welcome to amanpour on pbs. from greece to california, from japan to the arctic circle, an extreme summer season is on the rampage. what have we learned since the red flag was first raised 30 years ago? elizabeth colbert joins the program. the challenges and rewards of h horizontal identities. the author and filmmaker of fall from the tree explains. welcome to the program, everyone.

it is that time of year again. only this year, it is worse. at least 70 people are dead in the worst wildfires to hit greece in more than a decade. intense winds powered massive flames forcing some residents to escape into the sea to seek shelter from the raging firestorm. the planet looks like it's burning up. here in the uk it's experiencing its drier summer on record. japan has declared a natural disaster with dozens of people dead as temperatures break records across the country. in laos, thousands are displace after a dam burst. a wildfire near california has spread to more than 30,000 acres. 30 years ago, this summer, nasa scientist james hanson told congress that was the greenhouse affect, a buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,

threatened changes in climate. as this nasa animation of rising global temperatures shows, they were right. they predicted it then. it's happening now. joining me now is the elizabeth colbert. she's the science writer whom al gore described as reporting from the front line of the violent collision between civilization and our planet's ecosystem. welcome to the program. that is some introduction that al gore gives you. it shows how vital and how calam calamitous your brief is. what can you tell bus about the 30-year-old warning? >> the thing that's important to understand is that it's cumulative. the more co2 you put up, the warmer the climate you are going to get at the end. what james was trying to do 30 years ago was say, don't dump all the stuff in the atmosphere. you are not going to like the

result. 30 years have passed. that warning has not been heeded. in fact, emissions have gone up dramatically since the late 1980s. we are going to be coping with the consequences of that. we are seeing that right now. >> you say coping. how well are we coping? that is just really just a small handful of really what's going on right now as we speak all over the world. there's potentially an iceberg melting that could cause a tsunami around greenland right now. >> well, we do -- because we have not dealt with this problem in any way systematically but actually trying to either reduce our emissions or think really clearly about what kind of broad systematic changes we need about where people are living and how they're living, unfortunately, it seems like for the foreseeable we will deal with things on an ad hoc basis.

you may not be able to deal with them. that's the danger here. that was exactly why jim went to capitol hill 30 years ago to try to prevent us from having -- from getting to this point. now that we're here, there's a lot -- a lot that we need to be doing. i think i'm sitting here in the u.s. where we're actually going in the opposite direction, the wrong direction. scrubbing climate change from government websites. not thinking clearly about the problem at all. >> it is absolutely incredible that we still sit here and people can still debate whether humans are actually responsible for this massive climate change when the science is utterly clear. the one thing i want to ask you before moving on to the scientific specifics, you have written a profile of james hanson. he has lamented that despite his warnings, despite his experience and his expertise, maybe he just

wasn't a good enough communicator, maybe the scientific community failed in their dire warn, no matter how early they were. >> he made that remark to an associated press reporter a couple months ago. there were a bunch of stories that appeared around the 30th anniversary. i actually took issue with that. i don't really think that the blame falls on the scientists. i think the blame falls very squarely on the political system and really on all of us for not listening to what the scientists were telling us. that doesn't mean that scientific communication couldn't be improved. everything could be improved. but we were warned to the very, very highest level of the u.s. government, of the world government. in fact, in 2015, the heads of state of virtually every country in the world gathered in paris and acknowledged that we had a

huge problem at had to do something about it. now things have unravelled in paris because of political developments in the u.s. mainly. so there was a bright moment when people -- a moment of ho hopefulness when people thought we were going to finally take action, maybe not with the problem, but some kind of action. >> you are being diplomatic. basically, president trump has withdrawn the united states from the paris climate accord. we do hear from interested parties like mayors, like bloomberg and others that states and cities are picking up the slack in the united states and meeting those targets. is that what you hear as well? the u.s. is still fulfilling and meeting its target. >> well, no. the u.s. is not on track to meet its targets. i think that's pretty clear. it was going to have a hard time meeting its targets even with the regulations that the obama

