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HBO: Obviously this is a very personal project for
you. Tell us how it came about, and why it's
so important to you.
Laurie David: Well, my goal is to make it personal for
everybody, because this issue of global
warming is going to impact every single
person. It's not a political issue, it's a moral
issue: what kind of world are we all going to
choose to live in? One that's one degree
hotter or five degrees hotter or ten degrees
hotter?
And that is the place that we're at right now.
And that was the driving passion in making
this documentary, was to try to reach as
many people as possible with the urgency of
what's going on, and how we're impacting our
climate. And HBO is a great place to do a
documentary and reach a whole new group of
people who might not be engaged on this
issue already.
What's happening is that the scientists who
are the most cautious people on the planet
have now said that we have less than ten
years to slow global warming down or else.
HBO: That's not much time.
Laurie David: That's right. And if the scientists are saying
that, it's my belief that it's probably five years.
So we better get going. And that's what's
driving everything is that we have a crisis,
we've been warned about this for two decades
now, and no one is paying attention. And seriously, what other issue is going to
impact people's lives more? Not terrorism, not
Iraq, not Social Security, it's global warming,
and it's here now, and we really need to wake
up and start dealing with it.
HBO: It seems like many people in the face of a lot
of evidence continue to take a rather casual
view, and say that the predictions are just
reactionary. How would you respond to the
person who chooses to put on blinders and
say, it's not that bad?
Laurie David: Well, one of the things that's happened is that a lot of mis-information has been spread about global warming, and
it's been spread by special interests that have
an agenda to keep the status quo. And I'm
referring to the oil industry, the auto industry,
the coal industry. It's been well-documented
now that they've spent a lot of money to try to
confuse people, to pose global warming as a
theory rather than a fact. So, that's one thing
that's been going on.
So a lot of people are either in complete denial, or they're in complete and total despair
and they feel like, well, nothing can be done,
it's too big a problem. But neither is true. The exciting thing about this problem is that
all the solutions already exist to start solving
this. And in Too Hot Not to Handle we spend a
lot of time talking about the solutions and
showing what corporations are doing and
individuals are doing and mayors are doing to
start reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
HBO: It's such a huge problem that the enormity of
it seems to overwhelm people.
Laurie David: It is an enormous problem, but there are
things that we can be doing as individuals.
There are things we can be doing as a family,
as a business owner, as a city, and of course
as a country. And we can be doing them
tomorrow. The big problem with this issue is
getting the American people to demand
changes. We have to build this movement
where the American people say, we want
solutions now. Government doesn't change until the people
demand it, so we need to shake everybody up
and say, hey, this can be dealt with, but we're
going to have to start right now, and that's
what I think this documentary is going to help
do.
HBO: It seems that this is the year of the hybrid car.
Even the president is hopping on that
bandwagon.
Laurie David: Well, talking about hybrid cars doesn't help as
much as actually driving them. So, that's
number one. I mean, we have to reject cars
that get under twenty miles to the gallon.
That's number one. If we raise fuel economy
standards tomorrow, we would be making a
huge impact on this problem.
There's a statistic which states that if the
average fuel economy in the United States was
increased by five miles per gallon, we'd save
something like twenty-five billion gallons of
gas a year. Why aren't we doing that? We
have to do that.
HBO: That's incredible.
Laurie David: And that's technology that exists right now.
So, one of the things we have to do is elect
politicians, either Democrats or Republicans,
who will raise the fuel economy standards of
our cars. Then there's obviously a whole host
of things that individuals can do.
On our website, stopglobalwarming.org there's
a list of about fifty things people can do.
But
here's a basic thing: we all have cell phones
now. Cell phones have a charger. Your
charger is in the wall, and when you pull your
cell phone out, everyone leaves the charger in
the wall. No one is pulling that out. Well,
that's drawing energy, using energy and
wasting it. This is something small which
very few people realize. It's the same thing with your toaster, and your
blackberry, and your hairdryer. If it stays
plugged into the wall, it's pulling energy.
HBO: Even if it's not turned on?
Laurie David: Even if it's not turned on.
HBO: Wow.
