Our Planet from the Air: Home

Listen to me. Please.

You're like me - a Homo sapiens.

A wise human.

Life.

A miracle in the universe appeared around four billion years ago,

and we humans only 200,000 years ago.

Yet we have succeeded in disrupting the balance

that is so essential to life.

Listen carefully to this extraordinary story,

which is yours, and decide what you want to do with it.

These are traces of our origins.

At the beginning, our planet was no more than a chaos of fire,

a cloud of agglutinated dust particles

similar to so many similar clusters in the universe,

yet this was where the miracle of life occurred.

Today, life, our life,

is just a link in a chain of innumerable living beings

that have succeeded one another on Earth

over nearly four billion years.

And even today, new volcanoes continue to sculpt our landscapes.

They offer a glimpse of what our Earth was like at its birth -

molten rock surging from the depths,

solidifying, cracking, blistering or spreading in a thin crust

before falling dormant for a time.

These wreaths of smoke curling from the bowels of the Earth

bear witness to the Earth's original atmosphere,

an atmosphere devoid of oxygen.

A dense atmosphere, thick with water vapour,

full of carbon dioxide.

A furnace.

The Earth cooled,

the water vapour condensed and fell in torrential downpours

at the right distance from the sun.

Not too far, not too near.

The Earth's perfect balance enabled it to conserve water

in liquid form. The water cut channels.

They're like the veins of a body,

the branches of a tree, the vessels of the sap

that the water gave to the Earth.

The rivers tore minerals from the rocks

and gradually added them to the fresh water of the oceans,

and the oceans became heavy with salt.

Where do we come from?

Where did life first spark into being?

A miracle of time.

Primitive life forms still exist in the globe's hot springs.

They give them their colours.

They are called archaebacteria.

They all feed off the Earth's heat,

all except the cyanobacteria,

or blue-green algae.

They alone have the capacity to turn to the sun

to capture its energy.

They are a vital ancestor

of all yesterday's and today's plant species.

These tiny bacteria

and their billions of descendants

changed the destiny of our planet.

They transformed its atmosphere.

What happened to the carbon that poisoned the atmosphere?

It's still here, imprisoned in the Earth's crust.

Here, there once was a sea inhabited by microorganisms.

They grew their shells by tapping into carbon from the atmosphere

dissolved in the ocean.

These strata are the accumulated shells

of those billions and billions of microorganisms.

Thanks to them, the carbon drained from the atmosphere

and other life forms could develop.

It is life that altered the atmosphere.

Plant life fed off the sun's energy,

which enabled it to break apart the water molecule

and take the oxygen,

and oxygen filled the air.

The Earth's water cycle is a process of constant renewal -

waterfalls, water vapour,

clouds, rain,

springs, rivers,

seas, oceans, glaciers.

The cycle is never broken.

There's always the same quantity of water on Earth.

All the successive species on Earth have drunk the same water.

The astonishing matter that is water.

One of the most unstable of all,

it takes a liquid form as running water,

gaseous as vapour,

or solid as ice.

In Siberia, the frozen surfaces of the lakes in winter

contain the traces of the forces that water deploys when it freezes.

Lighter than water, the ice floats.

It forms a protective mantle against the cold,

under which life can go on.

RUMBLING

The engine of life is linkage. Everything is linked.

Nothing is self-sufficient.

Water and air are inseparable,

united in life, and for our life on Earth.

Sharing is everything.

The green expanse peeking through the clouds

is the source of oxygen in the air.

70% of this gas, without which our lungs cannot function,

comes from the algae that tint the surface of the oceans.

Our Earth relies on a balance

in which every being has a role to play

and exists only through the existence of another being,

a subtle, fragile harmony that is easily shattered.

Thus, corals are born from the marriage of algae and shells.

Coral reefs cover less than 1% of the ocean floor,

but they provide a habitat for thousands of species of fish,

molluscs and algae.

The equilibrium of every ocean depends on it.

The Earth counts time...

in billions of years.

It took more than four billion years for it to make trees.

In the chain of species,

trees are a pinnacle, a perfect living sculpture.

Trees defy gravity. They are the only natural element

in perpetual movement toward the sky.

