01x04 - In Harm's Way

[bunniefuu]

When the Berlin
Wall fell in 1989,

there were just over 5
billion people on the planet.

Today we're
approaching 8 billion.

More people than ever
are facing disaster.

We're seeing cyclones, we're
seeing floods, we're seeing fires.

Natural disasters create chaos.

120,000 residents either could not
evacuate or chose not to evacuate.

Capable of both uniting
and dividing people.

Disasters are not events, they are
the end point of social processes.

In the 21st century,
humanity faces

an existential disaster
of its own making.

Man-made climate change

is one of the fundamental
challenges we'll have to confront.

It absolutely has the
potential to cause

large-scale disruption
and destruction.

In a warming world, the
weather is more deadly.

People who work in
climate science have said:

this is what you'd expect
with climate change.

These are the stories behind the disasters
that have shaped the modern world.

The world has transformed
over the past 30 years.

In the blizzard of
news and events,

it's hard to make sense
of how we arrived here.

But if we stand back, we
can see how things connect.

We can see the road to now.

Despite the great advances
in science and technology,

we remain largely powerless
in the face of natural disasters.

The worst disaster
of the 21st century

k*lled more than 225,000
people in 14 countries.

On Boxing Day 2004, there was a
powerful earthquake in the Indian Ocean.

At magnitude 9.1, it
literally shook the planet.

Striking near the Indonesian
island of Sumatra,

it triggered deadly waves,
travelling in every direction.

This is one of the classic
Tsunami generating earthquakes.

They call it a
subduction zone event.

Where two plates grind
against each other,

one's pushing the
other one down,

and then it essentially flips up
and bang, that generates a wave.

Tsunami waves raced across the
ocean, reaching as high as 30 metres

when they struck the coast
of impoverished Aceh.

Not just one wave,
multiple waves.

And they're coming at a
coastline with such force,

and when they inundate
or flood that area,

they can travel up river waves, they
can travel up other bodies of water.

And in particular, in the case of Banda
Aceh, it actually came from two directions.

It came from the west and also
came around from the north.

So there were accounts of
people who ran one direction

only to find that they were facing the
Tsunami coming from the other direction.

Banda Aceh's main bridge,
three days after the calamity.

On one side, hundreds
of swelling bodies.

On the other, refugees from
outer islands scramble ashore.

We saw no survivors
for about 100 kilometres.

My guess is that maybe 80,000
people have been k*lled in Aceh.

The estimated Indonesian death
toll ended up at double that figure,

more than 160,000 k*lled.

This reflected the concentration of
communities close to the coastline

for traditional subsistence
agriculture and fishing.

Almost a week after the Tsunami,

survivors were struggling
up Aceh's west coast,

searching for the missing,
looking for food and shelter.

Just an hour and a half after
the earthquake first registered,

Tsunami waves were also
racing toward Thailand.

As usual, European tourists
escaping the northern winter,

thronged the beaches.

Many were recording their holidays
when the giant waves struck.

Resorts in Phuket, Khao Lak
and Phi Phi Island, were hit hard.

It breaks a long way offshore, so
you just have this roiling mass of hell,

you know, up to about five
metres high, zooming towards you,

at about the speed of a
5,000-metre Olympic runner.

So, can you outrun that?

That wave is a
good 15, 20 feet tall.

Phuket's hospitals were
quickly swamped with survivors.

In the immediate aftermath,
thousands of people were missing.

Message boards were set up,
enabling people to share information.

Among many separated families, a German
woman searched for her five-year-old son.

If you give up your hope, then
you don't want to go on anymore.

I'm still hoping that Tim is somewhere
in the hospital and can't talk

and is just unconscious
or whatever.

Soon, the waters
started to recede,

revealing the true
scale of the devastation.

With the Tsunami, they
have these huge debris fields

and you have no idea where
people might be either dead or alive.

Search and rescue crews
came from around the world.

Bodies can be swept
quite long distances.

Bodies can be trapped in
trees, in branches, in brush.

And indeed can be
located in places

where you would not
expect to find a body.

So, you will often get a situation
where bodies are recovered,

perhaps weeks or months later,

in unusual places that were not
subject to a detailed search at the time.

