DiCaprio: In a Few Decades, Renewable Energy Could Supply 100% of Our ... - Huffington Post

Green World Rising, one episode of a four-part documentary series produced in collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio, is a clarion call to save our species.
U.N. delegates and the world's leading scientists are meeting in Copenhagen this week before releasing another frightening report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The report will warn governments around the world that persistent burning of greenhouse gasses is, "increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems."
This is just the latest in a string of climate reports by intergovernmental bodies, universities, and research teams trying to pin down what planet Earth will look like if it continues its trajectory toward a two to three degree Celsius increase in global temperatures and beyond. The picture is grim, but there still is hope to saving our species and world from the most devastating effects of rapid climate change.
It begins by recognizing the problem. As Leonardo DiCaprio states right off the top in the documentary, "Climate change is happening now and is caused by human activity." That means we must fundamentally change human activity: from how we generate energy to how we transport goods and ourselves from place to place to how we grow our food.
In Green World Rising, we're introduced to new solar, wind, and geothermal industries on the cutting edge of a green world. Like Mosaic, Inc., which is "banking on the sun" by deploying solar panels on residential rooftops giving individuals energy freedom from dirty coal fired power plants as well as a financial kick-back when that excess solar energy is spread around the grid to others.
This form of "decentralization" is crucial in the development of alternative energies. To beat back the worst effects of climate change, we have to replace our 19th and 20th century modes of energy and food production and transportation.
No longer tethered to centralized fossil fuel depots, electric cars and trains and eventually planes will be able to move us around the planet in a clean, efficient manner while also reducing our global carbon emission by one-third.
And the giant centralized factory farms that have come to dominate the food industry with their pesticides and disregard for the soil, can be replaced by small, organic, bio-diverse farms focused on local food production.
The threat of climate change is real. But, as DiCaprio states, "We have the solutions. Human ingenuity working alongside Earth's natural systems is building a new world that is sustainable and self-reliant."
This can be done within our lifetimes. Green World Rising shows us how. It's an important film that's part of a crucially important film series that comes at a time when our place on this planet is in peril.
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