administration had put in place to try to curtail co2 emissions. those were a big set of rules that affected power plants and also that affected tailpipe emissions from cars. auto fuel efficiency standards for cars. both of those sets of regulations, even as you and i speak, are being rolled back. so there's -- unless there's some kind of -- i don't want to say miracle, but close to a miracle, there's no way without those sets of regulations or without any political action on the federal level that the u.s. is going to meet its targets that it off neered in paris. it has not officially withdrawn because they can't. there's a time period involved there. but the trump administration has announced its intention to withdraw. >> i want to play you something that defense secretary james mattis has said about this crisis and about what actually

it means in his area of activity. it's a quote. he says, climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today. it's appropriate for the command to incorporate drivers of instability that impact the security environment in their areas into their planning. surely even the trump administration and their sort of hard-headed pragmatists can react to that kind of national security imperative. >> i think if you talk to people at the very highest levels of the u.s. military, they will acknowledge -- they will acknowledge that climate change is a huge threat. it's called a threat multiplier. in already unstable parts of the world, you are seeing water stress, all of the things that

were predicted that are now happening and that are making unstable places that much more unstable and that much more difficult to live in and producing humanitarian crises. the fact that -- i also have to blame the u.s. congress. the fact that people haat the highest levels of the administration and u.s. congress choose to take this really ostrich-like stand. if i stick my fingers in my ears and pretend it will go away is tragic, really. it will cost many, many lives. i think that history will look back at this moment when anl ea is burning, we're seeing terrible fires north of the arctic circle, when japanese people are experiencing an incredible heat wave. we will have a heat wave in the southwestern u.s. next week. the political system simply

refused to even acknowledge the problem. they're going to look back at a moment of insanity. it's going to be what in god's name were these people thinking? you do take them to task. it's not even really ostrich-like. it's worse. it's actually cozying up to some of the lobbies which are the worst polluters. we heard this now from epa whistle blowers awli whist whistleblowe whistle-blowers that things are being rolled back and lobbyists are pouring money into the current administration. tell us what's happening in the area of regulation that was designed to keep us safer and cleaner. >> well, as you mentioned, the climate change, the regulations that were designed to combat climate change are just one of many, many environmental regulations in a series of

regulations that are under assault right now. for example, this week there was news about rolling back endangered species protections for hundreds of listed species and many more that should be listed. all around -- you look at basically any area of environmental protection. the administration, the one thing -- many people pointed this out. the one thing they are effective or efficient at doing and ruthlessly focused on is rolling back environmental regulation. they have to -- a lot of these are fought in court. we haven't seen the end result yet. they are moving through that process of rolling back a lot of environmental protections, going back to before the obama administration. >> obviously, the writing that won the pulitzer was for your work on endangered species.

your writings that now species are endangered by humans. 66 million years ago, the dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid. now it's humans doing the extincting, so to speak. tell us what that will mean. tell us what species and how at risk they are. >> the characteristic of our time is that many, many, many species across many, many, many different groups -- it's not even just confined to one group. it's across all groups. are endangered. you can look down the list. we don't have data on a lot of species. we don't know how many we share the planet with. if you look at very, very well studied groups, you find in the case of mammals, for example, a quarter are all considered endangered. some of the iconic species on

planet earth, elephants are in big trouble, rhinos. we can go all the way down the list and even look at very small animals. we can look at groups of insects. many insects are endangered. it's not confined. that is the defining feature of our time and why we know we are in some kind of a crisis. >> it certainly is a crisis. thank you so much. you have actually written, you don't need to guess about this, climate change has become obvious, people can just look around and see it happening. thanks for joining us tonight. there is disaster. and then in the world we can also find triumph. my next guests explore how people manage to pole vault over some of life's most difficult obstacles. in far from the tree, andrew

