tavis: good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. first a conversation about the state of the planet with new yorker writer elizabeth kolbert. her latest tome is "the sixth extinction" and looks at what human beings are doing to many species what the asteroids did to the dinosaurs wiping them out. and then daniel beaty, "transforming pain to power," putting his difficult childhood into perspective. he is touring a new play he wrote about paul robeson titled "the tallest tree in the forest." we're glad you joined us. those conversations coming up right now.

♪ ♪ >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ ♪ tavis: there have been five epics where catastrophic events have wiped out life on earth. the fifth extinction was caused by an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs. elizabeth kolbert who covers the environment for "the new yorker" says we're living in the middle of another mass extinction, this one, though, caused by human

activity. her tome is called "the sixth extinction," an unnatural istory and the result of years of research. elizabeth, thanks for being on the program. >> thanks for having me. tavis: starting in an unlikely place which is this notion of why there is so much debate. you have scientists, you have researchers, you have best selling texts about the reality of what we're enduring today and yet on capitol hill and beyond because this obviously connects with the politics of our time, there is still so much debate about it and depending on what point of view one wants to hear, one can find a congressman, a senator, a president that will support your point of view. >> well, i mean, in the scientific world as you see, there is virtually no debate over certain things, for example, that we are changing the world, humans are changing the world very radically and dramatically. climate change which i assume is one of the points you're

alluding to is at the heart of this. it's not the only way we're changing the planet, but a mainly way we're changing the plant. in the scientific world you don't have find anybody to debate that. carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. it has the property of warming the planet. why we're still debating it on a political level seems that it's very, as to quote vice president al gore, it's inconvenient. it's politically inconvenient for us to acknowledge this because a lot of changes would be -- as soon as you acknowledge that we're changing the planet on the scale that it has very potentially massive repercussions and very damaging repercussions, the next question is ok, what are we doing about it? there are a lot of vested interests obviously that prefer things the way they are. i think that's pretty clearly why we're having this debate. i put that in quotes. tavis: we'll come back to the science which is at the heart of your text in just a second. i want to talk about the politics. it seems to me with all of the work that you have done and all of the work that others have

done to make clear what the science is telling us, if we cannot in the realm of the body politick make the research come to life, that is to have a real debate on the floor of the house or the senate, have a real debate inside the white house about what we're going to do about this, then what does it really matter? i guess my question is, you have done all of the work here, if people don't take it seriously, you know, what difference does it make? >> well, you have really cut to the heart. you really know how to hurt a girl, yeah. [laughter] >> you cut to the heart of the matter and i want to say that one of the reasons that i wrote this book was precisely to try to put the information in front of people. that's all as a journalist that you can really do. to tell it in a hope in a way there a lot of stories. i traveled to amazing places. i went to the great barrier reef, the amazon, the andes to bring people stories of what is going on out in the world and bring this issue alive in a way and put it out there.

beyond that, in terms of as you say, many people have tried to bring this to the public's attention and the politics seem to be stuck. so you have rattled, we're still at loggerheads over this. the only thing that i feel i can do as a journalist is put it out there. tavis: so let me make you feel a little better now. >> good. tavis: by hitting you in your sweet spot. so you traveled the world. what's the through line for what you saw no matter where you went? >> well, that's one of the interesting things about it. i mean, i went to really some of the most remote places that a person can get to. everywhere that i was going, i was going out with scientists, very dedicated scientists, we schlepped to the andes and amazon. everywhere we were going the scientists were looking at human impact. on the great barrier ree they were studying the impact of the

carbon emissions are doing to the ocean. what is called globally warming's equally evil twin, a lot of our carbon emissions are ending up in the oceans and they're tainting ocean chemistry. the great barrier reef has lost 50% of its coral cover just in the last 30 years. tavis: you subtitled the book an unnatural history, that in and of itself gets a debate going of whether this is natural or whether or not it's unnatural. obviously you think it's unnatural. tell me why you chose that as a subtitle? >> well, it's sort of a bit of a play on words, i guess. one of the key questions of the book and of our, you know, of our time and ever since darwin, i guess you could say is where do humans fit into the natural order. for a long time science has gone in the direction of sort of putting people in their place. we learned that the sun doesn't revolve around the earth. the earth revolves around the sun. we're just another species

