Before The Flood (2016)
Samuel David Bolivar Trujillo
A 2016 documentary produced by National Geographic Channel, narrated by
Leonardo DiCaprio, in his journey as a United Nations Messenger of Peace, traveling
to different locations around the world, ranging from highly developed countries to
developing nations. DiCaprio meets with different scientists and political leaders
regarding the effects of climate change and how humans are the main contributors
to these phenomena. people who admit this is a non-reversible phenomenon,
although they promote behaviors to avoid and in some way reverse the effects that
are occurring as a result of our actions. He realizes that there is a global
misinformation campaign led by large corporations with private interests working to
confuse the public about this climate crisis, denying the existence of global warming.
Directed by Fisher Stevens and Martin Scorsese as executive producer. In this
documentary you can see the effects of climate change in the world and aims to alert
society about how our lifestyle is destroying the ecosystem and then we must seek
a solution before it is too late.
At a United Nations conference, Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said that climate
change is coming too fast. He made an analogy of the earth, he said that if we
considered how big the universe is then our planet is just a small boat and stated
that if that boat collapses, then we will probably all collapse with it. During that
conference DiCaprio was called out by the secretary general as a credible voice of
the environmental movement. DiCaprio said that he thought that humans are trying
to pretend climate change was not real so it would make it disappear. unfortunately,
the press said that Leonardo DiCaprio has foolishly fallen into a sham. basically they
said that those who believe in climate change are idiots.
DiCaprio shows us that in the past several cultures used to kill many animals, whom
he considered magnificent, and caused damage to their environment, except that
they didn't realize it and they just did it for survival, nowadays we know all the
damage that we are causing to our planet and even so, we keep on doing it but on
much larger scale.
One of the biggest problems in the climate change issue is the economy, Michael
Brune said that if human beings wanted to fight climate change, then we should
realize that most of our economy is based on fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural
gas, commonly used for transportation and electricity.
He said that in the first decades of the 21st century, in order to maintain our
dependence on these fuels, humans used very risky sources, he listed: the
demolition of mountain tops, drilling for natural gas, offshore oil drilling, and
bituminous sand, which he considers one of the major pollutants. and this is why he
says that there is no clean fuel.
To demonstrate how bad for the environment tar sands can be, DiCaprio flew
through an area that was once full of trees but now has none left. tar sands are
normally used to extract oil.
DiCaprio recalled when he spoke with the now ex-president of the United States, Al
Gore, about this issue. Al gore argued that most of the things we did, such as our
means of transportation, the way we produced food, the way we built our cities; they
release CO2 into the atmosphere and this produced climate change. He predicted
that the polar ice caps would eventually melt, the oceans would rise and human race
would meet with many natural disasters, he didn't understand it at the time but now,
it is a reality.
Baffin Island, Canadian Artic
To start his tour, DiCaprio began his journey through the Canadian Arctic, where he
met with the guide Jake Awa and Dr. Enric Sala.
The guide explained that they used to have much more ice, much bluer; however,
now it is a lighter, weaker ice. In addition, Dr. Enric Sala stated that by 2040 there
will be no sea ice left, he said that humans will be able to navigate through the arctic
all because of the fossil fuels we are burning. He predicts that if the arctic disappears,
the currents, the weather patterns, all that will change and disasters will occur.
DiCaprio remembers back in the 2000s when he talked to the president of the united
states at the time, he recalled that it took a long time for people to feel climate
change. he noted that back then they were all focused on small actions that could
contribute, like changing a light bulb to one that is less harmful to the environment.
unfortunately, today things are at a more alarming level.
Greenland
In Greenland, DiCaprio had the opportunity to speak with climatologist Jason E. Box;
he said that if the climate stays at the temperatures of the last decade then
Greenland is likely to disappear.
The melting of the ice in the arctic is clearly a big problem for humanity because if
the ice melts, the sea level rises affecting mostly coastal cities, this brings us to
Florida, where DiCaprio spoke with the mayor of Miami.