Visual identification of the
victims, was next to impossible.

Forensic pathologists
were called in.

It was decided that all 5,000 bodies
will be treated exactly the same.

So every single person would have
a forensic pathology examination,

a forensic dental examination,
a fingerprint examination.

In Thailand, the Tsunami
k*lled about 5,400 people.

But while the
international media

focused on tourists
who perished at resorts,

Thais struggled to
cope with losing family,

homes and livelihoods
in the flooding waters.

The Tsunami radiated across the Indian
Ocean as far as the east coast of Africa.

Sri Lanka and southern India

lost tens of thousands of
people to the giant waves.

The Indonesian earthquake
and the tsunamis it spawned

showed how destructive a single
event could be across a vast area.

Every year, the United States
is battered by ferocious storms.

To help cope, it's developed extremely
sophisticated weather tracking systems.

In 2005, eight months after
the Indian Ocean Tsunami,

American forecasters sounded
the alarm about a tropical storm

bearing down on the renowned
music city, New Orleans.

The evacuation order
was made too late.

Every person is hereby ordered

to immediately evacuate
the city of New Orleans.

Hurricane Katrina
was a massive storm.

At one point, it was a category five
and it filled the entire Gulf of Mexico.

Hurricane Katrina would become
notorious throughout the world,

not only for the
devastation it caused,

but for a failed government response
which had deadly consequences.

Parts of the city lie two
metres below sea level,

wedged between Lake Pontchartrain
and the Mississippi River.

New Orleans has always
been at risk from storms,

but this storm was more
powerful and more destructive.

The levee banks, many
constructed by the US Army,

were overcome by the volume and
force of the water generated by Katrina.

When they gave way,
there was really nothing

to stop the water
from just pouring in.

So that in some parts,
80% of the city was flooded

and in some parishes, over
80% of the homes were lost.

Affluent residents generally
responded to storm warnings

and left before
the levees failed,

but nearly 30% of the city,

mostly poor and
African-American, remained.

The estimates are that somewhere
between 100,000 to 120,000

residents of the city of New
Orleans, either could not evacuate,

or chose not to evacuate in
advance of Katrina's landfall.

The elderly and sick didn't
have the means to escape.

In addition to the size
and scale of the storm,

which caused a massive
amount of devastation,

there were also many failures at
the local, state and federal level.

The federal government in particular
actually accepted responsibility

for the delayed response
to Hurricane Katrina.

Tens of thousands waited for
assistance which never came.

The city quickly
descended into chaos.

On top of the dangers of the flood,
there was looting and violence.

On the day Katrina struck,

close to 10,000 people had taken
shelter in the Louisiana Superdome.

Over the next few days,
another 20,000 joined them.

The city's electricity
system failed.

The back-up generator
for the stadium

couldn't provide running
water or flushing toilets.

There was inadequate
drinking water and food.

Another 25,000 were housed
in the convention centre

in equally squalid conditions.

It took President George W Bush four
days to declare a state of emergency

and acknowledge the extremely
slow response to Katrina.

The result is, that many of our citizens
simply are not getting the help they need,

especially in New Orleans.

And that is unacceptable.

In the richest nation on Earth,

the poorest citizens of New
Orleans were neglected.

No-one knows for sure, how many
people died during the storm,

but 1,833 is the most
cited estimated toll

for New Orleans, Louisiana
and neighbouring states.

Disasters don't dissolve
pre-existing inequalities.

What disasters do, is they
exacerbate social fault lines.

When it comes to who
has the resources,

the capacity to actually prepare for,
respond to and recover from disaster,

we know that that is profoundly
influenced by social class,

by race and by other characteristics
that affect us during non-disaster times.

Katrina had a lasting impact.

The human and financial
cost forced US authorities

to rethink preparations
for super storms

and to rebuild flood defences
around New Orleans.

The United States has the resources to
predict and respond to some disasters.

Many struggling
countries do not.

Haiti is one of the
most densely populated

and poorest nations
on the planet.

It also has a history
of corruption,

such that governments
haven't provided basic services.