evolved like another species. we're just another animal really. part of of the point of my book is get people to push things back the other way to say yes, we're just another species, but we're a very, very unusual species. we turn out to be really unusual, not just in our time, but when you look over the expanse of geological history, we turn out to be a very unusual force, a force not unlike an asteroid. tavis: it makes us unusual, not special. is there a point there? >> yeah, it's a very interesting point, exactly. we have, as it turns out, largely without intending it, i mean, that's another sort of theme of the book, largely without intending it, we're changing the world. when you go to the grocery store, your intention is not to change the world. it happens to have that impact. we have done a lot of things without even realizing it. yes, just being unusual as you

say does not put you, you know, above in a sense any of the other organisms with which we share this planet. tavis: how much of what you saw convinced you to the extent that it did that the damage that's already been done is irreparable? >> well, as the saying goes, extinction is forever. even in the course of four or five years of researching this book, i saw animals. for example, these remarkable frogs from the tropics, i saw some of them and they are not here anymore. you cannot find any of them anymore. they are extinct. there is no going back from that. there is no traversing the clock on that. now, can we minimize our impacts? absolutely, there are a lot of things that we can do to minimize what we're doing, but we're not getting back, you know, those frogs that i saw that no longer exist. tavis: give me some sense of the

scale that it would take vis-a-vis our commitment, our engagement to turn the clock back on what you lay out in the text that's already happening? >> well, to take climate change as i say as a central example because i do talk about a couple different phenomena in the book, the ways that we're changing the world that are not climate change, people sometimes say we need to be really almost on a war-time footing. if you want to change our whole economy is based on burning fossil fuels which is taking co2 out of the ground and putting it up in the air. that's what we're doing. and if you want to change that, you have to really, really concentrate on it. everything has to go in the right direction. so one of the reasons that people, many people when anyone is critical of president obama's policies toward global warning, on the one hand, he says the right things and he wants to reduce our current emissions. on the other hand, he has been

promoting a lot of oil drilling, gas drilling, that tends to increase our carbonation. you got to do everything. everything has to be pointing in the same direction. you got to really turn this whole economic engine from one that is based on fossil fuels to one that isn't. that's a massive undertaking. we need to be starting, not now, last year basically. tavis: so barack obama, to your point, elisabeth, might be saying more stuff that environmentalists want to hear as compared to a guy like george w. bush, but whether the republican, whether the president rather is a republican or democrat, i think it was calvin coolidge who said the business of america is business. again, whether the occupant of the oval office is a republican or democrat, we get this pablum oftentimes, not a whole lot happens which leads me to this question -- how much of this sixth extinction will have to be blamed on the business of america?

>> well, that's a really good question. i mean, one of the points i make in the book is we actually have been sort of at this world altering, you know, project for quite a long time and that includes, you know, when humans arrived, you know in the hawaiian islands 1,500 years ago, a lot of the native fauna was destroyed by rats that they brought along, for example. it's not something that we just woke up with modern american industrial society that now we're going to start changing the planet. it's ramped up with industrialization and we in this country are at the forefront of that. so it's going to, but it is certainly at this point a project that any, most people on the globe are part of. it's going to take massive, massive global scale change. that's another problem that we face which is even a lot of blame game going on, right, what are the china doing, what are we

doing, so we need both the developed world and the developing world really need to be moving once again getting all of your arrows in the same direction if you want to have any impact. tavis: the industrialized nations of the world are doing the lion's share of the damage and the developing nation as you put it, every time there is a conference, an international conference, they're pointing their finger and they're saying, hey, u.s.a., hey, china, you all are making the rest of us suffer. say a bit about the damage that we're causing, not just to the environment, not just to the planet, but how so much of this is in fact on us as compared to these developing nations? >> absolutely. if you looked at there are charts, i should have brought along one of these charts that looked at how much co2 the average american citizen puts in the atmosphere, let's say it's up here and how much the average ethiopian is putting up in the air, like that, and you look at what are the consequences of climate change going to be.

