Before the Flood Page #3

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Right now we are

standing on the ocean,

we are basically

walking on water.

This is the northern

tip of Baffin Island,

one of the hundreds of islands

in the High Canadian Arctic.

We are way above

the Arctic Circle,

and if you put your

hand in the water,

you would not be able to stand

it for more than 5 minutes,

except you who are a badass.

You hunt and fish here, right?

Yeah.

What do you, what do

you fish and what do you hunt?

In my territory I

hunt fish, seal, narwhal,

and polar bear.

- Is this polar bear?

- Yup.

Oh, well there you go!

And the ice here, since you've

been around has it been

decreasing?

We used to have

a solid ice, blue.

Not light blue like this, blue.

Hard, ice.

Now we usually have a, kind

of ice cream type of ice.

It's ice but it's,

when it starts to melt,

it melts pretty fast.

Much faster than before.

2040, you will be able

to sail over the North Pole.

There's going to be no sea

ice left in the Arctic Ocean

in the summer.

We are burning so many fossil

fuels that the ice is melting.

The Arctic is like

the air conditioning for

the Northern Hemisphere.

If it goes away, that's

going to change currents,

that's going to change

weather patterns,

that's going to make floods and

droughts more catastrophic.

It's the most dramatic

transformation of a large

environment ever.

Look at this.

They're right here!

There are about 10,000

to 12,000 narwhals

in this region.

The numbers are stable here,

in other regions are declining.

Wow.

That's awesome.

Yeah, they are

waiting for the ice to open up,

to swim in, so they

can catch the flounder.

I can't believe what

they sound like, it's amazing.

They're like purring.

You know, I don't

want to be in a planet

without these animals.

He's the

chairman of Earth Day 2000,

Leonardo DiCaprio.

When I was 25 years old,

I remember being asked to

participate in this huge event

in Washington for Earth Day.

Temperatures are rising,

coral reefs are dying,

and not since a meteor hit the

earth 65 million years ago,

have so many species of plant

and animals become extinct

in such a short time.

I even got a chance to

interview the President

of the United States.

Why do you think this issue

is so constantly overlooked?

I think it's

because it takes a long time

for the climate to change in

a way that people feel it,

and because, uh, it seems

sort of abstract now.

At the time, it was

this huge push to get the word

out on global warming.

Now a couple degrees' difference

in today's temperatures

may not seem like an emergency.

Back then everyone was focused

on small, individual actions.

We all have to, you know, bring

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