Rising Waters

[00:00:00.00] [BULLFROG CROAKING]

[00:00:08.86] [MUSIC PLAYING]

[00:00:11.83] It's very difficult for somebody living in the United States to grasp the fact that if sea level rises just a few feet, a whole nation will disappear.

[00:00:25.67] Way before most these islands go under, they're going to lose their freshwater supplies, their freshwater lenses. They're going to be inundated with seawater.

[00:00:36.10] We are like the warning system for the whole world to see.

[00:00:44.72] Major funding for this program was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding was provided by the Environmental Verification and Analysis Center at the University of Oklahoma.

[00:01:11.79] There is Bikeman, and that sand bar there is where the island was.

[00:01:23.60] This was Bikeman, but the original name is Teabanuea, meaning "a place for chiefs."

[00:01:46.17] People used to come here when it was an island to hold picnics and, much earlier, to present their gifts to the gods, especially when they want to go out fishing and have luck. It is now lost, as you can see as you stand on it. It is sand and rock.

[00:02:46.35] They emerged millions of years ago, thousands of islands scattered across the vast Pacific Ocean.

[00:03:06.27] These islands now hold unique ecosystems. Exotic fish, coral, and marine life.

[00:03:26.13] [MALE VOCALIZING]

[00:03:39.75] They are also the home to more than 7 million people. Nearly 1,000 distinct languages and cultures thrive in some of the smallest nations in the world.

[00:03:52.75] [SINGING AND CHANTING]

[00:04:07.69] Now these tiny islands are shadowed by one of the biggest threats the planet has ever faced-- global warming.

[00:04:19.20] Since the beginning of time, the earth has been warmed by sunlight beaming down through the insulating blanket of the atmosphere. That blanket, made up of carbon dioxide and other gases, traps heat on the earth from the sun's energy, creating what is called the greenhouse effect.

[00:04:36.95] This process regulates the earth's climate, keeping it stable enough to sustain life.

[00:04:44.91] [INDUSTRIAL NOISES OVERLYING DRUMBEAT]

[00:04:56.05] But since the Industrial Revolution, human beings have been releasing chemicals into the atmosphere. Among them have been enormous emissions of carbon dioxide created by the burning of fossil fuels.

[00:05:14.52] The accumulation of these industrial gases is thickening the blanket of the atmosphere and warming the global climate.

[00:05:23.13] We know from geological evidence that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has never been above a level of about 280 parts per million for the last 230,000 years. It is now at roughly 370 parts per million. And that rise is all due to human activity, of fossil fuel burning, deforestation, and other types of land use activities.

[00:05:57.91] We also know that when carbon dioxide is high in the atmosphere, the temperature is hot.

[00:06:05.61] In fact, the global temperature has already risen nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit in the past century, and the 1990s were the hottest decade in the last 1,000 years. Scientists predict that atmospheric carbon dioxide will double by the year 2100.

[00:06:23.17] By then, global temperatures will have risen 5 degrees Fahrenheit or more. That may not sound like much, but it could lead to dramatic and unforeseen consequences.

[00:06:35.05] We're taking a real risk because we're dealing with a very complex system, very complex. We don't know how it behaves completely. But we do know something-- if we keep pushing that system, it's going to change.

[00:06:49.38] The temperature increase could speed up global storm systems, trigger more frequent and powerful hurricanes, droughts, and floods. For the Pacific Islands, there is an even more serious threat.

[00:07:05.16] When you warm water, it expands. And when you warm earth's surface temperatures, ice that's on the land will melt and go into the sea. And just as the temperatures have been rising for about 200 years, so we believe that sea levels have probably been rising for about the same length of time.

[00:07:27.34] What could happen? Well, a chunk of the Antarctic ice sheet could what we call surge. That would raise sea level 15 to 25 feet, which would be the end of island states, most coastlines, and so forth.

[00:07:40.81] These are forecasts for the future. In the Pacific, islanders say some of these changes already are beginning to take place.

[00:07:50.50] 4,000 miles southwest of California lie the volcanic islands of Samoa, home to a Polynesian culture thousands of years old.

[00:08:07.91] There's a saying in English that there's no place like home. I remember as a young kid running around naked on the beach. That's the way of life, they way you live.

