inuit leave a carbon footprint wherever we go to, but there's 65,000 inuit right across inuit nunangat. our footprint on the earth is very little, compared to some of the very big industrial areas of the world, so it's imposed onto us without our welcome. doesn't make no difference how much you voice your concern, what you present, how you deliver it-- it's still going to happen. [♪♪♪] the power that's being generated at muskrat falls is being ran through underground cables to the eastern seaboard.

this is what we're getting after they destroy our land for muskrat falls-- 100% dependency on these dirty, diesel-generated plants. [wind gusting] [birds chirping] [river trickling] [ushigua speaking spanish]

[♪♪♪]

[patricia gualinga speaking spanish] [paez] i have been persecuted and i have been monitored by the government. several times, i had to go to the international courts to tell the story about what happens when you are a human rights defender, or you have been working so hard to protect the rights of nature. years by years, you protect yourself, protect your family, you protect the forest, the resistance... sometimes, i-i get tired.

i get tired and i... get, uh, lost, and i start feeling that it's not enough, but, day by day, i have to do the best to change it. [♪♪♪] [dodds] hmm. when i get to that point with climate change, the notion of what's happening, and i go "i can't take anymore, i'm just exhausted." that's a big struggle in my head, where i'm grasping for somewhere that isn't this new reality. -yeah. -for me, it was when the fires were happening in tasmania and that gondwana forest was burning, and something just touched me really deeply, knowing that forest, it is not supposed to burn, and i remember feeling this deep sorrow. mm. we talk about phases of grieving,

but the thing with climate change, it's not like there's been one death and then we grieve it. this is continuous. you know that footage of the last thylacine, that always breaks my heart. dodo and the thylacine are the things i grew up with, thinking, "they went extinct, we don't do that anymore, that was the end of this bad behaviour." and to now be in a world where that's just how it is now, on a daily basis-- is just beyond what i can fit in my heart. i don't even go there. i can't. i can't. it's too much. it's too extreme. [busy office chatter, indistinct] [farrell] people have stepped beyond denialism into a state of, like, total doom and panic, and there hasn't been that, like, middle part

where people get to come to terms with how bad this is, because, basically, nobody would talk about it, so that's quite serious for people to have no sort of, like, development/processing time. that's why the emotional and intellectual labour of coming to terms with this and going "let's tell the truth about it" is so difficult. [energetic chatter] ...in terms of, like, it's going to affect our future, and i think that's a pretty emotional response, that it will be us being the most affected, and then it feels like no one else-- like, society's normalized it, but no one else is really doing anything. [discussion continues, indistinct] the climate crisis just overwhelmed me. it's like, "what is the point if, in 12 years," you know, "my world's just gonna be so much worse?" [sammy mcnamara] once you start reading about this stuff and the un report comes out, the "12 years" one-- i think that really hit a lot of people with depression. [distant siren wails] [♪♪♪]

[bowman] we're now beginning to realize there's something afoot planetarily. there's this change. it's a non-negotiable, inescapable... pain, and that's maybe what we would describe as "grief." you can go to bed and you can try to forget it, you can dream, and then you wake up in the morning, with this terrible ache because the pain's still there, and trying to understand... ...what to do, and not knowing what to do, not having a clear path-- it can send people into sadness, depression. [tong] i go through a sense of giving up. it's so futile and i can't take it. it's not an easy emotional thing to come to terms with. [♪♪♪]

[ashlee cunsolo] how are we not doubled over in pain a-at everything? at the extinction, at the climate change, at the loss, at what we know is coming? that balance, i think, is what so many of us are struggling with. how do we be open to the pain, but how do we not let it crumble us to the ground and just throw our hands up and say, "well, it's too late, it's too awful, it's over"? we can't do that, because it's not over. but it is going to be a period of grief without end. so, somehow, we have to make peace with the grief, but not just give up. [♪♪♪] [water bubbling]

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪♪] [♪♪♪]

[♪♪♪] [♪♪♪] [loon cries in the distance]

