Planet Earth 2000
ABCNEWS Special

The Report of
Earth Day Chairman
Leonardo DiCaprio

ELIZABETH VARGAS, ABCNEWS Good evening. I'm Elizabeth Vargas. Tonight on EARTH DAY 2000 we're going to spend the next hour exploring what some scientists have called the most important environmental issue of the new century'global warming. To do that we're trying something different.

Last fall, Leonardo DiCaprio, chairman of Earth Day 2000, came to us and said he would like to be a part of a program about the environment. His own interest in that topic home when he noticed something very unusual in a place familiar.

 LEONARDO DICAPRIO, ABCNEWS This is the Los Angeles River, and the locals call this particular section Frog Town. Now, I grew up a couple of blocks away, and during certain times of the year, this whole area was teeming with frogs. But now for whatever reason, within the last five years, they have completely disappeared. At first, it was something that I didn't attach a lot of significance to'until I began to understand that local cases like this may be a part of a much bigger chain of problems.

 1ST ALASKAN WOMAN It's getting real hot.

 1ST ALASKAN MAN We lost two hunters.

 2ND ALASKAN MAN If this change continues and the ice gets less, those animals that we're dependent upon will be replaced by something else.

 3RD ALASKAN MAN We're basically trying to avoid thin ice.

 LEONARDO DICAPRIO Some scientists believe we're coming into a time where we're not just polluting or destroying local habitats, but actually changing the chemistry and the dynamics of the entire atmosphere.

 1ST FLORIDA WOMAN If we are having an impact on these reefs, then it would be very sad if we were to lose them and the organisms that live in them.

 LEONARDO DICAPRIO (VO) It's called global warming, and it's an extremely complex topic...

 1ST WOMAN It really doesn't affect me. What can I do to stop it' I have no idea.

 LEONARDO DICAPRIO (VO) ...for which scientists have many divided opinions.

 KEVIN TRENCHBERTH You can try to stop, or at least slow down, the process.

 PAT MICHAELS, SCIENTIST There is no way we could stop the warming in any significant sense.

 LEONARDO DICAPRIO (VO) Throughout this hour, we're going to try to make sense of all this. Some of what you'll learn will scare you, a lot will surprise you.
(OC) We're going to challenge ourselves to find out about what we can do right now, to look beyond just our limited time on this planet, to ensure the future of all life on Earth.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS And so, tonight, joined by my ABCNEWS colleague Chris Cuomo, we're going to take you across the country and under the sea. We'll bring you to some beautiful places like this one, New Mexico's Chaco Canyon, where an 800-year-old mystery may hold a clue to our environmental problems today.
(VO) Far from this quiet spot, we'll travel to Atlanta, home of the country's worst traffic jams, to find out their solution for clean air. And finally, to the White House. Stay with us for PLANET EARTH 2000.
 

(Commercial break)
ANNOUNCER PLANET EARTH 2000 continues. Once again, Elizabeth Vargas.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS, ABCNEWS There is some debate among scientists as to what causes global warming and even about what the long-term effects of those climbing temperatures might be. But there is little doubt that right now, temperatures are rising. The last decade was the hottest 10-year span since we began keeping records in the late 19th century.
(VO) How do you take the temperature of planet Earth' You send a Navy submarine to the top of the world, searching for a breakthrough in the understanding of global warming. In the Arctic Ocean researchers found that the ice is now melting at a rate of four inches a year and has gotten four feet thinner over the past four decades. But the effects of global warming can take a much nastier form than melting ice'deadly heat waves in the Midwest, catastrophic droughts, wildfires around the globe, devastating hurricanes that take hundreds of lives, destroying property, typhoons across Asia and flooding. These disasters are all part of the natural weather cycle, but many scientists now think global warming may be exacerbating severe weather patterns by heating the air.

 KEVIN TRENCHBERTH Something is happening to the weather, and some of the changes are profound.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS (VO) Kevin Trenchberth is a scientist who has studied climate change.