On January 12, 2010, Haiti was
struck by a magnitude 7 earthquake.

The water's going to an end!

The epicentre was
less than 25 kilometres

from Haiti's capital,
Port-au-Prince.

Emergency responders immediately attempted
to rescue people from collapsed buildings.

There is some person inside
the house. We can't find him.

We don't have a
loader to take them out.

The earthquake's impact was
devastating and in the chaos that followed,

the death toll proved
difficult to calculate.

The estimates ranged
from 80,000 to 330,000,

with most people
agreeing that it was

somewhere in the
neighbourhood of about 220,000.

A staggering toll for a
country of just 11 million.

An estimated 3 million people were
rendered homeless by the quake

and the aftershocks, which destroyed
buildings for days afterwards.

Within the Caribbean,

most countries there use the
Caribbean Uniform Building Code,

but not so in Haiti.

The shaking causes
a disintegration of

the columns and the walls
that are supporting the floors

and then you basically end
up with a stack of floor slabs

and in some cases you can
have multi-storey buildings

ending up as a great
big stack of floor slabs.

With few functioning hospitals
and limited electric power,

survivors had their injuries
treated in the street,

under the most crude conditions.

There was a strong global
response to the Haiti disaster.

The United States diverted an aircraft
carrier to deliver emergency aid.

Desperate Haitians rushed
the helicopters at every drop.

In Port-au-Prince, UN workers
trying to deliver food were mobbed.

Disasters are not events.

They are the end point
of social processes.

With Haiti's government,
courts and police in disarray,

street justice prevailed.

A man accused of robbing a
woman, was set upon by a mob.

They k*lled him with
his own g*n and

then set him alight,
a warning to others.

It's unfortunately
the case that in Haiti

there were many people
who were not self-sufficient

or who were barely self-sufficient
before the earthquake.

And the nature of the
damage, the social disruption

and the damage to service delivery
systems, such as they were,

made the recovery
all that harder.

We're talking about a disaster where
merely removing the debris took years.

A year on from the earthquake,

worshippers gathered in the
shadow of their wrecked cathedral

remembering relatives and
friends lost in the quake.

It was time to reflect on what little
had improved since the disaster

despite an avalanche
of international aid.

A lot of money has
been spent on Haiti

and we haven't seen the
outcomes, the results.

There is some out there.

The Haiti earthquake
severely disrupted the lives

of an estimated one-third
of the population.

More than one and a half
million were listed as displaced.

Their homes were uninhabitable.

Three years after the earthquake,
350,000 people were still living in tents.

Now that they're rebuilding,

it's very hard to enforce
better building regulations,

because people have this urgency and
the old practices do tend to come back,

because often they're
cheaper and more understood.

So you can have quite a
challenge of building back better,

so that you're ending up with a more
resilient community after the event.

On the other side of
the world from Haiti,

Japan, a wealthy nation, has
long been braced for disasters.

Earthquake-proof buildings
and Tsunami defences

reflect a country accustomed
to dealing with seismic events.

And yet, what became known as
the Fukushima nuclear disaster

showed that even
Japan underestimated

nature's threat to
technology and society.

March 11, 2011,

saw one of the biggest earthquakes
to strike Japan in a century.

Buildings in Tokyo
shook for two minutes.

The quake, magnitude nine,
triggered a gigantic Tsunami.

Waves swept over the land,
inundating up to 10km from the coast.

Fires broke out at
factories and refineries.

The number of people k*lled or missing
in the disaster was close to 20,000.

The initial warnings
that went out,

talked about a wave smaller than
the wave that was actually coming.

Part of the problem was,
people not understanding

what those wave
heights were going to be,

how far they had
to go to be safe

and how quickly
they had to do it.

And in many cases,
they had very little time.

The earthquake and Tsunami
exposed the vulnerability

of Japan's nuclear power plants.

The Fukushima plant is
250km north-east of Tokyo.

It was built on the coast so that
seawater could be used as a coolant.

To make that easier,
the site was excavated

so that the plant was only
10 metres above sea level.

But the waves that swept over
Fukushima were 13 to 15 metres high.

Flooding the nuclear plant
caused a build-up of hydrogen gas.