[veron] in my younger days, i was thinking about the future, and "wow, i'm gonna make a great life for myself." for me. for me. it's me, yeah, i was thinking that. always me. i really only woke up to that when the worst happened. [thunder rolls] [rain pattering on roof] i was at a coral workshop in hong kong and had a phone call that my, uh, daughter was dead. she drowned, playing in a creek, um... and... uh, i've never got over that. i lost something that was much more important to me than i was. it certainly changed me from a person who felt the whole world was revolving around me to someone who is much less important.

the destruction of nature-- it's more important than i am. it's the next thing that... is dying. it's the next thing that is dying that is more important to me than i am. charlie veron gets less and less important. it's a hard thing to explain, but it is important to realize that the people who are the exploiters of this planet are people who put themselves first. and people who put themselves first haven't suffered the worst thing that can happen to them. they've got away with it. or they don't care. harsh observation, hey? but i think it's true. [♪♪♪]

[gualinga speaking spanish] [♪♪♪] [ushigua speaking spanish]

[♪♪♪] [cunsolo] there has to be this deeply ethical shift and that changes our ability to talk about a different type of grief

that's not a human-to-human grief, but a human-to-more-than-human grief, where we open up, we let everyone in, and, in many ways, i think that the ecological bodies that are out there are waiting for us to figure that out. other species are waiting for us to catch up and to open up and to realize that we are in this deep community. [♪♪♪] [gualinga speaking spanish]

[♪♪♪] [narrator] my dearest friends... i rise with the sun, light candles... ...make tea. small rituals to keep me steady and begin my day. [♪♪♪] my walks through the woods are a kind of prayer.

i bend down and drink from the dew-covered grasses. i feel the pine boughs and the rough bark of trees. each day, i find myself returning to life. [♪♪♪] [veron] it's so nice to be at peace and at one with the world. i just feel part of it. i feel like a coral... [laughs] ...or a fish. i'm standing on australia's great barrier reef.

this is the largest structure ever made by life on earth. it's incredible that such tiny animals as coral polyps played a key role in the building of the reef. when i first heard of climate change, i thought, "oh, come on, pull the other leg." so i looked up what carbon dioxide does in the atmosphere, took me about an hour to realize, "wow! this is for real." that drove me to turn away from the research i was doing, which i loved doing, and become an advocate for the great barrier reef and for coral reefs. not much point in studying something if you know it's gonna die. better to study it and try and find ways of keeping it alive. that's what i've done. [♪♪♪] [thunberg] i had kept all my concerns and worries to myself, and once i started sharing these to my parents, response from them wasn't very good. they were like everyone else-- "oh, everything will be fine,

there will be some technical solutions and someone will come up with something." i just kept on talking about this with them, and over and over again, showing them graphs, reports, and articles, and films, and so on, and after a while, they started to understand what was actually going on, and then they started to change their lifestyle, and so i felt like i could have some impact. [♪♪♪] [dodds] when the prime minister came, he said people speaking out about "this is a climate change event" were politicizing it, and that it wasn't the time, and also that this was a normal part of australian life and it'll happen again. went to bed at 4:00 in the morning. woke up and those words, that this would happen again-- suddenly, i understood what he'd said. behind that was him saying,

"we're not gonna make any changes to what we're doing. you can expect more of this, and the next town can burn just like this one, and we won't do anything to stop the processes that caused it." but that would be like if an arsonist had started this fire, "we're not going to do anything about arsonists." we're not going to do anything that stops this disaster, and if that means people die next time... oh, well, that's australian life." and so it was rage, was the first thing i felt. out of that rage, i started to act. prime minister, your remarks, on the day after a ferocious bushfire devastated my community in tathra, indicated that you have no intention of intervening to prevent the next fire or the one after that. i had no idea why or what would happen with it, just that i couldn't not say it. what has to burn, prime minister, before you can smell the smoke? but it ended up becoming a message that resonated with other people and...

