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-Thank you.

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We are in the grips

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of a massive global crisis,

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and you are leaving it to children
to clean up your mess!

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Schoolchildren have
today ditched the classroom

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to take to the streets
over climate change.

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They’re calling
for the prime minister to be sacked

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and for an immediate departure
from fossil fuels.

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Ho, ho!

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ScoMo has got to go!

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Hey, hey, ho, ho!

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More than 11,000 scientists

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from around the world

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have issued a warning today
declaring a climate emergency.

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Australia’s seen
both the warmest

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and the driest year on record.

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There are also
warnings out this morning

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for the impending bushfire season,

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which authorities fear
could be the worst on record.

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Extreme conditions
are on the way,

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and it’s all down to climate change.

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Australia is a distillation

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of the world’s dilemma
when it comes to climate change.

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But the story doesn’t make any sense

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unless you understand
what Australia is actually like.

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From its very inception,

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it’s a country that’s been reliant
on fossil fuels.

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We are now the world’s
largest exporter of coal,

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the world’s largest exporter of gas,

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and you hear the same thing over and over:

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If we haven’t got fossil fuels,
we’ve got nothing.

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We are also a very flat, dry continent

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that’s exquisitely vulnerable
to climate change.

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We knew that we would start feeling
the impacts before anyone else.

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And we’ve ignored that bigger picture
to our great cost.

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Now to the catastrophic
wildfires in Australia.

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More than 200 fires rage

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in two of Australia’s
most populated states.

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Climate scientists are saying

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the bushfires in Australia are a warning
of what may be to come around the world.

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This could be the new normal.

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The greatest tragedy of this terrible

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Black Summer bushfire season

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was that we saw it coming.

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My first big fire was in 1971.

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I was only 12 years old.

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Some friends rang up
and said the fire’s coming

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up the hill towards us,
and off we went with axes

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and rakes and hessian sacks.

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There was no ifs or buts.
That was just what you did.

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In Australia, fires are a constant.

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Small fires in the Blue Mountains Area,

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fanned by hot north winds,

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struck towns and villages
with bewildering speed.

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Every year, there are bushfires.

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Some years are very, very bad.

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Other years, not so much.

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But every year, there’s fires.

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It was very rudimentary in the early days.

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Grab branches off trees,

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beating out the flames.

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Wet sacks, rakes.

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That was my first big fire,

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and that’s when I knew
that’s what I wanted to do as a career.

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I was hooked.

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And I didn’t purposely
set out to be the chief,

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but in hindsight,
it was a thirst for knowledge.

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The government decided I was
the best person for the job at the time,

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and it was an incredible privilege
and honor.

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I was accustomed to a long buildup
to a bad fire season.

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My father would say,

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"Look, that wattle tree
is flowering a month early.

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"That means it’s really dry.

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"Look at the color of the leaves
on that banksia tree.

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"That means it’s having to go deeper
for water.

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"It’s dropping its leaves.

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"Watch the ants.
What sort of beetles came out

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at what time of year?"

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And in 1994, it just suddenly got hot
and windy and dry.

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The rain forest in Queensland is drying up

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and animals starving
after the driest three months

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for more than 80 years.

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I realized something’s haywire.

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New South Wales was hit
by massive simultaneous fires.

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Oh, my goodness.

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Oh, boy.

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Fire.

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It’s fire!

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This is the one that bushfire fighters

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have had nightmares about for years.

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Every hectare of this bush has tons
of tinder dry fuel ready to explode.

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There are grave fears about how far
its devastation will reach.

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Residents battle to protect their homes,

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but for some,
the struggle became too much.

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It is the most terrifying experience

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you can imagine.

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In 1994, I lost my home
to a bushfire that took everything.

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I walked away in the shorts I was wearing,

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uh, just, you know,
trying to fight that fire.

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Thankfully, my family all survived,
but we lost neighbors.

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We lost four people in that fire.

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I’ve watched the climate science develop

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over the last 30 years.

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He is known around the world

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as one of the leading scientists
studying climate change.

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His name: Tim Flannery.

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We are approaching a threshold

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to dangerous climate change,
and the time to act is very limited.

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The scientists have been very, very clear
about what’s happening.

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Look at the picture of the Earth at night,

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and look at all the lights
that are on, right?

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Imagine the fossil fuels
that are being burned to support that.

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Those greenhouse gases trap heat energy
close to the surface of the planet.

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They act a bit like a blanket on a bed.

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And so the temperature
just keeps going up and up and up.

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A new study of climatic changes

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in eastern Australia has produced

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the strongest evidence yet
that the greenhouse effect is underway.

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The increase reflects the rise

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in carbon dioxide levels
in the atmosphere over that time.

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Something is really happening.

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I started to read and study
and ask questions

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and discovered some early papers
on climate change and thought,

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"They might have something here."

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And in the years to follow, I realized,
yes, they certainly did.

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You’d assume that about once a decade

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there would be a very damaging fire
in New South Wales.

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But after 1994,

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we were having more and more
of these bad fires.

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We were losing homes in 1997,
three years later.

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Christmas Day, 2001, massive fires.

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2002, more fires.

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2003, the city of Canberra,

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firefighters narrowly escaped
with their lives.

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Go!

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2009, Victoria.

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We were regularly getting
off-the-scale fire danger,

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and it was all down to climate change.

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The fires were getting worse and worse,

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and I knew that this is exactly

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what climate scientists
had predicted for Australia--

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longer fire seasons,
more intense fire seasons--

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and that, sadly, was what I was seeing.

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The community is somewhat concerned

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that, uh, global warming could lead
to droughts of greater duration.

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Now, whether that...

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whether that is a legitimate concern is...

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is a matter that’s, frankly,
very much debated.

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I’ve watched the climate wars in Australia

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for the last 14 years.

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The plans to expand the coal industry

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are on a staggering scale.

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There has been a concerted effort
to undermine

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the science of climate change.

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Carbon dioxide does not drive temperature.

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A complete reversal
of what these people are spreading:

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their lies and their deception.

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Then you said climate change was crap.

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Well, I think what I actually said

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was the idea of the settled science

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of climate change is, uh, a bit aromatic.

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I was Australia’s first--

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and to date, only-- climate commissioner.

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And served for three years
under the government,

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getting the word out about climate change,

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taking complex science
and making it comprehensible to people.

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Extreme weather events are going
to get more common and more severe,

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according to the latest report
from the Climate Commission.

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But the media just went totally crazy.

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Critics have labeled
the Climate Commission alarmist nonsense.

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These people are desperate.

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Climate change, the whole thing is a hoax.

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Out, out, out! Lies, lies, lies!

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Then the conservative government

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was elected, and their very first act
was to sack us.

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It wasn’t to do anything
important economically.

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It was to get rid of
the Climate Commission, which they did.

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He has to be exposed.

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It was really comic book stuff.

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People tried to act earlier,

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but there’s a lot of vested interests
involved.

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I mean, Scott Morrison--

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of course, now he’s our prime minister--

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stood up in the parliament
and held aloft a lump of coal.

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Mr. Speaker, this is coal.

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Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared.

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-SPEAKER: The treasurer...
-It won’t hurt you.

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The treasurer knows the rule on props.

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It’s coal.

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Of course, this lump of coal
wasn’t a dirty lump of coal

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with dust all over it.

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This lump of coal had come
from the Minerals Council,

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so it was very nicely cleaned up
for what was

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essentially a marketing presentation.

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Mr. Speaker,
those opposite have an ideological,

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pathological fear of coal.

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There’s no word for coal-ophobia,
officially, Mr. Speaker,

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but that’s the malady
that afflicts those opposite.

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Switching off jobs
and switching off lights

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and switching off air conditioners

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and forcing Australian families
to boil in the dark

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as a result of their Dark Ages policies,
Mr. Speaker.

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Jobs will be lost.

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Babies will die in hospitals
when the power goes out.

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This is the constant refrain.

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We cannot have kids
coming home from school

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and not having so much
as a toaster in the house

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because they don’t have power.

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They don’t have a fridge, mate.

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But I think one of the real low points

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was the debate over electric cars.

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The response to it
from Scott Morrison was this

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barrage of talking points that said,
amongst other things...

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It’s not gonna...
it’s not gonna tow your trailer.

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It’s not gonna tow your boat.

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It’s not gonna get you out to your
favorite camping spot with your family.

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To have that kind of infantile debate

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in a political campaign,
it just said to me,

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in 2019, we had not moved on.

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Thousands of school students
across the country

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want our politicians to know
they’ve had enough.

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They’re demanding something

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be done about climate change,
and tomorrow,

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they’ll be walking out of school.

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So, I was 16 when I first started.

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I think, like, ’cause people hear that,
and they go, "That’s, like, really young."

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You know, and a lot of adults
still would, you know, be like,

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"Oh, you’re so young. You’ve done so much.

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I’m so proud of you."
You know, that’s, um...

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"You give me hope," which...

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Don’t get me started on that.

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I found out that Sydney was gonna have
a climate strike protest,

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and I thought,
"I have to be involved with this.

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I have to get my friends involved."

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Like, "We have to take as many people
as possible from school."

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And I remember,
as we walked up towards the square

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00:14:09,975 --> 00:14:13,478
where it was gonna be held,
we turn the corner...

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...and it was... I mean,
it was just a sea of, like, sweaty,

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you know, teenage kids.

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Sydney has been brought to a standstill

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by people fired up over climate change,
joining millions of people

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00:14:29,828 --> 00:14:32,289
all around the world
in the biggest protest yet

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00:14:32,372 --> 00:14:33,873
over the state of our planet.

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We are on the outskirts
of the biggest catastrophe

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humanity has ever faced,
and our government is doing nothing!

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It’s almost like
you’re conducting an orchestra.

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We want a safe future! Who’s with me?

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That crowd becomes the music
and becomes the energy

251
00:14:56,104 --> 00:14:59,733
in that drive, that wave of hope.

252
00:14:59,816 --> 00:15:02,485
That wave just kept
crashing over the crowd.

253
00:15:02,569 --> 00:15:06,740
Like, people were really excited.

254
00:15:06,823 --> 00:15:08,658
Like, the rally hadn’t even started.

255
00:15:08,742 --> 00:15:10,118
Our job was done.

256
00:15:12,829 --> 00:15:16,374
A lot of the publicity was driven
by our prime minister reacting to it.

257
00:15:16,458 --> 00:15:20,670
We don’t support the idea
of kids not going to school

258
00:15:20,754 --> 00:15:25,383
to participate in things
that can be dealt with outside of school.

259
00:15:25,467 --> 00:15:28,094
And so, what we want
is more learning in schools

260
00:15:28,178 --> 00:15:31,181
-and less activism in schools.

261
00:15:31,264 --> 00:15:32,641
Which, you know, we sort of thought,

262
00:15:32,724 --> 00:15:33,808
you know, "Piss off."

263
00:15:33,892 --> 00:15:37,020
And to these adults, we say, laugh at us,

264
00:15:37,103 --> 00:15:40,106
attack us, do what you want to us,

265
00:15:40,190 --> 00:15:42,651
because you are on
the wrong side of history!

266
00:15:44,569 --> 00:15:47,364
We had over 300,000 people
take to the streets,

267
00:15:47,447 --> 00:15:50,492
which, if you are an Australian,
you will understand--

268
00:15:50,575 --> 00:15:52,077
Australians don’t do protests.

269
00:15:56,039 --> 00:15:58,124
Best day of my life. Best day.

270
00:15:58,208 --> 00:16:00,835
I’m not, like... Nothing can beat this.

271
00:16:00,919 --> 00:16:03,588
I remember coming home
and just thinking, "Shit."

272
00:16:03,672 --> 00:16:05,048
We want climate action,

273
00:16:05,131 --> 00:16:06,341
and we want it now.

274
00:16:06,424 --> 00:16:09,636
Hey, ho! It’s hot in here!

275
00:16:09,719 --> 00:16:13,014
There’s too much carbon in the atmosphere!

276
00:16:13,098 --> 00:16:15,392
Then there was just radio silence
from parliament.

277
00:16:20,355 --> 00:16:23,274
But the Murdoch media
suddenly were not quiet.

278
00:16:23,358 --> 00:16:25,402
The so-called activists--
more like anarchists--

279
00:16:25,485 --> 00:16:28,196
protesting in our streets these days.

280
00:16:28,279 --> 00:16:30,448
Lies, disinformation.

281
00:16:30,532 --> 00:16:34,661
Children completely brainwashed,
just saying what is

282
00:16:34,744 --> 00:16:36,079
the exact opposite of the truth.

283
00:16:36,162 --> 00:16:38,081
It was the first time
that I really experienced

284
00:16:38,164 --> 00:16:39,833
any, like, climate anxiety,

285
00:16:39,916 --> 00:16:44,379
because the people who’ve been in power
for the last 30 years

286
00:16:44,462 --> 00:16:47,257
have known about this crisis
and have deliberately decided

287
00:16:47,340 --> 00:16:49,718
to not only not do anything about it

288
00:16:49,801 --> 00:16:52,929
but to fight against people
who want to do something about it.

289
00:16:53,012 --> 00:16:54,681
You know, I want children growing up

290
00:16:54,764 --> 00:16:56,349
in Australia to feel positive
about their future.

291
00:16:56,433 --> 00:17:01,438
But I don’t want our children, um,
having anxieties about these issues.

292
00:17:01,521 --> 00:17:04,774
Whatever challenges come our way,
we’ll deal with them like we always have.

293
00:17:04,858 --> 00:17:06,401
I feel as if we have been

294
00:17:06,484 --> 00:17:08,486
just sleepwalking into a catastrophe.

295
00:17:10,155 --> 00:17:12,365
All of the warning signs have been there.

296
00:17:17,287 --> 00:17:20,123
Greg Mullins, our most experienced
fire commissioner,

297
00:17:20,206 --> 00:17:25,587
came to us in April and said,
"We are facing an unprecedented disaster."