Several reactors exploded.

TEPCO, the Tokyo
Electric Power Company,

eventually acknowledged that
three reactors had melted down

over the course of three days.

There was a reluctance on the part
of the utility,

to address Tsunami safety,

in part because this seemed to
be such a low-probability event,

that its likelihood
was discounted.

The Prime Minister at
the time, Naito Khan, said

there was a strong possibility of
radioactive fallout over a large area.

It was a catastrophic accident

and the radiation effects will remain
in the region for hundreds of years.

There's still a 20km exclusion
zone around the Fukushima plant.

Entire communities
are unable to return.

Thousands of black bags
contain irradiated soil.

Tanks hold radioactive water.

The people who once lived here

were occasionally allowed to
return and search for mementos.

This man was in no doubt his
daughter Yuna had drowned

but was grateful to
have found her T-shirt.

The cost of cleaning up Fukushima and
paying compensation to people affected

is expected to
exceed $250 billion.

Japan has begun
building Tsunami barriers

along a 400km
stretch of coastline.

Fukushima had a devastating impact on
the international nuclear power industry,

which had been promoted as the
low-carbon alternative to coal and gas.

Germany and some other European countries
are now phasing out nuclear power.

The capacity of natural
disasters to cause global chaos

had been dramatically illustrated
a year before in Europe.

Iceland is home to
32 active volcanoes.

In 2010, the volcano
Åfjättlöjökull burst into life.

It had lain dormant
for 200 years.

Having a glacier over the top of an active
volcano

basically leads to conditions where
you can get far more expl*sive activity.

So the magma heats up the ice,

the
ice melts, the water cools the magma,

and results in a very,
very expl*sive eruption.

The eruption was a boon for experienced
Icelandic pilots like Omar Ragnarsson.

While Omar's small, piston-driven aircraft
could fly safely near volcanic ash clouds,

they posed a huge hazard
for jet turbine engines.

The giant ash plume Rose nine
kilometres into the jet stream

and spread far beyond Iceland.

Suddenly, planes across Europe
were grounded, millions were stranded.

Most European countries closed
their airspace during this event

and for six days we had over
100,000 flights cancelled,

10 million passengers affected

and something like 48% of all air traffic
across the globe impacted by this event.

The disruption to air travel
affected other industries.

Starved of parts, some car
manufacturers suspended production.

Some countries experienced
shortages of fresh produce

and the pharmaceuticals industry
was hit by spoilage concerns.

The 2010 eruption illustrated
the value of constant

and ever more sophisticated
volcano monitoring.

One of Iceland's
biggest volcanoes, Katla,

is dangerous, not only for
what it might throw into the air,

but for what it could do to the
vast glacier which sits above it.

Were Katla to erupt, it's likely
the glacier would rupture,

sending ice and floodwater
down towards the village of Vik.

If there is a flood, it will go into the
sea and a big wave will come from there.

They're scared that the wave
will come and destroy the school.

Four times a year, the students at this
school practise their evacuation drill,

a level of preparedness
that remains rare

in an increasingly
disaster-prone world.

The intensity and ferocity of
tropical storms have increased.

Oceans have absorbed
about 90% of global warming

and storms draw their
energy from warming seas.

The US National Aeronautics
and Space Administration

says every three to seven years,
a wide swathe of the Pacific Ocean

along the equator warms by
two to three degrees Celsius.

In 2013, super typhoon Haiyan

blew in from the North Pacific,
making landfall in the Philippines.

Winds exceeded 300 km/h,

wreaking destruction
across the impoverished archipelago.

I tried to ask help, but
the wind was so fast.

I lost my house, I lost my
husband, I lost everything.

Then I don't know
where I started.

Everything lost.

Bantaiyan, one of 7,000
islands in the Philippines,

was directly in the
path of the typhoon.

It was home to 130,000 people.

They'd been battered by
another typhoon two years earlier

and thought they knew
what was coming.

We've had pretty strong typhoons
in the past, but never of this kind.

A lot of people who live in the islands,

thought that they would weather the storm,
they could weather the storm,

but obviously, from what
you see, we were all wrong.