solomon's book coined the book horizont horizontal. now adapted for the screen, it asks, what do we cure and what do we celebrate? >> all parents deal with children who are not what they imagined. my parents really didn't want to have a gay son. i wanted to see how other families managed it. i don't want to know just about families of gay people. i wanted to look at widely as i could. >> i knew he had autism. i assumed that he was impaired. it was overwhelming. he was shackled. >> you know as soon as you see him the worst has happened. it's not going to be okay. >> you go back to when they were

in the cradle. you wonder if you let them cry too long. i don't have any answer. a mother can't just stop loving a child. personally, i'm very excited someone is researching to find a cure. it's the same message our whole lives. there's something wrong with you. we need to fix it. i don't think i need to be fixed. >> fighting words. andrew and rachel joined me earlier this week to talk about their project. i spoke to them from new york. welcome to the program. >> what a pleasure to be here. >> thanks for having us. >> this is really quite extraordinary. you do -- it's a film of a book. you have this theme of the other, which andrew, you have term eed horizontal identity. explain to me why you use that term. >> there are really two kinds of identity. there are vertical identities that guess passed on from parent

to child. your ethnicity, nationality, often your religion. usually your language. those are characteristics that parents have in common with their children. even though some of those identities can be difficult and fraught by and large parents tend to reinforce a sense of pride in them in their children. then there are other identities that parents don't share with their children. most deaf children are born to hearing parents. most dwafgay people have straig parents. they have to learn a sense of identity from a peer group. they have to have a recognition, they discover this in adolescence when they have come through a great liberation to them. >> it's fascinating to term it in that way. before we get into some of the specifics and the identities that you highlight, let's not forget that your book was 700 pages long.

you interviewed people for years. i think there was 300 or so subjects you took into consideration. rachel, your film has had to really cut back. you had to take a different look at it. explain how your film is different from the book. >> the film is 90 minutes long. it's a feature documentary. it includes six stories, six families, including andrew as compared to the many hundreds that are in the book. i really tried rather than sort of trying to literally translate the book to screen, i really tried to kind of capture the essence and spirit of the book, which is incredibly unique. quite transformative. and distill it into a visual medium and a cinematic form. >> because you are the author and subject of the film, walk us through your own exploration of your own identity.

how you grew up. how was your relationship with your parents? >> i grew up in new york. i had a good relationship with my parents. they were generous and open. i recognized early on that i was gay. i thought if i told them, they were going to be shattered. i told them and they were. so it took a while to win them around. my mother, unfortunately, died shortly after that. she said all the right things before she died. i don't know that she meant them. my father threw us a beautiful is this unusual that a mother is less accepting than a father? >> my father was more neutral about the whole thing. he was accepting. he also was distanced from it. my mother was an intimate, very immediate experience. it was right up there. it all started very early on. i can remember -- i told this story before -- when i was at 6 years old and i was at a shoe store.

we were given a balloon to take home. my brother wanted a red balloon. i wanted a pink balloon. my mother immediately went into a thing about how many favorite color was really blue and how she thought i would like a blue balloon. i took the blue balloon. my favorite color is now blue and i'm still gay. >> at least you can laugh. rachel, you also followed jason. he has down syndrome. he was sort of a poster child at one point for the potential of children with down syndrome. you figured out, he had a difficulty trying to distinguish fantasy from reality. he loved elsa in "frozen." we will play a clip and talk about it. >> when i was a kid, the world revolves around me. i was close minded until elsa

came. let it go. she opened my heart. i want to go on a trip to norway. i know she's there. >> one of the interesting things about jason is -- he does havei is very smart. his fascination with elsa is part of his poetic way of seeing the world. he is a man who lost his father at an age that was painful for him. i think he, without knowing it, he feels vulnerable to loving people who could die or disappear. there's something for him very reassuring about being in love with something that isn't going to leave him. he finds in this fictional character of elsa, he finds a world of emotion. he's a very emotional guy. i think he does on some level