[00:08:29.26] You'd go out fishing, the food is available for you there. You don't suffer, you don't worry about paying the rent or paying for anything. It's just a very subsistence way of living.

[00:08:41.74] And that's the relaxed, Pacific way of living that I like most about the islands. In Samoan community, you're part of the whole extended family. Everybody helps out.

[00:09:00.30] A typical Samoan Sunday for any family, they get up early in the morning, about 5:30 or 6 o'clock, prepare the umu feast. And then they all go to church.

[00:09:16.48] [SINGING]

[00:09:33.37] And then after the church, they came back and they have a feast. I love it.

[00:09:43.17] I'm a climatologist. My area of expertise and interest lies within the Pacific. When I grew up, we always had to battle natural disasters. My parents told me all the stories about how to survive.

[00:10:00.13] When you grow up in an area where it's so climate-dependent and weather-dependent, you notice things so easily in your environment. There's something definitely happening. We feel the trend of tropical cyclone and hurricanes on the increase.

[00:10:24.73] [HEAVY WIND]

[00:10:31.51] You cannot imagine being in a cyclone or hurricane. You just break off that [INAUDIBLE] at the end of the day.

[00:10:46.23] [SLOW DRUMBEAT]

[00:10:55.13] My own personal experience, my parents' whole savings that was invested in the house that I was brought up in was totally destroyed in one of the worst hurricanes that ever struck Samoa in 1991. Everything they worked their whole life to build was completely destroyed.

[00:11:20.84] And it's like destroying my past, because I couldn't find a single photo of me when I was a baby. All the memories go down there.

[00:11:32.36] The most concern for Pacific island countries is the extreme weather events that are associated with the global warming phenomenon. For example, would there be an increase in the number of hurricanes occurring on a warming world? Based on the records that we have so far in the Pacific region alone, definitely there seems to be an increase.

[00:11:59.58] Another weather pattern which many scientists predict will increase with global warming is the El Nino. This little-understood natural phenomenon originates in the tropical Pacific. The El Nino causes dramatic changes in global weather. It knocks storm systems off their usual course and heats up the already-warm waters of the south Pacific.

[00:12:23.97] We're standing on what appears to be a coral graveyard, lots of pieces of dead coral.

[00:12:31.06] In American Samoa, marine biologist Nancy Dashbach shows the effects of a recent El Nino to a group of students. The ocean here was very warm. It got up to above 30 degrees, 32 degrees centigrade, which is about 85 degrees Fahrenheit.

[00:12:47.57] It was like a bathtub out here for several months. Coral can't live in temperatures that hot. So what happened was, they bleached. That lasted for a while, and then they started to die. Most of the reef flat on the top has been killed all around our islands of Samoa.

[00:13:08.06] When coral dies, the islands also lose an important natural defense against the impacts of storms.

[00:13:15.09] This is one of the major sources of coastal protection for most of this low-lying atoll, because they act barriers to stop the storms surges coming on the islands. So if the warm water is killing off these reefs, you will never have that protection.

[00:13:38.77] Furthermore, a lot of the islands depend on the coral reef for their food.

[00:13:43.66] [HORN SOUNDING]

[00:13:52.96] You must be at the fishing place by 5:00 in the afternoon. That will give us an hour to put the nets down, and then wait for another couple of hour or so.

[00:14:07.01] Our fishing-- our catches, I mean, it's not normal. We are puzzled why everything is changing. I think the effect of El Nino here is great.

[00:14:30.14] Back then it's bad news to catch between 400, 500 pounds a night. But now you couldn't fill a cooler sometimes. Everything has changed, and I'm a little bit worried I'll only get the fish for us to eat. That means we won't sell any, and we won't get the money.

[00:15:00.46] We're dealing here with an issue of whole islands and communities at risk. And their very survival is at stake.

[00:15:15.52] Northwest of Samoa on the equator lies Kiribati, one of the smallest countries in the world. Kiribati is a nation of 33 coral atolls, the rims of ancient volcanoes, and rises only a few feet above the sea.

[00:15:35.35] [DRUMMING AND SINGING]

[00:15:44.74] Because it is so remote, Kiribati has retained much of its traditional culture, a culture that has thrived for more than 2,000 years.