They grow unhurriedly toward the sun that nourishes their foliage.

They have inherited, from those miniscule cyanobacteria,

the power to capture light's energy.

They store it and feed off it,

turn it into wood and leaves

which then decompose into a mixture of water, mineral,

vegetable and living matter.

And so, gradually,

soils are formed.

Soils teem with the incessant activity of microorganisms,

feeding, digging, aerating...

and transforming.

They make the humus, the fertile layer

to which all life on land is linked.

BIRDS SQUAWK

What do we know about life on Earth?

How many species are we aware of?

A tenth of them?

A hundredth, perhaps?

What do know about the bonds that link them?

The Earth is a miracle.

Life remains a mystery.

Families of animals form, united by customs

and rituals that are handed down through the generations.

Some adapt to the nature of their pasture,

and their pasture adapts to them.

And both gain.

The animal sates his hunger and the tree can blossom again.

In the great adventure of life on Earth,

every species has a role to play, every species has its place.

None is futile or harmful.

They all balance out.

And that's where you, Homo sapiens,

wise human, enter the story.

You benefit from a fabulous four-billion-year-old legacy,

bequeathed by the Earth.

You're only 200,000 years old,

but you have changed the face of the world.

Despite your vulnerability, you have taken possession of every habitat

and conquered swathes of territory,

like no other species before you.

After 180,000 nomadic years, and thanks to a more clement climate,

humans settled down.

They no longer depended on hunting for survival.

They chose to live in wet environments

that abounded in fish, game and wild plants -

there, where land, water and life combine.

Even today, the majority of humankind

lives on the continents' coastlines, or the banks of rivers and lakes.

Across the planet,

one person in four lives as humankind did 6,000 years ago -

their only energy, that which nature provides, season after season.

It's the way of life of 1½ billion people,

more than the combined population of all the wealthy nations.

But life expectancy is short, and hard labour takes its toll.

The uncertainties of nature weigh on daily life.

Education is a rare privilege.

Children are a family's only asset, as long as every extra

pair of hands is a necessary contribution to its subsistence.

Humanity's genius is to have always had a sense of its weakness.

The physical energy and strength with which nature insufficiently

endowed humans is found in animals

that help them to discover new territories.

But how can you conquer the world on an empty stomach?

The invention of agriculture turned our history on end.

It was less than 10,000 years ago.

Agriculture was our first great revolution.

It resulted in the first surpluses,

and gave birth to cities and civilisations.

The memory of thousands of years scrabbling for food faded.

Having made grain, the yeast of life,

we multiplied the number of varieties

and learned to adapt them to our soils and climates.

We're like every species on Earth -

our principal daily concern is to feed ourselves.

When the soil is less than generous

and the water becomes scarce,

we're able to deploy prodigious efforts

to extract from the land enough to live on.

Humans shaped the land with the patience and devotion that the Earth

demands, in an almost sacrificial ritual performed over and over.

Agriculture is still the world's most widespread occupation.

Half of humankind tills the soil.

Over three-quarters of them by hand.

Agriculture is like a tradition handed down

from generation to generation in sweat, graft and toil.

Because, for humanity, it is a prerequisite of survival.

But after relying on muscle power for so long,

humankind found a way to tap into the energy buried

deep in the Earth.

These flames are also from plants,

a pocket of sunlight, pure energy.

The energy of the sun,

captured over millions of years, by millions of plants,

more than 100 million years ago.

It's coal, it's gas, and, above all, it's oil.

This pocket of sunlight freed humans from their toil on the land.

With oil began the era of humans

who break free of the shackles of time.

With oil, some of us acquired unprecedented comforts.

In 50 years, in a single lifetime,

the Earth has been more radically changed

than by all previous generations of humanity.

SIRENS WAIL

Faster and faster, in the last 60 years,

the Earth's population has almost tripled.

Over two billion people have moved to the cities.

Faster and faster. Shenzhen in China,

with its hundreds of skyscrapers and millions of inhabitants,

was just a small fishing village

barely 40 years ago.

Faster and faster. In Shanghai, 3,000 towers and skyscrapers

have been built in 20 years.

