that I never even seen
or met and you know what I mean?
So that's just, yeah.
Finally got to meet them when I got out.
I literally thought I'd probably be back in prison or dead already.
But then I got the opportunity with Homeboy Industries,
which is the largest gang intervention program in the U.S.
Solar happened to be one of the programs that was offered to me.
And I said, yeah, sure, like, let's do this.
And I was like, what's a solar panel?
That's how it got started.
I just fell in love with it.
Now I'm the Volunteer Training Coordinator for Grid Alternatives,
Greater Los Angeles.
Salvador, what's goin' on, man?
KADISH: Our mission is to bring the benefits of renewable energy technology
to underserved communities.
We're able to have people from the very communities we serve,
come out and get job training on the installations themselves.
I've worked with people who have come from prison and within, you know,
a year or two, are in a management position at a residential solar company.
You know, they're going from incarceration into being entrepreneurs.
MAN: There's going to be a lot to learn today.
We are going to be on sort of a steep pitched roof.
So we definitely want to go at a safe pace.
When in doubt, ask.
ANDRADE (off screen): Last year we placed 87 individuals in solar careers.
And honestly, they're dedicated because like myself, once I got released,
I want to stay out of trouble.
I just want to work.
I've been out of prison five years.
And now everything I do is for my son.
I want him to have everything I didn't have in life.
I want him to have it.
FABER-O'CONNOR (off screen): In LA alone we have created 29,000 green jobs.
Over 80,000 solar jobs in the state.
There's such a big opportunity.
We're not afraid of this being a job killer.
This is a job creator and people are coming to Los Angeles, to California,
to be part of that revolution.
BROWN (off screen): With Trump saying he's going to pull out of Paris,
the next best thing is for states to take their
own action because the climate is changing,
there's real impacts in real time and this is an existential threat to the
wellbeing of everyone everywhere in the world.
NARRATOR: Since the announcement to withdraw from Paris,
states and governors around the country have passed legislation to join the
U.S. climate alliance and uphold the commitments of the Paris Climate Accord.
New Jersey recently introduced a bill to join the alliance,
which would bring its membership to 16 states plus Puerto Rico.
MUKHERJI (over PA): Mr. Speaker, this bill if passed and signed into law
will help protect generations to come.
MR. SPEAKER (over PA): Madam clerk open the machine for a vote.
Senate bill 598 having received 49 votes in the affirmative,
23 votes in the negative and zero abstentions, I declare the bill passed.
Let the bill take the usual course of passed bills.
NARRATOR: New Jersey's decision to join the U.S. Climate Alliance
was successful due to a change in New Jersey's leadership.
POTOSNAK: Right up there with California and New York, New Jersey's probably on target
to be the greenest state in America.
And that happened in just one election.
MURPHY: So help me God.
POTOSNAK: The difference between our new governor, Phil Murphy,
and Governor Chris Christie couldn't be more clear.
It's like night and day.
Following Hurricane Sandy, what we saw from Governor Christie was just ignoring the
causes of climate change and ignoring things that we can do
to be more resilient with natural systems.
CHRISTIE: It's not a crisis.
The climate's been changing forever and it will always change.
POTOSNAK (off screen): It was disappointing, but it was also wrong,
but I can tell you for a fact the people here in New Jersey,
they understand the connection.
We were very, very focused on making sure the next governor,
whoever was going to be elected,
was going to really have strong plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
MURPHY: A stronger and fairer New Jersey accepts the sad reality of climate change
and invests aggressively in renewable energy and it upholds the goals
of the Paris Climate Accord.
POTOSNAK (off screen): Since Governor Murphy has come into office,
we saw a whirlwind of action in a very short period of time.
And I think we can take it a step further, because setting the bar with Paris
is an important step, but I don't think anyone who sees a bar just wants to get there.
We want to go and reach even higher.
NARRATOR: The movement that's working across the country continues to gain momentum.
Since the days after the Trump announcement to leave the Paris Climate Accord,
the number of cities, states, businesses and organizations pledging to uphold the
agreement has more than doubled.
And with initiatives that are tracking the commitments for real change in
our energy future, the stakes and challenges couldn't be clearer.
But even in places grappling with the long legacy of fossil fuels,
commitments to a clean energy future are moving forward.
Regardless of federal inaction.
PEDUTO: I couldn't disagree with the president any stronger and I say that as
somebody who lived through the Pittsburgh of old.
Pittsburgh was the center of heavy industry.
Coal and steel became a part of its legacy.
It was a two-shirt town, meaning that if you worked in corporate
Pittsburgh in the 1940s,
you wore one shirt up until lunchtime and then you changed it because
of the amount of soot that would get on it.
During the 50s and the 60s, we were one of the wealthiest cities in the United States.
And then by 1979, it all collapsed.
Took 30 years between 1979 and 2009 to see this city come back.