Miami, Florida
In Florida, water is flooding into the city, the streets are totally filled with water. One
of the solutions that the mayor implemented was to raise the roads and create pump
systems to remove the water from the city. The mayor said that unfortunately this
will only be useful for the next 50 years, and after that what will happen?
the mayor said that we have to have solutions to that point, but he clarified that they
have a governor and a cabinet that do not believe that climate change is a serious
issue. Actually, in Florida several officials were banned for using the words "climate
change", this policy was implemented in 2011. This policy began to be implemented
in 2011 after Rick Scott came into office.
Senator Rubio stated that he does not believed that human activity was directly
responsible for those changes in the climate the way scientists have stated.
In response to the opposition, the mayor said he thought it was a completely political
issue, because as he expressed it, "The ocean is not Republican, it's not
Democratic, it's just growing."
At Penn state university, DiCaprio had an interview with a distinguished professor of
atmospheric science; Michael E. Mann, he explained that 97% of climate scientists
accepted the existence of global warming and they said that it was due to the burning
of fossil fuels and other human activities. in spite of that, doctor Michael told us that
human beings are facing a huge disinformation campaign whose objective obviously
is to confuse people. but he adds something else, he said that the fossil fuel
companies are the ones that financed all these campaigns to deny the existence of
climate change, obviously it suits them that there is no climate change in financial
terms.
The documentary shows us how even though this large percentage of scientists
agree with the existence of climate change, there are politicians and other public
figures who do not believe in climate change and take it upon themselves to go to
the media to talk about how it is false, and that if you believe in it you are stupid.
James Inhofe, one of the most climate change denying congressmen, expressed in
congress that global warming was nothing more than a hoax. he said that man
cannot be able to change the climate, that is just like pretending to be a god. For
showing the evidence of climate change, doctor Michael was defamed in the media,
he even received death threats from people that he believes knew that they could
not win this scientific debate. Dr. Michael said that even if they tried to launch an
environmental bill, it would not pass congress, because congress itself is controlled
by the fossil fuel companies, and they themselves, he said, have blocked any
legislation to deal with the problem.
China
In China, DiCaprio met with the director of the institute of public environmental affairs
Ma Jun; he said:
“The last 35 years, china has been through a massive industrialization and
urbanization and its growing. China is the factory of the world, manufacturing for all
the western countries and much of the pollution of that industry is getting dumped in
our backwards” Ma Jun
He said that people have become very concerned about the level of toxicity that is
in the Chinese air, and this happened when people understood how it was affecting
their own health and that of their family. and that concern led to mass protests and
thanks to the manifestations the Chinese government started to implement new
different methods for acquiring energy.
That was in the case of a developed country like China, but what about less
developed countries? DiCaprio's next location will be India
India
India is one of the countries that emits the most CO2 into the atmosphere, however,
the country's priority is development and lifting the population out of poverty, sadly a
high percentage of India's population is in extreme poverty. In India there are on
average 300 million people without energy, that is almost equivalent to the number
of people in the united states. There are people whose only source of energy for
cooking is the excrement of some animals.
“we care about climate change, but the fact is we are a country where energy access
is as much as challenge as climate change, we have to make sure every Indian has
access to Energy” Sunita Narain
i feel that Sunita has a kind of repulsion against the united states and blames the
united states as a whole, i feel that she is partly right, the united states is one of the
countries that emit more CO2. but it is not only their fault, for me this is absolutely
everyone's responsibility. and not 'because of that any American i have in front of
me i will tell him that his country condemned our world and in a certain way,
discriminate. That was what I could see meanwhile she was talking with DiCaprioShe said that the electricity consumption of one American is equivalent to that of 34
people in India, she said that there really was no change, and in the absence of
change the poor are the ones who will be most affected by climate change. She said
we need to put the issue of lifestyle and consumption at the center of climate
negotiations
DiCaprio states that if we want to solve this problem we all should have a
responsibility to set an example to others and help the world transition before it is
too late.
Kiribati
The president of Kiribati said that due to rising sea levels, their islands will be under
water, they have tried to relocate the population as a short term solution, but in the
long term they really don't know what to do. he said we must accept that we may not
be able to accommodate the entire population so that they will not be affected by
flooding.
