My name is Damon.
And this is my daughter, velvet.
Are you trying to plant dad?
She's just turned four.
Her days are spent in a happy bubble,
created by my excellent wife, Zoe.
Yeah?
She's lucky enough that her major concerns right now
are numbers... Daddy. Mummy. Velly.
So how many pieces is that?
How to tell a knock knock joke...
- Knock, knock. - Who's there?
- Unicorn. - Unicorn who?
Unicorn jump over the rainbow.
Oh, that's who it is!
And the elusive art of sleep direction.
But soon she'll have to leave that happy bubble
and face a rapidly deteriorating environment.
faster than the scientists predicted.
We're seeing large waterfalls
pouring off the side of the ice.
It's an alarming acceleration.
The need to address this is so urgent...
That it often overwhelms me.
The simplest way I can explain our current predicament
is to briefly channel my year nine science teacher
and pretend our house is the planet.
Carbon is a miraculous building block
and for millions of years,
our planet has been part of a natural carbon cycle.
Some gets released, some gets stored,
and if these things are balanced,
then equilibrium is maintained.
But since the industrial revolution,
we've broken the balance
and have been dramatically increasing
the release of the earth's stored carbon
into our atmosphere.
For hundreds of thousands of years,
we've hovered between about 180 and 280 parts per million
of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
But since the industrial revolution,
that number has shot up over 40%
to more than 400 parts per million,
trapping heat in our atmosphere.
More than 90% of the excess heat being trapped
is absorbed by our oceans.
The oceans also absorb much of the extra carbon dioxide,
and so are now 30% more acidic than they were 150 years ago.
And this is impacting on biodiversity,
as many sea creatures, such as oysters or clams,
are struggling to make their shells.
But the increased heat and overall energy in the system
also leads to more intense weather events.
Hotter air can hold more moisture,
so rainfalls, storms, hurricanes, floods,
even snowfalls can become heavier.
It is true that the climate has always been changing.
It just hasn't changed this rapidly
in at least 50 million years.
Unfortunately, the increase in heat
also means that our polar caps and glaciers
are rapidly melting,
which causes sea level rise
that threatens hundreds of millions of people
The earth is our collective home,
but we're actually renting it from future generations.
So we need to not only rapidly reduce our emissions...
Oi! Righto!
But also find ways to sequester
or draw down the excess carbon dioxide
that has already been put into the system.
Many scientists believe that getting down to 350 ppm
would be a terrific goal.
So I think we're all pretty aware
that when it comes to predictions of the future,
they're almost entirely negative at the moment.
Any time you open your newsfeed or social media,
there's some kind of doom and gloom story
about the future of our environment.
And as a father, I...
I think there's room for a different story.
A story that focuses on the solutions
to some of these problems.
So my plan is to go out and find some of these solutions
and then create a vision of a different future
for our daughter.
What about...
I want to show her what the world would look like
if the solutions I find were implemented today.
So, what would the world look like in 2040
if we just embraced the best that already exists?
And that's my only rule.
Everything I show her in this 2040,
has to exist today, in some form.
I can't make it up.
- See you, dadda. - See you, darling.
Have fun.
I'm calling it an exercise in
fact-based dreaming.
The first step in this exercise was to consult the generation
who'll be sharing the future with our daughter.
- Hi, everybody. - Morning.
Morning. My name is Damon.
Now, do you guys know where we've come from today?
Do you know what country that I'm from?
No.
We have animals called platypus.
- Kangaroo. - Australia!
Australia? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We've been going all around the world
and talking to lots of different children your age,
and so we're going to ask you what kind of things
you want to see in the future.
Well, what would make me happy in the world is...
Hmm.
I think we should get this invention
which sucks up all of the rubbish in the world
and puts it in a intergalactic dimension,
which is a rubbish dimension.
I'd like to see deforestation being stopped
because it's ruining the planet.
Animals are losing their homes.
Cleaner water. That would really make me happy.
Well, I would like for the government
to have done something on global warming and pollution,
as now, I think they're not really doing anything about it.
You know, just be respectful to earth.
It was sobering to learn how preoccupied the kids are
with the state of the planet,
and what a big job I had ahead of me.
So I began my search for solutions with energy.
I found myself in Bangladesh, where the roads are chaotic...
And people are openly peddling ice on the streets.
Currently, Bangladesh has one of the largest
solar home system markets in the world.
Over 5 million solar home systems.
So most households in every rural area in Bangladesh
actually has a solar home system,
and that's their primary source of energy.
Wow.
This charming 23-year-old is neel tamhane,
who has studied alternative energy technologies
and come home to help power his country.
Turns out I wasn't the only one who wanted to hear him talk.
So what we do is we interconnect solar home systems
and we enable energy sharing between them,
which is basically trading,
and the customer chooses when they want to trade
and when they don't.
Instead of building large grids,
we're proposing a decentralised structure
where we start building grids bottom up.
The setup is quite simple.
Any home that has solar panels and a battery...
Can buy this special box...
Which connects them to another house
with the same setup.
The box allows the buying or selling of energy
between the homes.
But it gets better.
There is still a segment of the population
that still can't afford to buy a solar home system.
So, instead of doing that,
if they can just buy a small solbox,
they can just buy energy when they need it.
You fill up your solbox with money.
As you keep using energy, it deducts money.
What this means
is that all the boxes can connect to each other
to form a microgrid.
It's like a water tank of community energy
that people can give to or take from.
The beauty is that this microgrid
can then connect to the adjacent village's microgrid
and the network becomes stronger and stronger.