ERVIN: The city had to reimagine itself as a knowledge economy where
healthcare and education and robotics really developed here and now we're starting
to see the fruits of those labors.
PEDUTO (off screen): There was a whole different part of Pittsburgh that was thinking
maybe our future doesn't necessarily have to be based upon the past.
And these were the people that were looking at technology and engineering
and understanding it wasn't steel, it was innovation that would be the
cornerstone from which we would build a new Pittsburgh.
ERVIN: And now we're in the position to reap some of the benefits of those seeds
that were sown and create the clean economy.
It's about changing building codes, how we plan our neighborhoods,
how we design our streets.
So whether you are developing new energy-efficient housing or you know, creating new,
clean energy generation systems, this is economic development.
This is innovation.
PEDUTO (off screen): And today we are fully committed to making that
transition to be at 100% renewable energy
at the city level, a 50% reduction in the amount of energy
we're using and a zero-landfill waste policy by 2030.
It's an ambitious goal, but it's also a very practical goal.
This city is a city of bridges.
We have more bridges than most cities on earth.
As mayor, my job is to take all the great things that I remember from my childhood
about Pittsburgh and what it was and make sure it gets to the other side of the bridge
and then to be able to hand it off to somebody, because I believe that it's not just the
Pittsburgh's but it's the other cities, it's the institutions and the youth
that will help to lead the world.
PROTESTORS: Take it the polls!
MAN: Take it the street!
PROTESTORS: Take it the polls!
IRIS (over PA): This isn't just the beginning of one march.
This is the start of us taking control of our future.
(applause).
I started speaking out because I felt like the youth voice needed to be in the
discussion about these issues that are directly going to impact us.
And we are calling for climate action because this is zero hour.
(cheering).
This is zero hour to act on climate change because the clock is ticking.
But when you bring together a group of diverse young people from all different
backgrounds, we can really come together as a movement and take action because our
lives are at stake here.
EVA (off screen): I think people in my generation and the generation below
me see this as our future.
We see a viable path where people are working and people are installing solar panels
and wind turbines and we just see that as where we're going.
It's not even a question.
CASTRO: You look at the facts.
The transformation towards a renewable energy future is the greatest
economic opportunity of the 21st century.
SUH (off screen): This is not a left state, right state, blue state,
red state issue.
This is a fantastic opportunity for communities to revitalize themselves and
combat climate change at the exact same time.
KADISH (off screen): If climate change is going to be addressed successfully,
everyone is going to need to participate in the solutions and that means not just
installing solar on homes but moving people into electric vehicles
that are powered by that solar.
It means finding a way for renters to benefit from solar so that the gains
from this new economy flow to everybody.
TAYLOR (off screen): We have to move away from fossil fuels.
One way to do that in a fast and ambitious fashion is to put a
price on greenhouse gas emissions.
LUBBER (off screen): And it's going to take grappling with the reality
that we need to act now.
If we put it off, the challenge gets bigger, it gets greater.
We still need scale and having policy at a federal level is going to be
an imperative to quicken the pace.
PEDUTO: And if we look at it as an American Marshall Plan, and we start to build out the
renewable energy industry, we can exceed the goals of the Paris Agreement.
POTOSNAK: The minimal thing you should be doing is getting out there and asking
candidates for office and elected officials how they're agreeing to tackle
a big problem like climate change.
FABER-O'CONNOR (off screen): We're all a resident of somewhere,
so residents of cities have a huge role to play.
That's where we can pull the levers on things like transportation decisions,
land use decisions, people understanding where they live, where they work,
how they get around.
This is their everyday life that actually can make a real difference.
GARCETTI: I believe that we will be able to bring the best of technology,
personal action, and just the heart that says, "this matters."
Long after we're going to be gone, that our children and our children's children will
have an Earth and a quality of life that we can feel proud that we left behind.
CLEETUS (off screen): What I'm hopeful about is that there are
so many people around the world who are out there
saying that they want this vision of a clean energy economy
and a future that benefits all.
So what we need to do is galvanize this movement, put pressure on our political
leaders to do what we want them to do, to live up to their responsibility to us,
to our children and our grandchildren.
GROUP: Our future! Our planet! Our future!
♪ This land is your land, this land is my land ♪
♪ From the California to the New York island ♪
♪ From the Redwood Forest, to the gulf stream waters ♪
♪ This land was made for you and me ♪
♪ As I was walking that ribbon of highway ♪
♪ I saw above me that endless skyway ♪
♪ I saw below me that golden valley ♪
♪ This land was made for you and me ♪
♪ I've roamed and rambled ♪
♪ And I followed my footsteps ♪
♪ To the sparklin' sands of her diamond deserts. ♪
♪ And all around me a voice was sounding ♪
♪ This land was made for you and me ♪♪
Captioned by Cotter Captioning Services.