Hundreds more are under construction.

Today, over half of the world's seven billion inhabitants

live in cities.

New York.

The world's first megalopolis

is a symbol of the exploitation of the energy

the Earth supplies to human genius.

The manpower of millions of immigrants, the energy of coal,

the unbridled power of oil.

MACHINE WHIRS

America was the first to harness the phenomenal

revolutionary power of black gold.

In the fields, machines replaced men.

A litre of oil generates as much energy

as 100 pairs of hands in 24 hours.

In the United States, only three million farmers are left.

They produce enough grain to feed two billion people.

But most of that grain is not used to feed people.

Here, and in all other industrialised nations,

it's transformed into livestock feed

or biofuels.

The pocket of sunshine's energy

chased away the spectre of drought

that stalked farmland.

No spring escapes the demands of agriculture,

which accounts for 70% of humanity's water consumption.

In nature, everything is linked.

The expansion of cultivated land and single-crop farming

encouraged the development of parasites.

Pesticides, another gift of the petrochemical revolution,

exterminated them.

Bad harvests and famine became a distant memory.

The biggest headache now was what to do

with the surpluses engendered by modern agriculture.

But toxic pesticides seeped into the air,

soil, plants, animals, rivers and oceans.

They penetrated the heart of cells similar to the mother cell

that is shared by all forms of life.

Are they harmful to the humans that they released from hunger?

These farmers, in their yellow protective suits

probably have a good idea.

Then came fertilisers,

another petrochemical discovery.

They produced unprecedented results on plots of land

thus far ignored.

Crops adapted to soils and climates,

gave way to the most productive varieties

and the easiest to transport.

In the last century, three quarters of the varieties

developed by farmers over thousands of years,

have been wiped out.

As far as the eye can see,

fertiliser below, plastic on top.

The greenhouses of Almeria in Spain

are Europe's vegetable garden.

A city of uniformly-sized vegetables

waits every day for the hundreds of trucks that will take them

to the continent's supermarkets.

The more a country develops,

the more meat its inhabitants consume.

How can growing worldwide demand

be satisfied without recourse to

concentration-camp style cattle farms?

Faster and faster. Like the life cycle of livestock,

which may never see a meadow.

Manufacturing meat faster than the animal,

has become a daily routine.

In these vast food lots,

trampled by millions of cattle,

not a blade of grass grows.

A fleet of trucks from every corner of the country

brings in tons of grain, soymeal and protein-rich granules

that will become tons of meat.

The result is that it takes 100 litres of water

to produce 1kg of potatoes,

4,000 litres for 1kg of rice.

And 13,000 litres for 1kg of beef,

not to mention the oil guzzled in the production process

and transport.

Our agriculture has become oil powered.

It feeds twice as many humans on Earth

but has replaced diversity with standardisation.

It has offered many of us comforts we could only dream of.

But it makes our way of life totally dependent on oil.

This is the new measure of time.

Our world's clock now beats to the rhythm

of these indefatigable machines

tapping into the pocket of sunlight.

The whole planet is attentive to these metronomes

of our hopes and illusions.

The same hopes and illusions that proliferate,

along with our needs -

increasingly insatiable desires and profligacy.

We know that the end of cheap oil is imminent

but we refuse to believe it.

For many of us, the American dream is embodied by a legendary name...

..Los Angeles.

In this city that stretches over 100 kilometres,

the number of cars is almost equal to the number of inhabitants.

Here, energy puts on a fantastic show every night.

SIRENS WAIL

The days seem to be no more than the pale reflection

of nights that turn the city into a starry sky.

Faster and faster. Distances are no longer counted in miles

but in minutes.

The automobile shapes new suburbs

where every home is a castle,

a safe distance from the asphyxiated city centres

and where neat rows of houses

huddle round dead-end streets.

The model of a lucky few countries

has become a universal dream,

preached by televisions all over the world.

Even here in Beijing,

it is cloned, copied and reproduced

in these formatted houses

that have wiped pagodas off the map.

The automobile has become the symbol of comfort and progress.

If this model were followed by every society,

the planet wouldn't have 900 million vehicles,

as it does today,

but 5 billion.