[00:16:10.91] Here in Kiribati we believe that there's a recipe, a secret formula and a secret recipe, for human peace and human happiness. To us, we see happiness as a product of being able to be part of a community, of a collection of people.

[00:16:37.73] We still have the pristine environment here, as naturally beautiful as they were created thousands of years ago.

[00:16:46.09] And our way of live here, of course, is very much based on ourselves, in the family, in the village. We care for each other. We look after each other in a community say.

[00:17:00.54] To us, it's a paradise. But it is a paradise that is under threat.

[00:17:07.53] We are now faced with the challenges of change. As the world changes around us, we also feel these changes. In the last 40 years of my lifetime, a lot of changes have certainly happened to the weather pattern.

[00:17:26.83] [SURF SOUNDS]

[00:17:38.50] Islands can erode from natural causes, but in recent years, Kiribati islanders have reported strange high tides, rogue waves, the loss of small islands, and storms more powerful than those of the past.

[00:17:53.27] I've lived here since the '60s, and there used to be a tree here, right in front of my house. In the '70s, the high water mark used to be here. The tree was lost, along with the beach that used to be here.

[00:18:06.18] We moved our house inland there, and the water keeps coming up to the house during the high tides now, and so we built this seawall two years ago. If the tide continues to wash away our land, we will have to move to the other side of the road to higher ground.

[00:18:29.88] We'll continue to try and carry on life as usual, and create things on the island and encourage our people to move forward. But we're not too sure. There's no point in creating a lot of infrastructure on an island that will disappear in the next 50 or 100 years.

[00:18:53.02] On the islands, fresh water has always been a precious commodity. But now, even the existing groundwater is threatened.

[00:19:02.92] Seawater is always encroaching onto the freshwater lens underneath the coral atoll. And this is happening every day.

[00:19:15.95] Just recently, we had the whole area inundated with seawater when it rose up during one of the recent spring tides. Whenever the water rises by a few centimeters, that is enough to destroy many acres of crop area.

[00:19:37.55] Certain plants just depend very much on the fresh water. It must be fresh water. A few drops of seawater on the roots of this plant is enough to destroy them. Affecting the livelihood of many hundreds of people who depend on that crop.

[00:19:58.46] If the crops are destroyed, they will have to be relocated. That will disrupt the culture in that particular village. People will scatter.

[00:20:10.35] We will lose our human values even before we start losing the islands. The human values that are being nurtured in the culture will be lost.

[00:20:27.76] 400 miles northwest of Kiribati lies the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The Marshall Islands is a country made up of 29 atolls, which, like those of Kiribati, rise barely above sea level.

[00:20:45.70] [SNARE DRUM]

[00:20:50.70] Half a century ago, these tiny islands attracted the attention of the entire world.

[00:20:58.88] All right now, James, will you tell them that the United States government now wants to turn its great destructive force into something good for mankind.

[00:21:12.94] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

[00:21:19.42] Two of the islands were used to test 67 nuclear weapons. Islanders were forced into exile. Later, atomic fallout and radiation poisoning forced many more to abandon their contaminated homes. Memories of that tragic period still haunt the islands today.

[00:21:48.67] But now that the Cold War is over, a new generation of Marshallese is beginning to plan for a better future. At 26, Ben Graham is the first director of tourism for the Marshall Islands. He hopes to help the Marshalls build a new peacetime economy.

[00:22:06.85] What we're trying to do in our approach is simple education. It's to state the facts. Yes, several of our atolls were used for nuclear testing, but the Marshall Islands as a whole is by no means a risky place or a dangerous place to go as a visitor.

[00:22:26.43] In the last 50 years, our country has undergone a great deal of change.

[00:22:37.06] [GUITARS PLAYING, SINGING]

[00:22:43.01] Many Marshall Islanders received reparations for the damage wrought by the nuclear testing and other US aid. But the country faces difficult economic problems. More than 75% of the population is under the age of 25, and jobs for this next generation will be scarce.

[00:23:09.89] The Marshallese know they must diversify their economy.

[00:23:14.93] We're going to go along the northern side of the atoll here.

[00:23:17.87] Ben Graham has been exploring some of the islands with his friends, hoping to develop ecotourism destinations.