There's a mimicking of nature here, isn't there?
Like, in the way that cells multiply
and form something and strengthen it.
Yeah, that's a great analogy.
You have one solar home system,
you interconnect with your neighbours, you make it 50.
Slowly, you interconnect villages.
Once you have collected hundreds,
you can hook it up to the grid, you can sell to the grid.
Forget buying from it -
you become the primary energy generation source
for the country.
So the idea is we are like a swarm of bees
or a swarm of fish that move together,
pool in all our energies together to run bigger loads.
This technology could revolutionise
the way we distribute energy worldwide.
From little things, big things grow.
When we have a decentralised mode of energy,
the same thing that happened with the web,
happens with information
where basically, it's Democratic.
Energy becomes Democratic.
But also it becomes very efficient.
It's far more efficient
because you produce it at the point where you consume it.
Having efficient local energy
also provides greater resilience
in an increasingly hostile climate.
And when we talk about climate change, it's floods,
it's natural disasters that happen very often here.
In the last 1.5 years, we have seen about 5, 6 disasters.
When you have a centralised grid, everything breaks down
and then it takes a long time to build it back up.
If we have decentralised generation sources,
every household has their own generation source.
They're independent
and they have their power in their own hands,
instead of depending on the government
to provide it to them.
The impact of the locally-generated electricity
is best seen at night.
The influx of cash has made the village bazaar the place to be.
You guys have just skipped the landline telephone.
You've gone straight to the mobile.
Exactly. And it's throughout. It's not even about energy.
We skipped the grid and we build our own.
There are developing countries like India,
Bangladesh, a lot of countries in east Africa
that are trying to do a top-down electrification.
They are spending billions of dollars here.
But instead of doing that,
if they can actually help subsidise these systems
and let people own their own system,
they would be so proud by owning these.
So when I'm trading energy with you, suppose,
you're actually paying me for it, and I'm getting the money,
so the money also stays within the economy.
This is bringing back people together.
Yes!
As I left the village, I had a renewed sense of hope.
Particularly when neel told me
this technology is springing up in other countries.
This solution is great for our environment,
with so many cascading benefits
for any community that chooses to adopt it.
So, sticking to my rule of only showing what exists today,
here's what the future of energy could look like
for my daughter.
This, velvet, could be you.
Or this.
Or even this.
We love you.
And this could be where you live.
Or here.
Or even here.
But probably not here.
Darling! It's seven o'clock! It's time for family yoga!
Crystal, bring up energy.
Certainly. What would you like me to do?
Imagine if your house in 2040
is part of a microgrid
that helps power the economy throughout your city.
Imagine if your windows are solar glass
and come standard in new homes.
And your solar battery is cheap and recyclable.
This could allow you to donate your excess energy.
I'm going away for four days.
Would you like to share or sell?
Share. Hurricane relief.
Done. You're a legend.
Thanks.
- Humans are awesome. - Ok.
That choice was good for your soul.
Alright.
Every home is going to have a battery
that's going to store as much electricity
as it possibly can store.
And all the governments in the world
cannot push back against that
because folks are going to go buy it at the store,
at Ikea, at Walmart, at the supermarket.
And it's going to be very cheap.
So cheap that you're not even going to notice.
If cheaper home energy systems
are combined with more people demanding clean energy
from their politicians, darling...
Then there's a chance many countries
could be close to 100% renewable by 2040.
What I can guarantee
is that not only will I be an embarrassing dad...
Find news.
But that natural disasters will increase their intensity
over the next two decades.
Absolute chaos.
Run, run! Get out! Run, run!
God. Oh, my god!
Whoa!
But what I now know
is that we actually have everything we need
on both a large and small-scale
to power us through these disasters.
And by building new grids,
loads of people will get loads of jobs.
- Oh, that's good. - Mmm.
But what would be really great during this transition, velvet,
is if the people who work in the fossil fuel industry
are given support and funding for retraining in new careers.
Paid for by redirecting some of the $10 million a minute
governments currently spend subsidising fossil fuels.
What struck me about the microgrids
is that the profits from the shared energy
stay within the community and empower individuals,
rather than going to a big energy company elsewhere.
But it turns out microgrids are currently illegal
in some countries.
If we recognised that our well-being
fundamentally depends upon the stability
and the thriving of this planet,
we would put that at the heart
of the economic system we create.
I met with the economist Kate raworth
in an appropriate location.
Kate is proposing a new economic framework
designed for our current predicament.
Today's economy, the returns of production
are accruing to a 1%, which leaves us with
these extraordinary levels of inequality.
So we need to create an economy
in which value created is shared far more equitably
with all those who help create it.
And daft though it sounds, I think it looks like a doughnut.
The kind with the hole in the middle.
So, in the hole in the middle of that doughnut
on life's essentials - be it food,
housing, education, water, energy,
and so we want to get everybody in the world out of that hole.
But we also can't go beyond the doughnut's outer crust,
because there we start to put so much pressure
on this extraordinary planet,
causing climate breakdown...
Biodiversity loss...
Air-pollution...
Too much land conversion.
We kick out of kilter this extraordinary living planet
on which all of our well-being depends.
Last century's economists didn't see this.
No phase of humanity has encountered this before.
It's our generational challenge.
We need new ideas to do this.
The wonderful thing about the microgrids
is that they fit beautifully within the doughnut framework.
The solar energy helps restore the outer boundaries
like climate change...
And air-pollution...
But on the inner boundaries,
more people are pulled into the doughnut
by improving health, with less kerosene use...
