Free worldwide film an eye-opener

To the Editor,

If you love your children, you must watch Leonardo DiCaprio's urgent new climate change movie Before the Flood ¹ free. He travelled the world as a UN environmental observer and was terrified by what he saw. It's chilling, yet hopeful.

In the 2000s, we thought using different lightbulbs would save us, but climate change predictions were far too conservative. Greenland glaciers have lost 30 feet in depth in only five years, releasing massive methane (worse than C02) from the permafrost. There will be no sea ice in summer in a few short years. The Gulf Stream will stop and Europe will freeze.

Rising oceans are flooding Miami streets. Fiji is relocating whole island populations to higher ground. In India, half of all crops were destroyed in five hours of rain. Fifty per cent of coral is gone meaning one billion depending on coral fisheries for daily protein will starve. The ocean buffers a third of the atmosphere and stabilizes the climate but they can't do it fast enough now. Future ocean life may only be slime. Rainforests do the same but are being cleared at an alarming rate.

China is the world's manufacturing centre, one city is using as much coal as all of the U.S.A. None of its factories will comply with standards, while millions of workers wear gas masks and protest while watching pollution databases. Fortunately, Chinese media are pro-green growth.

Today, one North American uses 10 times as much power as 10 Chinese, 34 Indians or 61 Nigerians. One billion of the world have no electricity, but we've had it for 100 years. Although most climate scientists agree that climate change is due to massive atmospheric C02 increases caused by humanity, the big corporations spend billions on public disinformation to confuse us and pay off politicians like big tobacco did years ago.

In the Paris climate accord, 195 countries agreed to reduce C02 emissions to keep global warming to under two degrees, but there's no carbon tax, penalties or enforcement for not doing so. That won't stop the runaway climate change train. Food and water wars are coming. Even Obama says rising oceans causing refugees pose a “national security threat.”

Sumatra palm oil is in almost everything we buy today. Palm oil companies bribe for permits to slash and burn the forests for big profits, emitting more C02 daily than the entire U.S.A. What can we do? Stop buying products with palm oil.

We must stop eating beef, the biggest reason for deforestation. Almost half of U.S. land is for food but 70 per cent of that is fed to cattle yet livestock are the biggest methane source. Go back to eating chickens who use only 20 per cent of the land and produce 10 per cent of C02.

There's more hope. Only 100 of Elon Musk's giant Tesla factories could supply the whole world's energy needs (even remote villages) with sustainable solar batteries and no electric plants. Germany has two million solar roofs now. Denmark is 100 per cent wind energy. Sweden is the first fossil free nation. They all did this very quickly. Will the rest follow fast enough to avoid climate catastrophe?

Our atmosphere is a thin onion skin. We have to make conscious consumer choices. When corporations stop making money they will behave differently. We can change the world or reap the whirlwind.

K. Richardson, L'Amable

1. http://docur.co/documentary/before-the-flood