Faster and faster. The more the world develops,

the greater its thirst for energy.

Everywhere, machines dig ore and rip from the Earth

the pieces of stars buried in its depth

since its creation - minerals.

As a privilege of power, 80% of this mineral wealth

is consumed by 20% of the world's population.

Before the end of this century, excessive mining will have exhausted

nearly all the planet's reserves.

Faster and faster.

Shipyards churn out oil tankers,

container ships and gas tankers,

to cater for the demands of globalised industrial production.

Most consumer goods travel thousands of kilometres

from the country of production to the country of consumption.

Since 1950, the volume of international trade

has increased 20 times over.

90% of trade goes by sea.

500 million containers are transported every year...

..headed for the world's major hubs of consumption, such as Dubai.

Dubai is a sort of culmination of the western model,

a country where the impossible becomes possible,

building artificial islands in the sea, for example.

Dubai has few natural resources.

But with the money from oil it can bring millions of tons of material.

And workers from all over the planet.

Dubai has no farmland but it can import food.

Dubai has no water but it can afford to expend immense

amounts of energy to desalinate sea water

and build the highest skyscrapers in the world.

Dubai has endless sun but no solar panels.

It is a totem to total modernity that never fails to amaze the world.

Dubai is like the new beacon for all the world's money.

Nothing seems further removed from nature than Dubai.

Although nothing depends on nature more than Dubai.

Dubai is a sort of culmination of the Western model.

We haven't understood that we're depleting what nature provides.

Since 1950 fishing catches have increased five-fold,

from 18 to 100 million metric tons a year.

Thousands of factory ships are emptying the oceans.

Three quarters of fishing grounds are exhausted,

depleted or in danger of being so.

Most large fish have been fished out of existence

since they have no time to reproduce.

We are destroying the cycle of a life that was given to us.

At the current rate, all fish stocks are threatened with exhaustion.

Fish is the staple diet of one in five humans.

We have forgotten that resources are scarce.

500 million humans live in the world's desert lands -

more than the combined population of Europe.

They know the value of water.

They know how to use it sparingly.

Here, they depend on wells replenished by fossil water,

which accumulated underground in the days

when it rained on these deserts -

25,000 years ago.

Fossil water also enables crops to be grown in the desert to

provide food for local populations.

The fields' circular shape derives from the pipes that irrigate them

around a central pivot.

But there's a heavy price to pay.

Fossil water is a non-renewable resource.

In Saudi Arabia,

the dream of industrial farming in the desert has faded.

As if on a parchment map,

the light spots on this patchwork show abandoned plots.

The irrigation equipment is still there.

The energy to pump water, also.

But the fossil water reserves are severely depleted.

Israel turned the desert into arable land.

Even though these hothouses are now irrigated drop by drop,

water consumption continues to increase along with exports.

The once-mighty River Jordan is now just a trickle.

Its water has flown to supermarkets all over the world

in crates of fruit and vegetables.

The Jordan's fate is not unique.

Across the planet, one major river in ten

no longer flows into the sea for several months of the year.

Deprived of the Jordan's water,

the level of the Dead Sea goes down by over one metre per year.

India risks being the country that suffers most

from the lack of water in the coming century.

Massive irrigation has fed the growing population.

And in the last 50 years, 21 million wells have been dug.

In many parts of the country,

the drill has to sink ever deeper to hit water.

In western India, 30% of wells have been abandoned.

The underground aquifers are drying out.

Vast reservoirs will catch the monsoon rains

to replenish the aquifers.

In dry season, women from local villages dig them

with their bare hands.

Thousands of kilometres away, 800 to 1,000 litres of water

are consumed per person per day.

Las Vegas was built out of the desert.

Millions of people live there.

Thousands more arrive every month.

The inhabitants of Las Vegas

are among the biggest consumers of water in the world.

Palm Springs is another desert city with tropical vegetation

and lush golf courses.

How long can this mirage continue to prosper?

The Earth cannot keep up.

The Colorado River, which brings water to these cities,

is one of those rivers that no longer reaches the sea.

Water levels in the catchment lakes along its course are plummeting.