[00:23:25.69] I myself, I mean, I love to go to the Aur atolls. You can fish, you can surf. You can snorkel and scuba dive and explore ancient villages.

[00:23:40.49] I think with the coral down here and the good water quality and the nice beach here, this is a very good island for visitors.

[00:23:48.65] A lot of our economic well-being will depend on just how successfully we develop tourism. And we realize that this is not going to happen overnight.

[00:24:01.85] But Ben's plans may soon be washed away.

[00:24:04.68] [SURF SOUNDS]

[00:24:11.85] The waters came in like this, and took out all the houses.

[00:24:17.36] During a recent rain season, the islands have been swept by strong storms and tides.

[00:24:24.39] The houses by the oceanside were washed out. And people were moved to the churches and the school.

[00:24:32.64] We start to expect them, that from this month to that month, there'll be a flood somewhere on island.

[00:24:43.68] There were so many coconut trees that were planted, but they have been downed.

[00:24:53.42] During the last decade, the island of Majuro has lost dozens of feet of shoreline. Unregulated development contributes to the damage, but locals believe that the unusual storms and sweeping high tides are causing most of the erosion.

[00:25:10.77] We as a country need to start asking ourselves, where will we go and what will we do, before we discuss development of any sector-- tourism, fisheries, or agriculture.

[00:25:25.30] What will we do when sea level rises and covers up our atolls?

[00:25:36.94] In an effort to prevent further erosion, Majuro has become and island of seawalls. Even garbage imported from the United States is used to fend off the rising tides.

[00:25:54.34] Since land is so scarce, even the coral reefs are being dug up to construct walls, walls that constantly need rebuilding.

[00:26:07.98] Sea walls cost money, and all the money in the world won't prevent this from happening.

[00:26:14.26] According to government officials, building and maintaining effective seawalls around Majuro will cost more than the island's annual national budget.

[00:26:30.48] The erosion is not only removing the land, but the very culture itself. Even the dead are not safe from the rising waters.

[00:26:41.63] In the Marshallese culture, each village has a cemetery. That village will have a lineage, and the people of the lineage will be buried there. It's very important for families to know where their relatives are buried. We count the relatives further back. It's not just the cousins and the great aunts. It's really further back.

[00:27:10.87] In the culture, we can only come and visit the graveyard during a funeral. That will be the time that you can go and renew the paint on the grave or put more flowers on the grave that belongs to your relative.

[00:27:35.97] We've lost some of the graveyards because of erosion. This is part of a grave. That one too. Here's another one. A whole one over there. That probably belonged to a child.

[00:27:56.51] When a grave is eroded, the relatives would go and pick up all the bones and move them. At this moment, that's what they are doing.

[00:28:09.75] [WOODWIND INSTRUMENT PLAYING]

[00:28:21.68] [WATER LAPPING]

[00:28:32.65] The Marshallese, like their Pacific neighbors, worry that in the not too distant future they may have to leave their homes. Those fears come from a sense of history repeating itself. The United States, the country that forced them into exile half a century ago, now poses the biggest threat to their hopes for a better future.

[00:28:55.65] It's a very unique situation because we have a political and economic partnership with the biggest country that contributes to global warming, the United States. We think that countries and people in countries which contribute largely to global warming have an obligation to take steps to try to prevent it and help people like us.

[00:29:23.55] Steps to bring down the climate's rising temperature involve reducing greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. It was at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 that the United Nations called world leaders together to address the global warming threat.

[00:29:42.07] 150 nations signed the first international treaty on climate change. The treaty set the year 2000 as the deadline for industrial countries to voluntarily reduce their greenhouse gases. But the non-binding agreement was ignored by most countries, including the United States, and emissions continued to climb.

[00:30:05.92] We are by far the largest polluters in terms of greenhouse gases. We're also the largest economy. Our particular circumstance was that since 1992, 1993, this economy has been blessed by rigorous economic growth. With that growth, greenhouse gases are increasing.

[00:30:25.51] In addition, energy prices hit all-time historic lows. And that, of course, was something that proved disincentive to reducing our own energy consumption. As a result, we saw by the year 2000, we'd be well above the 1990 level.