298
00:17:25,670 --> 00:17:27,005
Two years in a row,

299
00:17:27,088 --> 00:17:30,508
the driest year on record
for much of... of eastern Australia.

300
00:17:34,512 --> 00:17:37,432
And this year’s looking like
the hottest year on record.

301
00:17:39,684 --> 00:17:42,896
How are we going to manage
the fire situation?

302
00:17:44,314 --> 00:17:46,816
So we were trying to help Greg

303
00:17:46,900 --> 00:17:48,693
to get an audience
with our prime minister,

304
00:17:48,777 --> 00:17:51,488
because this is a matter
of a national catastrophe.

305
00:17:54,115 --> 00:17:56,159
We wrote to the prime minister

306
00:17:56,242 --> 00:17:59,913
in April 2019 and said, "Prime Minister,

307
00:17:59,996 --> 00:18:02,457
"we fear that a bushfire catastrophe
is coming our way.

308
00:18:02,540 --> 00:18:03,958
"We’d love to meet with you.

309
00:18:04,042 --> 00:18:06,002
"’Cause this is going to be a shocker.

310
00:18:06,085 --> 00:18:08,630
This year, we’re gonna need everything
we can get."

311
00:18:11,925 --> 00:18:15,345
"We need better use of the military
to support the fire services,

312
00:18:15,428 --> 00:18:17,889
"more funding for firefighting aircraft.

313
00:18:17,972 --> 00:18:20,850
But you need to know about this,
Prime Minister."

314
00:18:22,060 --> 00:18:24,395
He just wasn’t interested.

315
00:18:28,149 --> 00:18:30,735
2019...

316
00:18:30,819 --> 00:18:32,487
it’s a snowball rolling down the hill.

317
00:18:32,570 --> 00:18:34,489
It’s getting bigger and bigger.

318
00:18:34,572 --> 00:18:36,115
There was just no moisture left.

319
00:18:36,199 --> 00:18:38,409
And we just watched the forests dying.

320
00:18:39,452 --> 00:18:42,372
It was like, yeah,
you just had a terrible feeling

321
00:18:42,455 --> 00:18:44,916
it was all really catching up with us.

322
00:18:46,209 --> 00:18:47,877
But I have to say,

323
00:18:47,961 --> 00:18:52,215
I did not predict how brutal
the fires were going to be

324
00:18:52,298 --> 00:18:53,925
as the summer went on.

325
00:18:54,008 --> 00:18:58,346
It rocked Australia to the core
what happened in the Black Summer.

326
00:19:05,937 --> 00:19:07,689
You know when you watch a movie

327
00:19:07,772 --> 00:19:10,400
and there’s that sort of,
like, low drone noise?

328
00:19:12,360 --> 00:19:15,113
It just increases in volume.

329
00:19:15,196 --> 00:19:19,742
And you just know that something’s coming
and it’s going wrong.

330
00:19:19,826 --> 00:19:23,288
It was like that--
it was a very slow burn.

331
00:19:24,747 --> 00:19:27,667
And then all of a sudden,
it just was massive.

332
00:19:35,049 --> 00:19:37,051
The lead-up to it was frightening.

333
00:19:41,347 --> 00:19:46,477
The whole of Victoria and New South Wales
got very, very dry.

334
00:19:46,561 --> 00:19:50,023
And it was just, like, a...
a brooding presence.

335
00:19:56,362 --> 00:19:57,947
I went into the bush

336
00:19:58,031 --> 00:20:01,993
because I wanted to record
what I could see.

337
00:20:06,456 --> 00:20:11,377
I was really concerned
because the trees grow so close together.

338
00:20:12,420 --> 00:20:14,964
300 to 500 trees per the acre.

339
00:20:18,176 --> 00:20:20,345
It’s a very volatile forest.

340
00:20:20,428 --> 00:20:24,474
And any fire there,
it just goes off like a bomb.

341
00:20:31,814 --> 00:20:33,691
Just 13 days out of winter,

342
00:20:33,775 --> 00:20:35,860
and there are at least 40 bushfires

343
00:20:35,944 --> 00:20:37,195
burning across the state.

344
00:20:37,278 --> 00:20:39,572
Today the message
from authorities was clear:

345
00:20:39,656 --> 00:20:41,199
Get ready.

346
00:20:42,909 --> 00:20:45,745
I was working
at the newspapers up the coast.

347
00:20:46,788 --> 00:20:49,749
We’d already started reporting on fires,

348
00:20:49,832 --> 00:20:51,918
I think, uh, as early as September.

349
00:20:55,964 --> 00:21:00,468
Everyone was off photographing fires.

350
00:21:08,226 --> 00:21:10,144
They were just going off everywhere.

351
00:21:10,228 --> 00:21:12,146
Like, the-the phone just keep going,
"Beep-beep-beep."

352
00:21:12,230 --> 00:21:13,731
And then, uh, look, there’s another fire.

353
00:21:13,815 --> 00:21:15,525
There’s another fire.

354
00:21:15,608 --> 00:21:18,528
And so there was a sense in the air
that something could happen.

355
00:21:18,611 --> 00:21:21,322
And around here,
it was really, really dry.

356
00:21:23,366 --> 00:21:25,535
Some of the walks that I do every day,

357
00:21:25,618 --> 00:21:28,788
I’d noticed that the plants
had started dying and wilting.

358
00:21:30,832 --> 00:21:33,292
By the time it was November,

359
00:21:33,376 --> 00:21:37,338
the ground was, um,
like concrete, seriously.

360
00:21:37,422 --> 00:21:39,007
Everyone’s lawn was dead.

361
00:21:43,052 --> 00:21:45,304
Mallacoota’s very remote.

362
00:21:46,347 --> 00:21:50,518
And quite a number of longtime locals
were very, very concerned

363
00:21:50,601 --> 00:21:54,147
that this was going to be the year.

364
00:22:00,278 --> 00:22:03,072
But the biggest red flag went up

365
00:22:03,156 --> 00:22:05,241
when the rain forest was burning.

366
00:22:06,701 --> 00:22:08,911
Those forests have never burnt.

367
00:22:14,917 --> 00:22:16,836
We’re bearing direct witness

368
00:22:16,919 --> 00:22:21,549
to so many processes of change
playing out around us.

369
00:22:25,011 --> 00:22:29,140
We’re essentially right in the middle
of this stretch

370
00:22:29,223 --> 00:22:32,310
of some of the oldest forests
on the planet.

371
00:22:36,272 --> 00:22:39,609
Unchanged through
tens of millions of years.

372
00:22:42,779 --> 00:22:45,531
Through continents splitting apart,

373
00:22:45,615 --> 00:22:48,326
asteroids hitting the world.

374
00:22:48,409 --> 00:22:52,914
Those trees have been like an arc
through time and space.

375
00:22:55,208 --> 00:22:58,920
But as a consequence
of these climatic shifts,

376
00:22:59,003 --> 00:23:01,172
they’ve been drying out.

377
00:23:03,132 --> 00:23:06,511
It’s a process of unwinding deep time,

378
00:23:06,594 --> 00:23:09,806
of ripping the rug out
from under these species

379
00:23:09,889 --> 00:23:12,183
that have always had the conditions
that they need,

380
00:23:12,266 --> 00:23:14,811
going back to the time of the dinosaurs.

381
00:23:17,063 --> 00:23:22,902
The fires of Black Summer
burnt into these ancient refuges.

382
00:23:35,748 --> 00:23:37,875
There are currently 51 active fire zones

383
00:23:37,959 --> 00:23:40,795
across the state, 23 of them uncontained.

384
00:23:40,878 --> 00:23:42,797
The ongoing bushfire threat is coinciding

385
00:23:42,880 --> 00:23:44,882
with a dangerous heat wave,

386
00:23:44,966 --> 00:23:49,720
forcing the Rural Fire Service to declare
an unprecedented emergency situation.

387
00:23:52,056 --> 00:23:54,392
I’ve been with the Rural Fire Service...

388
00:23:55,643 --> 00:23:57,687
...for 60... 65 years.

389
00:23:57,770 --> 00:23:59,313
-60-odd years.
-Mm-hmm. 65.

390
00:23:59,397 --> 00:24:02,900
Fought fires all over New South Wales
and Victoria,

391
00:24:02,984 --> 00:24:05,903
and I’d never seen anything like it.

392
00:24:12,618 --> 00:24:15,746
That fire started, and it never let up.

393
00:24:20,084 --> 00:24:22,712
They attacked it with bombers.

394
00:24:25,298 --> 00:24:27,758
Large air tankers.

395
00:24:29,135 --> 00:24:30,887
It didn’t matter what they did.

396
00:24:30,970 --> 00:24:33,514
It worked its way down the coast.

397
00:24:33,598 --> 00:24:35,516
Major blazes are going to combine

398
00:24:35,600 --> 00:24:38,477
to form one massive fire,

399
00:24:38,561 --> 00:24:41,355
and everyone is on very high alert.

400
00:24:41,439 --> 00:24:43,566
We knew sooner or later

401
00:24:43,649 --> 00:24:45,359
it was going to be our turn.

402
00:24:47,320 --> 00:24:51,449
I can remember saying to people,
"This is serious.

403
00:24:51,532 --> 00:24:54,493
This fire is going to impact on Cobargo."

404
00:24:55,912 --> 00:24:59,957
I had no idea that it was going to be
within hours.

405
00:25:01,417 --> 00:25:03,044
At about 4:00 in the morning...

406
00:25:03,127 --> 00:25:05,046
-3:00. It was 3:00.
-Or, um...

407
00:25:05,129 --> 00:25:06,923
-It was 3:00 in the morning...
-Mm-hmm.

408
00:25:07,006 --> 00:25:09,383
woke up, went out, and-and I...

409
00:25:09,467 --> 00:25:11,260
it just felt unreal.

410
00:25:13,221 --> 00:25:18,142
All of the western skyline
just had this eerie red glow.

411
00:25:18,226 --> 00:25:19,810
Red.

412
00:25:19,894 --> 00:25:22,021
I came in, and I woke Mary, and I said,

413
00:25:22,104 --> 00:25:23,898
"Listen, get up, love.

414
00:25:23,981 --> 00:25:25,608
"Have breakfast.

415
00:25:25,691 --> 00:25:27,443
This fire is going to hit."

416
00:25:30,446 --> 00:25:33,241
-BOY: Oh, it’s way darker!
-GIRL: Mum!

417
00:25:33,324 --> 00:25:36,369
-Mum. Mum.
-It’s way darker.

418
00:25:37,620 --> 00:25:39,372
30th of December,

419
00:25:39,455 --> 00:25:41,958
the CFA called
an emergency community meeting.

420
00:25:43,834 --> 00:25:48,464
We still had probably around
7,000 tourists in the town.

421
00:25:51,592 --> 00:25:54,595
There was an announcement
for people to leave.

422
00:25:54,679 --> 00:25:56,264
A lot of people didn’t leave.

423
00:25:58,808 --> 00:26:00,726
I went around the caravan park
and asked people

424
00:26:00,810 --> 00:26:03,312
how they were feeling
about this looming sky.

425
00:26:06,816 --> 00:26:09,193
And I really think
that there was a sense of, like,

426
00:26:09,277 --> 00:26:12,530
"Oh, well, I’ve come here on my holiday,
and I’ll be all right."

427
00:26:14,824 --> 00:26:16,742
I think, at that stage,

428
00:26:16,826 --> 00:26:19,328
everyone was still thinking
it’s not going to happen.

429
00:26:23,833 --> 00:26:27,169
You know, you don’t think
it’s going to happen really.

430
00:26:27,253 --> 00:26:29,630
At one point, I was wetting down my car,

431
00:26:29,714 --> 00:26:31,716
and this stupid woman
came up to me and said,

432
00:26:31,799 --> 00:26:33,509
"What are you doing wasting water?

433
00:26:33,592 --> 00:26:35,136
"You don’t need to have your car...

434
00:26:35,219 --> 00:26:37,471
What are you doing washing your car?"

435
00:26:37,555 --> 00:26:40,766
I said, "I’m wetting it down
so the embers can’t catch."

436
00:26:40,850 --> 00:26:43,019
I said, "Do you live here?"
She said, "No, I’m visiting."

437
00:26:43,102 --> 00:26:44,812
I said, "Well, go home."

438
00:26:46,314 --> 00:26:48,607
Holidaying while home burns.

439
00:26:48,691 --> 00:26:50,776
Scott Morrison relaxing in Hawaii

440
00:26:50,860 --> 00:26:55,156
as the nation confronts
an unprecedented bushfire catastrophe.

441
00:26:56,741 --> 00:26:58,784
When I saw Scott Morrison

442
00:26:58,868 --> 00:27:02,496
going off on a holiday to Hawaii
in the middle of this emerging disaster

443
00:27:02,580 --> 00:27:04,498
that we could have done a huge amount

444
00:27:04,582 --> 00:27:07,752
to actually make it
much less severe than it was,

445
00:27:07,835 --> 00:27:10,212
um, I almost cried.

446
00:27:10,296 --> 00:27:12,673
He’s cutting short his family vacation,

447
00:27:12,757 --> 00:27:17,636
which his office has refused to confirm
or deny for days.

448
00:27:17,720 --> 00:27:20,973
I think it was really clear
from the outset,

449
00:27:21,057 --> 00:27:24,393
uh, when the fires started to get serious

450
00:27:24,477 --> 00:27:27,521
that Scott Morrison did not understand

451
00:27:27,605 --> 00:27:29,523
the gravity of the situation.

452
00:27:29,607 --> 00:27:32,735
I get it that people would have been upset

453
00:27:32,818 --> 00:27:35,571
to know that I was holidaying
with my family,

454
00:27:35,654 --> 00:27:38,199
uh, while their families
were under great stress.

455
00:27:38,282 --> 00:27:41,202
They know that I’m not gonna stand there
and hold a hose.