Water shortages could affect nearly two billion people before 2025.

The wetlands represent 6% of the surface of the planet.

Under their calm water lies a veritable factory,

where plants and microorganisms patiently filter the water

and digest all the pollution.

These marshes are indispensible environments

for the regeneration and purification of water.

They are sponges that regulate the flow of water.

They absorb it in the wet season and release it in the dry season.

In our race to conquer more land,

we have reclaimed them as pasture for our livestock

or as land for agriculture or building.

In the last century, half of the world's marshes were drained.

We know neither their richness, nor their role.

All living matter is linked - water, air, soil, trees.

The world's magic is right in front of our eyes.

Trees breathe ground water into the atmosphere as light mist.

They form a canopy which alleviates the impact of heavy rains.

The forests provide the humidity that is necessary for life.

They store carbon, containing more than all the Earth's atmosphere.

They are the cornerstone of the climactic balance on which

we all depend.

The trees of the primary forest

provide a habitat for three-quarters of the planet's biodiversity,

that's to say, of all life on Earth.

These forests provide the remedies that cure us.

The substances secreted by these plants can be

recognised by our bodies.

Our cells talk the same language, we are of the same family.

But in barely 40 years, the world's largest rainforest, the Amazon,

has been reduced by 20%.

The forest gives way to cattle ranches, or soybean farms.

95% of these soybeans are used

to feed livestock and poultry in Europe and Asia.

So, a forest is turned into meat.

Barely 20 years ago, Borneo, the fourth largest

island in the world, was covered by a vast primary forest.

At the current rate of deforestation,

it will have totally disappeared within ten years.

Living matter bonds water, air, earth and the sun.

In Borneo, this bond has been broken

in what was one of the Earth's greatest reservoirs of biodiversity.

This catastrophe was provoked by the decision to produce palm oil,

one of the most productive

and consumed oils in the world, on Borneo.

Palm oil not only caters to our growing demand for food,

but also cosmetics, detergents and, increasingly, alternative fuels.

The forest diversity was replaced by a single species, the oil palm.

For local people, it provides employment,

it is an agricultural industry.

Another example of massive deforestation is the eucalyptus.

Eucalyptus is used to make paper pulp.

Plantations are growing, as demand for paper has increased five fold

in 50 years.

One forest does not replace another forest.

At the foot of these eucalyptus trees, nothing grows because

their leaves form a bed which is toxic for most other plants.

They grow quickly, but exhaust water reserves.

Soybeans, palm oil, eucalyptus trees -

deforestation destroys the essential to provide the superfluous.

But elsewhere, deforestation is a last resort to survive.

Over two billion people, almost a third of the world's population,

still depend on charcoal.

In Haiti, one of the world's poorest countries,

charcoal is one of the population's main consumables.

Once the pearl of the Caribbean, Haiti can no longer

feed its population without foreign aid.

On the hills of Haiti, only 2% of the forests are left.

Stripped bare, nothing holds the soils back.

The rainwater washes them down the hillsides as far as the sea.

What's left is increasingly unsuitable for agriculture.

In some parts of Madagascar, the erosion is spectacular.

Whole hillsides bear deep gashes hundreds of metres wide.

Thin and fragile, soil is made by living matter.

The erosion, the fine layer of humus,

which took thousands of years to form, disappears.

Here's one theory of the story of the Rapa Nui, the inhabitants

of Easter Island, that could perhaps give us pause for thought.

Living on the most isolated island in the world, the Rapa Nui

exploited their resources until there was nothing left.

Their civilisation did not survive.

On these lands stood the highest palm trees in the world.

They have disappeared.

The Rapa Nui chopped them all down for lumber.

They then had to face widespread soil erosion.

The Rapa Nui could no longer go fishing.

There were no trees to build canoes.

And yet the Rapa Nui formed one of the most brilliant

civilisations in the Pacific.

Innovative farmers, sculptors, exceptional navigators -

they were caught in the vice of overpopulation

and dwindling resources.

They experienced social unrest, revolts and famine.

Many did not survive the cataclysm.

