Six Degrees Could Change The World (31 of 36)

Six Degrees Could Change The World

[Lynas] Warmings of six degrees over longertime periods have been associated with some of the most devastating mass extinctions which have evertaken place.
It's fair to assume that if temperatures soar by six degrees within less than a century that we're going to face nothing less than a global wipeout.
[Narrator] Six degrees of warming has been called "the doomsday scenario."
Our lives would never be the same again.
But it's not all doom and gloom, yet.
Most experts believe we can awaken from the nightmare.
Right now, the average temperature has only risen 0.8 degrees Celsius.
But we don't have much time.
Two degrees hotter puts us on the brink of runaway global warming, when it could dramatically disrupt how we live our lives.

[Lynas] The scientific reality seems to be that we have to, if at all possible, peak global emissions within the next ten years, by 2015.
And this, of course, is an extremely tight timetable.
We're talking about turning around the energy supply for most of humanity within the space of a decade.
[Narrator] For anyone iooking for solutions, there's no place like home.
This is the Cohen residence, a pleasant three-bedroom in Snowmass, Colorado.
But lurking beneath the surtace, an energy-eating monster.
More than half the eiectricity in the United States goes into buildings in one form or another.
Many homes waste more energy than they use.
[Teapot whistling] A team of eco-detectives is investigating the Cohen house for crimes against the climate.
[Man] This innocent-looking thing here, when it is on, eats a whole lot of money.
When I feel this much cold on the outside of the freezer, I know that the insulation is really not as thick as we would like.
Oh, what have we here?
Climate change is a problem we don't need to have, and it's cheaper not to.