The Palau president said that it will be the small island nations, which contribute the
least to the causes of climate change, that will be most affected by global warming.
But it's not just sea levels that are rising, humans are also taking marine systems to
the point of destruction. Dr. Jeremy Jackson and DiCaprio went on a dive to a coral
reef destroyed by human actions, he said that the reefs as we know them today are
going to disappear and that more than half of them have already disappeared.
Indonesia
we move on to Indonesia where the conflict is based on the palm oil industry.
Fariwiza Farhan said that this industry has taken over almost 80% of their forests,
all this clearly financed by the big corporations that destroyed and burned the forests
with the authorization of the government, releasing large amounts of CO2 and taking
away the homes of millions of living beings, all this to satisfy the needs of the
consumer, so we are made aware to regulate our food and the brands that we are
buying.
Carbon Tax
returning to the subject of fossil fuels Elon Musk said that the fossil fuel industry was
the largest in the world and had more influence than any other industry. He thought
that the science of the issue was that we are safely going to a level of damage, the
faster we act the less damage that will result.
Elon implements in his factories the energy of the sun in batteries: "if you have the
energy of the sun, why not store it in a battery" Elon Musk.
He proposed that the solution to climate change would be to add a carbon tax to any
kind of activity that releases CO2 into the atmosphere.
Gregory Manikin, professor of economics, believed that a carbon tax would be a
viable solution. He said that climate change involved several negative effects and
$44 trillion in costs. He said that if we added a carbon tax then people would have
to take those costs into account, so by raising the price of carbon, their consumption
would go down, and humans would have to use renewable resources. In the face of
opposition, he says we have to change the president's point of view, and if we are
going to change the president's thinking we have to change the public's thinking on
that.
NEW CHANGES IN PARIS
We are shown the climate summit that took place in Paris, where an agreement was
reached in all the countries, this agreement demands to keep global warming well
below 2 degrees Celsius, but there was no carbon tax.
Leonardo DiCaprio met with then president Obama to discuss the issue, Obama was
happy about what had been achieved in Paris and was hopeful that something could
change. Obama said that the targets that were set in Paris are not close enough to
what the scientists told us we need to do to solve the problem. He said that if we use
the next 20 years to apply existing technologies to reduce CO2 emissions so that we
can then implement new technologies that do not help to reverse the effects of this
inevitable phenomenon, we can in a sense slow down climate change. The
Pentagon has stated that this is a matter of national security because if sea levels
rise, people will have to relocate and there will be a shortage of resources.
A Nasa expert says that if we start implementing the necessary changes the planet
will continue to warm for a while and then start to cool down. but he states that there
is a chance to do something to save our planet.
the pope said that the events in Paris will take us in the right direction but it is not
enough, he said that we have to pray, for the human race.
Personal Opinion: this personal opinion of from a past work
Climate change is something that cannot be avoided
But even so that someone talks about climate change, the population does not care,
why?
Well, our ability to worry about something is like a glass that we can fill with a certain
amount of fear, so from so much using terrible images that generate fear, or the
population, the glass has been spilled, as a result of this the fear no longer works
All this starts from the industrial revolution, we began to burn coal, oil and natural
gas in large quantities for energy production and to manufacture things, in turn many
of these manufactured things also generate carbon dioxide, producing a great
change in the C02, because of this, the temperature has begun to rise more than it
would be natural, and this is what is called global warming, this is the cause of
climate change. And if our climate changes and becomes warmer, disasters occur,
rising sea levels, forest fires, overflowing rivers and lakes, etc.
Another reason why people don't care about climate change is Denialism, denialism
is a position that says that anything about climate change is a lie and that there is no
reliable data, even if there is.
.For years’ denial studies have been funded by various companies and studies that
support climate change issues are not paid for by companies, this group of United
Nations scientists have been chosen by more than 195 countries and do not charge
for it. Therefore, we can say that there are interests on both sides and that favors
denialism, since the scientific studies with which we can combat denialism suddenly
no longer have as much value and the population begins to distrust them. This is
part of the post-truth and makes things complicated, so it seems that, even if
something is, you cannot agree And trying to fight post-truth is so exhausting and
although I am not a denialist so as not to have to fight against it, we look for excuses.