[00:30:42.02] Warned by industrial leaders that changes in oil and coal consumption might force their economies into recession, policymakers refused to carry out cutbacks. They also pointed to gaps in the scientific evidence, saying that the grim forecast was not 100?rtain.

[00:31:00.35] It'll take us another 20, 25 years to be 99?rtain. And there's a high price for that. The price that we pay is if we wait around that long, it becomes that much more expensive to fix the problem, and it becomes that much more damage that we could have prevented that we won't prevent.

[00:31:18.39] For Pacific Islanders, the unwillingness of industrial nations to cut their greenhouse emissions had come as a shock. They were determined to convince world leaders that global warming must not be ignored.

[00:31:32.66] So this is something that we've actually got to confront as a region.

[00:31:36.52] Scientists from the islands, including Penehuro Lefale, met to develop a strategy for the coming international meeting.

[00:31:44.33] What can we say about the longer term change, which are things which actually deal with, at one extreme, survival?

[00:31:52.41] So we need to talk to the leaders about what are the impacts of the latest El Nino, for example, the drought that is taking place.

[00:32:00.66] The idea is to, how do we work in partnership? How do we respect one another?

[00:32:04.51] There must be compensation. There must be some flow of resources to address that financially.

[00:32:17.34] As the scientific evidence of global warming became more compelling, world leaders met again to consider the issue, this time in Kyoto, Japan. At the conference, leading scientists presented conclusive findings confirming earlier theories of global warming.

[00:32:34.15] Are human activities changing the earth's atmospheric composition and climate? The answer is clearly yes. And even more relevant for your discussions here in Kyoto, without policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions, the earth's climate is projected to warm by 1 to 3 and 1/2 degrees centigrade by the year 2100.

[00:32:56.23] Island nations urged world leaders to heed the warning signs.

[00:33:01.31] Throughout the world, the story is the same. Island countries are on the front lines of the global climate catastrophe.

[00:33:11.63] For days, world leaders debated how much to cut back, how quickly, and at what cost.

[00:33:18.50] The world is watching.

[00:33:21.40] Scientists and environmentalists appealed to the world community to develop a treaty to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They called for a 60% to 80?crease, the only way, they warned, to quickly stabilize the climate.

[00:33:37.20] But such a significant cutback would require a drastic drop in fossil fuel consumption. It was a proposal world leaders refused to consider.

[00:33:45.99] The imperative here is to do what we promise rather than to promise what we cannot do.

[00:33:52.34] Even a compromise proposal of 20% was rejected.

[00:33:57.05] To take on a target of reductions they had anticipated would basically have caused us such a severe impact our economy it would have plunged the world into recession. That's just not a realistic target for us to undertake. You cannot do that.

[00:34:14.33] [INAUDIBLE], the delegate of Samoa, wishes to take the floor.

[00:34:18.82] The somewhat mediocre proposals for strengthening commitments which are now being discussed leads us to feel that Annex 1 Parties are probably not taking the science seriously enough.

[00:34:39.21] On the last day of the Kyoto meeting, delegates stunned the islanders by proposing global emissions reductions of only 6?low 1990 levels.

[00:34:51.38] We'll recommend the adoption of this protocol to the conference by unanimity.

[00:35:01.78] The scientist say in order to just stabilize the emissions of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, you need at least 60% to 80% global cuts in CO2 emissions. What was agreed upon in Kyoto is only a global reduction of 6% by the year 2010.

[00:35:30.63] From an island perspective, that is really, really difficult to accept. Because it's the security and the solvency off island nations that are at stake.

[00:35:45.48] Despite their disappointment in such a small reduction, many treaty supporters were relieved that an agreement was reached at all.

[00:35:53.38] Kyoto got lots of people unhappy. But my own view is it was an important first step. You can't solve a problem at the scale of the planet, like the world's atmosphere and its climate, by just having individuals, corporations, or nation-states being the only players. It requires an international agreement because everybody's stuff contributes.

[00:36:11.88] The second principle that it recognized is that you have to charge the people who do the most damage the most. The overwhelming balance of evidence and scientific opinion is that it is no longer a theory but now a fact that global warming is for real.

[00:36:31.91] But Clinton administration support of the treaty failed to convince the US senate.