456
00:27:41,285 --> 00:27:43,037
I’m not a trained firefighter.

457
00:27:47,083 --> 00:27:51,379
He saw it through
a purely political lens, I think.

458
00:27:53,506 --> 00:27:55,800
He did not want the fires to be an issue,

459
00:27:55,883 --> 00:27:57,343
a big national issue,

460
00:27:57,426 --> 00:27:59,095
because he was worried it would open up

461
00:27:59,178 --> 00:28:01,347
the climate change issue.

462
00:28:01,430 --> 00:28:04,433
Australia has been battling
ferocious fires

463
00:28:04,517 --> 00:28:07,353
for as long as, uh,
Australia has been a nation

464
00:28:07,436 --> 00:28:08,979
and-and well before.

465
00:28:09,063 --> 00:28:11,273
He was overly influenced

466
00:28:11,357 --> 00:28:13,359
by the power of the Murdoch media.

467
00:28:13,442 --> 00:28:16,404
Fire is part and parcel of our landscape.

468
00:28:16,487 --> 00:28:17,988
It always has been.

469
00:28:18,072 --> 00:28:20,282
People in politics

470
00:28:20,366 --> 00:28:22,576
took these guys, they took these women

471
00:28:22,660 --> 00:28:24,453
really seriously.

472
00:28:24,537 --> 00:28:28,999
Does climate change cause these fires? No.

473
00:28:29,083 --> 00:28:30,584
The lies.

474
00:28:30,668 --> 00:28:33,337
We know what causes bushfire.
Someone has to light it.

475
00:28:33,421 --> 00:28:34,839
You know, arson.

476
00:28:34,922 --> 00:28:36,799
They said, "These fires have
been started by arsonists."

477
00:28:36,882 --> 00:28:40,636
You can’t blame
the fires on climate change, especially

478
00:28:40,719 --> 00:28:42,638
when so many are...
deliberately lit.

479
00:28:42,721 --> 00:28:44,473
The fact of the matter is

480
00:28:44,557 --> 00:28:48,102
Australia has an arson problem
you can’t pin on global warming,

481
00:28:48,185 --> 00:28:50,604
climate change
or whatever title you’re giving

482
00:28:50,688 --> 00:28:52,523
your environmental bogeyman these days.

483
00:29:01,323 --> 00:29:03,117
What a load of crap.

484
00:29:03,200 --> 00:29:04,702
They couldn’t accept

485
00:29:04,785 --> 00:29:07,037
that we’re having
the worst fires in history

486
00:29:07,121 --> 00:29:09,748
because it was clearly driven
by climate change.

487
00:29:09,832 --> 00:29:14,128
Right through, I think, to
the tragedy of New Year’s Eve,

488
00:29:14,211 --> 00:29:17,214
the government didn’t really get it.

489
00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:29,393
People, communities are getting cut off.

490
00:29:29,477 --> 00:29:31,061
They’re getting trapped.

491
00:29:32,104 --> 00:29:35,441
The fire’d approached
from every angle here.

492
00:29:35,524 --> 00:29:37,818
You’d go to sleep seeing the fire,

493
00:29:37,902 --> 00:29:40,446
and you’d wake up,
and it would still be there,

494
00:29:40,529 --> 00:29:41,947
closer to you than it was,

495
00:29:42,031 --> 00:29:44,366
and it just wore you down.

496
00:29:50,206 --> 00:29:52,333
And so you’ve got to have good luck,

497
00:29:52,416 --> 00:29:55,127
and Mallacoota had terrible luck.

498
00:30:03,385 --> 00:30:04,720
Where’s my keys?

499
00:30:04,803 --> 00:30:06,305
Has anyone seen my keys?

500
00:30:06,388 --> 00:30:08,724
Don’t worry about the keys.
We’ll put you in this car here.

501
00:30:08,807 --> 00:30:10,809
-That’s my car, mate.
-Don’t worry about the keys.

502
00:30:10,893 --> 00:30:12,645
-I can’t open it without them.
-Doesn’t matter.

503
00:30:12,728 --> 00:30:13,812
Go, now, now!

504
00:30:13,896 --> 00:30:15,981
A siren went off.

505
00:30:16,065 --> 00:30:17,733
And our phones went off.

506
00:30:18,442 --> 00:30:19,777
And it was,

507
00:30:19,860 --> 00:30:21,654
you know, "Evacuate now."

508
00:30:25,324 --> 00:30:28,244
And I turned around,
and there it was coming at me.

509
00:30:30,287 --> 00:30:31,747
Go! Go!

510
00:30:31,830 --> 00:30:33,082
This red glow.

511
00:30:33,165 --> 00:30:34,333
Move!

512
00:30:35,376 --> 00:30:38,587
It was orange and smoky.

513
00:30:38,671 --> 00:30:40,798
There was lightning up in the sky.

514
00:30:48,180 --> 00:30:50,224
Cars were going on to Bastion Point beach.

515
00:30:50,307 --> 00:30:52,935
Other people were getting ready
down at the wharf,

516
00:30:53,018 --> 00:30:56,564
and then other people
were going to the hall.

517
00:30:56,647 --> 00:30:58,399
There’s a photograph of a local woman,

518
00:30:58,482 --> 00:31:00,901
and she’s holding her little dog.

519
00:31:00,985 --> 00:31:05,197
She wanted to leave,
but she also wanted to stay.

520
00:31:05,281 --> 00:31:06,782
"I want to stay because

521
00:31:06,865 --> 00:31:08,409
this is where I live.
This is where I belong."

522
00:31:08,492 --> 00:31:10,202
And here we were.

523
00:31:10,286 --> 00:31:12,997
Now we had to decide whether
we go or whether we stay,

524
00:31:13,080 --> 00:31:14,999
like there’s a monster coming down on us.

525
00:31:21,422 --> 00:31:23,591
And the wind. I can’t stand wind anymore.

526
00:31:23,674 --> 00:31:26,260
I can’t be out in it
because it just reminds me

527
00:31:26,343 --> 00:31:29,346
of this howling going past my ears.

528
00:31:33,309 --> 00:31:36,437
You could hear it.
It was a... like a...

529
00:31:36,520 --> 00:31:38,147
It was like a dragon,
you know, like a...

530
00:31:43,319 --> 00:31:46,822
And then everything went pitch-black.

531
00:31:52,453 --> 00:31:56,290
This is Mallacoota at 9:13 in the morning.

532
00:31:56,373 --> 00:32:00,085
Absolutely unbelievable. Pitch black.

533
00:32:00,169 --> 00:32:02,504
There’s embers falling from the sky.

534
00:32:03,547 --> 00:32:07,134
A girlfriend of mine texted me
and said, "Are you okay?"

535
00:32:08,385 --> 00:32:12,181
And I started taking some shots
just to send to her.

536
00:32:15,809 --> 00:32:18,937
She said to me,
"Was this taken last night?"

537
00:32:19,021 --> 00:32:21,607
And I said, "No, it’s right now."

538
00:32:22,691 --> 00:32:24,485
It’s now really scary.

539
00:32:24,568 --> 00:32:27,196
You couldn’t see your hand
in front of your face.

540
00:32:27,279 --> 00:32:29,198
The wind’s picked up,

541
00:32:29,281 --> 00:32:31,784
which is pushing the fire
straight towards us.

542
00:32:31,867 --> 00:32:34,536
The reason that the sky goes
absolutely pitch-black

543
00:32:34,620 --> 00:32:37,081
is because all of the soot

544
00:32:37,164 --> 00:32:40,709
that is created by the fire
actually goes ahead

545
00:32:40,793 --> 00:32:41,960
of the fire front.

546
00:32:42,044 --> 00:32:43,754
So that’s what hits you first.

547
00:32:46,006 --> 00:32:48,717
And then, as the fire front gets closer,

548
00:32:48,801 --> 00:32:53,639
the soot clears, and you just get
this intensely red sky.

549
00:33:10,072 --> 00:33:12,032
I was sitting outside the hall.

550
00:33:13,075 --> 00:33:14,785
I wanted to see as much as I could.

551
00:33:20,791 --> 00:33:22,626
But then a CFA volunteer

552
00:33:22,710 --> 00:33:25,254
came and tapped me on the shoulder
and said, "You have to move in."

553
00:33:31,677 --> 00:33:34,638
In the hall, it was really claustrophobic,

554
00:33:34,722 --> 00:33:36,473
and they blacked out the windows,

555
00:33:36,557 --> 00:33:38,767
so you couldn’t look out,
and all you could see

556
00:33:38,851 --> 00:33:40,769
was the fire through the skylights.

557
00:33:40,853 --> 00:33:42,604
You know, so you could see the red...

558
00:33:42,688 --> 00:33:44,606
the red glow and the flickering
through the skylights.

559
00:33:44,690 --> 00:33:46,817
And, you know, like,
we were sort of just laying down.

560
00:33:46,900 --> 00:33:51,280
I-I can remember just sort of laying down,

561
00:33:51,363 --> 00:33:54,408
and I just thought,
"How are we gonna get out of this?

562
00:33:54,491 --> 00:33:56,410
How are we going to actually
get out of this?"

563
00:33:56,493 --> 00:34:00,914
And then I also felt, you know,
I put my child in this situation, so...

564
00:34:00,998 --> 00:34:04,334
maybe my imagination is big,
but it was really...

565
00:34:05,377 --> 00:34:06,920
...a real thing that you didn’t know

566
00:34:07,004 --> 00:34:09,965
whether you were actually really gonna
come out of there alive or not,

567
00:34:10,048 --> 00:34:12,551
because it-it could have gone up.

568
00:34:12,634 --> 00:34:13,844
Yeah.

569
00:34:17,306 --> 00:34:20,017
It was like being on a plane
when it’s going down.

570
00:34:20,100 --> 00:34:21,935
And that’s how it felt.

571
00:34:27,232 --> 00:34:30,819
The side of our house was very, very hot,

572
00:34:30,903 --> 00:34:33,322
and the embers just hit me--
little red embers.

573
00:34:33,405 --> 00:34:37,159
And the heat was enormous, so I...

574
00:34:37,242 --> 00:34:39,077
hosed myself down.

575
00:34:40,954 --> 00:34:43,791
I was shocked at the ferocity of it.

576
00:34:44,792 --> 00:34:47,461
It was only a matter of half an hour,

577
00:34:47,544 --> 00:34:49,797
and we lost water.

578
00:34:49,880 --> 00:34:51,757
Need to evacuate!

579
00:34:51,840 --> 00:34:54,134
-Please evacuate!

580
00:34:54,218 --> 00:34:57,805
So we’ve lost water, we’ve got no power,

581
00:34:57,888 --> 00:34:59,765
-and we’ve got no fire trucks.
-Right.

582
00:34:59,848 --> 00:35:02,142
All communications are gone.

583
00:35:02,226 --> 00:35:04,394
Our radios are knocked out.

584
00:35:04,478 --> 00:35:06,480
The town was at-at the mercy.

585
00:35:10,234 --> 00:35:12,986
Said to Mary, "There goes the house."

586
00:35:15,405 --> 00:35:16,949
"There goes the shop."

587
00:35:18,784 --> 00:35:21,161
It was almost surreal.

588
00:35:30,587 --> 00:35:32,673
Jesus.

589
00:35:32,756 --> 00:35:36,301
The roar and the noise of it
was horrendous.

590
00:35:36,385 --> 00:35:39,388
I just called it a vicious monster.

591
00:35:40,389 --> 00:35:42,182
Wow.

592
00:35:45,853 --> 00:35:49,565
For an individual person
facing a bushfire,

593
00:35:49,648 --> 00:35:52,985
the fire almost behaves like a, an animal,

594
00:35:53,068 --> 00:35:55,153
a predator that’ll play with you.

595
00:35:55,237 --> 00:35:58,740
You can see it just gently
creeping along harmlessly.

596
00:35:58,824 --> 00:36:00,868
Whoa! Kangaroo!

597
00:36:00,951 --> 00:36:02,911
Okay, coming this way.

598
00:36:02,995 --> 00:36:04,496
But within an hour, it’ll change,

599
00:36:04,580 --> 00:36:06,790
and it might burn a neighbor’s house
and leave yours.

600
00:36:06,874 --> 00:36:09,042
Oh!

601
00:36:10,210 --> 00:36:13,964
Or it’ll burn your house
and leave everything else around it.

602
00:36:16,842 --> 00:36:20,387
So it’s psychologically very damaging
to have to deal with that stress.

603
00:36:22,556 --> 00:36:25,893
And then when the fire comes,
of course, it’s a catastrophe.

604
00:36:29,980 --> 00:36:32,149
Normally, the flashbacks happen

605
00:36:32,232 --> 00:36:35,360
more on hazy sort of days
when it’s not quite as clear

606
00:36:35,444 --> 00:36:37,821
and you’ll just glance up at a ridge.

607
00:36:38,864 --> 00:36:40,365
I don’t know, it just triggers something,

608
00:36:40,449 --> 00:36:41,450
and I just see flame.

609
00:36:50,459 --> 00:36:52,544
The roar of the fire was...

610
00:36:52,628 --> 00:36:55,005
Yeah, there’s no words, really,
to describe it.

611
00:36:55,088 --> 00:36:57,049
It was just screaming.

612
00:36:57,132 --> 00:36:59,092
Like, we couldn’t talk to each other.

613
00:36:59,176 --> 00:37:02,304
It was more hand signals
and yelling in each other’s ears.

614
00:37:08,852 --> 00:37:11,021
The trees are about
two to three stories tall,

615
00:37:11,104 --> 00:37:13,857
and the flames are about
two to three stories above them,

616
00:37:13,941 --> 00:37:17,611
just ripping the whole way around,
just tornadoing above us.

617
00:37:17,694 --> 00:37:20,197
It was just picking everything up
and just taking it.