know she's fictional. he gets so much pleasure out of his relationship with elsa that he doesn't care. there's something beautiful about that. >> i want to go to another clip from the film of two dwarves who you profile. they are married. they have dwarfism. try to get pregnant, have a kid. interestingly enough, they hope that their kid would be a dwarf as well, like them. before i play the clip, i just want to ask you, were you surprised by that? >> not once i got to know them. when you get to know them, it's very apparent very quickly that they are not only proud but very delighted to be in the bodies they're in. they have found a community and an identity that most of us don't necessarily get an opportunity to find. >> i want to play this clip. it's about the reveal to the parents.

>> is that what i think it is? >> is that -- >> so. it was the ultrasound picture. their family was absolutely overjoyed. what about when the families just don't know how to deal? the child is so difficult, so horizontal? in the case you profile, who zahn t -- horizontal in a criminal way. a young boy who committed a murder when he was small against a really, really small young boy and is now in prison. tell me how that family struggles to accept their child. >> the mother says, you don't get to choose to love your children. you love your children. any mother would know that you

can't just stop loving your children. they struggle. their son did this terrible, awful, cruel and atrocious thing. he is still their son. they still have emotional attachments to him. the film really looks at the idea you can have someone who has done something so extreme and appalling and the love is not compromised by it. it looks at the idea that contrary to popular perception, people who do those awful things don't necessarily do them because they come from bad families and have traumatized backgrounds. you have people like the reese family who are wonderful, loyal, good parents and who did their best with their kid and who seemed to have a strong sense of moral entintegrity and this jus happened to them that their son did this. >> the trailer is very poignant. the mom asks you, asks the camera, what did she do wrong, who could she have done differently. did she leave him crying too

long, her son, that he could have turned out like that? it's heartbreaking. you have filmed a lot for this film. you have chosen not to put it all out there. even some scenes that you think are fantastic to be able to explain really what's happening. what sort of themes and why did you make that decision? >> there are people who are minors. there are some material that we filmed that's very private. someone going to the bathroom or changing to go to the bathroom and intimate access to their bodies. they were at the time comfortable sharing with us. i didn't feel as a filmmaker that we needed it. i worried at some point they might have mixed feelings about having that material air. so i made some calls in the edit room about material that i didn't want to put in the film.

maybe i would have made a different decision 25 years ago before i had children. i'm now coming at it from a different place. >> it's really interesting. andrew, i want to ask you -- you have written that in the u.s. there's been a heroic kindness, a value that seemed inseparable from the american ideal five years ago, which has grown circumstantially disposable. does this film try to address that or correct that? >> this film is about how much value there is in diversity and how much value there is in human difference. it's a celebration of the idea that people with differences that we think have a disadvantage can often find meaning in those circumstances and rise to be remarkable and crucial members of other society. at a time when the american government is putting children in cages after separating them from their families, at a time when people are dehumanized, immigrants in particular, but other groups as well, this is a

film about the humanity that persists in the people we would push to the margins. it's a real call to action to always include people like that in the national discourse and not that anyone is less human than anyone else. >> thank you so much for joining me. >> thank you. >> thank you so much for having us. >> what a pleasure. >> what a fascinating reveal. that's it for our program tonight. thanks for watching amanpour on pbs and join us again tomorrow night. >> you are watching pbs.

katty: you're watching "beyond 100 days" on pbs. devastating scenes in greece where people jumped into the ocean to escape wildfires. up to 100 are thought to have died. christian: one group of tourists couldn't escape and died huddled together with their children. katty: the worst wildfires in the country in over a decade. the greek prime minister has appealed for calm. >> in memory of nose who -- those who perished, we are declaring three days of national mourning. however, we should not let the mourning overwhelm us because this is a time to fight, to be unified, courageous and have solidarity. katty: europe and asia in the grip of searing temperatures combined with strong