Education, by providing light to study...
Income equality,
by keeping profits within the local economy...
And networks,
because the microgrid now interconnects households.
I am going to invent a plane and...
You type in the coordinates where...
What you want it... where you want it to go and...
In a split second, you're there.
I think electric cars would help the environment
because that causes less pollution.
And maybe, um, get electric cars if they can, um,
'cause that reduces, like, fossil fuels
and then that also stops global warming.
And instead of using cars,
I would like to use rocket boots to go around
and they would be powered by plants.
Oh, that would be so cool. That would be awesome.
And rocket boots, I think,
would really cool to see people flying around the city in.
And also I want it to go worldwide
and I want to try and invent them.
So, it's interesting
being in some of these big American cities,
the traffic is just diabolical.
And I can see that it...
You know, I consider myself quite a happy person, you know.
I've got not a lot to complain about.
But I'm really...
Feeling a bit antsy in this traffic and, um...
It kind of does that to you.
And I think probably a lot of people
might not put that as a factor
because they've got other things going on in their life,
but if you do have things in your life
that are bothering you,
then you throw yourself into this environment...
Things can get a little tense.
And I've been tempted to jump on the horn
and abuse couple of people.
In the us right now,
road vehicles contribute to 20% of emissions.
But our environment and sanity will be severely tested
with predictions of an extra one billion cars worldwide
by 2040.
j I can lock all my doors... j&
a possible solution could be replacing car ownership
with on-demand driverless vehicles.
The same way that we went from owning DVDs or cds
or records or whatever,
to having all of those on demand -
essentially Netflix and so on -
the same thing is going to happen with transportation.
I wasn't sure I'd trust a driverless car
with my daughter,
so I subjected this prototype
to the surprise pedestrian test.
Ah! Yes!
Robots - 1, human - 0.
The next test was a little more challenging.
Traffic.
When I push this button,
this car will be driving itself.
And, um, wish me luck.
Right.
So, this is my first experience in a driverless vehicle,
and, uh...
I'm a little bit nervous
because that wheel is turning by itself.
Siri, please look after me.
So, yeah, you can see that's our car tracking there,
and the little lidar, the radar on top
is reading out all the information
I think, about 50m ahead of us
and scanning the area and determining what's around us,
what other obstacles, what it should look out for -
pedestrians, bike riders, other cars.
So it's constantly ahead of us, predicting.
Two things are going to happen.
We're all going to have a massive fleet of cars
that are going to pick you up at home, take you to work,
take you to the supermarket and so on,
and the other one -
even if you already own a car that you already paid off,
it's going to be four times more expensive
just to own that car
than it is to access transportation as a service,
so, autonomous electric vehicles.
I do like the freedom of my own car,
so the big question is
are enough of us willing to give that up
and embrace shared transportation?
One of the interesting challenges
about a future of vehicles that involves ridesharing,
is that we have all these ideas tied up with owning vehicles
that have very little to do with
getting us from point a to point b,
and all to do with what those things said about us.
So, you know, they became symbols of independence
and freedom.
They became symbols of class and wealth and capital.
Now, the reality is, of course, we haven't had cars forever.
And the notion of cars as status symbols
and signals of independence -
that's 60, 70 years old, at most,
and less than that in most places.
And so the idea that we can uncouple those things
isn't impossible.
And frankly, they only ever got coupled in the first place
because of advertising.
If we did embrace on-demand transport,
much like we now require fewer cds or DVDs...
We'd also require fewer vehicles...
And almost no parking space.
Two thirds of la is parking and roads.
You could fit three cities the size of San Francisco
in the empty parking space
left by the autonomous vehicle disruption.
And so, as a society, we need to make decisions.
What do we do with all that parking space
that's going to be vacant?
So, here's what 2040 could look like for my daughter
without an extra billion cars.
As you head off to your first school dance, velvet...
Family hug. Family hug.
It will be nice not having to worry
about your date's driving skills.
Look, dad! A ghost must be driving! Spooky!
I imagine your date to be very kind.
And very impotent.
All the cars that your mum and I ever owned
were stranded assets,
meaning that 96% of the time they were parked or unused.
But now, in 2040,
with driver costs gone and the rideshare explosion,
fewer people actually own cars.
They get around in luxurious pods like this
for next to nothing.
It's just inner cities that are likely to be driverless only.
And we could really fatten the doughnut
if vehicles were community-owned.
But I secretly hope, darling,
that rocket boots girl has achieved her ambition
of worldwide domination.
So, this is a huge disruption
of a massive part of the labour force.
Inevitably, there'll be debates around this technology.
But if enough of us embrace ridesharing,
we could reclaim our cities for humans instead of vehicles,
and generate millions of new jobs.
This is big vision.
We just need to have that vision now.
A lot of people want to be working on something
that they can see is actually helping to regenerate
and innovatively recreate the world.
The extra space in our cities could allow the building
of more low-cost sustainable homes.
And we could see the growth of remanufacturing industries,
which might convert existing vehicles to electric.
But most exciting could be the urban food farms
that spring up in empty parking lots.
Or inside disused car parks.
And imagine having fresh local food growing on our rooftops.
This would also contribute to a much healthier environment.
It's unbeatable to grow food in your own backyard.
It's unbeatable to grow food
all through and around your city.
It's unbeatable to grow food on your roof.
Those are the absolute gold standard of emissions.
One day you will be amazed by the distances
some of our food travelled.
Bring up data for 2016.
In 2016, the us was importing the same amount of beef
as it was exporting.