618
00:37:20,280 --> 00:37:22,783
Branches landing next to us
as thick as your arm.

619
00:37:31,750 --> 00:37:33,585
I was trying to breathe,

620
00:37:34,670 --> 00:37:37,339
and so I tried to rip my mask off,
trying to breathe, and I couldn’t.

621
00:37:37,422 --> 00:37:39,341
There was nothing I could do.

622
00:37:39,424 --> 00:37:41,551
I was in full panic mode at that point.

623
00:37:43,762 --> 00:37:46,056
I was seeing birds falling out of the sky.

624
00:37:47,516 --> 00:37:49,559
Yeah, the cockatiels on fire,

625
00:37:49,643 --> 00:37:51,561
burning and dropping out of the sky.

626
00:37:56,984 --> 00:37:58,735
It was something you could not fight.

627
00:37:58,819 --> 00:38:00,737
It was just-- survive.

628
00:38:02,322 --> 00:38:04,116
I knew there was gonna be mass loss.

629
00:38:06,535 --> 00:38:07,995
To the south, there were bushfires.

630
00:38:08,078 --> 00:38:09,454
To the west,
there were bushfires.

631
00:38:09,538 --> 00:38:11,623
To the north, there were bushfires.

632
00:38:11,707 --> 00:38:13,750
And in every direction,
roads were cut off.

633
00:38:13,834 --> 00:38:15,961
Families are trapped on the beach

634
00:38:16,044 --> 00:38:18,588
as the fires surround them on all sides.

635
00:38:25,429 --> 00:38:29,016
The entire coast
is choked with this thick smoke,

636
00:38:29,099 --> 00:38:31,101
making it difficult to breathe.

637
00:38:36,273 --> 00:38:38,942
The fires really came home to me

638
00:38:39,026 --> 00:38:41,528
when the smoke came into Sydney.

639
00:38:45,407 --> 00:38:47,701
You know, you’d be going
for your morning walk,

640
00:38:47,784 --> 00:38:49,745
you’d be seeing your friends,

641
00:38:49,828 --> 00:38:52,622
and just this heaviness in your breathing.

642
00:38:53,749 --> 00:38:57,210
And it was really discombobulating for me.

643
00:38:57,294 --> 00:39:00,088
I was writing about climate change,

644
00:39:00,172 --> 00:39:05,594
and there I was
in my everyday life experiencing it.

645
00:39:11,183 --> 00:39:13,602
The plume of smoke
generated by the inferno

646
00:39:13,685 --> 00:39:17,314
covers five and a half million
square kilometers.

647
00:39:17,397 --> 00:39:19,232
That’s the size of Europe.

648
00:39:20,275 --> 00:39:23,361
DR. REBECCA McGOWAN:
The psychological impact was stifling.

649
00:39:23,445 --> 00:39:25,363
They say seal up your windows,

650
00:39:25,447 --> 00:39:26,656
seal up your doors.

651
00:39:26,740 --> 00:39:28,241
That doesn’t stop the smoke.

652
00:39:29,868 --> 00:39:31,953
It was just insidious.

653
00:39:38,627 --> 00:39:40,712
DR. ROLY STOKES: You know,
and maybe in a bushfire season

654
00:39:40,796 --> 00:39:42,923
in the past, you might have
a week of smoke

655
00:39:43,006 --> 00:39:44,424
and that was a really bad fire.

656
00:39:45,425 --> 00:39:47,135
And this was just three months

657
00:39:47,219 --> 00:39:48,845
of, like, the thickest smoke

658
00:39:48,929 --> 00:39:50,472
that you could imagine.

659
00:39:56,812 --> 00:39:58,522
You know, it was just everywhere.

660
00:39:58,605 --> 00:40:00,357
You couldn’t get out of it.

661
00:40:01,983 --> 00:40:03,401
And I was so tired--

662
00:40:03,485 --> 00:40:05,779
really unusually tired.

663
00:40:05,862 --> 00:40:07,948
You know, like,
people just keep saying to me,

664
00:40:08,031 --> 00:40:10,784
"Well, you’re pregnant, um,
and you have a toddler,

665
00:40:10,867 --> 00:40:12,744
so you’re gonna be tired."

666
00:40:12,828 --> 00:40:14,538
But you get tired from the heat

667
00:40:14,621 --> 00:40:17,457
and you get tired from
having to breathe harder.

668
00:40:20,961 --> 00:40:22,587
When a woman is pregnant,

669
00:40:22,671 --> 00:40:24,840
the whole system is on overdrive.

670
00:40:24,923 --> 00:40:27,592
So she breathes faster

671
00:40:27,676 --> 00:40:30,137
and she takes deeper breaths.

672
00:40:30,220 --> 00:40:33,306
She’s inhaling this toxic smoke.

673
00:40:33,390 --> 00:40:36,560
The tiny little smoke particles
travel through her body

674
00:40:36,643 --> 00:40:39,771
and get lodged in the placenta.

675
00:40:39,855 --> 00:40:42,524
The filter system,
the thing that we all grew from.

676
00:40:47,279 --> 00:40:49,906
My friend who worked in obstetrics,

677
00:40:49,990 --> 00:40:52,159
she said, "It just doesn’t sound right."

678
00:40:53,160 --> 00:40:55,620
So I went to the hospital.

679
00:40:57,914 --> 00:41:00,167
"This baby needs
to come in the next 24 hours

680
00:41:00,250 --> 00:41:03,211
because this is really
real risk of stillbirth."

681
00:41:03,295 --> 00:41:05,672
That’s-that’s pretty real,
confronting news.

682
00:41:07,883 --> 00:41:10,302
The same time that Saga was being born

683
00:41:10,385 --> 00:41:14,181
is when the village of Cobargo was burning
just 200 kilometers away.

684
00:41:14,264 --> 00:41:16,433
And the air was full of smoke,

685
00:41:16,516 --> 00:41:18,018
and people are having
New Year’s celebrations

686
00:41:18,101 --> 00:41:20,061
we could hear from outside the hospital.

687
00:41:20,145 --> 00:41:21,980
It was a really bizarre time.

688
00:41:24,691 --> 00:41:27,736
And coming in
at just under two kilograms,

689
00:41:27,819 --> 00:41:31,573
Saga Snow made an early entrance
at 36 weeks,

690
00:41:31,656 --> 00:41:35,243
not wanting to miss
any of the festivities.

691
00:41:35,327 --> 00:41:38,788
The baby was small,
and the baby was early,

692
00:41:38,872 --> 00:41:41,750
and the baby had respiratory issues.

693
00:41:43,001 --> 00:41:45,295
Nice little temperature-controlled box.

694
00:41:45,378 --> 00:41:47,214
The midwife,

695
00:41:47,297 --> 00:41:50,300
her immediate question straightaway was,
"Are you a smoker?"

696
00:41:50,383 --> 00:41:52,469
"Are you a smoker? Have you ever smoked?"

697
00:41:52,552 --> 00:41:54,387
And she said, "No, I’ve never smoked.

698
00:41:54,471 --> 00:41:56,556
You know, why do you keep asking me that?"

699
00:41:56,640 --> 00:41:59,309
And the placenta attached to this baby,

700
00:41:59,392 --> 00:42:03,855
it was a gray, crumbly,
disgusting-looking placenta.

701
00:42:03,939 --> 00:42:07,359
We’ve all seen those pictures
of what smokers’ lungs look like.

702
00:42:07,442 --> 00:42:09,486
They’re on Australian cigarette packets.

703
00:42:09,569 --> 00:42:11,613
That’s what this placenta looked like.

704
00:42:17,035 --> 00:42:20,664
She was in ICU for 17 days.

705
00:42:21,706 --> 00:42:23,124
You’re not holding your baby.

706
00:42:23,208 --> 00:42:24,417
You’re... you know,

707
00:42:24,501 --> 00:42:27,504
you put your hand in through the incubator
and hold her little hand.

708
00:42:27,587 --> 00:42:31,174
And I can still now, um, get her to sleep
by holding her hand

709
00:42:31,258 --> 00:42:34,678
because that’s what she learned
in those first few weeks.

710
00:42:40,350 --> 00:42:44,479
She was well under first percentile
in birth weight,

711
00:42:44,562 --> 00:42:47,190
and she’s taking a long time to catch up.

712
00:42:49,943 --> 00:42:52,654
By the time she’s 18 months,
if she’s still behind,

713
00:42:52,737 --> 00:42:54,781
they’ll consider giving growth hormones.

714
00:42:55,907 --> 00:42:57,701
The young women who are coming in

715
00:42:57,784 --> 00:43:01,830
with their babies tell me
that it’s-it’s not just them

716
00:43:01,913 --> 00:43:03,707
but in their mothers groups,

717
00:43:03,790 --> 00:43:06,793
their babies have been affected
by the smoke

718
00:43:06,876 --> 00:43:08,503
and their babies were born early.

719
00:43:08,586 --> 00:43:11,131
Where the women have to go back
after the birth

720
00:43:11,214 --> 00:43:16,344
and have these crumbly, horrible,
smoke-affected placentas scraped out.

721
00:43:17,595 --> 00:43:19,306
You can see how little she is there.

722
00:43:19,389 --> 00:43:22,434
The origin of life is actually now

723
00:43:22,517 --> 00:43:24,311
this canary in the coal mine,

724
00:43:24,394 --> 00:43:26,604
and these babies are being exposed

725
00:43:26,688 --> 00:43:29,316
to the effect
of the heating of the planet,

726
00:43:29,399 --> 00:43:31,484
the climate change.

727
00:43:31,568 --> 00:43:33,695
Night night, Saga.

728
00:43:47,459 --> 00:43:50,795
Look, in-in Australia,
bad fire weather days

729
00:43:50,879 --> 00:43:52,797
have always been difficult,

730
00:43:52,881 --> 00:43:56,343
but what was different this summer
was multiple fires

731
00:43:56,426 --> 00:43:59,346
formed their own weather systems.

732
00:44:03,141 --> 00:44:06,394
With massive fires, the heat going up

733
00:44:06,478 --> 00:44:10,899
drives the smoke column ten, 12, 13
kilometers up into the stratosphere.

734
00:44:13,068 --> 00:44:16,696
And the water vapor in the smoke
forms a cloud.

735
00:44:17,697 --> 00:44:20,075
The fires create their own thunderstorms.

736
00:44:22,577 --> 00:44:26,039
They’re a very dangerous,
scary thing to be under.

737
00:44:29,417 --> 00:44:31,836
Incredible winds from every direction.

738
00:44:31,920 --> 00:44:34,172
Ah, burn and piss off, will you?

739
00:44:36,466 --> 00:44:38,676
The sparks carried
in the convection column

740
00:44:38,760 --> 00:44:41,221
going eight to 12 kilometers.

741
00:44:42,222 --> 00:44:45,016
And they spark fires up to 30 kilometers
away from the lightning,

742
00:44:45,100 --> 00:44:47,060
but there’s no rain.

743
00:44:48,103 --> 00:44:50,397
-See the wind swirling?
-Yeah, it is, isn’t it?

744
00:44:52,607 --> 00:44:54,150
I remember my dad saying,

745
00:44:54,234 --> 00:44:57,654
"I think I saw one in the 1939 heat wave."

746
00:44:58,988 --> 00:45:01,616
And I thought I saw one in 1975.

747
00:45:04,244 --> 00:45:05,954
But that was sort of a legend
with firefighters.

748
00:45:06,037 --> 00:45:07,789
Not many people have seen ’em.

749
00:45:08,873 --> 00:45:11,334
I saw about ten last summer.

750
00:45:16,047 --> 00:45:19,008
It’s true that big fires
can generate their own weather,

751
00:45:19,092 --> 00:45:21,761
because this looks like
a massive thunderhead.

752
00:45:21,845 --> 00:45:25,098
It looks like a nuclear bomb’s gone off.

753
00:45:25,181 --> 00:45:27,725
It’s, um... it’s huge.

754
00:45:27,809 --> 00:45:29,727
Pyro-convective storms...

755
00:45:29,811 --> 00:45:31,729
"Rare." Well, not anymore.

756
00:45:34,232 --> 00:45:36,067
I was fighting fires as a volunteer,

757
00:45:36,151 --> 00:45:38,111
and I was all over the state.

758
00:45:38,194 --> 00:45:40,405
Um, I don’t like this.

759
00:45:40,488 --> 00:45:42,323
No. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

760
00:45:42,407 --> 00:45:47,245
You know, I’d never really felt
in the past almost powerless

761
00:45:47,328 --> 00:45:50,123
as I did this last spring and summer.

762
00:45:52,417 --> 00:45:53,960
Hurry up!

763
00:45:54,043 --> 00:45:56,045
-Everyone out!

764
00:45:59,674 --> 00:46:01,718
I was in Batemans Bay.

765
00:46:01,801 --> 00:46:04,679
We were waiting for instructions
and catching our breath.

766
00:46:07,098 --> 00:46:09,517
You couldn’t see very far
because of the orange smoke.

767
00:46:09,601 --> 00:46:11,186
Everything was dark.

768
00:46:11,269 --> 00:46:13,855
It was probably 2:00 in the afternoon,
but it was like night.

769
00:46:17,650 --> 00:46:21,154
Then I saw something moving
on the side of the road.

770
00:46:21,237 --> 00:46:22,947
And I walked closer.

771
00:46:23,031 --> 00:46:25,283
It was a mob of kangaroos.

772
00:46:29,287 --> 00:46:31,789
The speed of that fire
with its pyro-convective storm

773
00:46:31,873 --> 00:46:35,210
driving it in every direction,
they had no way... way to go,

774
00:46:35,293 --> 00:46:37,670
and they came out of the forest on fire

775
00:46:37,754 --> 00:46:40,465
and dropped dead on the road,
and I’ve never seen that. I...

776
00:46:40,548 --> 00:46:42,258
Kangaroos know what to do in a fire.