they're going to be potentially most severe for those people who have contributed the least. so the issue of global justice here is very, very intense and hangs over all of these global climate talks, it's one of the many reasons we don't seem to make my progress. increasingly developing countries are asking for some, for aid to help deal with the consequences of climate change which we don't want to give. we're still, as you say debating in the congress whether climate change is taking place. meanwhile increasing numbers of people are feeling it in their own lives. tavis: it's fascinating when you think about it, whether we want to hear it or not, we may end up killing off the rest of the world without a tank, without a drone, but because of the way we maltreat the environment. mention two other things right quick, two other things that we are causing the world to move closer to extinction besides climate change? >> we are moving a lot of things around the planet. for example, there are estimates that like in ballast waters of

our supertankers, 10,000 species are moving around the planet every day. when you think about it, that has the effect of bringing the continents together, all of these creatures that evolved separately for tens of millions of years, we can bring them together overnight. in the case of frogs in the tropics, some of the species that i mentioned that are no longer with us were killed off by a funkal disease that was brought, moved around the planet by people, ok. so that's one way we're changing the planet that's not climate change. another way that people are very familiar with obviously is we're just mowing down forests. we're fragmenting a landscape. you're an animal to move across the landscape, you can't anymore. that's another way. we're changing the surface of the earth in very dramatic ways. tavis: maybe the best book written about these matters in quite some time. it's called "the sixth extinction" written by elizabeth kolbert who covers these matters for "the new yorker" magazine. thank you for the text good to have you on the program.

>> thanks a lot. tavis: finding strength in a turbulent and painful childhood forms the basis for daniel beaty's newest tome, "transforming pain to power," which chronicles how he found inspiration in the difficult circumstances that mind undermine so many other's lives, that philosophy allowed minimum jimenez to create a play by one paul robeson who paid a price for his activism called "the tallest tree in the forest." later in the program, he'll perform a piece from his transforming pain to power. first, let's take a look at daniel singing robeson's most famous songs, "old man river." ♪ old man river, old man river ♪ ♪ it must know something but don't say nothing ♪

♪ he just keeping rolling along ♪ s on rolling tavis: come to the text in just a second. let me start with robeson. i certainly get it. i think he is one of the most unheralded, unappreciated, undervalued, i could go on all night, but for you, why a piece about paul robeson? >> i believe robeson epitomized the artist activist. during the time when there was such urgent issues facing us as a nation, as a human people, it's really important to highlight the story of artists who are willing to take a stand. >> he is the ultimate renaissance man, i think. for those who don't know what they ought to know about paul robeson, let's one through some of the things they'll know about him in the play. >> i call him a black superhero. tavis: exactly what it is. >> it doesn't sound real when you tell the story of all what he did. he was born the son of a slave

in 1898. he was the third negro ever to graduate from rutgers university. went on to columbia law school, was all american football player. after that got into singing, didn't stop there, made hollywood films. had the longest running shakespearean play on broadway >> othello." he had such a huge platform. he spoke about issues that he thought was urgent ranging from the plight of black people in this country to the plight of workers all over the world and the african fremont movement. tavis: and paid a hellish price for it. >> he literally sat down everything. there is a line in the play, he says "no more singing pretty songs. i will use my voice for the workers and my knee grow people." that's the stand that he took. tavis: what is causing a

pushback on robeson given his stature as an artist? >> robeson was really dangerous because he understood the link between race and class. when he went to truman, when there was a wave of lynch terror happening in this country and truman was not willing to do anti-lynching legislation, he went to the streets and he went to the unions and he got poor folks of all races, working folks of all races to unite together. that's when he became really, really dangerous. it got to the point during the whole mccarthy era that he was called before the house un-american activities committee. this man who was the most famous black person in the world was all of a sudden deemed un-american. as you can imagine, that took a real toll on his mind, his heart, he was depressed for a period of time. so as the play starts, his wife has brought him a stalk of cotton to remind him of where he came from, remind him who his father was, to give him some

strength as he goes before the house un-american activities committee. he asks the question, how will they decide i'm un-american, that leads him through the journey in his life. tavis: how does america, to the extent we can and maybe we can't, how do we pay the debt that we owe to paul robeson? he was willing to pay the price for it. i'm wondering how is it all these years later that we do justice to him when we treated him so horribly? >> absolutely. i think it begins with people knowing the story and knowing the story and true complexity. to me, i was really upset when i first found out about him, when i'm a student of classical voice at yale listening to c.d.s of spirituals. who is this mammoth, this incredible voice? never had he been talked about in my community or school. to see the breadth of what he can do and it starts with telling the story. entertainment is the greatest socializing force in the world.

i'm doing what i can do, but i would love to see a mini series, a move done about him. he needs to be in the history books. tavis: you don't learn about paul robison in indiana. i got to college at indiana university, the first time in college,s the first time i read about this robeson guy. i come to l.a. years later. i feel very fortunate and very blessed that in my lifetime, i have gotten to be friends with both harry bellefonte and sidney appointy. not to drop names. you can't talk to poitier more than five minutes without hearing about robison. you can't talk to bellefonte more than three minutes before hearing about paul robeson. >> three seconds. tavis: they will tell you they are not who they are without paul robeson. >> absolutely, i actually speak about an experience with mr. poitier in my book "transforming pain to power." i got to take a private tour of the america i am exhibit with mr. poitier.