Fish caught in Norway was flown to China for filleting.
Then flown back to Norway to be sold.
What were you guys thinking?
Well, sometimes we weren't.
But how's this?
If we electrify our transport systems
and frankly, make them far more attractive...
A lot more fossil fuels will stay in the ground.
If nobody's going to buy
internal combustion engine petrol cars,
nobody's going to buy oil.
What we see is that oil demand is going to peak
and it's going to go down dramatically.
And it's never coming back.
This means areas like the tar sands oil fields
could be magnificently transformed.
If you do choose to live in a city, velvet,
I hope it's a bit like this.
A city where so many of the public parks,
urban food projects and cleaner transport networks,
all contribute to a healthier environment,
while fostering a greater sense of community..
And a hell of a lot less road rage.
But the bonus
is that you can now actually hear birds singing
in the middle of the city.
As wonderful as this future could be,
I was pretty gobsmacked to learn that vested interests
now spend almost $1 billion a year
preventing us from actually lowering our emissions.
So, the fossil fuel industry
have being doing a magnificent job
at copying the tobacco playbook
in creating doubt and confusion amongst the public.
And I've been following some of their key players,
their sneaky players, online,
just to try and learn and understand
some of the tactics.
So, one of the things they do
is that they create websites
that sound and look very Sincere,
but are full of misinformation.
You see here the innocent hummingbird, the leaf.
They'll also fund think tanks
that come up with really clever cultural memes
and these are things like, you know,
"climate science isn't settled",
which is ripped straight from tobacco.
Or "climate change is a religion".
That's another one. It's very evocative.
They'll also used fake bots or algorithms
that appear to be humans on social media,
and what this does is creates a sense
that they have more support than they actually do.
And this one's pretty key because companies like exxon
will often fund lots of different organisations
to make it look like
there's this wide consensus of climate denial,
whereas in actual fact,
all those different organisations
were funded by the same source.
These tactics have focused the conversation
primarily on our emissions,
while obscuring a crucial component of our dilemma.
If we ceased all emissions today,
if we cut emissions to zero,
human emissions to zero,
we would still be toast.
We're still already over a tipping point
and on our way to a point of no return.
So we have to reduce the emissions
that we're producing today,
and we also have to sequester carbon
and we have to remove excess carbon from the atmosphere
and store it.
With an increased sense of urgency,
I met with Paul hawken,
who thankfully isn't afraid of heights.
He's the founder of project drawdown -
the first comprehensive plan to reverse global warming.
If you look at the solutions that we model in drawdown,
they're virtually all regenerative development.
That is to say the earth is better off,
the people are better off, the communities are better off,
the creatures are better off, the birds are better off.
No matter what it is, they're better off for it
than had we not done it.
Paul suggested I first explore food and agriculture
for drawdown opportunities.
When you change agriculture practices related to food,
you can do two things.
One is you stop emitting carbon, co2,
but you're also sequestering carbon.
So it's one of those sectors... Yeah!
That actually does both - it's a twofer.
Which is... not only does it stop putting it up,
but it actually brings it down.
So you're flipping a whole sector.
Yeah, I think that people should be eating
more fruit and vegetable and less sweet stuff
and so that the sweet stuff should be, um...
Like, you should be rationed on sweet stuff.
When I grow up,
I want it to be national hot dog day every day.
I want to see more trees
and also want to see chocolate raining from the clouds.
Be more healthy.
That's all I really have to say about the food.
Like, I wanted not so much people eating meat
because that's animals.
But I do like bacon.
Bacon's nice.
But...
It still, like, pigs and I have a pig toy.
And when I eat bacon, I feel kind of sad.
Soil's almost an unknown universe
in that there's over 6 billion microorganisms
of huge diversity
in a small spoonful of soil, of healthy soil.
Which is really quite amazing.
Don't know who counted them, but someone did.
It's a tough job. Yeah.
I was in regional Victoria in Australia to meet col seis,
a champion of regenerative agriculture.
In 1979, we had a major bushfire at home.
Like... a wildfire.
And lost virtually all of our sheep,
which were 3,000 merino sheep.
I went from going ok to being broke overnight.
So I had to work out a way of doing it
without spending any money.
And I developed a different way of farming,
totally different, through 1980s and 1990s,
which turned out to regenerate the land.
Using a lot less chemicals and inputs
than is traditionally used.
That's right. And since I changed -
I actually did the figures on it -
I've saved over $2 million, since I changed.
I don't go where the $2 million went.
Col helps farmers around the world use plants
to pull carbon from the atmosphere
and put it into their soil...
Because our constant ploughing of the soil
has released billions of tonnes of the stuff.
Over the last 10,000 years of agriculture,
the degradation of soils
has been one of the leading causes of climate change.
It's actually, as of right now,
a larger cause of climate change
than burning fossil fuels.
I asked col to strike a farming calendar pose
to explain how he brings the carbon back home.
Plants use carbon dioxide and energy from the sun
to create simple sugars.
The plant uses some of these sugars to grow.
The rest is pumped into the soil, through the roots.
These sugars feed soil microbes,
which interact with the plant
and the carbon dioxide taken from the atmosphere
is sequestered into the soil as carbon.
- G'day! - Fraser.
- Hey, Damon. - Nice to meet you, mate.
- You too. - How you going?
- Very well. G'day. Col. - G'day.
We went to take the kids fishing
and we had to go and find worms on the farm
and Fraser was just going from paddock to paddock
trying to find worms.
- There wasn't any. - There was none.