777
00:46:42,342 --> 00:46:43,760
They’re fast animals.

778
00:46:43,843 --> 00:46:45,803
I just, uh...

779
00:46:48,806 --> 00:46:51,351
What do you... I don’t know.

780
00:46:51,434 --> 00:46:53,394
Yeah, the world’s changed.

781
00:47:31,516 --> 00:47:35,019
Every year
for the last 25 or 26 years now,

782
00:47:35,103 --> 00:47:38,439
there has been
a conference of the parties.

783
00:47:38,523 --> 00:47:40,650
It’s where decisions
like the Kyoto Protocol

784
00:47:40,733 --> 00:47:42,569
and the Paris Climate Agreement
were reached.

785
00:47:42,652 --> 00:47:46,030
And in 2019, it was the COP 25.

786
00:47:47,073 --> 00:47:48,825
Well, the COP 25 climate conference

787
00:47:48,908 --> 00:47:51,160
is underway in Madrid
with a new report showing

788
00:47:51,244 --> 00:47:55,623
the past decade is almost certain
to be the hottest on record.

789
00:47:55,707 --> 00:48:00,545
UN Secretary-General António Guterres
is calling for urgent action.

790
00:48:00,628 --> 00:48:03,298
I was invited by Greenpeace

791
00:48:03,381 --> 00:48:06,050
to join them at this conference.

792
00:48:06,134 --> 00:48:08,136
And I realized I didn’t have any jeans,

793
00:48:08,219 --> 00:48:09,971
and I was heading into European winter,

794
00:48:10,054 --> 00:48:11,889
and I thought,
"Hmm, better get some jeans."

795
00:48:11,973 --> 00:48:15,310
And, um, I remember being in the city
with my mum,

796
00:48:15,393 --> 00:48:20,815
and there was ash falling
and the sky was, like, orange.

797
00:48:20,898 --> 00:48:23,192
And we just thought,

798
00:48:23,276 --> 00:48:25,194
"Well, something has to come out of this.

799
00:48:25,278 --> 00:48:27,113
We have to create this change."

800
00:48:29,490 --> 00:48:32,327
I hopped on the plane,
and when I got to Madrid,

801
00:48:32,410 --> 00:48:34,579
I was staying in this hostel with a bunch

802
00:48:34,662 --> 00:48:36,414
of other kids from around the world.

803
00:48:36,497 --> 00:48:38,416
-SPEAKER: What do we want?
-CROWD: Climate justice!

804
00:48:38,499 --> 00:48:40,084
-When do we want it?
-Now!

805
00:48:40,168 --> 00:48:41,711
We were there at the conference

806
00:48:41,794 --> 00:48:43,838
from about 8:00 in the morning
to 8:00 at night.

807
00:48:43,921 --> 00:48:46,549
Fossil fuel companies
were funding the conference,

808
00:48:46,633 --> 00:48:48,384
and their names were plastered everywhere.

809
00:48:51,679 --> 00:48:53,473
Each country had its own pavilion

810
00:48:53,556 --> 00:48:57,685
sort of, like, trying to represent
what they were doing in terms of climate.

811
00:48:57,769 --> 00:49:00,104
What did Australia have as its pavilion?

812
00:49:00,188 --> 00:49:02,690
Australia didn’t have a pavilion,
I remember.

813
00:49:02,774 --> 00:49:07,987
And our Minister for Energy Angus Taylor

814
00:49:08,071 --> 00:49:11,783
got up in front of the entire world

815
00:49:11,866 --> 00:49:15,370
while his own country was on fire

816
00:49:15,453 --> 00:49:17,747
and said that Australia
was doing its part.

817
00:49:17,830 --> 00:49:21,125
We are already on track
to meet and beat

818
00:49:21,209 --> 00:49:23,753
the targets we have set for 2030,

819
00:49:23,836 --> 00:49:26,964
just as we are meeting
and beating our Kyoto targets.

820
00:49:27,048 --> 00:49:29,133
That was embarrassing. It was...

821
00:49:29,217 --> 00:49:31,678
It was just... like, it was humiliating.

822
00:49:34,472 --> 00:49:38,726
This government is not taking action
to address climate even though

823
00:49:38,810 --> 00:49:41,145
our country is burning
because of their inaction.

824
00:49:43,856 --> 00:49:45,525
Fossil fuel lobbyists were able to just

825
00:49:45,608 --> 00:49:47,735
sort of weave in and out
of government cubicles,

826
00:49:47,819 --> 00:49:51,280
whereas indigenous activists
and young people were locked out.

827
00:49:51,364 --> 00:49:54,283
Shame on you! Shame on you!

828
00:49:54,367 --> 00:49:55,952
Shame on you!

829
00:49:56,035 --> 00:49:58,955
And we saw these negotiations break down.

830
00:50:00,248 --> 00:50:03,626
We’re disappointed that we once again
failed to find agreement.

831
00:50:03,710 --> 00:50:07,547
This is really becoming very worrisome

832
00:50:07,630 --> 00:50:09,841
for a lot of countries.

833
00:50:10,883 --> 00:50:12,468
Coming back to Australia,

834
00:50:12,552 --> 00:50:14,470
we were really left
with not much hope at all.

835
00:50:16,639 --> 00:50:18,433
The fires were everywhere.

836
00:50:20,768 --> 00:50:23,813
It was just horrific,
and I was really burnt out.

837
00:50:23,896 --> 00:50:25,773
Like, you know, your heart can sink.

838
00:50:25,857 --> 00:50:28,484
I think my heart had just hit the floor
and just kept going.

839
00:50:29,610 --> 00:50:31,612
I cried for three days straight.

840
00:50:38,411 --> 00:50:41,205
I was totally shocked by the scale.

841
00:50:41,289 --> 00:50:43,750
If you’d have asked me before the fires

842
00:50:43,833 --> 00:50:46,878
how big a percentage of the forest area
would have burned,

843
00:50:46,961 --> 00:50:49,255
I might have said maximum five percent.

844
00:50:50,798 --> 00:50:52,717
But to see 21% burned,

845
00:50:52,800 --> 00:50:55,178
it’s-it’s like we’ve...
we’ve crossed a threshold.

846
00:50:56,763 --> 00:50:58,639
We’ve entered a new era.

847
00:51:04,312 --> 00:51:08,775
Those fires burnt ten times more
than had ever burnt before.

848
00:51:10,067 --> 00:51:12,695
And the impact was beyond comprehension.

849
00:51:18,201 --> 00:51:20,119
You-you drive for hundreds of kilometers

850
00:51:20,203 --> 00:51:21,579
in New South Wales,

851
00:51:21,662 --> 00:51:23,998
and all you see is blackened earth.

852
00:51:32,131 --> 00:51:34,801
Three billion animals were killed.

853
00:51:37,512 --> 00:51:39,305
You pick him up, and I’ll...

854
00:51:42,141 --> 00:51:44,352
All right.

855
00:51:44,435 --> 00:51:46,145
We’ll get going in a second.

856
00:51:46,229 --> 00:51:48,105
-MAN: Yeah.
-Okay.

857
00:52:13,172 --> 00:52:16,843
We saw places burning
that have never burned before.

858
00:52:16,926 --> 00:52:20,888
Forests millions of years old
that dinosaurs used to walk through

859
00:52:20,972 --> 00:52:24,058
that had always been
too wet and cold to burn...

860
00:52:24,141 --> 00:52:25,810
burn.

861
00:52:32,525 --> 00:52:35,987
Usually in a fire,
you get blackness and grayness.

862
00:52:38,739 --> 00:52:42,910
But the trees burned so hot
that when that fire had passed

863
00:52:42,994 --> 00:52:45,454
it looked like snow had fallen,

864
00:52:45,538 --> 00:52:47,415
because the ash was snow white.

865
00:52:51,586 --> 00:52:53,254
And that’s what it was like.

866
00:52:57,550 --> 00:53:00,303
It was kind of almost like walking out

867
00:53:00,386 --> 00:53:01,512
into the apocalypse or something.

868
00:53:01,596 --> 00:53:03,180
Like, everyone just was a bit dazed.

869
00:53:07,143 --> 00:53:12,648
The first thing that we saw was just
all the houses around town, just gone.

870
00:53:17,069 --> 00:53:18,988
So I just started photographing.

871
00:53:31,375 --> 00:53:33,044
You know, by January,

872
00:53:33,127 --> 00:53:36,088
there were people going about
their holidays having to be rescued

873
00:53:36,172 --> 00:53:38,174
by the Australian Army, the Navy.

874
00:53:45,681 --> 00:53:48,392
Unbelievable scenes
for a country like this.

875
00:53:58,361 --> 00:54:00,488
You know,
I’ve seen people who’ve lost houses.

876
00:54:00,571 --> 00:54:04,575
We’ve all seen them on television
being interviewed and stuff like that.

877
00:54:04,659 --> 00:54:06,827
But until it happens,
I don’t think you’ve got any idea

878
00:54:06,911 --> 00:54:08,704
what it’s actually like.

879
00:54:08,788 --> 00:54:12,959
And it’s... and it’s layer
upon layer upon layer of...

880
00:54:13,042 --> 00:54:14,585
of dealing with it.

881
00:54:14,669 --> 00:54:17,672
It’s-it’s not, you know,
there’s the initial shock

882
00:54:17,755 --> 00:54:22,468
and-and, you know, um, despair
that you’ve lost everything you own.

883
00:54:22,551 --> 00:54:24,178
I mean, I have no photos.

884
00:54:24,261 --> 00:54:28,140
I have nothing of my mother’s,
my father’s, my grandparents’, nothing.

885
00:54:28,224 --> 00:54:32,061
It’s just... it’s like a whole part of
my life has just been wiped away.

886
00:54:42,363 --> 00:54:46,325
Former New South Wales
Fire and Rescue Commissioner Greg Mullins

887
00:54:46,409 --> 00:54:50,579
is demanding action
to prevent future catastrophes.

888
00:54:50,663 --> 00:54:52,790
We have to talk about climate change

889
00:54:52,873 --> 00:54:57,837
because our bushfire situation
in Australia has changed forever.

890
00:55:00,756 --> 00:55:05,553
What the ex-fire chief
is saying is patently absurd.

891
00:55:10,224 --> 00:55:13,936
They said that I shouldn’t
have been talking about climate change

892
00:55:14,020 --> 00:55:16,063
when people were suffering in the fires.

893
00:55:16,147 --> 00:55:18,024
This is what it’s come to.

894
00:55:18,107 --> 00:55:22,319
Hysteria and, uh,
completely fact-free ranting

895
00:55:22,403 --> 00:55:25,865
can see you elevated
to some heroic status.

896
00:55:27,450 --> 00:55:28,868
I don’t care.

897
00:55:30,870 --> 00:55:32,580
I’m actually in this business,

898
00:55:32,663 --> 00:55:34,749
and I know that when people suffer loss

899
00:55:34,832 --> 00:55:37,501
they want to know why immediately.

900
00:55:41,338 --> 00:55:43,632
They want to know what the hell happened.

901
00:55:56,228 --> 00:55:58,731
I don’t want to look at it right now.

902
00:56:08,115 --> 00:56:10,117
...they’re all from
the original businesses in Cobargo.

903
00:56:10,201 --> 00:56:12,161
Brian Ayliffe from just over the road,

904
00:56:12,244 --> 00:56:13,370
lived there for 48 years.

905
00:56:13,454 --> 00:56:16,123
That was a family business. They’re gone.

906
00:56:16,207 --> 00:56:18,459
We heard a rumor that there was

907
00:56:18,542 --> 00:56:21,670
multiple cars getting around town.

908
00:56:23,339 --> 00:56:25,424
Why is there four, like,

909
00:56:25,508 --> 00:56:27,927
SUVs all blacked out getting around town?

910
00:56:28,010 --> 00:56:31,597
It’s gonna be someone of some degree
that needs security.

911
00:56:33,516 --> 00:56:36,602
So we all went,
"Oh, you know, the prime minister’s here."

912
00:56:39,980 --> 00:56:41,440
It wasn’t a leader saying,

913
00:56:41,524 --> 00:56:44,443
"This has been an emergency.
What do we need to do?"

914
00:56:44,527 --> 00:56:47,696
He got out,
and he started taking selfies with people.

915
00:56:47,780 --> 00:56:50,407
-Got a smile.

916
00:56:50,491 --> 00:56:51,909
Looking in this direction.

917
00:56:51,992 --> 00:56:53,494
Good on ya. Thank you very much.

918
00:56:53,577 --> 00:56:55,121
-Thank you.
-Good on ya.

919
00:56:55,204 --> 00:56:56,789
He just went, "How are you?

920
00:56:56,872 --> 00:56:58,207
"All right, you’re not good. Next person.

921
00:56:58,290 --> 00:57:00,918
"Oh, how are you? Oh, you’re not good.
Next person."

922
00:57:03,462 --> 00:57:05,339
That boiled my blood.
I’m not going to lie.

923
00:57:05,422 --> 00:57:08,050
I... My house was in rubble,

924
00:57:08,134 --> 00:57:10,678
and here he is taking selfies
with people, smiling.

925
00:57:10,761 --> 00:57:12,763
I thought that was
extremely inconsiderate.

926
00:57:14,140 --> 00:57:18,060
And he come up to me
and asked, "How are you?"

927
00:57:18,144 --> 00:57:20,062
And I-I just saw red.

928
00:57:20,146 --> 00:57:21,814
Hello. How are you?

929
00:57:21,897 --> 00:57:25,317
I’m only shaking your hand
if you give more funding to RFS.

930
00:57:25,401 --> 00:57:27,486
So many people here have lost their homes.

931
00:57:27,570 --> 00:57:29,071
Yeah, I understand, all right?
I understand.

932
00:57:29,155 --> 00:57:31,574
We need some beds.
We don’t have enough beds here.

933
00:57:31,657 --> 00:57:33,159
-We need more help.
-Shh, shh, we understand that.