that was the beginning of a big change for me, in taking the risk that i hadn't taken before. i really was scared to speak out about climate change, 'cause i felt like i'd internalized that message that "it's not safe," that you'll get whacked talking about this, 'cause it's too political. and suddenly, when it wasn't political, it was fucking hot, and it had smoke billowing and it burnt down my neighbours' houses, and that's not politics, that's a fucking raging bushfire, and if you see that, you step out of the way, and you try to not let it happen again. [♪♪♪] [cunsolo] climate change, in a weird sort of way, asks a lot of humanity. we can't just say "well... made a mistake on that one, i guess we'll try again." it's actually taking ourselves to account. who do we want to be as a species, moving forward? how do we see ourselves differently within this web of relations

that we have suddenly destructed or harmed or destroyed? and what does it take to atone for the loss? how do we ever make right what we've done as a species? when we talk about mass extinction, how do we make that right? i don't know if we can, but i think we have to have those conversations, because if we don't take the responsibility seriously, that won't lead to the transformative changes. so climate change calls on us to be different. [♪♪♪] [narrator] i've been reading about systems theory and adaptation. apparently, when a living system is disturbed to the point that it might cease to exist, it self-organizes into a new form that will have a better shot at survival. this is exactly how i feel

after ten months of cancer treatment. surgery, chemo, and radiation seem to have instigated some strange adaptations. i feel utterly changed from the inside out. the way i used to define myself and find meaning feels misplaced, missing, even non-existent, and it seems that only living through each day with an open curiosity, am i coming to know who this new self is. [birds calling] [ground crunching underfoot] [bowman] we thought we were powerful. we thought we could build amazing dams and do geo-engineering and control, and we are powerful, but we're not as powerful as a wilful planet. storms, and floods, and fires, and droughts,

and disease outbreaks-- they're all telling us something. i've been expecting it for so long. well, it's obvious it's going to happen-- it's climate change. what's the reality i'm walking around in? i'm expecting these things. nature and humans are not in balance. and, fundamentally, it's reminding us we're not just the centre of the universe. this world wasn't made just for us. and so, climate change is disrupting who we thought we were, and where we were going. [♪♪♪] [ushigua speaking spanish]

[♪♪♪] [thunberg] when i talk to people about this, they always say we need to have hope, otherwise we won't do anything, and we can't just tell these negative stories, and we need to tell the positive stories. no, we need to tell the truth. we can't hide things just because it's not hopeful. it's like people, they can't do anything without hope. [narrator] i used to think hope was a belief in the possibility of a better, even a beautiful future.

but i've learned that kind of hope is no friend of mine. it distracts me from what's right in front of me and blinds me from what is heading in my direction. so now i understand hope is found in this moment. what i choose to do now-- that is all i have, what we each have. [♪♪♪] well, the jury's out on hope, if you want to know, okay? [indistinct voices] there's lots of evidence that says people need hope to act. there's lots of evidence to say that people need to lose hope to act. [♪♪♪]

"when hope goes, action begins." i mean, that's one of the extinction rebellion slogans, and why's that? because hope basically enables you to think that things will be okay and you don't have to act. [♪♪♪] i'm not saying that's the only dynamic, but it is a dynamic, right? obviously there's another dynamic, which is you're really miserable, you have some hope, and then you act, so you know, that's got things going for it as well, but if you, you know, if you want to... mm. it's complicated. so your message is entirely about failure, it's about negativity. it is, in a way, i suppose a howl of rage and despair. that's right. it is. and you think that is, uh, a message that the people of the world and the political leaders of the world

are going to respond to? yes. and the reason why is because when people go through depression and rage, they come out and decide to do things. [♪♪♪] [bowman] in rivers in east australia, fish that are 100 years old have been killed, and then i learned of a community group that's heroically trying to save some fish by pumping oxygen into the water. on the one side, you could say that it's an absurd pin prick to a catastrophe, but on the other side, it's a beautiful example of a gesture of environmental love. [♪♪♪] and there are many other examples now, where these horrifying environmental disasters are bringing out really important gestures... [♪♪♪] ...trying to save things and trying to acknowledge

that things that are being killed have a right to live. so it's like taking our degraded places and trying to make them beautiful and biodiverse. the action of trying to repair land helps people repair themselves. [♪♪♪] [drum beating] [tv reporter] the coffin is symbolic of the death of the grand river. labrador land protectors say the water is being destroyed by the hydro dam project. [flowers] this was our land. this was our water. this was our food. and now, suddenly, it's just going to be taken? and we can't say anything? they're telling us, legally, we're not allowed to say anything. i mean, that's, to me, that's like revolutionary time. i think it's time for revolution. this drastic-- it calls for drastic measures, like walking up to the police officer and saying "no, no. just i'm not backing down."