earlier this year, former nasa climate scientist james hansen did a study. he found that nuclear energy over the last 40 years that's been used worldwide has saved 1.8 million lives by producing zero air pollution energy. and he says that if we expand it we'll save another 7 million lives. those numbers have to be convincing for people that care about climate change. >> there's still radiation. >> tell that to the fukushima area, the chernobyl area. tell it to the areas where hundreds of square miles are now uninhabitable. the atomic energy commission in the 1950s, michael, said that a class nine accident in the u.s. would contaminate an area quote the size of pennsylvania. you don't want to have an energy source that has one bite of the apple. you have a disaster whether it's due to sabotage, earthquake, horrendous hurricane or human error or design defect. any of those. if you have one major disaster, it will affect all other nuclear plants. you know that. >> this fear mongering that you've been doing for 40 years has been effective in halting the growth o

. >>> four prominent scientists, including james hansen, distributed a joint letter citing the need foruclear power plants. they wrote renewables like wind and solar and biomass cannot scale up fast enough to deliver cheap and power at the scale the global economy requires. there's no credible path to climate stabilization that does not include a substantial role for nuclear power. honda is recalling 344,000 of its 2007 and 2008 odd see minivans saying that the van's brake and they are not aware of any problems related to the brake problem. >>> runners participated in the new york marathon. the two winners were kenyans. >>> we're talking about a new executive order by president obama requiring local governments and federal agencies to account for climate change when they undertake big new projects. for more, we're joined from washington by margaret tolive. if we're just catching up here, what were those changes? what was the executive order saying? >> so the executive order is telling federal agencies and local governments and especially federal agencies to analyze all of the risks that

any opportunity to build up on dates or skills like that place can come to get that in telling james hansen said. all in. so smelly and there's only so much i could do. on the concert tomorrow. though test the students and people young people were interested in making change the world. a change for the better. need to be hearing that this is an important thing it's just. i just asked. i was determined to do. we're hoping is that we can make a tangible contribution. the key to overcoming some of these problems. things will be an extremely important role from a tree. just in the coming is perceiving him to come to us this is my life my dedication working for peace locally nationally and internationally. this is just confirming something of interest. many many years. he is these. she might use of chemical pastor steve pemberton. which commemorates the truth in the first day of the conviction rates the child. through him. just listen to the far reaches of the universe the connections to stitch. since it's open to new piece to stitch and sleep in the house. stick around or religion. this is true

their books and it's reflected in their stock prices if we were to decide not to pull that out and james hansen says if we burn two trillion tons of carbon you know the global planet is going to the planet going to warm thirty degrees that that's that's an extinction event if they were to take that off their books or if a carbon tax caused them to have to scale back what impact would that have on the company and what impact might that have on their on the economy. well i mean i think the case we're making is that for all interview suppliers they will benefit but certainly within energy suppliers as a class there are going to be winners and losers in the marketplace but it's time for energy companies to pay the freight if they're going to you know the full freight transporting. from the oil well or from the mine mouth to into the market and then there's going to be these extra extra analyses into the atmosphere they should pay for that pollution cost at the same time energy companies that are non or low carbon producing they should get the benefits of being a pollution free commodity into the ma

james hansen, a former nasa climate scientist. he is the scientist who brought the world's attention to global warming, along with al gore who he has been close with over the last couple of decades. the others are well regarded in their own right, dr. tom wigley, the most cited climate scientists, dr. kerrie emanuel, an expert in global warming and hurricanes and dr. ken cordera, what happens to the oceans when they're forced to absorb so much more carbon. >> this year global carbon emissions are supposed to hit a record 36 billion tons. china leads the way followed by the u.s., the european union and india. is there any way that those numbers can be turned around by replacing coal and other fossil fuels like wind and solar? >> well, it's very difficult, one of the most important statistics for people to realize is that in the '80s and '90, we -- global energy that was from clean sources sort of zero carbon sources went from 6% to 12% but it's been stalled out at 12% over the last 20 years, even with a big push on renewables by th