 KEVIN TRENCHBERTH The heating goes into changing evaporation. There's more moisture in the atmosphere that gets gathered in by storms. And so, when it rains, it rains harder. What used to be a 100-year rainfall event which causes flooding is likely to become a 30-year event or even a 10-year event.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS (VO) Yes, the Earth is getting warmer, about one degree Fahrenheit over the last century. It may sound insignificant, but you should know the rate is increasing, and over the last 10 years, we've had five of the warmest winters on record. And those warm, wet winters means mosquitoes don't die out. In fact, they breed in standing rainwater, so this summer, look for more bug bites, more insecticide spraying and more outbreaks of rare tropical diseases.
(VO) But why is the Earth warming' Most scientists agree it is, in part, because of the greenhouse effect. That's where increased amounts of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, rise and trap the sun's heat in the atmosphere, forming a kind of global blanket which holds that heat close to the Earth. In other words, when all those smokestacks and tailpipes spew emissions from the energy we consume, we add more greenhouse gases to our atmosphere. In fact, right now, there are more of those gases up there than at any time in human history.

 KEVIN TRENCHBERTH Carbon dioxide has increased by over 30 percent. Carbon dioxide has a very long lifetime, over 100 years. And so we're going to have to live with this problem for some time in the future. I really worry about the environment we're leaving our children and our grandchildren, but not everyone has that point of view.

 PAT MICHAELS, SCIENTIST Nobody really complains when the mean temperature of the air masses in January goes from minus 40 to minus 38.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS (VO) Scientist Pat Michaels sides with those colleagues who think global warming is no cause for alarm. A consultant to the coal industry, Michaels says the warming trend is extremely gradual and that planet Earth can take it.

 PAT MICHAELS It may very well be that as we go into the 21st century, what we are going to see is the paradigm of fragile Earth evolves into the paradigm of resilient Earth. In other words, you know, it takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS (VO) But in the meantime, the possible consequences of a warmer planet are affecting species around the world'amphibians, for example. Some researchers say unusually warm, dry weather, may have caused the mysterious disappearance of 20 kinds of amphibians in Central America, including the extinction of the Golden Toad. It's too early to tell for other species, but scientists are looking backward to see what may lie ahead.
(VO) Buried deep in these glaciers are bubbles of air preserved over the past 100,000 years. By drilling into the core, researchers have been able to measure the levels of these age-old greenhouse gases. They found every time the Earth's temperature was high, so was the level of greenhouse gases, gases created naturally back then by things, from volcanoes to decaying plants, long before the gasses were intensified by the pollution of modern civilization.
(OC) Some 800 years ago, the Anasazi Indians lived and thrived in this scenic New Mexico canyon. And then they suddenly left. The reasons why have remained a mystery. But now some scientists think they may have uncovered part of the answer.
(VO) In the once-prosperous community of the Anasazi, scientists have found more clues to the climate shifts of the past. Here, the evidence was hidden in the trees of Chaco Canyon.

 1ST MAN IN NEW MEXICO The tree is a recording instrument. The wide rings are years of very good growth. It's a lot of rainfall. The very narrow rings are years when there was very little rainfall.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS So, you can see the years were extraordinarily dry.

 1ST MAN IN NEW MEXICO They're coming along. Good growth. And then bang, a great drought is this time period between my fingers.

 MICHAEL ADLER, ANTHROPOLOGIST There was a major drought or series of droughts between 1130 and 1180. If you can imagine years of tough living. These people had to depend upon the environment to give them the moisture and the soils, and the warmth that they needed. And when that did not come, they needed to go elsewhere.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS So, by the year 1200, this place was a ghost town.

 MICHAEL ADLER It really was.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS (VO) What happened here nine centuries ago is a dramatic example of how alterations in the climate can profoundly change life as we know it, here on planet Earth.

 MICHAEL ADLER We can't underestimate the role that the environment had. In some cases, the environment does you in.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS There's a place where global warming is already seen as a matter of life and death. You may be surprised when you see where that place is. Stay with us.

 ANNOUNCER PLANET EARTH 2000 will continue in a moment.
 

(Commercial break)

 ANNOUNCER PLANET EARTH 2000 continues. Once again, Leonardo DiCaprio.

 LEONARDO DICAPRIO, ABCNEWS I read recently that it only took five to nine degrees to pull us out of the last Ice Age. Now, a couple of degrees difference in today's temperatures may not seem like an emergency, but five to nine degrees is all that separates our planet from catastrophic change.

 CHRIS CUOMO, ABCNEWS (VO) Scientists have suggested that in a time of global warming, cold zones like Alaska, Siberia and northwest Canada would experience climate change faster and more than anywhere else. Today, there is no question that Alaska is thawing. While the Earth's temperature has risen about one degree over the last century, Alaska has seen an increase of at least five degrees, and that's just since the '60s. Glaciers, permafrost and sea ice are all melting. Eskimos and Inuits may well be more climate-aware than anyone. In the Arctic Circle, weather defines who they are, what they eat, how they make their living, where they live and how they move.
How many people live in Kotzebue'

 PETE SHAEFFER, TRIBAL ELDER We have about 3,000 there in the winter, and then in summer, it swells up to about 4,000.

