they say there are only three kinds of stories -- man versus nature -- one small step for man. >> man versus man. >> first you duck, then you cover. >> and man verse himself. >> i'm not a crook. >> the story we're about to chase has all three. several billion tiles over. the cast includes you, everyone you'll ever meet and every living thing. the stage is the entire planet and the stakes a hundred miles,

only the end of life as we know it. but this is not a show about the end of the world. the world will be just fine. the world has been spinning through fire and ice for over 4 billion years. no, i'm talking about us, life as we know it, the modern human world that could only be built on a living planet with a goldie locks climate, not too hot, not too cold. but now the world scientists are urgently trying to tell us goldilocks is dying. so this is a road trip into america's stories of man versus

nature, his neighbors and himself as seas rise, mountains burn and economies shift. and it's a search for ways to turn our denial or depression into action. >> this is only the beginning. >> to save the lives of millions we will never meet and a few we know really well. this is "the road to change." let's start with a confession. for years i considered myself the luckiest s.o.b. in television news. got to chase stories all over the globe.

but -- >> everything back there is gone. >> each trip brought fresh insight into how much we're losing and how much we had lost. >> 50 years ago, 60,000 acres might burn in a year. last year it was almost 2 million acres. and now with every unnatural disaster -- >> a report out today from the united nations warns climate change is having a devastating impact. >> -- every horrifying warning from science. >> a deadly pickture here in th united states. >> and every shrug from the people in charge. >> global warming a lot of it is a hoax. it's a hoax. >> himy wonder and gratitude tu

into worry and grief. i'm not alone. the american psychological association came up with a name for it -- eco anxiety. >> what we're not doing is acknowledging the bigness of it. >> reporter: rene lurchman studies the psychology of the climate crisis. >> suddenly we're coming along and saying guess what, everything you thought was really amazing about being humans, all these incredible developments, travel, food production, industrialization that humans have benefited so much from and are very proud of, it like all of a sudden the narrative changes and it like this is all actually destroying our planet. destroying lives that you care about and destroying the beings

that we love. so that's a pretty intense message. >> it's big enough to short circuit our brains in a way, our emotions. >> exactly. exactly. but how did we get here? how did people with good tin intentions pave our way to hell? maybe we should start on highway one, a prime example of versus human nature. look at this, i'm driving on a highway over the ocean. the question now is for how long. you know, this was originally the overseas railroad, built by an oil man named henry flagler, driven by the audacious vision of turning sea and swamp into paradise. man, if he could see it now.

but 20 years before flagler found florida, a woman in upstate new york discovered something even more profound. her name was yunis newton foote, she was an artists are and scientist. she found when you put different gasses in the sun, it perhaps heat and atmospheres of that gas would give our earth a high temperature. back then nobody paid attention to scientists in skirts. even at countless men duplicated her discovery, there was no stopping the industrial revolution. coal and oil transformed humanity, built the modern world, complete with overseas highways. but all that burning also built an invisible greenhouse in the

sky. and thanks to all that heat trapping gas, just the oceans are absorbing as much extra heat as five hiroshima-size atomic bombs every second of every minute every day. yeunice foote was right. and 163 years later on independence day 2019, anchorage was hotter than key west. >> this whole lake, there was no lake in the early 1950s. so the ice went all the way down to the end of the lake. >> end of the lake down there. >> right. >> this is what is left of alaska's spencer glacier. what took thousands of years of

snow to grow has melted away in mere decades. >> the ice that we're standing on is probably about 5,000 years old. once this water melts off and goes into the ocean, as long as we have all this carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it's not coming back here. >> and if you count greenland and the polar caps, since 1961 earth has lost the equivalent of a block of ice the size of the united states 16 feet thick. satellites and computer models get better by the year. new science shows prediction of sea level rise have been wildly conservative. from bangkok to boston, shanghai to charleston, it is now projected that 150 million people will be living below high tide by 2015.