And it ended up...
This fun experience ended up being not so fun
because there was so much frustration
about how come there weren't any worms and...
'Cause healthy soil has worms.
We had everything going for our farm
and I didn't feel that it was getting the yields
and getting the results that, you know,
I thought were going to be there.
And I tried just throwing more fertiliser at it
and that didn't seem to work.
And so I just had all these questions
around what we were doing and why we were doing it.
So, what's going on here, fellas?
So, this is what we call a chemical summer fallow.
Yep.
Where we control the weeds
with a chemical over summer.
So, how does that affect the soil,
like, in terms of the...
This form of agriculture
really kills the whole soil ecosystem.
So, what are we looking at there, col?
That hard compaction, poor-structured soil
is really not good in agriculture.
Like, if you think about a plant
trying to get through that, it's almost impossible. Um...
The other thing too, water can't get in there.
To counteract these problems,
col's simple advice to Fraser was to start planting.
Ok, so what we've done here
is planted a mix of different species.
About 80 in total.
They all play a role in the soil health,
with their different roots
and their different root exudates.
So we've got the sunflower here and the sorghum.
- Um, millet. - Yeah, right.
Down here.
And all these together means with that variety,
it's making the soil...
It's pulling the carbon into the soil
and making it healthier.
That's right. Yeah. Exactly.
- Go, nature! - Yeah.
If we go back even a few thousand years,
all of the grasslands in the world
were dominated by large mobs of grazing animals.
And also, they were kept moving all the time by predators.
So the animals - in this case, cattle -
are never kept on the same area at one time.
By letting the cattle run amok in the crops,
good things happen.
They flatten the field,
they create a utopia for the local insects
which becomes a natural fertiliser,
and crucially, they are fed as nature intended.
Over the last 50 or 60 years,
we've removed animals like cattle and sheep
from eating their natural food
and put them in feedlots, eating grain.
And we should never have done that
because they have never evolved to eat grain.
So what happens is that the cattle are basically sick.
And we are finding out now that the meat from feedlots
is not healthy for us.
It's certainly not healthy for the animals.
And it's something that we should never have done.
Any discussion around livestock
has to include methane,
which is another damaging greenhouse gas,
quite rudely burped out by the cows.
While some livestock practices offset that damage,
the bad news for the hot dog kid
is that we need to embrace a more plant-rich diet.
And the meat we do eat
should ideally come from regenerative practices
like Fraser's.
Plant-rich diet means that we actually reduce
the amount of protein that we eat in wealthier nations,
because it's too high.
It's 100-110g per day.
What we model is decreasing that to 50-60 g.
The fact is, some people want to eat meat.
What meat they eat is critically important.
How it's produced, how it relates to the land
are very, very important.
But as our climate becomes increasingly volatile,
this type of farming has one more crucial advantage.
For every 1% increase in carbon to 30cm,
we increase the water holding capacity of soil
by 166,000 litres per hectare.
On every rainfall event.
When it rains, the soil on the left,
with more carbon and organic matter,
absorbs the water and less runs off the top.
Whereas the chemical-ridden soil on the right
absorbs almost no water, and allows it to run off,
taking the chemicals with it
into nearby rivers and waterways.
That's the way we can buffer against droughts
and dry seasons.
Grasslands, all around the world,
they virtually had a built-in irrigation system.
Really can see the aggregation that's going on
from all these roots
of all the different plants we've been growing in here.
So what we've got going here with this clod
is basically a dry paddock
with, um, not much growing in it, apart from a few weeds.
And here, three months ago,
we planted the multi-species grazing crop, yeah.
So that's in three months that's happened?
That's in three-months. It's incredible, isn't it?
That kind of represents big ag,
and this represents mother nature.
And it's pretty obvious who I'd rather
get my source of vegetables from.
Well, when we talk about trying to work out
some of the global problems and trying to do it quickly,
well, you can really see the speed that it can happen here.
I mean, look at all these roots.
Like, that's all carbon pumped, isn't it?
It is. It really shows that plants, plants and more plants.
In other words, plant diversity, um,
plus grazing animals
will create that and fix our problems.
People ask me, "well, what can we say to farmers?"
And the answer is, "we can't do without you."
We can't mitigate climate change without agriculture,
so we have to find ways,
instead of part of the problem.
Fraser will now let his multi-species crop
break down.
He can then plant his commercial crops here
without having to break the soil and release carbon.
But perhaps most importantly,
he can now take the kids fishing.
So, I just bake it for 20 to 30 minutes?
Yes, that's it. You've got it.
And then, once it's done,
you just sprinkle the Greens on the top and that's it.
Beautiful.
- Thanks, nan. Love you. - Ok. Bye, darl.
Bye!
By 2040, my hope, velvet,
is that more people will have an understanding
of how the foods they eat impact our environment.
If this transpires,
your generation are likely to eat a lot less meat
than mine did.
There's no doubt we'll continue our obsession
with fad diets.
We find it's the flavour-free diet that's the way to go
because let's face it -
it's the flavour that gets us into trouble.
Isn't that right?
I'll just love tending our garden.
From an app.
And your mum and I will completely understand
when you start avoiding dinner at our house.
With less global consumption of meat,
aided by some pretty convincing substitutes...
We could see many feedlots close down.
And animals returned to the land
for use in regenerative farming.
But just imagine what we could do
that is currently being used to grow food for animals.
This land could transition
to a range of regenerative practices
that drawdown vast amounts of carbon into the soil,
while retaining precious water
and producing nutrient-dense food.