934
00:57:33,242 --> 00:57:35,286
It’s okay. It’s okay.

935
00:57:35,369 --> 00:57:37,913
How come we only had four trucks

936
00:57:37,997 --> 00:57:40,708
to defend our town, Mr. Prime Minister?

937
00:57:40,791 --> 00:57:43,836
Fuck, you’re an idiot, mate.
You really are.

938
00:57:43,919 --> 00:57:45,838
You won’t be getting
any votes down here, buddy.

939
00:57:45,921 --> 00:57:47,214
-WOMAN: You control the funding.
-You’re an idiot.

940
00:57:47,298 --> 00:57:48,716
What about the people around here?

941
00:57:48,799 --> 00:57:50,551
-No, I’m pissed off!
-WOMAN: What about the people

942
00:57:50,634 --> 00:57:52,970
who are dead now, Mr. Prime Minister?

943
00:57:53,053 --> 00:57:55,264
You’re not welcome, you fuckwit!

944
00:57:56,515 --> 00:57:58,601
Are you from the media?

945
00:57:58,684 --> 00:58:01,645
Tell the prime minister to go
and get from Nelligen.

946
00:58:01,729 --> 00:58:05,024
We really enjoy doing this,
head!

947
00:58:05,107 --> 00:58:06,901
Thank you very much.

948
00:58:09,653 --> 00:58:12,781
The bushfire crisis
ignites on the streets.

949
00:58:12,865 --> 00:58:14,366
Our country is on fire!

950
00:58:14,450 --> 00:58:16,160
We’ve been telling the politicians

951
00:58:16,243 --> 00:58:17,995
the same message for over ten years,

952
00:58:18,078 --> 00:58:19,914
and they are not listening.

953
00:58:19,997 --> 00:58:22,416
We have a prime minister
in denial about climate change.

954
00:58:22,499 --> 00:58:23,959
This is real.

955
00:58:24,043 --> 00:58:26,253
We will rise! We will rise!

956
00:58:26,337 --> 00:58:29,131
Australians started
coming out on the street

957
00:58:29,215 --> 00:58:32,384
at such short notice
to really demand change.

958
00:58:32,468 --> 00:58:35,012
People were angry,
and people were scared for their lives.

959
00:58:35,095 --> 00:58:39,558
And I think it shows how bloody angry
everyone is here in Australia.

960
00:58:39,642 --> 00:58:44,146
An estimated 20,000
demand action on climate policy.

961
00:58:44,230 --> 00:58:46,106
It was people taking a stand.

962
00:58:46,190 --> 00:58:48,859
People who hadn’t really listed climate
among their priorities.

963
00:58:48,943 --> 00:58:52,696
I’ll set Australia’s policies
consistent with what I believe

964
00:58:52,780 --> 00:58:54,323
and my government believes
is in Australia’s national interests.

965
00:58:54,406 --> 00:58:55,991
But hasn’t... Sorry to interrupt,

966
00:58:56,075 --> 00:58:57,910
but hasn’t that changed a bit?

967
00:58:57,993 --> 00:58:59,995
Look, I’m-I’m someone who...
who was probably on board

968
00:59:00,079 --> 00:59:02,498
with what you took to the... to the polls
wh-when you went.

969
00:59:02,581 --> 00:59:06,585
I think now, though, that I’m part
of a growing groundswell of support who...

970
00:59:06,669 --> 00:59:09,797
people think that more needs to be done,
that now is the time for action.

971
00:59:09,880 --> 00:59:11,840
It’s not a time to sit around
and keep-keep chatting

972
00:59:11,924 --> 00:59:14,260
and saying that we’ll
discuss this down the track.

973
00:59:14,343 --> 00:59:17,179
When this big realization

974
00:59:17,263 --> 00:59:21,809
started to come through
that we couldn’t just put

975
00:59:21,892 --> 00:59:26,105
greenhouse gas emissions
into the atmosphere for nothing,

976
00:59:26,188 --> 00:59:28,023
this was a big shock.

977
00:59:28,107 --> 00:59:30,693
Key National Party
figures have hit out at a push

978
00:59:30,776 --> 00:59:34,905
for the Morrison government to promise
zero carbon emissions by 2050.

979
00:59:34,989 --> 00:59:36,907
Why not be aspirational?

980
00:59:36,991 --> 00:59:38,659
Why not have a bold target?

981
00:59:40,786 --> 00:59:43,372
But I think just as people thought

982
00:59:43,455 --> 00:59:46,667
that we might finally
have a serious debate

983
00:59:46,750 --> 00:59:50,921
about climate change policy
in this country, COVID hit.

984
01:00:06,353 --> 01:00:08,522
I watched in sore amazement

985
01:00:08,605 --> 01:00:11,483
as the Morrison government
dealt with the COVID crisis.

986
01:00:13,819 --> 01:00:16,780
There they were listening
to the chief health officer.

987
01:00:18,157 --> 01:00:21,035
In fact, Australia declared a pandemic

988
01:00:21,118 --> 01:00:23,370
12 days before
the World Health Organization did.

989
01:00:23,454 --> 01:00:27,374
Hotel quarantine
for all travelers entering Australia

990
01:00:27,458 --> 01:00:28,834
is now well underway,

991
01:00:28,917 --> 01:00:31,962
as the Army enforces
the strict mandatory isolation.

992
01:00:34,048 --> 01:00:36,091
We had this very severe lockdown

993
01:00:36,175 --> 01:00:38,260
that had enormous economic impact.

994
01:00:38,344 --> 01:00:40,846
The government became
a socialist government overnight,

995
01:00:40,929 --> 01:00:44,308
subsidizing people’s wages and so forth.

996
01:00:44,391 --> 01:00:48,020
The spending in response
to coronavirus has been historic.

997
01:00:48,103 --> 01:00:50,189
Now, they were hard yards
for any government to do,

998
01:00:50,272 --> 01:00:52,900
but to see a right-leaning government
do them amazed me.

999
01:00:57,738 --> 01:00:59,073
And I thought, "Oh, this is great.

1000
01:00:59,156 --> 01:01:01,867
We might actually get some action
on climate change as well."

1001
01:01:01,950 --> 01:01:04,036
Given the bushfires,
which scarified everybody.

1002
01:01:04,119 --> 01:01:06,080
I mean, we’ve seen government act.

1003
01:01:06,163 --> 01:01:07,873
Now we know how it can be done.

1004
01:01:07,956 --> 01:01:09,917
We’re getting a snapshot of

1005
01:01:10,000 --> 01:01:11,585
our post-coronavirus economy.

1006
01:01:11,668 --> 01:01:14,338
And in startling news, the figures rival

1007
01:01:14,421 --> 01:01:15,964
the years after World War II.

1008
01:01:17,007 --> 01:01:20,844
Australia did a very
interesting thing when people were looking

1009
01:01:20,928 --> 01:01:22,930
at the economic recovery.

1010
01:01:23,013 --> 01:01:27,267
What is the world going to do
to come out of the COVID recession?

1011
01:01:29,561 --> 01:01:34,233
People started talking about
a green COVID recovery.

1012
01:01:35,442 --> 01:01:40,489
We can’t go from the COVID frying pan
into the climate fire.

1013
01:01:40,572 --> 01:01:43,617
We’re facing the biggest economic
fight-back of our generation,

1014
01:01:43,700 --> 01:01:45,244
and for many, the big question is:

1015
01:01:45,327 --> 01:01:47,079
Where do we get our energy from?

1016
01:01:47,162 --> 01:01:48,956
And where do we find our new jobs?

1017
01:01:49,039 --> 01:01:52,167
76,000 jobs in Australia
could have been created

1018
01:01:52,251 --> 01:01:53,419
with renewables.

1019
01:01:53,502 --> 01:01:55,504
There’s just so much could have been done.

1020
01:01:55,587 --> 01:01:58,924
Instead, the prime minister got up

1021
01:01:59,007 --> 01:02:01,718
and talked about a gas-led recovery.

1022
01:02:01,802 --> 01:02:03,303
-MORRISON: Thanks very much.

1023
01:02:03,387 --> 01:02:05,389
There is no credible energy
transition plan

1024
01:02:05,472 --> 01:02:07,516
for an economy like Australia’s

1025
01:02:07,599 --> 01:02:10,394
that does not involve
the greater use of gas.

1026
01:02:11,437 --> 01:02:13,355
So, yeah, ladies and gentlemen,

1027
01:02:13,439 --> 01:02:15,315
moms and dads, boys and girls,

1028
01:02:15,399 --> 01:02:17,901
let’s extract more methane.

1029
01:02:17,985 --> 01:02:19,486
Got to get the gas.

1030
01:02:19,570 --> 01:02:22,448
We must unlock new sources of supply.

1031
01:02:22,531 --> 01:02:25,075
We must get additional gas to market

1032
01:02:25,159 --> 01:02:27,077
as efficiently as possible.

1033
01:02:27,161 --> 01:02:31,206
I sat there
watching the speech on television,

1034
01:02:31,290 --> 01:02:34,168
and I waited for the prime minister

1035
01:02:34,251 --> 01:02:36,462
to use the words "climate change."

1036
01:02:36,545 --> 01:02:38,964
I appreciate your patience this morning.

1037
01:02:39,047 --> 01:02:41,508
I waited for him to explain

1038
01:02:41,592 --> 01:02:44,887
how climate change fitted in

1039
01:02:44,970 --> 01:02:46,722
to this gas-led recovery.

1040
01:02:46,805 --> 01:02:52,102
His speech went on and on and on
right till the end.

1041
01:02:52,186 --> 01:02:53,896
He does not use the words

1042
01:02:53,979 --> 01:02:55,314
"climate change."

1043
01:02:55,397 --> 01:02:58,192
He never mentions
the words "climate change."

1044
01:02:58,275 --> 01:03:00,652
We’ve got to get the gas.

1045
01:03:00,736 --> 01:03:03,447
He was sending a message:

1046
01:03:03,530 --> 01:03:08,744
We are gonna double down
on our bet on fossil fuels.

1047
01:03:09,953 --> 01:03:11,413
Mike Cannon-Brookes, uh,

1048
01:03:11,497 --> 01:03:12,539
it’s not good enough, is it?

1049
01:03:12,623 --> 01:03:15,209
Um, look, it’s-it’s the
standard set of talking points.

1050
01:03:15,292 --> 01:03:17,336
I find it... I find it
laughable when politicians--

1051
01:03:17,419 --> 01:03:19,338
sorry, Darren, no offense--
uh, say that they’re not

1052
01:03:19,421 --> 01:03:21,340
into long-term planning,
they don’t know how to do that.

1053
01:03:21,423 --> 01:03:22,508
That’s-that’s the job.

1054
01:03:22,591 --> 01:03:23,926
We’re trying to plan what the nation’s

1055
01:03:24,009 --> 01:03:25,928
gonna do in the next ten, 20 and 30 years.

1056
01:03:26,011 --> 01:03:28,597
I think we-we need to sort of
raise a conversation, right?

1057
01:03:28,680 --> 01:03:31,016
We need to have a broader vision
for Australia.

1058
01:03:31,099 --> 01:03:33,727
I think we could be
a renewable energy superpower.

1059
01:03:33,810 --> 01:03:35,771
It’s news that came in from the sidelines

1060
01:03:35,854 --> 01:03:37,940
of the UN Climate Summit in New York.

1061
01:03:38,023 --> 01:03:42,277
The Australian tech billionaire
Mike Cannon-Brookes confirming

1062
01:03:42,361 --> 01:03:45,656
he’ll be investing in
the world’s biggest solar farm.

1063
01:03:49,618 --> 01:03:52,955
CANNON-BROOKES:
Australia has a DNA of exporting energy.

1064
01:03:54,289 --> 01:03:56,208
That’s the way we should tell the story.

1065
01:03:58,168 --> 01:03:59,795
Why do we export energy?

1066
01:04:01,964 --> 01:04:04,174
We have a lot of resources.

1067
01:04:05,259 --> 01:04:07,427
So, instead of digging them
out of the ground,

1068
01:04:07,511 --> 01:04:09,555
what if we got them out of the sky?

1069
01:04:10,639 --> 01:04:14,184
We have a land mass
larger than the continental United States.

1070
01:04:14,268 --> 01:04:17,396
We’re the sunniest country
outside of sub-Saharan Africa.

1071
01:04:17,479 --> 01:04:21,233
You could power the entire planet
five times over just from Australia.

1072
01:04:22,359 --> 01:04:24,570
You’re pretty hooked into global markets.

1073
01:04:24,653 --> 01:04:26,530
-CANNON-BROOKES: Yep.
-Um, where is coal going,

1074
01:04:26,613 --> 01:04:28,282
from your perspective?

1075
01:04:28,365 --> 01:04:30,659
Um, oh, it’s going away.

1076
01:04:32,327 --> 01:04:33,829
Quite simply, look, I mean...

1077
01:04:33,912 --> 01:04:36,123
I don’t care what you think
about the climate.

1078
01:04:36,206 --> 01:04:38,417
We will need to pivot

1079
01:04:38,500 --> 01:04:42,254
from exporting coal and gas
to exporting renewable energy,

1080
01:04:42,337 --> 01:04:45,591
because the rest of the planet
will start figuring this out.

1081
01:04:45,674 --> 01:04:48,343
And as it does,
we are left exporting things

1082
01:04:48,427 --> 01:04:50,304
that no one else needs.

1083
01:04:50,387 --> 01:04:51,638
We can see that coming,

1084
01:04:51,722 --> 01:04:54,975
but we haven’t gotten
that storytelling through

1085
01:04:55,058 --> 01:04:58,395
when it comes to the myth
that Australia needs fossil fuels.

1086
01:04:59,563 --> 01:05:02,274
That is challenging
to our national psyche.