>> we're committed to about a foot, maybe a foot and a half of sea level rise here. >> and by the end of the century? by 2100? >> it could be anywhere between three and since feet. >> some of your colleagues are predicting 15 feet of sea level rise. which means miami's gone, right? >> yes. 15 feet is a serious problem. >> are they doom sayers, overly pessimistic? >> what they're trying to tell us if we remain on this trajectory, it's a really possibility what they're suggesting could happen. it's not out of bounds. it's not a radical statement. >> next up, we check with the movers and shakers. >> the fear is palpable here in miami. >> you want to have pervious materials below flood. >> to see how well they're

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we're always committed to keeping you connected. this was supposed to be a road trip into the future. with science as my map, i set out to find how america would be

transformed by the climate crisis. but i quickly learned the future is now because we are the first humans ever to walk on a planet this hot. so nobody knows what comes next. >> even if we take dramatic action and avoid some of the worst impacts, the world will be so totally transformed by the ambassad action we do take, the planet will be unrecognizable. >> one way or another, we're not going back to goldie locks. >> that will mean carbon plantations, a whole new way of growing food, every single building on the planet will have to be retrofitted. if we do nothing, our world will be transformed and if we take action to solve it, our world will be transformed, too. >> when i realized we're living through the end of as we know it, it began to feel like a road

trip through the five stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. miami shows signs of all five at once. >> 125,000 years ago all of south florida was underwater. what these hills marine sand chunks and the valleys of the tidal channels which cut between them. but the eirony is that what happened back 125,000 years ago is going to dictate what happens to your house now. >> today around the u.s. close to 100 coastal communities face chronic flooding due to sea level rise. the union of concerned scientists says that number could jump to 170 just in the next 15 years. meanwhile in miami, everyone knows they're living on porous

limestone. and a university of miami study says flooding events have gone up 400% since 2006. but between the floods and storms it's freaking gorgeous! it's estimated that the population of florida is growing at about 38 people an hour and it's hard to find a developer or politician eager to sound the alarm that the water will come. >> their basic message is that we can deal with it. you know, we can respond. >> but can they is this. >> no. no. nobody can. not in the long run, whether it will be a floating city, an abandoned city, none what will t will be but it will not look like this city. >> but it's a short ride from denial downtown to bargaining, denial and acceptance at pine crest. >> i live in pine crest.

i'm at 11. >> where neighbors have formed america's first underwater homeowner's association. >> i'm at seven feet, lower than i thought to be honest. >> my name is judy and i'm here for hope and for inspiration. >> there was some really negative response where people recoil and say why are you doing this? you're going to hurt us and hurt our property values, which i found to be part of the cancer i'm trying to cure. >> it's the brain child of xavier cortada. >> what's happening in our community. >> before water covers the street in the next century, there will be an aquifer below it that will not give you the fresh water you drink in these homes. before that happens, there's going to be a flood insurance rise. s that happens it will be property devaluation because all of a sudden the psychology of a

house being an investment is going to be started to be on its head. >> my home is in dank ger, a whe bunch of homes next to me. >> the fear is palpable here in miami. i wanted to give people a mechanism of coping and dealing and preparing for the inevitable. >> but they all know they can't do it alone. they need help from people in power. you are republican. >> yes. >> what is it like being associated with a party in which climate change seems to be a plank in the platform. >> for me i live it. we want to push back on what people are trying to brand us with, which is not accurate. >> which is what? >> which is we're going to be underwater in 150 years, which is not going to happen. >> how can you be sure? >> because we're making

significant investment to make sure that doesn't happen. >> they raised their own taxes. the miami forever new england devotes $400 million to higher streets and bigger drainage. that's a drop in a smelly bucket when they need 45 times that amount to fortify septic tamnks and if they fail, it's everybody's mess, even on ultra rich, this island. >> people at that income level have a lot more options than a lot of the rest of us they can invest in upgrading their sea walls, their buildings. >> a sweeping new report by

worldwide consultant giant found flood prone homes could lose 5 to 15% value this decade and up to 35% by 2050, which has some scrambling to protect their investment. >> the plan is to have the wall here. >> it would be about this high. >> in miami beach we're saying you can build one to five feet higher. >> so do you worry about banks or insurance companies at some point deciding, you know what, we're not going to write 30-year mortgages? >> we're having those conversatio conversations. >> as a developer, do you now have an ethical obligation to try to convince a customer to build higher? >> we have those conversations, and it's also a dollar and cents because the higher you go, the more money it is. >> but as the haves decide between luxury appliances and attitude, the have notes in

little haiti are worried about something else. >> this one is a haitian church. he's being pressured every day, sell, sell, sell, sell. >> the descendants are the workers who built henry flagler's railroad and immigrants who could only afford to buy on the wrong side of the tracks are now three feet higher than their rich neighbors. >> they are being pushed out from their homes, from their businesses. >> because high ground is valued property now. >> well, believe it or not, we didn't know that. >> but even a few extra feet of altitude may not save you from a next level hurricane. next up, how the fingerprints of an unnatural storm could be used to challenge the fossil fuel giants.