 CHRIS CUOMO Tribal elder Pete Shaeffer showed me around. Look at all those fish. Hold on a second.

 PETE SHAEFFER It's an Arctic fish.

 CHRIS CUOMO The only thing you have to worry about is somebody coming along and helping themselves.

 PETE SHAEFFER Not really. If they need it worse than you do, you just let them take it.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) The focus on climate begins at an early age. Every morning at tribal kindergarten, one pupil reports on the day's weather. Weather is described in such detail here that there are upwards of 15 words for what we call snow.

 1ST CHILD (Foreign language spoken)

 2ND CHILD (Foreign language spoken)

 3RD CHILD (Foreign language spoken)

 CHRIS CUOMO January, siginnaatchiaq means, 'the sun is just starting to come up.'

 CALEB PUNGOWIYI, NATIVE LEADER Ice, to us, is a supporter of life. It's an extension of our land. We travel on it. We go hunting on it. From 30 or 40 years to today, we see much earlier springs. And then ice and snow formations are later than what they used to be.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) Native leader Caleb Pungowiyi travels throughout the region to discuss changes he attributes to global warming.

 CALEB PUNOWIYI We see a real sharp reduction in the amount of ice that was in the Bering Sea. I think our elders have seen these changes occurring.

 1ST ALASKAN WOMAN It's really getting hot. We notice that.

 CALEB PUNGOWIYI Even if you try to predict the weather, what it's going to be tomorrow, it doesn't happen anymore.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) Pungowiyi took us to meet Bob and Carrie Uhl, who for 50 years have lived at this camp miles from civilization. Bob Uhl isn't an Eskimo, but to people around here, he's an honorary elder.

 CALEB PUNGOWIYI And they have a lot of respect for what he's done, living off the land with Carrie, you know, they're real true subsistence people.

 BOB UHL Would you turn off the tea kettle over there, please' You're almost a slave to the weather, I would say, when you're living off the land in the Arctic.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) Uhl is also an observer for the weather service. He keeps close track of the climate trends.

 BOB UHL Temperaturewise, it's been unusually mild. On March 1st, 2000, it's cloudy, 18 degrees Fahrenheit for the low, 24 degrees Fahrenheit for the high. We have a number of different species that were not here before.

 CARRIE UHL Well, the new animal that I notice is the moose.

 CHRIS CUOMO While the Uhls note significant changes in the environment, Bob's careful to point out that the Eskimos have seen plenty of weather cycles come and go.

 BOB UHL Within the last 20 years, these things do seem to have accelerated. It could be cause for alarm, but all that depends on what happens in the next 20 years.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) As elsewhere, there's debate as to just how concerned people should be.

 R. MEADE Last year, we had more fatalities, people going through the ice, than we had in the previous years.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) Traditionally, natives, with their intimate and thorough knowledge of the land, have hunted with minimal risk.
(OC) What kind of a man is a hunter' Like, how would you describe your father to me'

 JIMMY BROWN If he was still here today, I would still be looking up to him for advice.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) Last year, Jimmy Brown lost his father, along with another hunter, victims, perhaps, of unexpected thawing ice.

 JIMMY BROWN They took off on a hunting trip to hunt seal and just literally never came back. Some of the conclusions are that the ice apparently must have gotten thinner from beneath the surface.

 CHRIS CUOMO You think it's just coincidence, or you think we're talking about the impact of global warming'

 JIMMY BROWN I think we're talking about more than coincidence, because it's actually changed the pattern of, you know, how people relate to their hunting cycles and things like that.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) Hunters are beginning to react to what may signal an end to their way of life, ice which has thinned 40 percent in the last four decades, making it dangerous to be out, especially on heavy snow machines.

 2ND ALASKAN MAN We take more chances now because of different ice conditions than what we used to hunt before.

 3RD ALASKAN MAN In a way, it's a price we pay for our lifestyle.

 4TH ALASKAN MAN Getting ready for the ride.

 CHRIS CUOMO Men like Caleb Pungowiyi and George Goldy don't hunt for sport. They hunt because it's who they are. And if the ice here continues to thaw, it's their identity and culture that may melt away with it.

 GEORGE GOLDY I love to go hunting, you know. I love to be out in the open air. It's like energizing your soul.