As shortages of food, water and
medicines drove the population to despair,

thousands stormed the local
airport, struggling to board planes.

Eight trucks were
attacked and ransacked.

In a situation like this,
nothing is fast enough.

The need is massive,
the need is immediate,

because everybody, all at
the same time, is hungry.

All at the same time
have no water,

all at the same time have
no communication, no power.

Across the Philippines, Typhoon
Haiyan k*lled more than 7,000 people.

Millions were left homeless.

Haiyan posed a
critical question.

Was it just a one-off extreme storm,
or was it part of a pattern of change?

Filipino weather records show
that the top speed of storms

has risen 80km/h
over the past 70 years.

A report by the UN's Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change in 2019 said,

"Increases in tropical
cyclone winds and rainfall

"are exacerbating
extreme sea level events."

You could have a
cyclone or a hurricane

where a tiny fraction of the change
in the behaviour of that cyclone

was linked with global warming,

or the majority of the change
in the behaviour of that cyclone

was linked to global warming.

Typhoon Haiyan struck as a UN climate
change conference was underway in Warsaw.

The chief Filipino delegate

tried to stress the gravity of
the disaster in his homeland.

Mr President, I speak
for my delegation, but I...

I speak for the countless

people who will no longer be
able to speak for themselves.

We can take drastic action now
to ensure that we prevent a future

where super typhoons
become a way of life.

Fishing has traditionally been the
key economic activity on Ban Tai An,

but the sequence of typhoons degraded
fishing grounds, reducing catches,

and tourism was choked off by
the extraordinary destruction.

Climate change affects us directly
because we are surrounded by water.

The sea defines who we are.

If we have storms like this
becoming more and more frequent,

we might as well vacate and look
for a much better place on this earth

because certainly there won't
be any future to look forward to.

From the North Pacific
to the South Pacific,

ocean weather patterns
have become extreme.

One driver of climate in the
region is the El Niño system.

In an El Niño cycle,
which happens irregularly,

the central and eastern
regions of the Pacific

become substantially
warmer than average.

In Australia, this produces longer, hotter,
drier periods right across the continent.

2009 was an El Niño year.

In February, a heatwave settled
over southeastern Australia,

building up to a day that would
become known as Black Saturday.

For three successive days, the
temperature topped 43 degrees Celsius.

Firefighters feared the worst.

If you knew anything about fire,

you knew that something
horrendous was gonna happen.

The lead-up to Black Saturday was a
very, very prolonged, intense drought.

So the landscape was being
primed... crackling.

And then we get a
particular synoptic setup

where basically you transport
the hot, dry, arid air masses

and speed down into the
temperate part of Australia.

And if you've got ignitions in
already a primed landscape,

you can imagine how
those fires are gonna burn.

On Saturday 7 February, the
temperature hit a record 45 degrees.

100-kilometre-an-hour winds brought
down power lines, sparking fires.

The stage was set
for catastrophe.

Grass fires raced across paddocks
in the strong, gusty winds.

The bushfires, 400 in total,
swept across a vast area.

In one section of the
small town of Kinglake,

only a fraction of 200
homes survived the flames.

In all, 2,000 houses
were destroyed.

450,000 hectares were burnt out.

173 people perished.

There's nothing left to burn.

The house next door
to me is gone.

Our shed's gone. Everything's
gone except the house.

It was Australia's
deadliest natural disaster.

A judicial investigation into
the Black Saturday fires

found that electrical failures
caused five of the 11 biggest fires.

Power companies paid out tens of
millions of dollars in compensation

to thousands of victims.

A tragedy beyond belief, beyond
precedent and really beyond words.

World climate experts meeting
in Australia at the time of the fires

heard the number of extreme weather
days across the continent, was increasing,

from six a year in the early
2000s, to 10 days a year in 2020.

We're seeing heat records in some parts
of Queensland and New South Wales

that are not merely records.

You expect records to be broken.

They are like Usain Bolt doing
the seven-second 100 metres.

They are so off the charts,

that there has to be
performance-enhancing drugs involved.

And the performance-enhancing drug
involved in the heatwave records

are the greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere.