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for the same medications as the vet, but up to 30 percent less with fast free shipping. visit petmeds.com today. this is a unique, one in the world air sealed action tank. >> at the big moist room in the university of miami, there is a box full of hurricanes. wow, that's incredible! a multi-million dollar storm simulation machine, built to better understand the power of wind, water and heat. >> the amount of moisture that can evaporate from the surface of the ocean is very, very sensitive to temperature. so small increases in temperature lead to large

increases in evaporation. the evaporation is the fuel that drives the storm. if you warm up the ocean a little bit, you get a big response of evaporation that gives you a big response in the intensity of storms. >> at least one study predicts that by century's end, the number of cat four and five storms in the atlantic basin will increase by 45 to 87%. but while they can predict the behavior of nature during a hurricane, it's much harder to predict human nature after modern storms of past. >> wow, look at that. you can see right into that kitchen. >> yup. >> wow. >> this was mexico beach, florida, three months after hurricane michael. once known as mabrey by the sea, the panhandle town lost three

lives, 90% of its buildings were damaged and there's no telling how many residents left that will never come back. >> it's hard to ignore what the data that is being put out about global warming and the oceans around our continent and the rise. >> knowing that, would you invest here? >> no. my house is over there. okay? no. >> but at what point is there a moral obligation of leaders and business to say, i'm sorry, you can't build there anymore unless you take all the risk? >> you have to think of the economics of that. what becomes of the most valuable tax base lots in not only mexico beach but along the

coa coast? is the state willing to buy your property? >> because the value of that lot pays your cops, your teachers. >> that's right, they pay it all. that's exactly right. >> the mayor tells me he has an annual budget of $3.5 million. but just the clean-up from michael is estimated to cost up to 60 million. so in a future of storms made bigger, stronger and wetter by the burning of fossil fuels, some wonder whether fossil fuel corporations like this one should help cover the tab. the motiva refinery is the biggest in north america and owned by a saudi arabia company that made $111 billion profit in 2018, almost twice as much as apple. meanwhile, their neighbor who lives here is driven out by the floodwaters of hurricane harvey and almost two years later can't afford the repairs to move back

in. motiva and 20 other fossil fuel companies are being sued by rhode island for their partial responsibility for our once and future climate crisis. and while the companies are fighting the first ever liability suit of its kind of motiva's parent company acknowledged in a recent financial disclosure that claims such as these could grow in number. >> climate contribution science is one of the biggest advances in our understanding of climate change in the past ten years. it's basically researchers looking for human fingerprints on the storms. i think it will become important in the future as people continue to sue fossil fuel companies and governments making this so controversial. >> a day when you could sue exxon mobil for 50% of your losses in that storm. >> that's already happening to some degree. >> after rhode island, new york state did sue exxon mobil for allegedly defrauding investors

about the true cost of climate change. while the judge ruled new york didn't show enough evidence, he wrote that nothing in this opinion is intended to absolve exxon mobil for responsibility to contributing to climate change. and while a federal appeals court ended the climate kids bid to sue the federal government for lack of climate action, court fights over liability have only just begun. >> i think that this is a growing area, a very litigious area, because someone is to blame for these losses that are occurring and everyone's trying to figure out the legal mix of who and how and how much. >> do you see your town as a victim of this new normal? as a victim of a changing climate? >> no, i don't. i see us as a victim of mother nature in terms of hurricane michael. i've been here 65 years, and for

64 of those years we have been just fine. >> that, my friends, is human nature, even for those like the mayor, who acknowledge the science. the attitude is never surrender, always rebuild, #mytownisstrong. it not just beach towns doing the grim math resiliency these days. >> holy father let us come together and address climate change. >> next up, we head to the heartland where the people who grow our food are hoping, praying and rethinking everything they know about farming. people are surprising themselves the moment they realize they can du more with less asthma. thanks to dupixent,

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it has been said that once in your life you may need a doctor or a lawyer but every day you need a farmer.