 CHRIS CUOMO The danger out here is thin ice. Imagine traveling at 40 miles per hour for one, two, maybe three hours, all the time trying to study the nuance of the contours of the ice. Imagine how difficult it would be to hunt then. And that's the reality of these lives.

 5TH ALASKAN MAN It looks like yellow fog floating on top of the ice. Stay away from that.

 CHRIS CUOMO What about the big cracks'

 5TH ALASKAN MAN You should be fine. The ice is at least four'four to five feet thick.

 CHRIS CUOMO That's good to know.

 GEORGE GOLDY So far, nothing, but we'll go off here and see if there's any'anything up there.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) Pungowiyi says that the point of hunting isn't necessarily to catch an animal, but to be close to the environment. True hunters, Inupiaq, let the animals come to them.
Do we hunt moose'

 GEORGE GOLDY This one is a cow with a calf, so we can't hunt that one.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) Inupiaq honor the animal spirit, taking only what they need. The animals, they say, have their own barometers for the surroundings and can teach us all about the environment we share.

 GEORGE GOLDY This'this guy has a real full sack. Little.

 CHRIS CUOMO Wow, look at that.

 GEORGE GOLDY Tips of willow bushes. So, they're storing the food for bad weather that's coming. OK' So, in two days, we'll have snow, maybe.

 CHRIS CUOMO After spending a day in the Arctic circle, you can understand how special and delicate it is. And for the people in Kotzebue, how warming isn't just a temperature change, it's a change in their way of life.

 CALEB PUNGOWIYI Sometimes I think we're probably too late. Sometimes I think that we are'we may'we'll be able to adjust. But I can't help but think that the future is gonna be more difficult.

 ANNOUNCER PLANET EARTH 2000 will continue in a moment.
 

(Commercial break) 

ANNOUNCER PLANET EARTH 2000 continues.

 CHRIS CUOMO, ABCNEWS Let's take a second to visit the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. I'm here with Dr. Neil Tyson, astrophysicist.
Doctor, what can we learn about the climate from the other planets in the solar system'

 DR NEIL TYSON, ASTROPHYSICIST Let's first look at where Earth is in the solar system around the sun. We're at a distance. It's not too close and not too far. It's just right to sustain liquid water, water that's essential for life as we know it. But on either side of us, if you go closer to the sun, we get the planet Venus, that has a runaway greenhouse effect. And just outside of Earth's orbit, you get to the planet Mars. It is bone-dry, and it is as cold as the coldest spots we have here on Earth. Both sides of us are inhospitable to life, this forces you to take pause, because when you look at Earth, you can ask, 'is there anything going on right now that might one day lead to the conditions that gave us our neighboring planets'?

 LEONARDO DICAPRIO, ABCNEWS Much as the frog is a barometer of its habitat, the coral reef is a good measure of the health of an ocean. So, when we come back, we'll go to an underwater habitat in the Florida Keys to see what scientists have to say.

 1ST FEMALE DIVER We found that 80 percent of the coral surface was dead.

 ANNOUNCER ABCNEWS PLANET EARTH 2000 will continue after this from our ABC stations.
 

(Commercial break)

 ANNOUNCER PLANET EARTH 2000 continues. Once again, Elizabeth Vargas.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS, ABCNEWS Global warming means just that, a phenomenon that may be universal. The fear is that it could alter habitats as dry as this desert or as watery as the sea itself.
(VO) Most of us see the ocean from an outsider's perspective. It's no more familiar to us than the vacation commercials on TV, only useful when we go to the beach, or take a trip. But there are some people who would like us to know more about the sea.

 CAROL BALDWIN, MARINE BIOLOGIST Well, the coral reefs are the rain forests of the ocean. I mean, they support more diversity than any other place in the ocean.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS (VO) Carol Baldwin is a marine biologist specializing in coral reef and deep sea environments. When she's not organizing specimens in the Smithsonian's Fishes Room, she's collecting them in IMAX 3-D. She is part of the new generation of scientists who are finding ways to make their work accessible to the public.

 CAROL BALDWIN We are slowly going in the right direction. For so many years scientists have stayed in their little labs. We are very reluctant, often, to take the time to communicate with the public, simply because it just takes so much time away from our research.
I want you to think about something, OK' Let's pretend that we're all going on a picnic.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS (VO) On this day Baldwin met with a fifth grade class at the National Geographic Society in Washington, DC.