Instead of soy or grains, we could feed the animals grass,
crop residue, or food waste.
This would improve the health of the animals,
the people who choose to eat them
and our environment.
The steep croplands around the world, darling,
could be used to grow foods
that also draw down huge amounts of carbon.
A practice called agroforestry does this
by simultaneously growing foods like pawpaw,
bananas, coffee, avocados or vegetables,
but crucially, on small parcels of land.
With highly diversified local food systems,
you have a way of really dramatically decreasing
the scale of land, water, energy needed,
and massively increasing
how much you can get from that land.
Industrial ag says, "without us, you're not...
"You're going to starve. You're not going to eat.”
Well, actually between 70% and 80% of the food in the world
is created by small holders.
Industrial ag provides 20% of the food in the world.
Most of that is corn and soy fed to animals.
A lot of that is sugar, which we don't need.
So the idea that big ag is going to save us,
or without which we cannot exist
is absolutely upside down and backwards,
because they produce sickness,
they produce obesity, they produce diabetes.
That's what big ag is producing.
I hope one day, velvet,
you get to read the story of how we reached this future.
It's about how those who polluted our air
with excess carbon had to pay a penalty.
And the money raised
paid farmers to clean our air
by putting it back into the soil.
This helped restore the climate...
Biodiversity loss...
And land conversion...
While pulling more people into the doughnut
by saving precious water,
improving the quality of our food,
and in turn improving our health.
It's interesting, making this film,
the more that I'm learning about...
You realise how hard it is to actually do the right thing.
And in a sense, it's tempting to kind of just shut down
and switch off
because, I mean, here I am sitting on an aeroplane
that is spewing out half a tonne of carbon,
making this film,
or getting water in this cup
that's probably going to go straight into the ocean
and hurt a baby turtle,
and I don't want to know that.
And most people don't want to know about that,
so they switch off.
And you can't help but be a hypocrite at the moment
because our entire system is built on and by fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels have done us really well
to get to this point.
There's some great things in the world.
But we can't keep doing what we're doing.
It's actually impossible
to maintain the resources we're using.
So we're going to have to transition,
and it's going to be a little bit awkward,
if we're going to give our kids a better future.
j to the place on the map
j from which no-one has ever returned... j
While storing carbon in our soil
will go a long way to solving our problem,
there is a limit to how much carbon soil can hold.
So we're going to need another leg-up from mother nature.
Make sure coral looks ok
'cause it normally looks like a rainbow in the sea
with all the fishes,
but sometimes if you litter,
it looks a bit not good.
It looks like... a big, big mess.
At the beach, it would just not be the same
if you can't swim in the water.
And also all the really amazing marine animals
like vaquita, whales, sea fish -
if they were all gone, then it just wouldn't be the same,
the world.
I want the oceans to be cleaner.
One of the coming attractions
that I think is gonna to have the biggest impact
is what is called marine permaculture.
It's just another way of farming in the ocean,
but this is a more wild farming
because it actually sets up the context
for the oceans to regenerate themselves.
Dr Brian Von herzen, a physicist,
used to fly to Europe every year
and he saw how quickly the Greenland ice sheet was melting
and decided to change his whole life in 2006
to restoring living systems,
and focused on the ocean.
Brian told me to pack a lunch...
And a sick bag,
as we were spending the day out at sea.
With 93% of global warming
going into the ocean today each year,
the problem is that the waters are getting too warm
and without enough overturning circulation,
and there aren't enough nutrients,
and the result is we lose the life in the ocean.
Understandably, there has been reluctance
to meddle with our oceans.
But the fact that they are getting warmer,
becoming acidic,
and many fish species are now in danger of collapse...
Means that they actually need our help.
Brian's solution is seaweed.
So what we do with marine permaculture
is we restore overturning circulation.
It's as if your leg was asleep and you lost circulation.
We have to do that with the ocean.
We've gotta get that overturning circulation
going again
to bring the cool waters up with the higher nutrient levels
that can actually restore conditions for the seaweeds.
Between Australia and the United States,
there's 100,000,000 km? Of ocean desert
that is amenable to marine permaculture.
We can actually restore life in subtropical oceans,
restore the fish habitat that's needed to restore fisheries.
Marine permaculture is a regenerative technology
that works like this.
A frame made of recycled material
becomes a platform for the seaweed to grow on.
It sits just below the surface
and sinks lower as the seaweed grows and gets heavier.
A pump powered simply by the rise and fall of the ocean,
brings the cold, nutrient-laden waters from below
and disperses them over the seaweed
in the upper warmer layer.
The seaweed can be regularly harvested
and used for a range of purposes.
Seaweed is good for food, animal feed, fertiliser,
fibre and biofuel.
There's so much we can do with seaweeds.
So, we're cruising along in this very low-carbon vessel,
following Brian,
who's swum down to get the seaweed
in one of his testing sites here.
Except he's gone,
and he's been underwater for about two minutes and, um...
Brian!
Brian?!
- I found it. - You found it.
- Yeah. - Alright, we'll come to you.
The permaculture tests
that Brian and his team have conducted in the south pacific
have seen marine life return,
and the seaweed transform the quality of the water itself.
Seaweeds actually draw down
carbon dioxide from the ocean waters.
And they restore the alkalinity of the ocean.
That enables shellfish and other creatures to thrive.
Damon, I thought we'd try some seaweed salad today.
Oh.
Well, the little bursts of gas are good.
Yeah. Like little poppers.
Ok. That's actually pretty good.