[00:36:37.78] Here's the plan that our administration is now purporting, that they would cause us to enter into an agreement--

[00:36:46.33] Congressional opponents claimed the cost of emissions reductions fell too heavily on the United States and that emerging industrial countries needed to do more.

[00:36:55.86] When we arrive at the year 2010, to achieve our 1990 levels, here's what the United States will be doing in relation to the rest of the world. And here's what the rest of the world will be doing. And yet China and India and other Asian nations and developing countries, by this administration's negotiations, would be exempt.

[00:37:20.64] The developing countries do point to us, the United States, first and foremost. Other developed countries too, say, you're the ones that created this problem. You've got to take the first steps. And that's what Kyoto was all about, is our taking the first steps.

[00:37:32.84] European governments have already ratified the climate treaty and begun implementing programs to reduce their emissions. Meanwhile, some advocates for American industry have launched multimillion dollar campaigns to challenge the scientific basis for global warming.

[00:37:51.34] The year 2085. The atmospheric level of carbon dioxide has doubled to 540 parts per million. What kind of world have we created?

[00:38:03.35] A better world. A more productive world. Plants are the basis for all productivity on earth. They're the only organisms that can utilize the sun's energy and create matter, food. And they're going to do that much more effectively, much more efficiently.

[00:38:19.81] But mainstream scientists disagree. In fact, rising temperatures could eventually bring about crop failures, decreased yields, and food shortages.

[00:38:31.90] I pay little attention to people who go around expressing these marginal views. And I think they're very dangerous in a way, because they give people an excuse for not planning effectively for the future.

[00:38:47.93] Without a treaty, global emissions continue to rise.

[00:38:52.44] Basically, what we've done already in terms of emitting greenhouse gases into the lower part of the atmosphere has set the stage for the next 50 or 80 years. But if we cut emissions now, or if we cut emissions over the next 10 years, then, hopefully, towards the end of the next century then levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will go down.

[00:39:17.24] It's not going to have much effect on people in the next 20 or 30 years. We're talking about our grandchildren and their children. We're talking about creating a world which is a good place for them to live in so that they don't look back to our generation and think that was the generation that used up all the resources and left us with a wasteland.

[00:39:46.95] The reason I'm here is because I'm very concerned about what's happening back home in terms of the impacts of climate change. Everyone would say, look, you're just one little person. You can't make a difference. How are you being here going to make a difference to the outcome of the negotiations?

[00:40:07.61] The scientists are telling us, really, there's nothing much you can do because global warming is going to happen, and it's happening. I couldn't sit back at home and not do anything.

[00:40:25.94] Bonn, Germany. October, 1999. The scene of yet another world meeting on the climate change treaty. Angie Heffernan has come to Bonn from her home in Fiji, hoping to convince leaders of industrialized nations to push the climate treaty process forward to ratification.

[00:40:45.63] Angie is an environmentalist and policy analyst working with the Alliance of Small Island States, an organization which negotiates on behalf of island nations from all around the world.

[00:41:00.05] When I get on that plane and leave home, I feel like I'm somebody else, and I have to be somebody else.

[00:41:10.14] The first meetings I went, it was like you didn't fit in. Here you are a woman, a Pacific islander from this small little country. You're the victim. You feel like everything's happening too fast.

[00:41:24.23] [CROWD SOUNDS]

[00:41:38.59] It can be very scary because you see all these guys. Most of the people at this meeting are men in their suits and their briefcase, looking very serious, looking like they're high-powered negotiators.

[00:41:51.93] We've got the diplomats, you know, the ones that sweet-talk everyone. You've got the technical people, technical experts that come. You've got the NGOs here pushing their agenda. You've got the government delegations. You've got the media as well here to get the juicy stories. You've got the oil, the fossil fuel industry people here.

[00:42:14.94] You've got everyone out here with a different agenda, looking out for their own interests. Basically you can divide them into two different groupings. One, the one that wants progress, the other one that wants to hinder progress.

[00:42:30.96] I want to be that voice, that voice of conscience, because at the end of the day, like from developed countries, they're contributing to our problem in the Pacific. They're making us go under.