 CAROL BALDWIN What about in summertime when it gets really hot, what can you do to cool off a little bit'
Kids are like sponges, they just take it in. And you just see their eyes, you know, open wide.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS (VO) But Carol was there to watch a show sponsored by the Jason Project. The program is hosted by Dr. Bob Ballard in Houston, and features Dr. Ellen Prager in Key Largo. They do five broadcasts a day covering a wide range of topics and in each program they serve an individual coral to determine their health.

 DR ELLEN PRAGER We found that 80 percent of the coral's surface was dead.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS (VO) And everyday students across the nation watch the broadcasts or participate over the Internet.

 FIDEL RAMIREZ, STUDENT ON INTERNET How are coral reefs affected by climate change'

 DR ELLEN PRAGER One of the things that we found is that when the water temperature is warm corals can bleach, and the algae that lives within its tissues gets expelled. If you look at this coral head it's nice and brown. When a coral bleaches it turns white.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS (VO) The Internet allows students from as far away as Kotzebue, Alaska, to examine the coral.

 1ST FEMALE TEACHER We are teaching global warming to try and have the kids develop a stronger sense of stewardship over the environment that these kids are very closely tied to as part of their curriculum and part of their culture.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS (VO) Just last month government scientists said temperatures had been rising for 40 years in the oceans all over the world, but nothing was worse than the year of El Nino.

 DR ELLEN PRAGER In 1998, we had a record coral bleaching event and we think it was higher water temperatures, which may be a result of global warming.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS While bleaching can also be caused by high exposure to the light or high bacteria, most scientists agree that warmer water is the main culprit.

 DR ELLEN PRAGER Coral bleaching is an indicator of i stress. It's just like humans. Sometimes humans get sick when their immune system gets weak, and bleaching may do the same thing to coral.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS (VO) A healthy coral reef, like this one in Australia, is a vibrant metropolis of underwater species. Each reef contains a staggering degree of biodiversity because it can house many forms of life and many more than common feed off of the species living there. But if a coral reef dies, so may some of the creatures living in and around it. And living around it is exactly what Ellen and her team are doing. They are spending 11 days in Aquarius, an underwater habitat 63 feet below the surface.

 DR ELLEN PRAGER The reef is incredible. There's a big barracuda. It's very sad, no you just want to just, you know, take that hook out.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS (VO) The crew comes and goes through a room of compressed air they call a wet porch.

 DR ELLEN PRAGER It's just an open entryway in Aquarius where the air inside the Aquarius is at the same pressure as the water outside so it can be left open all the time without risking us climbing in and out.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS Through Jason and Aquarius, Ellen Prager's has introduced student argonauts to life beneath the sea. For them global warming is a boiling hot topic.

 1ST UNDERWATER STUDENT I think coral bleaching is definitely an indication that humans have a big responsibility to take care of the ocean. It's our Earth and we're here to protect it.

 2ND UNDERWATER STUDENT Coral reefs, if one thing dies, the whole food chain goes down because it's a chain reaction. If one thing dies, they're all going to die eventually. It's just time.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS (VO) As all divers know, time is a precious commodity. And for scientists like Ellen Prager and Carol Baldwin, there may not be much time to connect what they do to the everyday lives of people up on dry land.
(OC) When we come back, a look at some people with some surprising ideas on how to help the environment.

 ANNOUNCER PLANET EARTH 2000 will continue in a moment.
 

(Commercial Break)

 LEONARDO DICAPRIO Earth Day's solution for 2000 is clean energy. Right now, we're balancing on the edge of history on one hand the idea of progress, on the other, the depletion of the Earth's natural resources. The question is can we have both' The rapidly expanding city of Atlanta seems to think so.

 CHRIS CUOMO, ABCNEWS (VO) You are watching a thunderstorm in the middle of the night. In most places, thunderstorms happen in the late afternoon. But this happened at night because of the extra heat on the streets of Atlanta, otherwise known as 'Hotlanta.'

 DALE QUATTROCHI Between 1973 and 1992, there's been 380,000 acres of trees that have gone away in the Atlanta metropolitan area.

 MATT WALLACE, WSB-TV ATLANTA I've seen the city double in size as far as volume of traffic in the last five years.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) Traffic and all that new pavement brought on by growth and sprawl is actually changing the region's climate and ruining Atlanta's air.
CATHERINE ROSS, GEORGIA REGIONAL TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY We are not attaining the standards the federal government has set in terms of clean air. We are failing that test.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) Atlanta has the biggest traffic problem in the nation. The average Atlantan drives just about 35 miles each day, that's more miles per capita than any city in America. Things are so bad, the city is in violation of the Clean Air Act. And when that started costing Atlanta hundreds of millions of federal dollars, the environment became a top priority.