he was just so shocked to see himself featured a few times in that exhibit. stand on the shoulders of harry bellefonte, of ruby dee and ossie davis and, of course, of paul robeson. i am just honored to be able to have experiences with people like that and when they talk about their giants, that's when you know that this is somebody we need to pay attention to. tavis: you mentioned your book, i mentioned it, "transforming pain to power," unlock your unlimited potential, what's the message you want to get through this text? >> my father was a heroin addict and heroin dealer, been in and out of prison 59 times through the course of my life. my brother addicted to crack cocaine. i had a lot of images of who i could be in the world based on their experiences. i believe the deepest pain is the path of the highest purpose. the very things that can take us out can actually be a platform for real contribution to the world. that's really what the book is. it's part my story and it's part

a road map. tavis: what's the short answer for how you navigated through all that to become the artistic performer that you are today? >> ultimately, i believe that personal healing is a path to social transformation. you have to get present to what is going on in your own life and heart. ultimately, the question becomes what about my story, what about my experience giving me something to give to other people to empower the people. tavis: from this book, "transforming pain to power," unlock your inlimited potential by daniel beaty, he is going to perform a piece called "run lack man run." daniel beaty, it's all yours. >> thank you. >> sometimes late at night when these projects get quiet, i come upstairs here to the roof of building b and i talk to my mind, try to be bigger than my fears. you see, i have been told every action begins with a thought. and if you don't watch what

you're thinking, your thoughts will get the best of you. it's like the mind is an untrained child. you got to teach it what to do because sometimes my mind, he tells me you will never be enough. why even try. you know it's going to be tough. look at where you live, broken hopes, broken dreams. at night you lie in bed and scream the silent scream of a bastard child without a father as a guide. there is no daddy by your side, so you push your cries away and you fill that space with rage, a rage that keeps you caged in a cycle that never ends. you ain't going to be no better than the man who fathered you, able to create life, but not to follow through. your daddy left so you will, too. the sins of the father will visit the son. when life gets done, the abandoned run. those are the thoughts of a mind he says to me trying to choke out any type of hope of possibility and that's why i stand here on the roof of building b and talk back to my mind, all right, i have heard

enough. i know my path is rough. my mama she was there. she helped me to prepare. a father she was not, but still she gave me a lot. i have a mentor, too, he helps me make it through. say what you want, but there is nothing i can't do because i define my destiny, i won't let doubt get the best of me. i will father myself and my children will see a black man stays. this can be just a phase. this cycle can end. it all depends on where we go from here. you say when life gets tough, the abandoned run. well, i say run, black man, run. run to your children. hold them tight. help them make it through the night. be more than you think you can. be a man and take a stand. and when you make it through, reach back and help another person do what we all know must be done. run, black man, run. a fatherless child i may be, but i decide who i choose to be. run, black man, run. run, black man, run, run, black man, run. cheers and applause]

tavis: man, that is daniel beaty now performing in his show, "the tallest tree in the forest" here in l.a. if you can get into see it and his latest text is "transforming pain to power," unlock your unlimited potential. in case you just tuned in, the piece he just performed once again is "run black man run." daniel, good to have you on this program. >> thank you, tavis. congratulations on your success. that's our show for tonight. thanks for watching and as always, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. >> hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a conversation first with the man behind pixar and disney animation, ed catmull. and then actress marlee matlin. that's next time. e'll see you then.

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we're taking a roadtrip across the united states interviewing different people who inspire us. (antoine) one thing i always wanted to do is self publish one comic book. todd? he's probably the only person who can answer a lot of my questions for me. he did spawn? (antoine) yeah. this is todd mcfarlane. what is it that you want to give away to get what it is that you want? what a strange life this is. it's a great mystery, just these most unusual things happen. dan (filmer): we need to pull over now! [honking] [female narrator #3] state farm has made it possible for this series to be shared on public television stations across the country, helping a nation of young people find their own roads in life. like a good neighbor, state farm is there. [female narrator #2] roadtrip nation would also like to thank the college board for supporting the series. the college board: connect to college success. [male narrator #1] roadtrip nation is also made possible by at&t, helping students connect to success in school,