when they hurt, we hurt. and if you make a living with soil, seeds and sun, few things hurt more than unpredictable weather. >> checking cattle with snow blowing into my face and i come around the corner and i'm hearing the frogs chirping in a snow blizzard. it was just weird. i was like this is what climate change is, the wrong weather, the wrong time with devastating consequences. >> matt russell works coyote run farm in south iowa with his husband and adopted sons. >> this spring we just got hammered with rain, just hammered. >> and like their neighbor, justin jordan, they are still reeling from the wettest 12-month period the united states has ever recorded. >> you also see how short this corn is? normally this tassel will be at

the top of my fingertips, eight feet tall. >> he took a 20% hit, but at least he had a crop. thanks to freakish bomb cyclones and floods, a staggering 19 million acres went unplanted across the country and almost a third of farm income came from federal bailouts or insurance. >> holy mighty good, we thank you for this time to come together. >> so you can't blame them for praying. but this is a different kind of devotional, interface power and light is a national organization devoted to using faith to fight the climate crisis. farmer matt heads the iowa chapter. >> i'd say a majority of farmers don't believe it. it's a sensitive issue. it tied back to politics, too. >> and that's the sad part, this isn't unicorns or

anything, it's proven stuff. >> the hard part is how does god call you in your vocation? we've been so divided politically on the issue of climate change that even if people believe in it and want to help, they're afraid to say anythi anything. >> right. >> fear of being judged by the neighbors or something, right? >> yeah. by other farmers, by groups. >> i know that some of my neighbors kind of -- well, i don't know if they laugh at me but they probably do. but at the same time, i still love my neighbor, will do anything for my neighbor, but i hate seeing this polarization keeping people from doing things that would be beneficial. >> meanwhile, farm debt is the highest in decades, and for the

first time america's farm bill includes $50 million for rural mental health care and suicide prevention. so it's a fair question to ask who in their right mind would possibly want to get into this business and feed the world in the next generation? but here's the good news. right now every corn plant in this field is pulling carbon out of the sky and putting it in the ground. and with the right financial incentives and right innovation, they can keep it there and still feed the world. iowa, nebraska could be giant carbon sinks. and unlike drillers and minors and frackers, these farmers won't have to change careers in order to help save life as we know it. it is called regenerative agriculture or carbon farming.

it involves less tilling, chemicals, more cover crops and natural microbes, less mono crop factory farms, less trees and b b biodiversity. >> listen to the birds, too. something you don't hear in a crop field. not just plant diversity but wildlife diversity. >> the life. >> exactly. >> and one big cheer leader for this idea happens to be a famous farm boy from tennessee. >> if you're looking for common ground in rural america, it's the ground! >> my father taught me alesson when i was about five years old, where to find the best, most productive soil. and i held it in my hand and it was black and moist. but i'm embarrassed to tell you that it was 50 years later that i understood why it was black.

that's the carbon. >> since earth's soil holds four times the carbon as all living plants and animals combined, gore's farm east of nashville is a working growing laboratory to figure out how to keep it out of the sky and in the ground. there a ea's a perception that s kind of farming is for elites or hippies or who can afford it? >> you used to hear that same argument applied to solar panels but look what's happening now in subdivisions and all over the country. people are putting in solar panels because they're getting cheaper electricity. i think the same thing will happen with regenerative agriculture.

>> i came upon a backed that humanity has burned more carbon since your first book came o out -- >> you're not saying cause and effect here. >> no, no. >> i know your point. >> we live locally in a perpetual growth idea. you don't get elected or a board seat by saying we should slow down. we're in a mel of a hess really. >> but the former vice does not agree we should process through the five stages of grief. >> we have not been condemned to a death sentence. there is a group of people that seem to be eager to go from denial to despair without pausing on the intermediate step of solving the damn problem and doing the things that we can do now. and the good news is the

solutions are not utopian. they are available. >> but even with all the technology, even with plenty of will -- >> i can at least say i tried to do something. >> -- and a whole lot of faith. >> amen. >> -- so much of this story comes down to politics. coming up -- >> there is no man made climate change. >> a dive into partisan division fueled by fossil fuel. but first, a trip to fire country, where they are learning now more than ever -- >> only you can prevent forest fires. >> smokey bear is wrong.