By 2050, it's predicted
that there could be

as many as 24 extreme
weather days every year.

People who work in
climate science have said,

"This is what you'd expect
with climate change.

"You would see far more fires, far
more floods, far more extremes."

It's very complicated,

but we have changed the background
state of the Earth's climate.

The oceans have warmed
and the land has warmed,

and that means any event that forms
in that changed climate environment,

will have, as part of its signature,
the implications of climate change.

While Australia is burdened with the
worsening effects of climate change,

it's wealthy and can mitigate
some of the consequences.

But some Pacific neighbours are
powerless to hold back the tide.

Inhabitants of the Carteret Islands
in northeast Papua New Guinea

are among the world's first
climate change refugees.

The island's sinking.

We do see with our own eyes
that our islands are sinking.

We love the place,
we love the islands,

but it's sad to see this
island's gonna finish.

Since the 1950s, the sea has been
slowly devouring the Carteret atoll,

the inundation of salt water laying
waste to many food sources.

I will have no banana now to
eat, and I will eat coconut only

without banana, because
the sea spoils my garden.

But now, even the coconut
trees are succumbing to the sea,

and locals must rely on emergency
rations from Bougainville,

80 kilometres away.

Salty water is also seeping
up from the ground.

Stagnant pools, creating
a haven for disease.

Many Opa children
are affected by malaria,

and so this diarrhoea and other
tummy aches and headache,

all this comes up because
of stagnant water.

It appears the
battle is already lost.

The main island of Hahn is edged
with submerged rock and clam barriers

built in an attempt to
hold back the oceans.

There's a point at which, if we
don't get a grip on global warming,

that no matter how high
you build that seawall,

you're not gonna be able
to live on a low-lying atoll.

It's at that point,
that one has to think

who will accommodate people
leaving those atoll nations.

Despite worsening living conditions, about
1,500 islanders remain on the Carterettes.

Some have relocated to Bougainville,
hoping to find land, build houses

and sow crops which can no
longer be grown back home.

What will be lost, is a way of
life, a culture and a language

because that doesn't
survive too long,

maybe even a generation or
two in a Cosmopolitan setting.

I really miss the place.

I miss the sea, the fish and the
coconuts and the palm trees.

It is a home for me.

The plight of the Carteret Islanders
reverberates throughout the Pacific.

Countries built on low-lying atolls,
barely a few metres above sea level,

are losing valuable
land to rising seas.

Kiribati and Tuvalu are among the
most threatened nations in the world

and when we talk existential threat,
if your land area is going to go under,

that really is an
existential threat.

At the 2019 meeting of South
Pacific nations in Tuvalu,

Australia, the biggest greenhouse
gas emitter in the region,

came under pressure to
wind back coal production,

to prevent higher
carbon emissions.

As you are concerned about
saving your economies in Australia,

I am concerned about
saving my people in Tuvalu.

The leader of Tonga actually
shed tears in front of the leaders.

Pacific island
leaders were united,

but wield less power than
the fossil fuel industry

and governments confronted by
the cost of changing energy sources.

Australia, on its own,
won't k*ll the climate.

Islanders are
clinging to the hope,

that the average global temperature can be
limited to one and a half degrees Celsius.

Scientists are pessimistic.

One and a half degrees
is not possible now, I think,

unless we could miraculously
cut global emissions, literally,

in the next five years to zero.

I don't see how that's feasible.

Alarm about the dangers of
climate change is not new.

Three decades ago, in 1992,

warnings rang loud and
clear at the first Earth Summit.

The venue, Rio de
Janeiro in Brazil,

heavily polluted and overcrowded
with 10 million people.

35,000 diplomats, politicians and
bureaucrats, accompanied by 8,000 media,

crammed into luxury hotels
and conference rooms.

A blizzard of
reports was printed.

An ocean of cardboard and
plastic fed the delegates.

It was the biggest meeting of world
leaders since the end of the Cold w*r,

and the US was expected to lead.

We come to Rio with an
action plan on climate change.

It stresses energy efficiency, cleaner
air, reforestation, new technology.

But President George Bush

did not come with a proposed timeline
for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

He also refused to sign
the Biodiversity Treaty.