The real mystery of Easter Island is not how its strange statues

got there - we know now - it's why the Rapa Nui didn't react in time.

It's only one of a number of theories,

but it has particular relevance to us today.

Since 1950, the world's population has almost tripled

and since 1950, we have more fundamentally

altered our island, the Earth, than in all of our 200,000-year history.

Nigeria is the biggest oil exporter in Africa,

and yet 70% of the population lives under the poverty line.

The wealth is there, but the country's inhabitants

don't have access to it.

The same is true all over the globe.

Half the world's poor live in resource-rich countries.

Our mode of development has not fulfilled its promises.

In 50 years, the gap between rich and poor has grown wider than ever.

Today, half the world's wealth

is in the hands of the richest 2% of the population.

Can such disparities be maintained?

They are the cause of population movements whose scale

we have yet to fully realise.

The city of Lagos had a population of 700,000 in 1960.

That will rise to 16 million by 2025.

Lagos is one of the fastest-growing megalopolises in the world.

The new arrivals are mostly famers,

forced off the land for economic or demographic reasons,

or because of diminishing resources.

This is a radically new type of urban growth,

driven by the urge to survive rather than to prosper.

Every week, over a million people

swell the populations of the world's cities.

One human being in six now lives in a precarious, unhealthy,

over-populated environment,

without access to daily necessities such as water,

sanitation, electricity.

Hunger is spreading once more.

It affects nearly one billion people.

BIRDS CAW

All over the planet, the poor scrabble to survive on scraps

while we continue to dig for resources

that we can no longer live without.

We look farther and farther afield, in previously unspoilt territory

and in regions that are increasingly difficult to exploit.

We're not changing our model.

Oil might run out.

We can still extract oil from the tar sands of Canada.

The biggest trucks in the world move thousands of tons of sand.

The process of heating and separating bitumen from the sand

requires millions of cubic metres of water.

Colossal amounts of energy are needed.

The pollution is catastrophic.

The most urgent priority, apparently,

is to pick every pocket of sunlight.

Our oil tankers are getting bigger and bigger,

our energy requirements are constantly increasing.

We try to power growth like a bottomless oven

that demands more and more fuel.

It's all about carbon.

In a few decades, the carbon that made our atmosphere a furnace,

and that nature captured over millions of years,

allowing life to develop,

will have largely been pumped back out.

The atmosphere is heating up.

It would have been inconceivable for a boat to be here

just a few years ago.

Transport, industry, deforestation, agriculture -

our activities release gigantic quantities of carbon dioxide.

Without realising it, molecule by molecule,

we have upset the Earth's climatic balance.

All eyes are on the Poles...

where the effects of global warming are most visible.

It's happening fast, very fast.

The Northwest Passage that connects America, Europe and Asia

via the Pole is opening up.

The Arctic ice cap is melting.

Under the effect of global warming,

the ice cap has lost 40% of its thickness in 40 years.

Its surface area in the summer shrinks year by year.

It could disappear in the summer months by 2030,

some say 2015.

The sunbeams that the ice sheet previously reflected back

now penetrate the dark water, heating it up.

The warming process gathers pace.

This ice contains the records of our planet.

The concentration of carbon dioxide hasn't been so high

for several hundred thousand years.

Humanity has never lived in an atmosphere like this.

Is excessive exploitation of our resources

threatening the lives of every species?

Climate change accentuates the threat.

By 2050, a quarter of the Earth's species

could be threatened with extinction.

In these polar regions,

the balance of nature has already been disrupted.

Around the North Pole, the ice cap has lost

30% of its surface area in 30 years.

But as Greenland rapidly becomes warmer,

the freshwater of the whole continent

flows into the saltwater of the oceans.

Greenland's ice contains 20% of the freshwater of the whole planet.

If it melts, sea levels will rise by nearly seven metres.

RUMBLING

But there is no industry here.

Greenland's ice sheets suffers from greenhouse gases

emitted elsewhere on Earth.

Our ecosystem doesn't have borders.

Wherever we are, our actions have repercussions on the whole Earth.

The atmosphere of our planet is an indivisible hole -

it is an asset we share.

On Greenland's surface, lakes are appearing on the landscape.

