This is what were getting after they destroy our land for Muskrat Falls 100 dependency on these dirty, dieselgenerated plants. [wind gusting] [birds chirping] [river trickling] [ushigua speaking spanish] [ ] [patricia gualinga speaking spanish] [paez] i have been persecuted and i have been monitored by the government. Several times, i had to go to the International Courts to tell the story about what happens when you are a human rights defender, or you have been working so hard to protect the rights of nature. Years by years, you protect yourself, protect your family, you protect the forest, the resistance. Sometimes, ii get tired. I get tired and i. Get, uh, lost, and i start feeling that its not enough, but, day by day, i have to do the best to change it. [ ] [dodds] hmm. When i get to that point with Climate Change, the notion of whats happening, and i go i cant take anymore, im just exhausted. Thats a big struggle in my head, where im grasping for somewhere that isnt this new reality. Yeah. For me, it was when the fires were happening in tasmania and that gondwana forest was burning, and something just touched me really deeply, knowing that forest, it is not supposed to burn, and i remember feeling this deep sorrow. Mm. We talk about phases of grieving, but the thing with Climate Change, its not like theres been one death and then we grieve it. This is continuous. You know that footage of the last thylacine, that always breaks my heart. Dodo and the thylacine are the things i grew up with, thinking, they went extinct, we dont do that anymore, that was the end of this bad behaviour. And to now be in a world where thats just how it is now, on a daily basis is just beyond what i can fit in my heart. I dont even go there. I cant. I cant. Its too much. Its too extreme. [busy office chatter, indistinct] [farrell] people have stepped beyond denialism into a state of, like, total doom and panic, and there hasnt been that, like, middle part where people get to come to terms with how bad this is, because, basically, nobody would talk about it, so thats quite serious for people to have no sort of, like, Development Processing time. Thats why the emotional and intellectual labour of coming to terms with this and going lets tell the truth about it is so difficult. [energetic chatter]. In terms of, like, its going to affect our future, and i think thats a pretty emotional response, that it will be us being the most affected, and then it feels like no one else like, societys normalized it, but no one else is really doing anything. [discussion continues, indistinct] the Climate Crisis just overwhelmed me. Its like, what is the point if, in 12 years, you know, my worlds just gonna be so much worse . [sammy mcnamara] once you start reading about this stuff and the un report comes out, the 12 years one i think that really hit a lot of people with depression. [distant siren wails] [ ] [bowman] were now beginning to realize theres something afoot planetarily. Theres this change. Its a nonnegotiable, inescapable. Pain, and thats maybe what we would describe as grief. You can go to bed and you can try to forget it, you can dream, and then you wake up in the morning, with this terrible ache because the pains still there, and trying to understand. What to do, and not knowing what to do, not having a clear path it can send people into sadness, depression. [tong] i go through a sense of giving up. Its so futile and i cant take it. Its not an easy emotional thing to come to terms with. [ ] [ashlee cunsolo] how are we not doubled over in pain aat everything . At the extinction, at the Climate Change, at the loss, at what we know is coming . That balance, i think, is what so many of us are struggling with. How do we be open to the pain, but how do we not let it crumble us to the ground and just throw our hands up and say, well, its too late, its too awful, its over . We cant do that, because its not over. But it is going to be a period of grief without end. So, somehow, we have to make peace with the grief, but not just give up. [ ] [water bubbling] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [loon cries in the distance] [veron] in my younger days, i was thinking about the future, and wow, im gonna make a great life for myself. For me. For me. Its me, yeah, i was thinking that. Always me. I really only woke up to that when the worst happened. [thunder rolls] [rain pattering on roof] i was at a coral workshop in hong kong and had a phone call that my, uh, daughter was dead. She drowned, playing in a creek, um. And. Uh, ive never got over that. I lost something that was much more important to me than i was. It certainly changed me from a person who felt the whole world was revolving around me to someone who is much less important. The destruction of nature its more important than i am. Its the next thing that. Is dying. Its the next thing that is dying that is more