One of them is Techno optimism, according to this it does not matter that the planet
is warming more than normal, we are only not counting on technologies that we will
have in 20 or 30 more years that perhaps can provide a solution to this problem
Another way to get away from the post-truth is with Keep calm: based on this we
could say that climate change is real but we cannot go from producing our energy
with 0 CO2 from one day to the next, these technologies are expensive, must be
developed. Because we do not better concentrate on natural gas that produces 50%
less than carbon dioxide or oil, that is, to advance little by little
And the last way or excuse is to say that there are other problems that deserve more
attention. The world economic forum has been publishing a report on the greatest
risks at a global level; and risks such as pandemics, wars, economic crises have
been disappearing from the top positions, where they are now:
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Massive destruction weapons
Extreme weather events
Water crisis
Natural disasters
Failure of measures against climate change
And it is not that the other risks do not exist, but rather that the latter are the ones
that have the greatest impact on a global level.
And this is when something key comes in
EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED
If you analyze all these threats as a network of problems that are connected to each
other. In other words, if there is a water crisis, we will have crop problems that end
in a food shortage. Climate change is the one most connected to other problems. So
from climate change comes the water crisis and also climatic disasters and with
these disasters there is another risk, infrastructure failure, which is expected to fail
in case of climatic disasters and so on, all the risks that threaten humanity are
connected one way or another and climate change makes everything worse.
Nothing from Keep calm this is already here and we have less time than we think
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Countries that disappear
Increasingly violent natural disasters
Lost crops
Hunger
Wars for control of water
People forced to emigrate
Governments that are not prepared for the future
And these are the dystopian visions that are taking place for the future because of
climate change
Now let's change things
So if everything is connected and climate change worsens other things that can harm
humanity, attacking climate change would help solve humanity's great problems?
Could we create a positive vision about all this?
This is when we return to the post-truth, in which people do not know what to believe,
however this whole post-truth thing could be called manipulation, denialism does not
like us to know data such as that solar energy is cheaper that coal, oil or gas, nor
that China, the largest producer of carbon dioxide is beginning to do its homework
and already has 40% of the world's aero generators, that is why handling and the
good thing about manipulation is that it does not work so well if you know that you
are being manipulated
As a consequence of this, you can now believe in science again without generating
doubts.
Climate change is something that is happening or since we began to notice the
temperatures, we could see that the trend is clear, it is getting hotter and hotter, and
this is not going to change, that is why we have to adapt to the situation and try not
to make our situation worse, the sooner we reduce greenhouse gases, the more we
will reduce the negative effects that it produces.
Currently our energy network is based on fossil fuels, some countries have them and
others do not and that generates wars, to control resources and this causes a price
crisis, but not only that, as these energies also generate too much C02 they make
the change worse climate and increase this dystopia.
BUT if we adapt to climate change as I mentioned before we would have to change
them for renewable energies
What would happen?
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Less C02
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Cheaper energy
And we would reduce the risk of wars for resources because energy ceases to
depend on a key place and can occur anywhere, that makes us more resistant to
future crises because, even if one point of the network fails, the rest continues to
function, this too would produce new development opportunities,
But this does not stay that way
And if we adapt what we build based on climate change, then if we had cities, roads
with bridges more prepared for future disasters, we could better withstand the
disasters we already have and if we assume that due to climate change the rains
are going to change, then why not invest in water treatment plants, efficient irrigation,
desalination plants, and if we did we could resist other problems of humanity much
better, such as droughts and food crises.
Climate change is a problem that we already have, and since everything is related,
fighting it helps in almost any other problem that we have now, for example,
absorbing CO2, planting more trees, these arable crops would also help curb
desertification, a problem that affects 40% of our planet and that if we fight it helps
us against the water and food crises
If we adapt to climate change and solve its defects, we are transforming society,
making it more resistant to any crisis