[00:42:42.89] My immediate hope is that the US actually signs the Kyoto Protocol so we can have some progress in developed countries cutting their emissions, because the Pacific doesn't have much time left.

[00:42:57.28] It was not a hope shared by all who came to Bonn. Lobbyists for the Global Climate Coalition, an association opposed to an international climate treaty, argued that the proposed agreement would devastate the US economy.

[00:43:11.22] The economic impact is going to be very severe. And what does that mean? That means job loss. That means several million jobs lost. It also means higher cost for basic goods and services, like home heating expenses, electric utility expenses, car gasoline prices, bus fares. The ripple effect goes all the way through the economy and touches every household in America.

[00:43:34.59] Treaty proponents say such fears are greatly exaggerated.

[00:43:38.38] Because when somebody tells you it's going to cost a whole lot of money to get off coal, and they point to all the unemployed coal miners, they're not pointing out how many people are going to make money in the high technology, natural gas, combined cycle power plants, how many people are going to make money in the wind machines and in the solar machines, how many people are going to make money in the new fuel cell cars.

[00:43:59.33] So what you're really doing is you're not costing the economy very much. You're redistributing the winners and losers.

[00:44:06.80] Like Kyoto, the Bonn conference did not produce a concrete plan for action that all nations would accept.

[00:44:14.13] Mr. Chairman, we note that the workshop failed to reach any meaningful consensus on the issue of impacts of response measures.

[00:44:22.57] Mr. Chairman, we were very disturbed that the final session of the workshop became a negotiation where issues that seemed to have been agreed to by all participants during the course of the workshop were now being negotiated down.

[00:44:42.26] We are here at the conference in Bonn with a number of procedural delays, a number of deliberate delays from some parties. A lot of deliberate interference in the process by certain interested industries and their lobbyists. And we are floundering with trying to get a good outcome for the island countries.

[00:45:03.52] Some of the largest stakeholders in the debate over global warming were barely visible at the treaty conference. The oil and coal industries, these powerful multinationals, are cautious about any measures to restructure the world's fuel supply.

[00:45:18.83] They have resisted UN efforts to develop international regulations, and argued instead for allowing the market to set its own environmental standards.

[00:45:29.49] The Kyoto Protocol assumes that new technologies, better and improved technologies, will be available for use. A lot of creative minds in American business and industry are at work right now finding those technologies and working on them, and trying to bring them to the market so that we can have better and improved environmental performance and business efficiencies.

[00:45:49.69] But this has got to occur through the marketplace and over a period of time, and let the market bring them out.

[00:45:57.47] So it becomes very politically contentious. I understand their problem. We need to deal in a fair way with their transition. But just because it's difficult for them doesn't mean we hold back the progress in the world and we destroy the environment in the process.

[00:46:14.39] While the politicians and scientists continue to argue over policies to reduce emissions, Angie fears for her future.

[00:46:26.41] Well, you know, the scenarios don't look very good for us in terms of impacts in our countries at home. And at least I can say, you know, at least I can say I tried. We tried. Because our children are going to look back in time and they're going to judge us by what we've done. And they're going to blame our generation for not taking concrete action.

[00:46:52.72] But I'm very upset and I'm very depressed and I'm very frustrated, and I think like maybe it's not worth my while coming to these conferences.

[00:47:07.97] [TRAFFIC SOUNDS]

[00:47:28.16] You sometimes feel frustrated with the slow progress in negotiations. It's like trying to move a dinosaur. But that's the way it is, the way the world works. And we have to be patient.

[00:47:49.78] Penehuro Lafale's efforts to raise public awareness of global warming brought him to New York City. He believes the weather changes occurring in his Pacific homeland may soon take place throughout the world.

[00:48:04.72] On the island of Manhattan, a city with nearly as many people as the South Pacific, he finds a sympathetic ear, Dr. Vivien Gornitz.

[00:48:15.66] This is the World Financial Center. You can see there are two towers. And then behind it are the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

[00:48:25.07] Dr. Gornitz is a scientist at the Center for Climate Systems Research at Columbia University. She analyzes future coastal hazards of sea level rise for the New York metropolitan area.

[00:48:37.51] Penehuro joined her for an unusual tour of New York.