 CATHERINE ROSS We are talking about more buses, more inner city rails, bicycle paths, sidewalks, everything that gives people more choice and reduces this reliance on the automobile for every trip that they make.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) Catherine Ross is the executive director of the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority, or GRETA, an agency created by the state last year to deal with Atlanta's car troubles. GRETA has the power to green light public transportation projects and to veto developments that could cause more traffic.

 CATHERINE ROSS Nobody is sitting in traffic because they want to sit in traffic. They are sitting in traffic because they don't have any choice.
Mr. JOHN WILLIAMS (Post Properties): We saw the quality of life in the Atlanta area threatened and consequently, our economic growth, our prosperity threatened.
CUOMO: (VO) Through all that smog, John Williams saw the light. Williams, one of the region's most successful developers during the days of sprawl has made a u-turn. Now, he's creating cities within the city, like this apartment complex with its own town square, hair salon, restaurant and office building, developments where residents can walk to places beyond their own garage.

 JOHN WILLIAMS In previous times, people were concerned with security and other issues. But all of a sudden, it was traffic.

 CHRIS CUOMO When people talk about creating solutions to environmental problems is that going happen if it's not done in a way that's good for business'

 JOHN WILLIAMS The end of the day, the greatest incentive is the profit incentive. The good news for us is we're doing something that's environmentally sensitive, but it makes great business sense.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) Even if a development like this isn't for you, there are choices you could make every day to improve the environment, but most of us simply pass them by.
(OC) You hear it all the time. Carpool, share a ride. They even built these HOV lanes to make it easier for commuters. But as you can see, hardly anybody is using them. We're going along at barely the speed limit, but we're passing all this traffic and every car we pass has one person in it.
(VO) And what can one car do'

 DR MIKE ROGERS, GEORGIA TECH UNIVERSITY We've been measuring in this method since 1993.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) We found Dr. Mike Rogers of Georgia Tech testing the emissions of random cars at an on-ramp to I-75.
(OC) What do we have going on here'

 MIKE ROGERS This is a very high emitting vehicle, that's 7 percent CO and this vehicle is seriously out of tune. That vehicle is probably equivalent to a hundred ordinary vehicles.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) To see how much carbon dioxide a single vehicle might emit during rush hour, we decided to race Dr. Mike's van against this electronically powered ebike. The ebike can get up to about 15 miles an hour. The van can do 80, unless it gets stuck.

 MIKE ROGERS We're going to climb a hill.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) The race is five back-breaking miles through some of Atlanta's busiest streets.

 MIKE ROGERS Take a look at all that traffic. It's awful. I think we're the victors here today.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) In the end, the ebike beat the van by five minutes, and it had next to nothing in emissions. So how much damage did our little five mile race in the van do to the environment'

 MIKE ROGERS Well, this particular trip put about eight pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and that represents about a sixth of what the average Atlantan would put out for a particular day.

 CHRIS CUOMO So you're looking at almost 50 pounds of carbon put into the atmosphere'

 MIKE ROGERS So, carbon monoxide is innert in the atmosphere. So, it stays around for a couple of centuries before it's absorbed into the ocean and readmitted.

 CHRIS CUOMO Centuries'

 MIKE ROGERS Centuries, right.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) There are 3 million cars in Atlanta. If just half of commuters car pooled, we could save about 11 million pounds of carbon dioxide from going into our air each day. Well, if that doesn't move you, think of how much time you'd save by not sitting in traffic, if you think of it that way, we'd be helping the environment without making a big issue out of it.
(VO) Around the country, some businesses are finding that saving the environment can save money, too. The building at Four Times Square here in New York City is an example of making a difference in a big way. This building has been designed to be environmentally sensitive.
(OC) So this building is creating its own energy'

 PAMELA LIPPE, ENVIRONMENTAL CONSULTANT Oh, yeah, we create all of our heating and cooling within the building.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) Unlike most buildings, Four Times Square has its own fuel cells and solar collectors, which makes it less of a drain on the city's power. The building also has an innovative filtration system to address a major environmental concern for most cities: air quality.