important to me than i am. Charlie veron gets less and less important. Its a hard thing to explain, but it is important to realize that the people who are the exploiters of this planet are people who put themselves first. And people who put themselves first havent suffered the worst thing that can happen to them. Theyve got away with it. Or they dont care. Harsh observation, hey . But i think its true. [ ] [gualinga speaking spanish] [ ] [ushigua speaking spanish] [ ] [cunsolo] there has to be this deeply ethical shift and that changes our ability to talk about a different type of grief thats not a humantohuman grief, but a humantomorethanhuman grief, where we open up, we let everyone in, and, in many ways, i think that the ecological bodies that are out there are waiting for us to figure that out. Other species are waiting for us to catch up and to open up and to realize that we are in this deep community. [ ] [gualinga speaking spanish] [ ] [narrator] my dearest friends. I rise with the sun, light candles. Make tea. Small rituals to keep me steady and begin my day. [ ] my walks through the woods are a kind of prayer. I bend down and drink from the dewcovered grasses. I feel the pine boughs and the rough bark of trees. Each day, i find myself returning to life. [ ] [veron] its so nice to be at peace and at one with the world. I just feel part of it. I feel like a coral. [laughs]. Or a fish. Im standing on australias Great Barrier reef. This is the largest structure ever made by life on earth. Its incredible that such tiny animals as coral polyps played a key role in the building of the reef. When i first heard of Climate Change, i thought, oh, come on, pull the other leg. So i looked up what Carbon Dioxide does in the atmosphere, took me about an hour to realize, wow this is for real. That drove me to turn away from the research i was doing, which i loved doing, and become an advocate for the Great Barrier reef and for coral reefs. Not much point in studying something if you know its gonna die. Better to study it and try and find ways of keeping it alive. Thats what ive done. [ ] [thunberg] i had kept all my concerns and worries to myself, and once i started sharing these to my parents, response from them wasnt very good. They were like everyone else oh, everything will be fine, there will be some Technical Solutions and someone will come up with something. I just kept on talking about this with them, and over and over again, showing them graphs, reports, and articles, and films, and so on, and after a while, they started to understand what was actually going on, and then they started to change their lifestyle, and so i felt like i could have some impact. [ ] [dodds] when the Prime Minister came, he said people speaking out about this is a Climate Change event were politicizing it, and that it wasnt the time, and also that this was a normal part of australian life and itll happen again. Went to bed at 4 00 in the morning. Woke up and those words, that this would happen again suddenly, i understood what hed said. Behind that was him saying, were not gonna make any changes to what were doing. You can expect more of this, and the next town can burn just like this one, and we wont do anything to stop the processes that caused it. But that would be like if an arsonist had started this fire, were not going to do anything about arsonists. Were not going to do anything that stops this disaster, and if that means people die next time. Oh, well, thats australian life. And so it was rage, was the first thing i felt. Out of that rage, i started to act. Prime minister, your remarks, on the day after a ferocious bushfire devastated my community in tathra, indicated that you have no intention of intervening to prevent the next fire or the one after that. I had no idea why or what would happen with it, just that i couldnt not say it. What has to burn, Prime Minister, before you can smell the smoke . But it ended up becoming a message that resonated with other people and. That was the beginning of a big change for me, in taking the risk that i hadnt taken before. I really was scared to speak out about Climate Change, cause i felt like id internalized that message that its not safe, that youll get whacked talking about this, cause its too political. And suddenly, when it wasnt political, it was fucking hot, and it had smoke billowing and it burnt down my neighbours houses, and thats not politics, thats a fucking raging bushfire, and if you see that, you step out of the way, and you try to not let it happen again. [ ] [cunsolo] Climate Change, in a weird sort of way, asks a lot of humanity. We cant just say well. Made a mistake on that one, i guess well try again. Its actually taking ourselves to account. Who do we want to be as a species, moving forward . How do we see ourselves differently within this web of relations that we have suddenly destructed or