Seaweed salad.
So, what kind of... we're getting omega 3s in here.
- What kind of... - Oh, yeah.
What's our source?
Epa, dha, antioxidants, phytonutrients,
omega nutrients.
But this humble weed has one more heroic trait to offer.
It could play a profound role in drawing down carbon.
Well, this is an example of brown seaweed.
The fastest brown seaweeds will grow half a metre per day.
Hang on. Half a metre a day?
Half a metre a day.
And they'll grow over 50m long.
Is that one of the fastest growing plants in the world?
It is the fastest-growing tree on the planet.
Wow. Ok. So that's why the understanding of...
That it's going to be pulling carbon out of the atmosphere
very quickly, because it grows so fast.
Thousands of tonnes of carbon per square kilometre per year.
Wow. Ok.
Win! It's not a weed at all.
It's food, it's habitat for fish,
it gives back to the fish ecosystems,
and we balance carbon.
We measure the carbon export.
The testing of large-scale marine permaculture
is yet to be done.
But the stakes couldn't be any higher
for getting them underway.
This is all about restoring the foundation of our civilisation,
because with climate disruption,
we'll deplete the soils, we'll deplete the oceans.
There will be no civilisation left
because any time you lose that foundation
of food and the soils and the seas,
you lose civilisation as well.
So, velvet, because the warming will increase
over the next two decades,
and sea levels will continue to rise...
Some countries will need to adapt in new and creative ways.
But if predictions of severe droughts are realised
that see shortages of food,
the potential for unprecedented numbers of refugees
and civil unrest around the world...
Is enormous.
Just imagine large-scale marine permaculture,
helping to mitigate the severity of such a crisis.
It could provide an alternative food source
to the damaged land crops...
That is rich in protein and other nutrients.
Instead of having governments
that are reacting to disaster,
we need governments and communities
and businesses that proactively set a new vision
that prevents these disasters,
that actually takes us off in a different direction.
Investment in marine permaculture around the world
could generate countless jobs
and help us reduce our meat consumption,
while sequestering staggering amounts of carbon.
Imagine decommissioned oil rigs converted to house the workers
and becoming exciting tourist destinations
for those keen to explore marine life.
The seaweed could be particularly valuable
in climate vulnerable areas like the bay of bengal,
where it could provide food, fertiliser and biofuel.
Along the coast of Africa, it could provide similar benefits,
contributing to a thriving local economy.
With mechanisms, simple ones,
you are in fact regenerating the oceans.
You could feed 10 billion people
with the protein from marine permaculture alone.
At this point of the trip,
I felt for the first time like we genuinely have a chance
at a better future...
If we choose to take it.
But before heading home, there was another subject to address.
Well, I wish they'd stop killing off animals
and, well, forests and whatnot.
That'd be cool.
Probably for people to acknowledge that, like,
the factories we build
and, like, they hurt nature sometimes.
Like, the things that we produce,
it can, like, hurt the wildlife and it's not good.
But people just ignore it right now.
I would like to see everyone using the three rs -
reduce, reuse and recycle.
Many people know about it, but don't practice it today.
Today's economy, right?
It gets bigger faster and faster.
So the economy is doubling in size nearly every 20 years.
We take earth's materials, turn them into stuff we want,
we use it for a while and then throw it away.
Yep.
And that take, make, use, lose -
it cuts against the living cycles of the planet,
causing climate change, causing pollution.
So we're kicking ourselves out of planetary balance.
It is difficult to see the impacts
of our individual resource use on the broader environment.
But our survival could depend on us making that connection.
For greater than 99.9% of our evolution,
human beings lived in this very intimate association
with the natural world.
The decisions we made on a daily basis as individuals
within the context of communities,
they were informed by this immediate feedback
we got from the world around us.
From the sun, from the water that was falling on us.
And you fast forward to this little blip of time
that we're in right now, and, you know,
we're completely and totally alienated from nature.
We've lost that connection.
I've come to the town of oberlin in Ohio,
have come up with a quite brilliant way
to raise awareness of their community's resource use.
The environmental dashboard
was really kind of built around the science
and putting people and humans in connection with
how they're using their natural resources.
And so what this does
is it gives a visual representation of the usage.
And they put it into the schools
and so it's really gotten a lot more into the community.
And the teachers are utilising it in their lessons.
I want you to pay close attention
to the squirrel on the right side.
And watch what happens.
As it goes down, he gets sadder and sadder and starts to cry.
Why do you think the squirrel got happier or sadder?
I noticed that too.
Well, probably because we're using
a lot of electricity at that point.
More than we regularly used.
We did a controlled study
where we have another school system
very similar to oberlin's school systems
in a different area of Ohio.
They've got the same curriculum as we do,
but they don't have dashboard.
We found as a result of exposure,
if you ask them about electricity use,
they start talking about emotions.
And when you compare students in our school
with this other school,
they also have more of a community response
when they talk about what needs to be done about energy use.
They use the word 'we'.
And in the other school system, they use the word 't'.
So we've seen real change
as a result of this technology in the school.
What is most exciting about this idea
is that the dashboards could reconnect us
to a range of resources...
And influence our behaviour.
It's a way to really engage the community
in this discussion,
regardless of what race, what education, economic level,
in this discussion on sustainability
and the environment.
But awareness of our resource use
is just one piece of a complicated puzzle.
Another solution
that could have a huge impact on our dilemma
caught me completely off-guard.
Probably our biggest surprise was educating girls
and family planning.
You combine these two together,
the number one solution to reversing global warming
is the empowerment of girls and women.