 PAMELA LIPPE The air inside the building is, frankly, probably a lot better than the air outside the building.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) Tenants benefit from lower utility bills and an enhanced environmental image.
(OC) This building at Four Times Square is a good example of how what's good for the environment can also be what's good for business. A growing number of companies are becoming environmentally concerned both in terms of what they are making and how they are making it.
(VO) Historically, America's factories filled our skies and warmed our atmosphere with the smoke, soot and ash from burning fossil fuels. The Ford Motor Company's huge River Rouge plant is a prime example for better or worse.

 WILLIAM MCDONOUGH, RE-DESIGNING FORD ROUGE PLANT The River Rouge plant is this'the icon of the industrial revolution. It's the one. It's Henry Ford's original vertically-integrated industrial facility. Coal and iron, ore came in at one end and finished cars came out the other.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) But Ford's spending reported $2 billion to make the plant environmentally state-of-the-art. It's hoped that environmental sensitivity will pay off in good public relations. Bill Ford is chairman of the company.

 BILL FORD, CHAIRMAN, FORD MOTOR COMPANY I'd like to prove that being at the cutting edge of environmental leadership and to really push the envelope on environmental issues is also a good business proposition.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) Automakers are feeling their way into the future. Several super-efficient smaller models are on the market, and even Ford is trying to bring its sport utility vehicle up to speed.

 BILL FORD Our approach, whether it's fuel cells, whether it's hybrids or whether it's any other alternate technology, is to get it into high volume vehicles and get it into the mainstream of the marketplace.

 MATTHEW ARNOLD, ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYST SUV's are fundamentally a problem for the environment. Ford probably derives half or 60 percent of their net profit from SUV's. That's the reality of the marketplace today.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) Bottom line, businesses will make whatever consumers buy. If we want more environmentally sound cars to replace the gas guzzling SUV's, we've got to do one thing: actually buy them.

 MATTHEW ARNOLD It's funny because people want both. They want more and more stuff, and they want cleaner water, cleaner air, you know, and a safer environment. And both of those wants are legitimate, but, boy, they create a lot of tension.

 CHRIS CUOMO The tensions between consumer desires and environmental concern were radically played out amongst the redwoods of northern California. You see, even here in New York, trees act as air filters by taking carbon dioxide out and putting oxygen back in. That's why we have laws to protect our forests. But for some people, the battle is extremely personal. The story you're about to see begins when a woman named Julia Butterfly Hill climbed a tree.
(VO) This is the story of the woman who lived in a tree. This is Julia and these are redwood trees. One day, a couple of years ago, Julia climbed a redwood tree that was about to be cut down. It was an old tree, other people had named Luna. Julia stayed in Luna for over two years.

 JULIA BUTTERFLY HILL I decided that I was not going to allow my feet to touch the ground again until I had done everything I possibly could in my power to make people aware of what was happening here and stop what is happening here. Stop the destruction.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) This is the lumber company that wanted to cut its trees down. Luna was on its property. So the company had every reason to be unhappy.

 JOHN CAMPBELL, PRESIDENT, PACIFIC LUMBER The young lady has been trespassing on our property and it is private property.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) Julia says security guards were brought in for ten days to keep food and other supplies away from her. They couldn't, so they stopped trying.

 MAN Drive safe. Be careful.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) Some people in the company even began to admire the stubborn woman in the tree.

 MAN Julia, Julia, Julia.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) Sitting in a tree wasn't always so peaceful.

 JULIA BUTTERFLY HILL I've come to become one with nature.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) Julia had to deal with El Nino. Julia also had a cell phone she used to call the media.

 JULIA BUTTERFLY HILL I'm actually sitting here speaking with ABC.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) And one day, she had a helicopter buzz by so closely, it almost knocked her out of Luna. After two years, the company got tired of Julia living in its tree. Julia was tired, too. So they made an unusual deal.

 JOHN CAMPBELL Miss Hill has agreed to pay the company $50,000, which we in turn plan to pass over to Humbolt State University, the local college, and the money will be used for forestry research.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) And Julia could come back down to the ground. Luna and all of the other trees 200 feet around her were saved.

 JULIA BUTTERFLY HILL This is magic.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) Now, Julia travels across the country.

 JULIA BUTTERFLY HILL And we point to everything that's wrong in the world.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) Telling her story of personal power and responsibility.

 JULIA BUTTERFLY HILL We have the power to change the world. This is not a message of can we make a difference' It is, we do make a difference. We have the responsibility to make the choices that will preserve the environment for future generations.

 CHRIS CUOMO (VO) And that is the story of Julia Butterfly Hill, the woman who nourished a small deed and watched it grow over 200 feet tall.