1087
01:05:05,485 --> 01:05:08,196
In Australia, you cannot talk

1088
01:05:08,280 --> 01:05:10,741
about electricity generation

1089
01:05:10,824 --> 01:05:12,701
and ignore coal.

1090
01:05:12,784 --> 01:05:16,496
Coal will continue to play
an important role

1091
01:05:16,580 --> 01:05:19,291
in our economy for decades to come.

1092
01:05:19,374 --> 01:05:21,209
That means jobs.

1093
01:05:25,464 --> 01:05:27,466
We’re sort of seeing these communities

1094
01:05:27,549 --> 01:05:28,967
staring down the barrel of a gun.

1095
01:05:31,720 --> 01:05:35,515
Politicians on both sides of parliament
say that they’re standing up

1096
01:05:35,599 --> 01:05:37,643
for these communities,
but I would question that,

1097
01:05:37,726 --> 01:05:40,729
because I think that they’re lying
to these communities.

1098
01:05:42,648 --> 01:05:45,817
My grandfather was a coal mining engineer.

1099
01:05:47,778 --> 01:05:50,489
He came to Australia in the ’70s
with his then wife.

1100
01:05:50,572 --> 01:05:52,282
Dramatic divorce.

1101
01:05:55,452 --> 01:05:58,205
In the ’80s, he was made redundant,

1102
01:05:58,288 --> 01:06:00,832
and so, all of a sudden,
he was left without a job.

1103
01:06:00,916 --> 01:06:04,002
Something that his, you know,
family had been working in

1104
01:06:04,086 --> 01:06:05,671
for a couple of generations.

1105
01:06:05,754 --> 01:06:09,549
Something that had been
an integral part of his identity.

1106
01:06:11,843 --> 01:06:15,097
Like, we were really close,
and he used to tell these stories

1107
01:06:15,180 --> 01:06:17,057
about his time down in the mines

1108
01:06:17,140 --> 01:06:19,476
and about his friends,
about what it meant to him.

1109
01:06:26,608 --> 01:06:30,070
I’ve had the fortune to learn
about these experiences,

1110
01:06:30,153 --> 01:06:34,533
to learn about having this economic
dependence on this industry

1111
01:06:34,616 --> 01:06:37,577
and as a town having
that dependence on that industry.

1112
01:06:39,538 --> 01:06:40,831
I really want to see a pathway

1113
01:06:40,914 --> 01:06:43,750
for these communities out of fossil fuels.

1114
01:06:46,670 --> 01:06:48,880
CANNON-BROOKES: Being proud
of that industry is not a problem.

1115
01:06:52,008 --> 01:06:53,844
Mining is not a bad thing.

1116
01:06:53,927 --> 01:06:56,555
We need mining in Australia.

1117
01:06:56,638 --> 01:07:01,059
If you want to build batteries and panels
and wind turbines, guess what you need:

1118
01:07:01,143 --> 01:07:03,812
steel, gold, copper, nickel,

1119
01:07:03,895 --> 01:07:07,357
rare earths, lithium, obviously silver.

1120
01:07:07,441 --> 01:07:09,192
We have a lot of all of those
in Australia.

1121
01:07:12,946 --> 01:07:15,073
So that’s why we try to tell the story
and say,

1122
01:07:15,157 --> 01:07:17,075
look, it’s about energy
that we’ve been exporting.

1123
01:07:17,159 --> 01:07:18,744
We can continue to do that.

1124
01:07:20,829 --> 01:07:24,583
But we need to prove
that we can export renewable energy

1125
01:07:24,666 --> 01:07:27,335
in a massive way in large quantities.

1126
01:07:27,419 --> 01:07:30,422
If you think about exporting sun and wind,
it’s a little difficult, right?

1127
01:07:30,505 --> 01:07:32,799
We’re not gonna put up a giant mirror
and send it somewhere else.

1128
01:07:32,883 --> 01:07:34,301
We’re not gonna, like, turn the wind

1129
01:07:34,384 --> 01:07:38,430
and blow it somehow other ways
that they catch it on the other side.

1130
01:07:38,513 --> 01:07:40,432
So we need to figure out how to do this.

1131
01:07:40,515 --> 01:07:43,226
This is a problem
that Australia needs to solve.

1132
01:07:43,310 --> 01:07:45,020
The best part about this project--

1133
01:07:45,103 --> 01:07:47,439
it’s about 22 billion
Australian dollars, roughly--

1134
01:07:47,522 --> 01:07:49,149
is it’s possible.

1135
01:07:50,692 --> 01:07:52,611
Australian tech billionaire
Mike Cannon-Brookes

1136
01:07:52,694 --> 01:07:55,947
has announced plans to create
the world’s biggest solar farm...

1137
01:07:56,031 --> 01:07:57,574
And it’s aiming to generate power

1138
01:07:57,657 --> 01:08:00,494
and transmit that over to Singapore.

1139
01:08:00,577 --> 01:08:03,455
CANNON-BROOKES: We’re dealing with
a vast amount of power here

1140
01:08:03,538 --> 01:08:05,832
that needs to move over a vast distance--

1141
01:08:05,916 --> 01:08:07,751
3,500 kilometers--

1142
01:08:07,834 --> 01:08:09,920
through some pretty hairy waters.

1143
01:08:10,003 --> 01:08:15,425
So, in between the world’s largest
solar farm and the world’s longest

1144
01:08:15,509 --> 01:08:18,428
undersea high-voltage DC cable,

1145
01:08:18,512 --> 01:08:22,182
we also need to build
the world’s largest battery.

1146
01:08:25,310 --> 01:08:28,355
If this works-- which it will--

1147
01:08:28,438 --> 01:08:31,399
there will be 50 cables
from Australia to Asia

1148
01:08:31,483 --> 01:08:34,444
exporting massive amounts of energy.

1149
01:08:34,528 --> 01:08:39,324
We’ve got one of the best resources
to go to for the future of the planet

1150
01:08:39,407 --> 01:08:41,034
without changing our DNA.

1151
01:08:42,911 --> 01:08:45,205
It’s the entire planet
that is being challenged here.

1152
01:08:45,288 --> 01:08:47,916
It is the existential crisis
for the human race.

1153
01:08:47,999 --> 01:08:49,918
Climate change is affecting
the Australian economy.

1154
01:08:50,001 --> 01:08:51,461
It’s affecting businesses.
It’s affecting individuals.

1155
01:08:51,545 --> 01:08:54,965
I think it’s not an issue that business
should have its head in the sand on,

1156
01:08:55,048 --> 01:08:58,885
and that means they should be speaking out
in a government vacuum.

1157
01:08:58,969 --> 01:09:02,639
I think there is no doubt that
we are at a turning point in Australia

1158
01:09:02,722 --> 01:09:04,099
when it comes to climate change.

1159
01:09:04,182 --> 01:09:07,394
Some Australian companies
are powering forward

1160
01:09:07,477 --> 01:09:10,021
with a massive energy transition.

1161
01:09:10,105 --> 01:09:13,984
But what people don’t really understand
is the absolute urgency of this.

1162
01:09:17,112 --> 01:09:19,573
Today, average global temperatures

1163
01:09:19,656 --> 01:09:23,285
are about 1.1 degree above
what’s called the pre-industrial average.

1164
01:09:23,368 --> 01:09:26,121
So, where they were
200 years ago, basically.

1165
01:09:26,204 --> 01:09:27,747
Australia, however,

1166
01:09:27,831 --> 01:09:29,749
because it’s so sensitive
to climate change,

1167
01:09:29,833 --> 01:09:32,168
is already at almost
1.5 degrees of warming.

1168
01:09:35,088 --> 01:09:39,050
We knew that we would start feeling
the impacts before anyone else.

1169
01:09:41,636 --> 01:09:45,765
We are facing a new and terrifying future
in Australia, in terms of bushfires.

1170
01:09:47,684 --> 01:09:53,565
We might expect Black Summer conditions
once every 400 years in the past.

1171
01:09:53,648 --> 01:09:56,568
From now on,
we can expect it once every eight years.

1172
01:09:59,654 --> 01:10:01,823
Our climate has changed forever.

1173
01:10:01,907 --> 01:10:05,243
I’ll never see it go back
to what it was when I was a kid.

1174
01:10:06,745 --> 01:10:09,039
We’re getting weather now
that no human being

1175
01:10:09,122 --> 01:10:11,207
has ever seen on this continent.

1176
01:10:12,959 --> 01:10:17,589
In 2019, there was one fire
near the Victorian border

1177
01:10:17,672 --> 01:10:21,843
where a pyro-convective storm
picked up an eight-ton fire truck,

1178
01:10:21,927 --> 01:10:25,513
dropped it on its roof
and a young firefighter lost...

1179
01:10:29,100 --> 01:10:31,478
Yeah, he was killed, so...

1180
01:10:34,606 --> 01:10:38,652
Sorry, it’s-it’s tough for firefighters
to think of other firefighters, you know,

1181
01:10:38,735 --> 01:10:42,948
losing their lives in the line of duty,
and nine did in the last fires.

1182
01:10:46,910 --> 01:10:48,870
I’ve been around the world.

1183
01:10:48,954 --> 01:10:51,247
I’ve studied bushfires
and how we deal with things.

1184
01:10:51,331 --> 01:10:54,250
We can’t deal with
the worst years anymore.

1185
01:10:55,627 --> 01:10:58,964
We’re having fires
in places like Greenland,

1186
01:10:59,047 --> 01:11:01,007
the Arctic Circle,

1187
01:11:01,091 --> 01:11:03,134
where they never used to happen before.

1188
01:11:06,972 --> 01:11:09,474
And I look at California.

1189
01:11:10,517 --> 01:11:14,521
Twice as much area burnt
as their worst ever fire season.

1190
01:11:19,401 --> 01:11:21,778
Oregon was on fire.

1191
01:11:21,861 --> 01:11:23,488
Washington state.

1192
01:11:24,531 --> 01:11:26,533
The whole West Coast.

1193
01:11:31,579 --> 01:11:33,498
There’s something wrong.

1194
01:11:33,581 --> 01:11:35,959
There’s something really wrong.

1195
01:11:39,838 --> 01:11:42,716
Climate change scares the shit out of me.

1196
01:11:44,884 --> 01:11:46,845
We can’t stop a lot of the global warming

1197
01:11:46,928 --> 01:11:48,430
that’s built into the system now.

1198
01:11:48,513 --> 01:11:50,432
There’s a certain amount of change
that’s inevitable,

1199
01:11:50,515 --> 01:11:53,351
and it-it’s extremely important
that people understand that

1200
01:11:53,435 --> 01:11:56,604
and understand what the impacts of that
really mean on their lives.

1201
01:11:56,688 --> 01:11:59,399
We are so close now
to some of the tipping points

1202
01:11:59,482 --> 01:12:01,568
that I wrote about
when I wrote The Weather Makers

1203
01:12:01,651 --> 01:12:04,446
all those years ago, committing the world

1204
01:12:04,529 --> 01:12:06,906
to 1.5 degrees of warming by about 2030.

1205
01:12:06,990 --> 01:12:10,326
What does 1.5 degrees Celsius look like?

1206
01:12:10,410 --> 01:12:12,537
1.5 degrees is a world where

1207
01:12:12,620 --> 01:12:14,664
we will have significant impacts
from heat waves,

1208
01:12:14,748 --> 01:12:16,708
megafires and all of the other things.

1209
01:12:17,876 --> 01:12:21,212
But where the Greenland ice cap
is melting relatively slowly

1210
01:12:21,296 --> 01:12:24,883
and we’re getting sea level rise happening
but at a... at a lower level.

1211
01:12:24,966 --> 01:12:26,342
So it’s not a great world.

1212
01:12:26,426 --> 01:12:29,345
The world we left behind
at one degree of warming

1213
01:12:29,429 --> 01:12:31,306
or less than one degree was a lot better.

1214
01:12:31,389 --> 01:12:34,476
But two degrees, by comparison, is hell.

1215
01:12:34,559 --> 01:12:39,898
So, um, we-we need to make sure
we hit that 1.5 degree.

1216
01:12:39,981 --> 01:12:42,192
What does a two-degree world look like?

1217
01:12:42,275 --> 01:12:45,320
A two-degree world
is a world of catastrophe.

1218
01:12:47,572 --> 01:12:51,659
It’s a world where
the Greenland ice cap’s melting rapidly,

1219
01:12:51,743 --> 01:12:53,953
where the West Antarctic Ice Sheet
is decaying

1220
01:12:54,037 --> 01:12:56,164
and therefore sea level is rising rapidly.

1221
01:13:00,335 --> 01:13:02,462
It’s a world where
the Amazon rain forest is dying

1222
01:13:02,545 --> 01:13:05,423
and turning into a savanna or a woodland.

1223
01:13:06,758 --> 01:13:09,302
Where the permafrost
is melting away so rapidly

1224
01:13:09,385 --> 01:13:12,555
that massive amounts of methane
are being put into the atmosphere.

1225
01:13:12,639 --> 01:13:14,307
And then no matter what we do,

1226
01:13:14,390 --> 01:13:16,643
the temperature’s just
gonna keep on spiraling.

1227
01:13:22,982 --> 01:13:26,152
It’s a world of massive disruption.

1228
01:13:26,236 --> 01:13:30,281
Our economy, our food security,
our water security,

1229
01:13:30,365 --> 01:13:34,035
our peace will be threatened
by unprecedented change.

1230
01:13:38,540 --> 01:13:41,000
So, what should we do?

1231
01:13:41,084 --> 01:13:43,169
Sure, put some solar panels on your roof

1232
01:13:43,253 --> 01:13:45,505
and cut your emissions--
that is fantastic--

1233
01:13:45,588 --> 01:13:47,173
but never let the fossil fuel industry

1234
01:13:47,257 --> 01:13:49,092
or anyone else tell you
that that’s enough.

1235
01:13:49,175 --> 01:13:51,094
Right? It’s not my problem
as an individual.