Wow.
So, our daughter starts school next year
and as an Australian,
I completely take for granted
that she will get to complete her education.
And what I'm just learning here
is that there are 65 million girls around the world
that don't get that opportunity.
And there's a host of reasons for that.
Some are put to work to support families
or they're married off.
But on average,
those girls will have five or more children.
So we found that across the board,
and this isn't just countries
where there might be high rates of poverty.
Even wealthier countries,
we know that when girls stay in school for longer
and they have access to good reproductive health services,
as well as decent work opportunities,
that women will tend to delay having children
until they're ready,
and then they choose to have fewer children from then on.
So, what this does as a collective,
is it slows down the population growth rate,
which means that there's less pressure
and competition for access to a whole range of resources,
whether it's food or water or land.
Their children tend to stay in school longer as well
and, over time, they break that cycle of poverty.
So it's a form of family planning,
but it's not coercive.
It's not control.
It's just empowering girls to be who they want to be
and you have these incredible benefits.
One child, one teacher,
one book and one pen can change the world.
So this could be a pleasant afternoon
in a standard city of 2040.
Freed-up space has encouraged
a range of new outdoor activities.
Imagine, velvet, you and your cool group of friends
have met for a picnic.
Although it is unlikely
that Princess Elsa will still be part of your crew.
My hope is that we are all using resources more wisely
and some of the clever innovations that exist today...
Selfiel
except for this drone phone that I did make up
- to obliterate selfie sticks... - Home!
Have been widely adopted.
Some materials are grown or made from organic matter.
While other materials have been recycled or break down rapidly.
And wouldn't it be terrific
if we have not only implemented the smart ways
to deal with the billions of coffee cups
we send to landfill each year...
But each city of the world
has followed the lead of Stockholm,
who collect their residents' food waste...
Extract the methane to power their local vehicles...
And give the leftovers to farmers
to use as a natural fertiliser for their soils.
Well played, Sweden. Well played.
These behaviour changes in our resource use
could be reflected on dashboards
throughout our cities,
where there used to be ads.
Even encouraging some healthy competition.
But in this 2040, my greatest hope
is that girls across the globe
now have access to the same educational opportunities
as you and your friends.
The cascading benefits of this
could be greater than anything else I have discovered.
So, velvet, this was my story
of a future I hope you get to experience.
Your story and the one that transpires
may be completely different.
But what I now understand
is that not only are there so many people
who want to take part in telling a new story...
But we have everything we need right now
to make it happen.
When you go beyond the dominant media discourse
and get closer to the ground,
you will see, everywhere you look,
incredible reasons for hope.
Over the next few years,
you may notice less red meat for dinner...
More trips to the compost bin...
Better search engines...
And potentially a new dashboard in your classroom.
If enough of us make these sorts of small changes,
when combined, they will make a difference.
Big banks continue to take a hit
as the public shifts its money away from organisations
that support fossil fuels.
But of equal importance is strong leadership.
Wouldn't it be terrific if new leaders emerge
who can navigate us to a better 20407?
And just imagine if they used the doughnut framework
to create the new story...
Coupled with more and more people
finding a defining role within it.
What we can do is see where you get lit up
and maybe it's girls' education -
"wow. I had no idea!"
Or it can be food or it can be farming or it could be energy,
it could be housing, transport.
I mean, there's so many areas
where you actually probably do have influence
where you are working,
where you can affect change
in a way that actually is demonstrable
and meaningful to you and others.
And it just unleashes the power of innovation
and imagination and creativity that's within all people.
My hope for you, darling,
is that sometime in 2040 there's a day
when the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere
stop increasing and begin to come down.
And the solutions that achieve this
benefit a wide range of people.
To celebrate, there are parties across the globe
for you and your generation.
The regeneration.
When I grow up, I want homeless people to have their own homes
with their own money to buy their own food
and have their own jobs.
Well, I'd like it to be human instinct
to just look after the world and to care for the world.
I would like to see everybody have equal rights
and the same living opportunities.
I just want the future to be good.
Dadda!
So...
What's your 20407?
I want to see clean air for more people to breathe
and clean air, so that the trees
don't have to take the smoke into their leaves and die.
I also hope that we'll be able to solve world hunger,
'cause a lot of people are going hungry.
At the moment, the ice caps are melting
because of all the greenhouse gases.
[I the earth speaks loud and clear
j the time to act is here
I have want to make sure
there's no pollution in the ocean.
& tomorrow's become today
j it's too late to turn away
I want to see fresh air, fresh water, no pollution.
Because that will kill animals and I want no animals to die.
I'd like it to be human instinct
to just look after the world and to care for the world.
I would like to see a world
where people live in peace, Harmony and happiness
and not a world where people live in fear.
I don't think we should use guns
and force each other around.
j the creatures we have lost
j so please don't turn away
In the future, I'd like to see more beautiful things
like flowers, more trees.
Cleaner water.
Be respectful to earth.
Less global warming.
We could stop littering and make sure coral looks ok
'cause it normally looks like a rainbow in the sea.
j so please don't turn away
And also, I'd like my kids
to be able to swim in fresh water.
j so please don't turn away
A lot more inventions.
Electric cars.
Take transportation.
j so please don't turn away
If people keep doing what they're doing now,
the world won't be a very good place.
j so please don't turn away j the future
I would also like
if money was more evenly distributed.
I would like to see everybody have equal rights
and the same living opportunities.
For the government to have done something
on global warming and pollution.
I want people to treat each other better.