 ANNOUNCER Leonardo DiCaprio recently visited the White House. When we come back, we'll hear from the president
 

 Prepared by Burrelle's Information Services, which takes sole responsibility for accuracy of transcription

ANNOUNCER PLANET EARTH 2000 continues. Once again, Elizabeth Vargas.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS, ABCNEWS Earth Day chairman Leonardo DiCaprio recently visited the White House to talk about the environment. One thing he and the president discussed was what was being done at the White House complex to save energy.

 PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON We started a project here at the White House called the greening of the White House. Just by changing the lighting in this whole building, we lowered our electric bills by $100,000 a year.

 LEONARDO DICAPRIO Wow.

 BILL CLINTON And we put in a more energy-efficient heating system and water system. We bought more energy-efficient equipment, the copiers, computers, all with the Energy Star label, which is a totally voluntary thing the Department of Energy provides. Now, these are things that businesses all across America could be doing.

 LEONARDO DICAPRIO Mr. President, I want to thank you very much for your time, and as you know, I'm neither a politician nor a journalist, but being given the opportunity to sit down with you here and talk about an issue like global warming, was a'was a'was an opportunity as a concerned citizen that I couldn't pass up.

 BILL CLINTON Well, let me, first of all, thank you for your interest in this, because I think it's important that he get citizens more involved in it. And secondly, say I don't think it's all that controversial a topic among scientists. There are a few who say that it's not proven, but we know that the hottest years in recorded history and certainly in the last 600 years that nine of the hottest 11 years have occurred in the last decade.

 LEONARDO DICAPRIO Why do you think this issue is so constantly overlooked and why do you think people don't take it seriously enough, and for you, is it as important as something like health care or education'

 BILL CLINTON Oh, yes. Over the long run, it's?it's one of the two or three major issues facing the world over the next 30 years. I think it's because it takes a long time for the climate to change in a way that people feel it and because it seems sort of abstract now.

 LEONARDO DICAPRIO What do you think the best course for American citizens is, within the next 20 years, as far as helping the environment is concerned'

 BILL CLINTON I think that the most important thing we can do is every citizen must first understand that he or she can do something about this and it won't bankrupt them. They should have their homes, their cars, their businesses, everything they do should be oriented toward energy efficiency and alternative energy technologies. It needs to become a matter of citizen debate. So, I think citizen action and then citizens as voters turning it into political'a political issue in the very finest sense. Those are the things that I think need to be done right now into the next several years to get America on the right track.

 LEONARDO DICAPRIO Do you think we could eventually become a role model'

 BILL CLINTON Absolutely. If we'if we take this on the way we did the industrial revolution, the way we did the information technology revolution, there will be an energy revolution in the 21st century that will save the planet and actually increase health and wealth.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS Earth Day turns 30 this year. It's become something much bigger than its founders could ever have imagined three decades ago.
(VO) On April 22nd, 1970, the organizers of the first Earth Day created the environmental shout heard around the world. That first Earth Day marked forever the dividing line between carelessness and caring. Denis Hayes was instrumental in organizing the first Earth Day.

 DENIS HAYES We tapped into a set of issues that a huge number of people care deeply about. We passed the Clean Air Act established the Environmental Protection Agency, banned DDT, passed the environmental education act. All of this within the course of about a year and a half after Earth Day.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS (VO) By 1990, the 20 million ragged environmental activists of two decades before had grown to 200 million. Environmental concerns had entered the mainstream. Now at the start of the new century, Earth Day activities have spread to 184 countries, all over planet Earth. Tonight we've looked at global warming from different points of view. Now we go to the Butterfly Conservatory at the American Museum of Natural History for a final thought from Earth Day Chairman Leonardo DiCaprio.

 LEONARDO DICAPRIO As the debate surrounding global warming continues on, a recent study by government scientists suggests that the Earth's climate is in fact warming at an unprecedented rate. But it may be decades before we know the full impact of global warming. And by then, it may be too late for us to do anything about it. Now, there's a concept in the scientific community that goes something like this: complex systems or large phenomena like El Nino can be started by a fluctuation as gentle as the flapping wings of a butterfly. It's a metaphor called the butterfly effect. Now, if we take that a step further, that means that the slightest action could have a negative effect on the planet or in turn, it might result in something positive. Simple fact is that there's nothing to lose if we take preventative measures right now to save our planet, but there's a whole lot to lose if we don't.

 ELIZABETH VARGAS I'm Elizabeth Vargas. For all of us at ABCNEWS, good night.