1236
01:13:51,177 --> 01:13:53,888
It’s a collective problem we have,
and we need to act collectively

1237
01:13:53,972 --> 01:13:55,807
to find a solution.

1238
01:13:57,433 --> 01:13:59,269
And we’re not seeing that.

1239
01:13:59,352 --> 01:14:03,106
We’ve got states operating separately,
companies operating separately,

1240
01:14:03,189 --> 01:14:05,859
and we can’t guarantee
what the outcome will be.

1241
01:14:05,942 --> 01:14:08,653
This is a moment that needs leadership.

1242
01:14:08,736 --> 01:14:09,988
It really does.

1243
01:14:10,071 --> 01:14:12,866
We can all act and do our part,
but without government leadership,

1244
01:14:12,949 --> 01:14:15,243
it’s just not going to be done.

1245
01:14:15,326 --> 01:14:19,080
The prime minister
is feeling the heat on climate change

1246
01:14:19,164 --> 01:14:21,541
ahead of a UN summit of world leaders.

1247
01:14:21,624 --> 01:14:23,543
The pressure is growing on Scott Morrison

1248
01:14:23,626 --> 01:14:26,796
to commit to a target
of net-zero emissions by 2050.

1249
01:14:26,880 --> 01:14:30,967
Will you commit Australia to achieving

1250
01:14:31,050 --> 01:14:33,094
a net-zero emissions target by 2050?

1251
01:14:33,178 --> 01:14:35,346
Well, as you know,
our policy is to achieve that

1252
01:14:35,430 --> 01:14:37,891
in the second half of-of this century.

1253
01:14:37,974 --> 01:14:40,226
Well, as-as I outlined,

1254
01:14:40,310 --> 01:14:42,520
we’re seeking to get to net-zero.

1255
01:14:42,604 --> 01:14:45,440
Um, we’d preferably would like
to see that happen

1256
01:14:45,523 --> 01:14:47,025
by 2050, as I’ve said.

1257
01:14:47,108 --> 01:14:50,653
It could happen sooner
with significant technological change.

1258
01:14:50,737 --> 01:14:53,615
But I’ll tell you,
if there isn’t the technological change,

1259
01:14:53,698 --> 01:14:55,950
then it’s just a bit of paper.

1260
01:14:57,202 --> 01:14:59,746
It’s like this government
just doesn’t care.

1261
01:15:02,957 --> 01:15:05,460
I don’t get it,
because that’s what motivates me

1262
01:15:05,543 --> 01:15:07,378
is thinking of the future.

1263
01:15:11,382 --> 01:15:14,052
I worked in public service for many years.

1264
01:15:16,012 --> 01:15:18,640
You make a lot of sacrifices,
and you don’t get rich.

1265
01:15:18,723 --> 01:15:20,600
So it’s a bit of a calling,

1266
01:15:20,683 --> 01:15:23,228
and it’s about the greater good.

1267
01:15:23,311 --> 01:15:26,147
My career was fixing up
other people’s problems.

1268
01:15:26,231 --> 01:15:28,775
...could be seen from
about 50 kilometers away.

1269
01:15:28,858 --> 01:15:31,903
Uh, the-the flames were
15, 20 meters into the air.

1270
01:15:31,986 --> 01:15:33,947
When it all turns to shit,

1271
01:15:34,030 --> 01:15:35,698
they call the fire brigade,

1272
01:15:35,782 --> 01:15:38,201
and we turn up and we make things better.

1273
01:15:39,827 --> 01:15:43,665
I remember turning up
to a blazing warehouse one night

1274
01:15:43,748 --> 01:15:45,875
with an old, experienced station officer.

1275
01:15:45,959 --> 01:15:47,377
I was a pretty young firefighter.

1276
01:15:47,460 --> 01:15:49,254
I said, "What do we do?" And he said,

1277
01:15:49,337 --> 01:15:50,672
"How do you eat an elephant, son?

1278
01:15:50,755 --> 01:15:52,757
"You start with the first bite.

1279
01:15:54,634 --> 01:15:57,136
Just start. We’ll work it out as we go."

1280
01:15:59,389 --> 01:16:03,643
So that’s my mindset, and that’s what
we’ve got to do with climate change.

1281
01:16:04,686 --> 01:16:06,980
So we just don’t wait
for the climate denialists.

1282
01:16:07,063 --> 01:16:10,441
If they don’t get it, they don’t get it,
and they probably never will.

1283
01:16:10,525 --> 01:16:13,861
We’ve got a world to save,
and we’re going to do it.

1284
01:16:15,154 --> 01:16:17,490
We’ve got 20 to 30 years of warming,

1285
01:16:17,573 --> 01:16:19,701
and as long as we reduce emissions

1286
01:16:19,784 --> 01:16:22,537
to zero by 2050, the scientists are saying

1287
01:16:22,620 --> 01:16:27,250
the warming will stabilize
and then gradually start to come down.

1288
01:16:27,333 --> 01:16:31,713
I won’t see it, but my grandkids will,
and I want to keep them safe.

1289
01:16:34,007 --> 01:16:37,176
It is not okay!

1290
01:16:37,260 --> 01:16:39,804
These people and companies are literally

1291
01:16:39,887 --> 01:16:42,140
burning our futures.

1292
01:16:42,223 --> 01:16:46,060
The climate crisis impacts everyone.

1293
01:16:49,814 --> 01:16:52,358
The one comment
I got more than any other

1294
01:16:52,442 --> 01:16:54,986
from adults was: "Oh, you give me hope."

1295
01:16:55,069 --> 01:16:57,155
"Your generation is gonna save us."

1296
01:16:57,238 --> 01:16:58,906
I thought, "Great. Thanks."

1297
01:16:58,990 --> 01:17:01,034
We shouldn’t have to be doing this.

1298
01:17:01,117 --> 01:17:05,538
Like, as kids, we’re not equipped
to deal with these, you know, scenarios.

1299
01:17:05,621 --> 01:17:09,167
We should just be focusing
on freaking out about school,

1300
01:17:09,250 --> 01:17:11,336
our next assignment,
our next identity crisis,

1301
01:17:11,419 --> 01:17:14,339
and here we are trying to save the world.

1302
01:17:14,422 --> 01:17:16,883
Are you mad at us?

1303
01:17:16,966 --> 01:17:19,010
Um...

1304
01:17:19,093 --> 01:17:22,138
I’m not angry at the older generations.

1305
01:17:22,221 --> 01:17:26,559
I’m angry at people in power
who spread deliberate lies,

1306
01:17:26,642 --> 01:17:28,436
you know, deliberate misinformation

1307
01:17:28,519 --> 01:17:32,815
to deter people
from demanding what’s right.

1308
01:17:32,899 --> 01:17:36,444
I’m angry at people
who have incredible wealth

1309
01:17:36,527 --> 01:17:40,656
and decades of knowledge
about this brewing crisis

1310
01:17:40,740 --> 01:17:43,117
and decided not only to not do anything

1311
01:17:43,201 --> 01:17:46,704
but to exploit it
for their own self-interests and gain.

1312
01:17:49,665 --> 01:17:51,751
I foresee it being

1313
01:17:51,834 --> 01:17:55,838
the largest obstacle my generation faces,

1314
01:17:55,922 --> 01:17:57,924
in terms of having a safe future

1315
01:17:58,007 --> 01:18:00,176
and being able to have our own kids.

1316
01:18:02,970 --> 01:18:07,141
Like, that’s something I’m wary of,
is having my own kids, um,

1317
01:18:07,225 --> 01:18:09,894
because I don’t want
to bring them into a world

1318
01:18:09,977 --> 01:18:13,564
that’s going to be unsafe, um,
and that isn’t gonna provide them

1319
01:18:13,648 --> 01:18:15,108
with as good a quality of a future

1320
01:18:15,191 --> 01:18:19,070
as I have had the fortune to have.

1321
01:18:19,153 --> 01:18:20,947
-Three, two, one.
-Go.

1322
01:18:22,240 --> 01:18:24,409
’Cause people look at it
as an incredible thing--

1323
01:18:24,492 --> 01:18:27,203
of young people exercising their power,

1324
01:18:27,286 --> 01:18:29,247
exercising their voices.

1325
01:18:29,330 --> 01:18:31,499
-SPEAKER: What do we want?
-CROWD: Climate action!

1326
01:18:31,582 --> 01:18:32,708
-When do we want it?
-Now!

1327
01:18:32,792 --> 01:18:34,710
-What do we want?
-Climate action!

1328
01:18:34,794 --> 01:18:36,712
-When do we want it?
-Now!

1329
01:18:36,796 --> 01:18:38,464
-What do we want?
-Climate action!

1330
01:18:38,548 --> 01:18:40,216
-When do we want it?
-Now!

1331
01:18:41,634 --> 01:18:43,219
But I joined out of,

1332
01:18:43,302 --> 01:18:46,097
like, a feeling of necessity
rather than want.

1333
01:18:48,558 --> 01:18:53,020
And I think it is the most tragic thing

1334
01:18:53,104 --> 01:18:56,566
I’ve ever had the misfortune
to have to be a part of.

1335
01:19:06,284 --> 01:19:08,286
My mother taught me about Country.

1336
01:19:12,165 --> 01:19:15,501
We identify as Aboriginal
because of this, this and that.

1337
01:19:15,585 --> 01:19:17,044
This family, that family, that family.

1338
01:19:18,171 --> 01:19:20,840
It’s pretty obvious that the vast majority

1339
01:19:20,923 --> 01:19:23,176
of my genes are from Cornwall.

1340
01:19:23,259 --> 01:19:26,512
Um, but... and I’ve been to Cornwall,

1341
01:19:26,596 --> 01:19:29,015
but my heart didn’t flutter.

1342
01:19:31,726 --> 01:19:33,686
I came back to Australia, and...

1343
01:19:33,769 --> 01:19:37,773
this is what I know in my blood.

1344
01:19:38,983 --> 01:19:41,402
And all the time, I was writing.

1345
01:19:41,486 --> 01:19:44,238
I’ve written 33 books about the Country.

1346
01:19:47,450 --> 01:19:51,037
The Earth is the mother
of all Aboriginal people.

1347
01:19:52,038 --> 01:19:54,332
And we treat the Earth like our mother.

1348
01:19:54,415 --> 01:19:56,167
That’s our law.

1349
01:19:56,250 --> 01:19:59,504
And if we all respected the Earth
to that degree,

1350
01:19:59,587 --> 01:20:03,633
then we wouldn’t be damaging it
as greatly as we are at the moment.

1351
01:20:14,060 --> 01:20:17,897
I think we’ve been building toward this
for 250 years.

1352
01:20:20,900 --> 01:20:24,946
Europeans had so little respect
for Aboriginal people.

1353
01:20:26,072 --> 01:20:28,908
When the first Europeans came here,

1354
01:20:28,991 --> 01:20:31,577
they found a sweet and open land.

1355
01:20:33,120 --> 01:20:35,039
It was pleasant.

1356
01:20:35,122 --> 01:20:37,959
They said it looks
like a gentlemen’s park.

1357
01:20:38,042 --> 01:20:40,836
And it was a gentlemen’s park,

1358
01:20:40,920 --> 01:20:44,423
because the people here
were gentle men and women.

1359
01:20:46,676 --> 01:20:51,931
But Europeans then stopped the method
that had made it like that.

1360
01:20:54,850 --> 01:20:57,186
Indigenous Australians managed this land

1361
01:20:57,270 --> 01:20:59,272
for 40,000 years at least.

1362
01:21:02,149 --> 01:21:04,318
And it was carefully curated.

1363
01:21:07,446 --> 01:21:10,157
And then the Europeans came along.

1364
01:21:10,241 --> 01:21:13,536
We took the fire stick out of the hand
of Aboriginal people,

1365
01:21:13,619 --> 01:21:16,956
and we changed the landscape dramatically.

1366
01:21:24,547 --> 01:21:27,550
Now we are facing consequences
in terms of these huge bushfires

1367
01:21:27,633 --> 01:21:29,176
that result from climate change,

1368
01:21:29,260 --> 01:21:33,055
and we have to recognize
that the land has really changed.

1369
01:21:34,765 --> 01:21:39,645
And that the old practices may not be
entirely effective in the new regime.

1370
01:21:42,273 --> 01:21:44,609
And we need to learn together again

1371
01:21:44,692 --> 01:21:48,946
really how to manage this land
at that very large scale.

1372
01:21:52,533 --> 01:21:54,994
This is the critical moment for humanity.

1373
01:21:55,077 --> 01:21:57,330
Right? I’m not going to let
my children’s future

1374
01:21:57,413 --> 01:21:59,874
be flushed down the toilet for inaction.

1375
01:21:59,957 --> 01:22:01,417
And whatever I feel internally,

1376
01:22:01,500 --> 01:22:06,130
it’s gonna stay there because,
well, I’m-I’m gonna fight to the last.

1377
01:22:06,213 --> 01:22:09,383
There’s-there’s no moment
where you can say you’ve done enough.

1378
01:22:13,596 --> 01:22:15,556
This is a long conversation.

1379
01:22:18,142 --> 01:22:20,561
We’re gonna hurt each other,
and we’re gonna bruise each other,

1380
01:22:20,645 --> 01:22:22,104
and we have to wear it.

1381
01:22:25,274 --> 01:22:26,609
There’s gonna be disappointment.

1382
01:22:26,692 --> 01:22:28,110
There’s gonna be hope.

1383
01:22:28,194 --> 01:22:30,905
All of that’s gonna happen,
and we have to stay patient.

1384
01:22:34,533 --> 01:22:37,662
This argument is such a big argument.

1385
01:22:38,704 --> 01:22:42,166
But I’ve seen really important things done

1386
01:22:42,249 --> 01:22:45,878
in circumstances
where nobody expected it to be done.

1387
01:22:46,921 --> 01:22:49,215
So of course we can do it.