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♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ smokey the bear, smokey the bear, growling and growling and sniffing the air ♪ ♪ he can find the fire before it starts to flame ♪ ♪ that's why they call him smoke ♪ ♪ that was how he got his name >> bless his cartoon heart but for nearly 57 years, our friend smokey bear has been mostly wrong. >> so remember, only you can prevent forest fires. >> no, you can't. sure, the vast majority of forest fires are human caused, but the fires set by lightning often burn more acres than the ones is the by people. some of the epic fires in australia were so big, their smoke columns created lightning

with started more fires. as the american west warmed 50% faster than the rest of the planet since 1970, more drought and infestation of tree-killing beetles turned forests in fuel, just as millions of people with their camp fires, cigarettes and power lines came searching for paradise. >> that's how hot things got. that's a water meter. >> yeah. it just melted it. >> yeah. >> and then when the system depressurized, it sucked in all that toxic spoke. >> that's what we believe. >> around the time the fire ripped through paradise, the deadliest in history, it was predicted by 2050 the size of western wildfires could increase two to six times. that's sobering because paradise is a case study that when the

smoke clears, the nightmare has only just begun. >> and in the meantime you can't drink the water. >> can't drink the water. >> an industry analysis found that insurance companies paid out twice as much in two years than they took in profit over 26. >> and i'll guarantee you many of those people up there are grossly uninsured or maybe even underinsured because the insurance services offices have really cracked down. if you're in a fire-prone area, they are doubling, tripling your insurance costs or cancelling you. >> this is my old college apartment in malibu. i couldn't afford insurance back in the day. i can only hope that whoever lived here during the woolsey fire was covered. you have a list of addresses that are covered by your company. >> we do. >> and since public first responders have been so strapped, private for profit

firefightering companies are booming, the kind used by kim kardashian in the same blaze that took my >> yes and no. i have done pro bono work too. had we not done anything about it that house would have been gone. >> when america was knew, firefightering was a private enterprise. it was ben franklin that created the first bucket brigades and sold the idea if everyone puts out their neighbors house the community saves itself. >> do you think with the fires as bad as they are we could be going back to the model? >> maybe. >> you guys could do to fire departments what you could do to taxi drivers. i call and pay you? >> yes. i do think it could possibly go that way.

people say we cater to the rich. we don't. the resources are so thin and spread out, we have the fires going crazy, you know, would you do it? >> yeah. absolutely for my family, sure. can you imagine a future with the haves and the have-notes when it comes to defending your house against a wildfire? >> i am not going to imagine that future. i am hire todman fest a different future. >> gavin newsom ran on promises to bring california into a carbon-free future but as governor he has been consumed by fire and all of the complications like the state's largest utility company blamed for a series of blazes with liability lawsuits pushing them into bankruptcies. the families pushed into homelessness in the middle of a housing crisis and towns like paradise, struggling to rebuild.

>> it shouldn't be a state of haves and have-not that can protect themselves. >> put it in dollar figures, how much does a camp fire cost, just to put out the flames? >> jaw-dropping and the numbers continue to escalate. just the debris removal is in the multibillion dollar expense. >> since the camp fires started on federal land, some argue for more logging there to thin the fuel. >> that is the direction that the fire spread. >> naturalists point out life as we know it now calls for more forests and not less. >> we are willing to be skeptical about agencies and companies in the logs business that say they are go to save towns from tire by doing a bunch of logging deep down in the

forest. that is what they did here and we saw the tragic consequences. >> the timber companies logged the whole area and put in a plantation of ponderosa pines with the argument by managing the forest man can prevent the next big fire. exactly the opposite happened. when the camp fire came roaring over the ridge it blasted through this logged area at a rate three times faster than average. by some estimates if they let it go wild and not touched it the people in paradise would have had two extra hours to evacuate. >> a tree that falls in the first few years is indeed a problem from a fuels perspective. a tree has been that fell five or ten or 15 years acts more as a sponge. >> new science and ancient

wisdom are helping folks understand that western landscapes evolve to burn and they need fire to thrive. >> there is a bunch of native insects that actually depend on dead trees. >> the bugs attract the woodpeckers and flying squirrels and the hawks and so on through the web of life, all the way up to bears. >> you can't have any of it unless you have fire or drought killing patches of trees. >> a forest needs death to live. >> exactly. >> now more than ever e colgists like chad will try to convince our old friend to modify his message, only you can prevent community fires. instead of battling blazes deep in unpopulated woods, let them burn and spend the resources defending homes and businesses and towns like paradise. >> folks think climate change is not real and folks think you can't afford to address climate

change, my gosh. the most expensive option is doing nothing. >> plenty will stay. rebuild. fight. adapt. but what are the folks smoked out of california or flooded out of louisiana go? >> if my land goes underwater, is it still my land? >> generally not. >> how hard is it to move entire towns? >> anybody else is probably not moving. >> next stop, a look at the next great migration. but no matter what neighborhood you grow up in, the y creates opportunities for all. for a better us, donate to your local y today.