Laurie David: Yeah, it's an unbelievable thing. So, we've got
to get everybody pulling those chargers out of
the wall, turning their computers off at night,
using post-consumer waste paper. I mean, do
you believe that we are still chopping down
virgin wood for toilet paper? Seriously, that is
insane. And again, it's not about making a
sacrifice, it's about making a change, and
doing things in a smart efficient way, that's
what this is about.
Here is another stunning statistic, and we
talked about this on the Oprah Winfrey Show:
if every American household changed five
regular light bulbs to this new kind of bulb--
it's called a compact florescent bulb--it would
be equivalent to taking eight million cars off
the road for a year. Now why the heck don't
we do that?
HBO: Are they not widely available?
Laurie David: They're easily purchased, they cost a little bit
more, but you make it back on your energy
bill, and you will never replace that light bulb,
because they last forever. So this is a very
good thing we all should do. And again, it's
not about sacrifice, because it's just as much
light. You're not going to have to light five
candles in order to read at night.
HBO: Tell us a little bit about the work you're doing
with John McCain and Robert Kennedy, Jr.
Laurie David: Well, this is all about the public will. It's all
about getting the people to demand change. So we started to think, well, we need a march
on Washington to stop global warming, so let's
not go out on the streets, let's do it on the
internet. And let's not just do it for one day,
let's do it every day until we are millions
strong, and until we get so big and so loud
that the media and the Congress and the
administration can no longer ignore it.
So that's what we did, we launched the virtual
march to stop global warming, and it's at
stopglobalwarming.org. We currently have about three-hundred thousand people
already marching, and we're just ten months
old.
And the idea is that someone will go to the
internet, they'll join the march, and then
they'll send it to five friends. And by joining
the march basically you're saying, OK, I'm in,
the globe is warming, we're causing it, and we
want solutions now from our government.
The virtual march is something you can do
right now, it's simple, it's easy, it only requires
an email address. By joining the virtual
march, you're helping build awareness, you're
helping spread the word, and you're saying to
the United States government, this needs to
become an American priority.
And this is completely bi-partisan, it's not
political, it's moral. I launched it with Senator
John McCain, who's a Republican, and Bobby
Kennedy who's a Democrat, and we're
marching.
And if you look at the partners, if you click on
the featured marchers, it's an amazing array
of people, because truly we're all guilty. We're
all causing global warming, so we all need to
be part of the solution, all of us.
One email has gone from John McCain, one's
gone from Leonardo DiCaprio, one's gone from
Al Gore, one's gone from me; one's gone from
Bobby Kennedy. And we're building a grass
roots movement to demand solutions.
HBO: Some skeptics would
say, well, if we look back at the history of the
earth, we've seen these sorts of strange
anomalies before. Things can be normal again
next year.
Laurie David: Right, but here's the thing, if you do look
back, and scientists have, the fluctuations are
nothing compared to what's happening now.
So that's not true. And it's not cyclical. There
is more CO2 in the atmosphere right now
than in the last six hundred and fifty
thousand years.
And here's something else that's indisputable:
as carbon dioxide levels go up, heat goes up
with it. This is a fact, this is science. They
are totally and completely connected. So, if
there's more CO2 in the last sixty hundred
and fifty thousand years, it makes sense that
the temperature is getting hotter, and that the
trend is going to continue.
And this is why everyone is starting to panic.
We cannot continue with business as usual.
We can't. It's immoral. It's unethical. I
mean, we now know what we're doing, so
something has got to change here.
HBO: What do you hope people will take away from
the movie?
Laurie David: What I hope people will take away is just some
very simple things: that global warming is
happening right now, and that we are causing
it. We are impacting the climate. Humans
have become a force of nature themselves,
and the impacts are going to be horrific if we
don't do something about it. And that it's
going to take all of our ingenuity and passions
to stop this thing, but it can be stopped.
HBO: And that's the good news.
Laurie David: That's the good news. And the other good
news is that all the things we need to slow
global warming down already exist. We do not
have to wait a decade for something to be
developed or created. We have all the
solutions at hand right now. The only thing
missing is the American people demanding it.
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