[00:48:42.22] In New York, we live on an island in Manhattan, and we're surrounded by the sea. But most of the people in the city are not aware of that.

[00:48:51.62] For us in the Pacific, the sea and the land is part of us.

[00:48:57.30] One of the disadvantages, I think, of being as developed as we are here is that we've lost a lot of our connection to the land. We have a scientist see these things that are changing, and it's very hard to convince the rest of the public.

[00:49:12.32] Like the Pacific Islands, Manhattan rises barely above the ocean waters. Portions of it could be inundated by a rise in sea level, one of the effects of global warming. Manhattan had a glimpse of such a scenario in 1992, when a powerful storm hit the New York area.

[00:49:33.32] We're going to see one of the train stations, the PATH train stations, that was flooded during the 1992 December nor'easter. And so this whole area was flooded underwater during that storm. The water just washed over and came down the stairs.

[00:50:00.64] So many of the tunnel entrances and subway entrances are very close to the water level. The entire transportation system of the New York metropolitan area was totally disrupted. All the airports were closed. The entire subway system was shut down. The ferries weren't running, and even the Metroliner service was disrupted.

[00:50:30.32] With the rise in sea level, it's not that the number of storms would necessarily increase, but their impacts would be greater. The amount of flooding of even lesser storms would start to match what is happening here.

[00:50:53.38] Notice all these new construction, the skyscrapers and everything, very close to the water's edge. What is considered a boom and a revitalization of the waterfront puts all of this area at risk to any future changes in the sea level.

[00:51:11.42] Now of course in the future, this area, people are not going to abandon this area so quickly, so what they'll probably do is they'll have to raise the seawalls higher. They will spend the money to protect lower Manhattan, but this is not a feasible solution for every coastline in the world.

[00:51:32.16] It's very interesting to see that even New York itself is an island, and people need to look at it from that perspective. The message is really clear that we cannot afford to hold back and pretend that there is no problem. We need to work together as a global community to resolve the problems.

[00:51:53.89] The United States could be impacted quite severely from global warming. For example, the state of Florida, the Keys, the coral reefs. Places where millions of Americans go each year for vacation could be inundated. Places on the east coast, the Chesapeake Bay, could be inundated if we continue to pollute the way that we're polluting.

[00:52:17.26] I don't think that reducing greenhouse gases in the United States has to be painful. But there have to be changes that are made. And those changes need to be done in the United States by making us more efficient.

[00:52:29.99] You could get a large number of reductions from sport utility vehicles. Put forth a plan of how to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from our power plants.

[00:52:40.30] The United States has a special role to play in this debate, and it can be the leader on advocating and making changes to fight global warming.

[00:52:50.80] The island states have made everybody reexamine their fundamental premises about development. Why not bypass the internal combustion engine right over to fuel cells, to other high technology, low polluting devices? Bypass coal burning to combined cycle natural gas, efficient and clean, or to solar and wind and other kinds of power.

[00:53:12.83] And all of this is possible if there were an international agreement with a bargain to transfer technology and the resources to do that.

[00:53:38.51] The people of the Pacific Islands believe they have already glimpsed the future. Rising tides, more frequent and more violent storms, declining food supplies, physical erosion, cultural losses, growing anxiety, and, perhaps, eventual exile.

[00:54:05.43] But, they warn, if the bell tolls for them, it will toll for us too.

[00:54:12.64] Are we talking about the whole planet, the interests of the planet, the interests of the future of mankind? Or are we sort of just going around the circle, being driven by interests which are short term?

[00:54:30.01] It's a question of life and death for us out here. Our country is beginning to look at options of relocating, and literally seek higher ground.

[00:54:40.32] [MUSIC PLAYING]

[00:54:49.28] Once people have the awareness of what is causing this problem, then they know that there are options available to them to continue to be a part of this problem, or they want to be a part of the solution.

[00:55:04.79] And we may be the first victim of this phenomenon, but your turn will come up later, whether it will be your children or grandchildren, unless you do something about it.

[00:55:21.68] [MUSIC PLAYING]

[00:55:38.11] For more information about this program, please go to our website at www.itvs.org.

[00:56:33.05] Major funding for this program was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding was provided by the Environmental Verification and Analysis Center at the University of Oklahoma.