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♪ >> next stop on the road to change, louisiana. named after a french king and sold to us for less than 30 cents an acre. good deal. but now the land is sinking. just as seas are rising. >> every hour of every day a piece of louisiana about the size of a football field slides into the sea. >> there has been a lot of change in just the last 35 years. >> those that study the drowning of louisiana say that it is happening faster than anyone ever predicted. >> what maybe five years ago was

the worst case scenario is now what we call a light scenario. >> that is terrifying. >> that is terrifying. it basically means that climate change is here in full force. do you have children? >> i have an 8-year-old daughter. >> do you think she will ever take out a 30-year mortgage? >> i don't know. i don't know. i would not bet my money on it, let's put it that way. >> do this for regular high tide. there is no bad weather event. this is just water coming in. >> welcome to this. saturday, 10:00 a.m. >> two hours south of new orleans, settled on a band of biloxi choctaw needed a place to

hide from the trail of tears. >> see these trees right here? >> for the first 100 years they farmed the land, until the salt water came. >> whenever the water would get like this, you would feel water right underneath the floor of the house. >> they raised their home a few feet and a few feet more until before and after satellite proved what they already knew, 98% of their homeland has disappeared. >> i always talk about water as our life and our death. we were not able to farm it anymore, the water, the shrimp, the crabs sustained our people and now it is killing us. >> they won a first of its kind grant, $48 million federal to

move 40 miles north. the state bought 500 acres of old sugar cane fields. >> we will have baseball fields. we will have fishing ponds. wetlands. homes along the back. >> but before they could even break ground -- >> we had a tribal meeting today. >> they are getting a harsh lesson in how hard that it is to convince americans to uproot and retreat. >> anybody else is probably not moving. >> yeah. >> yeah. >> half of the 30 families that live here say they will never leave. some are worry if they can't pick their own land and neighbors they will lose tribal identity. >> you can't discriminate against people and tell people they can or can't live here based on zone characteristic they have. >> others like chris have a hard

time believing that glaciers melting so far away could ever melt his land. >> i have trouble with that. >> you doubt melting glaciers will affect you here? >> yeah. yeah. >> you doubt that? >> yeah. this place has been surrounded by water, you know. we have always been around water. so if we would be sinking, i think wield be sunk. >> if my land goes underwater is it still my land? >> generally not. >> really? >> generally when land turns into open navigable water, the public owns it. you don't get a check. >> it is not underwater. >> it eventually will be. >> it is not there yet. >> all right. >> i heard that. but it is still on top. >> still dry.

it is still yours. >> it is still mine. >> if it is this hard to move a few dozen people, consider the most widely accepted estimate that by the middle of the century, the climate could displace 200 million. at least 130,000 puerto ricans left their island right after hurricane maria. for many of the folks that i met there, they are losing home and hope and their american passport because their most valuable possession, and they are lucky compared to members of the migrant caravans in recent years, central american farmers whose crops failed in freak weather. imagine what border crossings around the world might look like as things get worse. in the u.s., imagine another great migration, folks seek safe harbor and fresh start like okies that fled the dust bowl during the great depression. it could shift the entire elect

toral map turning red states blue and blue states red and change the very definition of neighbor and stranger. now might be a good time to better understand the human dynamic between those that believe the crisis is real and those that don't. >> you only have 11 years to live, folks. 11 years. climate change is coming up on us so fast. >> a journey into the hows and yes of denial. >> there were death threats made to me and to my family. ♪

>> the last couple of years i have been pinballing between two americas. one that believes we are committing fossil fuel suicide and the one that does not. >> i have heard the thing about the climate is changing and i have yet to see substantial proof of it. >> you would think victims of record shattering fires or towns would be the most zealous believers in the warnings from science, but human nature does not work that way. >> if i was to say that i was affected by the climate change taking place where the icebergs are melting and it is turning into water, i would have trouble with that. >> and sometimes. >> so, this is it? >> yeah.