We are on a course that
is leading to tragedy.

I really believe that as we leave Rio,
we haven't satisfied that concern.

Environmental activists
declared Rio a farce.

I have 50 years longer
to live on this planet

than most of the grey
men in grey suits.

They're condemning me and my
generation, to live with global warming,

to live with, you know, increased
environmental and social degradation.

Rio was just the start of
regular UN climate conferences.

Kyoto in 1997 was decisive in setting
targets for emission reductions,

but the US declined to sign and China,
as a developing nation, was exempt.

The scientists got
it on the agenda,

got broad community understanding
that there is a problem,

but didn't manage to generate a
sense of the urgency of the problem,

to the extent that policymakers made
difficult and courageous decisions

to deeply cut CO2 emissions.

Finally, at the Paris
Climate Summit in 2015,

there was a broad
international commitment.

The biggest greenhouse
gas emitters -

America, China, India
and 190 other countries -

promised they'd work to keep the
average global temperature increase

to 2 degrees Celsius.

It's a formidable target, but it's
already been reached in West Africa.

Senegal, today, is
already at 2 degrees rise

average temperature since
the Industrial Revolution.

2 degrees rise average temperature.
Where have I heard that number?

Oh, that's what the Paris Climate
Agreement was designed to prevent by 2100.

Senegal's already there.
They're going to 4 degrees.

Three years after the
feel-good Paris Agreement,

the UN's climate change
experts were predicting failure.

Most countries, they
warned, were not on track

to meet the 2 degrees
limit on temperature rise.

The signs are very bad.

All the governments are
not meeting their obligations.

And subsequent UN reports
have shown that, actually,

the situation is more dire than was
even predicted at the Paris 2015 accords.

So, there are only a certain
number of years left.

I think we're way off track
on the global climate targets.

Last year, the UN Secretary-General
commented that we were 80% short

of the level of commitment needed
to keep global warming under 1.5.

80% short.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change said we had 12 years to turn the tide.

And they say, that
it is geophysically,

technologically and economically
possible to turn the tide.

The problem is, that it's
proving politically impossible.

And if that continues
to be the case,

then we're on course for
a 3 degree-plus future,

which will be very,
very miserable.

The management of climate
change would be easier,

if the world's
population was stable.

Yet even with current
declining birth rates,

the UN predicts there'll be close to
10 billion mouths to feed by 2050.

Populations are exploding.

Nigeria, by 2050, will have
more people than America.

411 million people, according
to the UN prediction.

Overpopulation is drastic.

The rate of human population
growth in Africa is extraordinary.

And you do not have there

the social backing and the creation of
food and shelter to house those people.

Billions of extra humans, are further
stressing the planet's natural resources.

More people need more energy.

In turn, that's driving the
demand for fossil fuels,

which emit the greenhouse gases
that are affecting weather patterns.

Scientists are researching
tipping points for climate systems.

The famous ones are things like
the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic,

which keeps Western Europe 5 to 10
degrees warmer than it otherwise would be.

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet,

methane stored in the permafrosts
of the northern middle attitudes.

The Amazon is thought to be a tipping
point where if it warms and dries,

you can have a
collapse of that system.

There are many tipping points,

and there is no guarantee that
we haven't already tipped them.

It isn't that they will tip at 1.5 degrees
or 2 degrees or 3 degrees or 1 degree.

We don't really know where
those tipping points are.

So we may have already
catastrophically triggered something.

But the really
important message is,

the more we warm the planet,

the more we increase the chances
of those tipping points being triggered.

Already, though, it's clear, there
are more extreme weather events

affecting billions more people.

Fire seasons are longer
and less predictable.

Fires have been burning on an unprecedented
scale, frequency and ferocity.

Cyclones, hurricanes, typhoons with
wind speeds not previously recorded

are often more deadly
and devastating.

Man-made climate change is

one of the fundamental
challenges we'll have to confront.

It absolutely has the
potential to cause

large-scale disruption
and destruction.

We have 10 years, we have 12
years, maybe 15 years if we're lucky.

But if we allow things just to
continue, then we're in trouble.