The ice cap has begun to melt at a speed

that even the most pessimistic scientists

did not envision ten years ago.

More and more of these glacier-fed rivers are merging together

and burrowing through the surface.

It was thought the water would freeze in the depths of the ice.

On the contrary, it flows under the ice,

carrying the ice sheet into the sea, where it breaks into icebergs.

As the freshwater of Greenland's ice sheet gradually seeps

into the saltwater of the oceans,

low-lying lands around the globe are threatened.

Sea levels are rising.

Water expanding as it gets warmer, caused, in the 20th century alone,

a rise of 20cm.

Everything becomes unstable.

Coral reefs, for example, are extremely sensitive

to the slightest change in water temperature.

30% have disappeared.

They are an essential chain of species.

In the atmosphere, the major wind streams are changing direction.

Rain cycles are altered.

The geography of climates is modified.

The inhabitants of low-lying islands here in the Maldives, for example,

are on the front line.

They are increasingly concerned.

Some are already looking for new, more hospitable lands.

If sea levels continue to rise faster and faster,

what will major cities like Tokyo, the world's most populous city, do?

Every year, scientist predictions become more and more alarming.

70% of the world's population lives on costal plains.

11 of the 15 biggest cities stand on a coastline or river estuary.

As the seas rise, salt will invade the water table,

depriving inhabitants of drinking water.

Migratory phenomena are inevitable.

The only uncertainty concerns their scale.

In Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro is unrecognisable.

80% of its glaciers have disappeared.

In summer, the rivers no longer flow.

Local peoples are affected by the lack of water.

Even on the world's highest peaks in the heart of the Himalayas,

eternal snows and glaciers are receding.

Yet these glaciers plan an essential role in the water cycle.

They trap the water from the monsoons as ice

and release it in the summer when the snow melts.

The glaciers of the Himalayas

are the source of all the great Asian rivers -

the Indus, Ganges, Mekong, Xiangjiang.

Two billion people depend on them for drinking water

and to irrigate their crops, as in Bangladesh.

On the delta of the Ganges, in Brahmaputra,

Bangladesh is directly affected by the phenomena incurring

in the Himalayas and at sea level.

This is one of the most populous and poorest countries in the world.

It is already hit by global warming.

The combined impact of increasingly dramatic floods and hurricanes

could make a third of its landmass disappear.

When populations are subjected to these devastating phenomena,

they eventually move away.

Wealthy countries will not be spared.

Droughts are occurring all over the planet.

In Australia, half of farmland is already affected.

We are in the process of compromising the climactic balance

that has allowed us to develop over 12,000 years.

More and more wildfires encroach on major cities.

In turn, they exacerbate global warming -

as the trees burn, they release carbon dioxide.

This system that controls our climate has been severely disrupted.

The elements on which it relies have been disrupted.

The clock of climate change is ticking

in these magnificent landscapes.

Here in Siberia, and elsewhere across the globe,

it is so cold that the ground is constantly frozen.

It's known as permafrost.

Under its surface lies a climactic time bomb - methane,

a greenhouse gas 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

If the permafrost melts,

the methane released would cause the greenhouse effect

to race out of control with consequences no-one can predict.

We would literally be in unknown territory.

Humanity has no more than ten years to reverse the trend

and avoid crossing into this territory -

life on Earth as we have never known it.

We have created phenomena we cannot control.

Since our origins,

water, air and forms of life are intimately linked.

But recently we have broken those links.

Let's face the facts - we must believe what we know.

All that we have just seen is a reflection of human behaviour.

We have shaped the Earth in our image.

We have very little time to change.

How can this century carry the burden of nine billion human beings

if we refuse to be called to account for everything we alone have done?

The cost of our actions is high.

Others pay the price without having been actively involved.

I have seen refugee camps as big as cities, sprawling in the desert.

How many men, woman and children

will be left by the wayside tomorrow?

Must we always build walls to break the chain of human solidarity,

separate peoples and protect the happiness of some

from the misery of others?

It's too late to be a pessimist.

I know that a single human can knock down every wall.

It's too late to be a pessimist.

Worldwide, four children out of five attend school.