harmed or destroyed . And what does it take to atone for the loss . How do we ever make right what weve done as a species . When we talk about mass extinction, how do we make that right . I dont know if we can, but i think we have to have those conversations, because if we dont take the responsibility seriously, that wont lead to the transformative changes. So Climate Change calls on us to be different. [ ] [narrator] ive been reading about systems theory and adaptation. Apparently, when a living system is disturbed to the point that it might cease to exist, it selforganizes into a new form that will have a better shot at survival. This is exactly how i feel after ten months of cancer treatment. Surgery, chemo, and radiation seem to have instigated some strange adaptations. I feel utterly changed from the inside out. The way i used to define myself and find meaning feels misplaced, missing, even nonexistent, and it seems that only living through each day with an open curiosity, am i coming to know who this new self is. [birds calling] [ground crunching underfoot] [bowman] we thought we were powerful. We thought we could build amazing dams and do geoengineering and control, and we are powerful, but were not as powerful as a wilful planet. Storms, and floods, and fires, and droughts, and disease outbreaks theyre all telling us something. Ive been expecting it for so long. Well, its obvious its going to happen its Climate Change. Whats the reality im Walking Around in . Im expecting these things. Nature and humans are not in balance. And, fundamentally, its reminding us were not just the centre of the universe. This world wasnt made just for us. And so, Climate Change is disrupting who we thought we were, and where we were going. [ ] [ushigua speaking spanish] [ ] [thunberg] when i talk to people about this, they always say we need to have hope, otherwise we wont do anything, and we cant just tell these negative stories, and we need to tell the positive stories. No, we need to tell the truth. We cant hide things just because its not hopeful. Its like people, they cant do anything without hope. [narrator] i used to think hope was a belief in the possibility of a better, even a beautiful future. But ive learned that kind of hope is no friend of mine. It distracts me from whats right in front of me and blinds me from what is heading in my direction. So now i understand hope is found in this moment. What i choose to do now that is all i have, what we each have. [ ] well, the jurys out on hope, if you want to know, okay . [indistinct voices] theres lots of evidence that says people need hope to act. Theres lots of evidence to say that people need to lose hope to act. [ ] when hope goes, action begins. I mean, thats one of the Extinction Rebellion slogans, and whys that . Because hope basically enables you to think that things will be okay and you dont have to act. [ ] im not saying thats the only dynamic, but it is a dynamic, right . Obviously theres another dynamic, which is youre really miserable, you have some hope, and then you act, so you know, thats got things going for it as well, but if you, you know, if you want to. Mm. Its complicated. So your message is entirely about failure, its about negativity. It is, in a way, i suppose a howl of rage and despair. Thats right. It is. And you think that is, uh, a message that the people of the world and the political leaders of the world are going to respond to . Yes. And the reason why is because when people go through depression and rage, they come out and decide to do things. [ ] [bowman] in rivers in east australia, fish that are 100 years old have been killed, and then i learned of a Community Group thats heroically trying to save some fish by pumping oxygen into the water. On the one side, you could say that its an absurd pin prick to a catastrophe, but on the other side, its a beautiful example of a gesture of environmental love. [ ] and there are many other examples now, where these horrifying environmental disasters are bringing out really important gestures. [ ]. Trying to save things and trying to acknowledge that things that are being killed have a right to live. So its like taking our degraded places and trying to make them beautiful and biodiverse. The action of trying to repair land helps people repair themselves. [ ] [drum beating] [tv reporter] the coffin is symbolic of the death of the grand river. Labrador land protectors say the water is being destroyed by the hydro dam project. [flowers] this was our land. This was our water. This was our food. And now, suddenly, its just going to be taken . And we cant say anything . Theyre telling us, legally, were not allowed to say anything. I mean, thats, to me, thats like revolutionary time. I think its time for revolution. This drastic it calls for drastic measures, like walking up to the Police Officer and saying no, no. Just im not backing down