>> members of the two americas shared the same name, blood and home. >> you guys built this yourself? >> yes. yes. team effort. >> one boatload at a time. >> one boatload at a time. >> wow. this is cozy. >> for generations, the whitney family has been watching their beloved bayous in southern louisiana disappear. >> what do you think about how much we have in our lifetime. it is pretty scary. >> there is nothing building it back up. >> even though they were nurtured in the same nature the brothers don't see eye to eye on why. >> do i sense a little bit of brotherly disagreement? >> yeah. i do believe that. >> you believe that? >> yeah. >> i am not a big believer in it to be honest with you. >> why? >> i guess that i go from what i

see. right now most of the united states is clinched in ice. niagara falls is frozen over. i do not see where the warming effect is. >> have you tried to explain it to him? climate change does not mean we are going to all turn into the tropics? >> we decided to agree to disagree on it. >> we can hope your brother is right. >> that is right. >> just like we need to be stewarts of our land and marsh and try to preserve it, we need to be conscious of what we are doing to the environment. we need to stewards of everything that we do on earth. >> i can see him going out of his way saying just because i do not believe in climate change do not mean i don't support the land. >> my grandfather originally had the property out here.

>> when i discussed the whitney brothers with the climate -- this is oil country where it is just as important as being a good stuard of the land. >> they have been generous to allow people to release surface rights. >> in my experience when people have a hard time coming to terms with the reality that climate change is human created that usually there is something going on that we are trying to protect, and it could be our deeply held loyalties to families, industry. >> for some folks -- >> we keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record. >> loyalty to a certain brand of politics. >> you know what this is? it is a snowball.

>> i would not call it the greatest crisis, no, sir. >> whether it is hotter or colder, the climate is always changing. >> there is no man-made climate change. >> is anything we are going to do now make any significant difference? >> no. >> something is changing. it will change back again. i think there is probably a difference but i don't know it is man-made. >> it is hard to imagine the word words conserve and conservation together. >> we come together with more scientific knowledge than ever before. >> we come to rio with an action on climate change. 92 the first president bush signed the first u.n. climate accord. a decade earlier exxon's own scientists explained the greenhouse effect to their

bottle bosses and predicted just how hot we would get. exxon insists the understanding of climate change has tracked internal documents show they knew in 1982. what did they do? drill, baby, drill. and spin, baby, spin. by 1988 they were officially emphasizing the uncertainty. >> the global warming theory to say that burning fossil fuels is the reason. scientific evidence remains inconclusive as to whether human activities affect the global climate. >> and then in 2009 just as the world was poised to take real action -- >> the hacked e-mail controversy involving british scientists. >> climate gate, e-mails that many say cast doubt on the

science behind global warming claims. >> someone hacked into a server in the university of england and stole over 1,000 e-mails between climate scientists. >> i first learned of this before thanksgiving in 2009. >> among those whose e-mails were hacked penn state's michael mann showing how earth's temperature jumped in the 20th century, findings confirmed by the national academy of sciences. >> they went through the stolen e-mails and cherry-picked individual phrases. >> by suggesting that scientists were making it all up, climate gate hijacked the conversation at the worst possible time. >> there were actionable death threats made to me and to my family. >> multiple investigations from the epa to the u.k.'s house of commons cleared them. declared climate gate was a

malevolent hoax. >> the only wrongdoing was the criminal theft of the e-mails in the first place. >> but it only added more fossil fuel to the machinery of denial. >> in the last 15 years there has been no recorded warning. >> if we are all products of the stories that we hear, from the people that we trust it is no wonder that republican mike and democrat keith can look at the same disappearing land and disagree. >> you have a lot of good-hearted people that have been convinced by their tribe if they are loyal republicans that they are supposed to deny the science of climate change. >> it may be changing. an annual gathering of the reddest of the red-blooded

republicans. >> you believe the climate crisis is a hustle? >> it is, absolutely. yes. >> but this year two booths away from climate hustle ii, i m. >> i have been to a few in my day and to spot a climate woke republican that wants a carbon tax is like spotting a snow leopard in the wild. do you consider yourself a republican greta? >> i see myself as a solution seeker. we talked about the problem and now we need to talk about solutions. >> she is a big fan of the baker-schultz plan that would tax carbon emissions and divy it up among americans. the average family would get $2,000 per year to start tax and dividends would ramp up until

fossil fuels go the way of the dinosaurs. >> this is the solution. the largest in the history of economics. >> no doubt. political winds are shifting with the changes in the weather. >> there is nothing that we can do to stop whatever the weather is go to do. we can't make it warmer. we can't make it colder. >> could they blow open a new age. >> you can't just sit around waiting for hope to come. >> next up on the journey, the search for hope. >> the road to change, america's climate crisis is brought to you by --

in these uncertain times, look after yourself, your family, your friends. but know when it comes to your finances, we are here for you. what can i do for you today? we'll take a look at the portfolio and make adjustments. i'm free to chat if you have any more questions. our j.p.morgan advisors are working from home to help guide you through this. for more than 200 years, we've helped our clients navigate historic challenges. and we will get through this one... together. ♪ ♪ let's watch a cooking show. cookie show? cooking shows. cookie shows? play the great british baking show.