Never has learning been given to so many human beings.

Everyone, from richest to poorest, can make a contribution.

Lesotho, one of the world's poorest countries, is proportionally

the one that invests most in its people's education.

Qatar, one of the world's richest states,

has opened its doors to the best universities.

Culture, education,

research and innovation are inexhaustible resources.

In the face of misery and suffering,

millions of NGOs prove that solidarity between peoples is

stronger than the selfishness of nations.

Bangladesh, a man thought the unthinkable

and founded a bank that lends only to the poor.

In 30 years, it has changed the lives of 150 million people.

Antarctica is a continent with immense natural resources

that no country can claim for itself.

A natural reserve devoted to peace and science.

A treaty signed by 49 states has made it a treasure

shared by all humanity. It's too late to be a pessimist.

Governments have acted to protect nearly 2% of the world's

territorial waters.

It's not much, but it's two times more than ten years ago.

The first natural parks were created just over a century ago.

They cover over 13% of the continents.

They create spaces where human activity is in step with

the preservation of species, soils and landscapes.

This harmony between humans and nature can become the rule,

no longer the exception.

In the United States, New York has realised what nature does for us.

These forests and lakes supply all the drinking water the city needs.

In South Korea, the forests have been devastated by war.

Thanks to a national reforestation programme,

they once more cover 65% of the country.

More than 75% of paper is recycled.

Costa Rica has made a choice between military spending

and the conservation of its lands. The country no longer has an army.

It prefers to devote its resources to education, ecotourism

and the protection of its primary forest.

Gabon is one of the world's leading producers of wood.

It enforces selective logging - not more than one tree every hectare.

Its forests are one of the country's most important economic resources,

but they have the time to regenerate.

Programmes exist that guarantee sustainable forest management.

They must become mandatory.

For consumers and producers, justice is an opportunity to be seized.

When trade is fair, when both buyer and seller benefit,

everybody can prosper and earn a decent living.

How can there be justice and equity between people whose only tools are

their hands, and those who harvest their crops with a machine

and state subsidies?

Let's be responsible consumers. Think about what we buy.

It's too late to be a pessimist.

I've seen agriculture on a human scale. It can feed the whole planet,

if meat production doesn't take the food out of people's mouths.

I've seen fishermen who take care what they catch

and care for the riches of the ocean.

I have seen houses producing their own energy.

5,000 people live in the world's first-ever ecofriendly

district in Freiburg, Germany. Other cities partner the project.

Mumbai is the 1,000th to join them.

The governments of New Zealand, Iceland, Austria, Sweden

and other nations have made the development of renewable

energy sources a top priority.

I know that 80% of the energy we consume

comes from fossil energy sources. Every week,

two new coal-fired generating plants are built in China alone, but I have

also seen, in Denmark, a prototype of a coal-fired plant that

releases its carbon into the soil rather than the air.

A solution for the future? Nobody knows yet.

I have seen, in Iceland, an electricity plant

powered by the Earth's heat. Geothermal power.

I have seen a sea snake lying on the swell to absorb

the energy of the waves and produce electricity.

I have seen wind farms off the coast of Denmark that

produce 20% of the country's electricity.

The USA, China, India, Germany

and Spain are the biggest investors in renewable energy.

They've already created over 2.5 million jobs.

Where on Earth doesn't the wind blow?

I have seen desert expanses baking in the sun.

Everything on Earth is linked, and the Earth is linked to the sun,

its original energy source.

Can humans not imitate plants and capture its energy?

In one hour, the sun gives the Earth the same

amount of energy as that consumed by all humanity in one year.

As long as the Earth exists, the sun's energy will be inexhaustible.

All we have to do is stop drilling the earth

and start looking to the sky.

All we have to do is learn to cultivate the sun.

All these experiments are only examples,

but they testify to a new awareness.

They lay down markers for a new human adventure,

based on moderation, intelligence and sharing.

It's time to come together.

What's important is not what's gone, but what remains.

We still have half the world's forests, thousands of rivers,

lakes and glaciers, and thousands of thriving species.

We know that the solutions are there today.

We all have the power to change.

So, what are we waiting for?