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>> in ways subtle and staggering, this shows how the climate crisis is already affecting countless lives. but the best science warns that this journey into change has only just begun. since the industrial revolution began, earth has warmed about two degrees fahrenheit.

the paris accord set the ambitious limit of 2.7 degrees, but it is getting hotter, faster. to hold that limit scientists say we may have about 500 gigatons of carbon left to burn, period. the bernstein research found there are 2,900 gigatons already on the books of fossil fuel corporations and burning through it would go through 5.4 degrees fahrenheit, a road to hell. all within the lifetime of this little guy. william river weir, my unborn son. i know what you are thinking. what is your carbon footprint. how much do you burn making shows like this. last year just in commercial air travel it was about 110 tons. it is impossible to rent an

electric vehicle possible to hold my crew and gear. we are at least a decade away from carbon free jumbo jets, i can take more trains and buy enough carbon offsets to buy urban trees. but that is not a fix. but at least it is something. that is why al gore said that he triple offsets all of the carbon that he burns. >> do you think that it is important individually to show that sort of commitment in order for your message to be taken seriously. >> yeah. i do. and i do that. but at the same time as important as it is to change your light bulbs, it is way more important to change the nation's policies. >> a recent study found since the 1980s, just -- much the way

big bottle and packaging companies used a fake crying indian to shift the blame for pollution on to the consumer. >> people starting pollution. you can stop it. >> it is now in the best interest of fossil fuel companies to blame the individual for global warning. they use windmills to show you can feel good about their product because they are working on a carbon-free future but exxon's annual report shows the amount they invest in lower emission energy solutions is less than 2% of what they spent last year drilling for oil and gas. >> you have taken a stance that you won't fly at all. do you think that it is okay if i do? >> i am not telling anybody else what to do or not to do. so of course why would i care

about your flights. i am only doing this because i have decided that i, myself, want to live this way. you can do whatever you want of course. >> flight shaming helps distract us from the government prediction that the two fastest-growing jobs this decade will be solar and wind installers. there are dozens of other green energy ideas waiting to be scaled up. but to build them fast enough, the country must pull together in a way it hasn't since world war ii. and get the rest of the world to join us. >> you are proposing essentially the moonshot. the original new deal. the civil rights movement. all of that together. >> the sunrise movement, help to push the green new deal.

a grand resolution to tackle the climate crisis and to reshape society and the economy at the same time. >> young people want to be talking about jobs and the economy and the climate crisis and racial inequity and how we get access to health insurance and health care. >> as part of the same conversation. >> it is very difficult to pull them apart. >> the green new deal is vague and it is controversial but only the first stab at legislating the end of life as we know it. and whether it is this idea or some other, a harvard study examined hundreds of protest movements throughout history. found if a nonviolent campaign can attract only 3.5% of the nation's population, change is almost guaranteed. that means less than 12 million americans could force a tipping point if they could turn eco anxiety and depression into

action. >> you can't just sit around waiting for hope to come. then you are acting like spoiled irresponsible children. you don't seem to understand that hope is something that you have to earn. >> probably can't take a sailboat to scold world leaders like greta, but you can earn your hope and get in the face of your local officials and your favorite brands and pester your bank and grocer and utility company for their zero carbon plans. and since a yale study found that about 65% of people talk about the climate crisis rarely or never, you can connect with neighbors, give voice to your worries and theirs and maybe give mother nature love while you are at it. >> one of the most powerful things that you can be doing is to talk about it and to name it.

if we pause and ask more questions and show curiosity, what are you really afraid of or anxious about? and allow that to just have space and then we would find so many more people tracking along with us. >> the only thing that we have to fear is fear itself. >> they say there are only three kinds of stories in the world. man vs. nature, man vs. man and man vs. himself. >> but what if we tried more man with nature stories. man with man. man at peace with himself.

it may just change the script and save life as we know it. i can't wait to meet you. hello and welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. anna coren in hong kong and cnn newsroom starts now. the united states has the most coronavirus infections and deaths in the world. now the nation is watching nervously as some states ease rules designed to combat the spread. businesses like tattoo parlors, gyms, salons and bowling alleys were allowed to