Mountains have always been a source of awe and beauty. Danny Arnold and his friend are extreme mountaineers, here on a quest for the ultimate thrill. They're scaling the Pits Palau at nearly 4,000 metres above sea level. You hammer in your axe and hear the tension, a cracking and hissing sound as it breaks into the ice blocks.
It's just awesome. But a growing number of scientists are saying that adventures like this might soon become impossible. Global warming is melting the glaciers. Ten years ago, you had far more days during the winter when you could really go climbing.
Over the course of a range of trips to Africa, Asia and Europe over the last few years, we monitored the impact of climate change, torrential rain and floods, devastating droughts and the ominous threat of permafrost thaw. But hope is not lost, thanks to an unprecedented number of people working to combat climate change. From researchers around the planet, to industry leaders and the global community of the United Nations.
These efforts are probably too late for particular regions. Our mountains, for example, have less snow, less ice and fewer glaciers. The European Alps as we know them now will soon be merely a memory.
We live in critical times. If we do not respond to nature's warnings, we will find ourselves at the brink of a human-made heat age. The world's coldest regions are among the absolute hotspots of climate change. The Arctic, the Antarctic, Alaska and the vast permafrost regions of Russia.
Nikita Zimov trained as a mathematician, but what he observed here in the far east of Russia prompted him to change course and turn climate activist. He's now dedicated his life to preserving the frozen layer of soil under the Earth's surface. Here, by the banks of the Kolyma River in the Republic of Sakha in Siberia, he's collecting evidence that the permafrost is no longer permanent.
The ground has warmed up by 3 degrees Celsius, causing the top layer of the ice to melt and a growing number of rare fossils to resurface. So it's a piece of the marmoswag. Not the biggest one, but average size. Plenty.
So here was in the Pleistocene. The ecosystem here was huge. And on every square kilometer roamed one mammoth.
And it was for 40,000 years. And on average here, on each square kilometer, now lay around 600 skeletons. So every once in a while they are.
Everywhere you look, the hill slopes are sliding down into the river, the result of permafrost melt. Zimov has dubbed the plants affected zombies due to the soil they grow in having been in deep freeze for 40,000 years and therefore devoid of life. And soon this vegetation will disappear again in the water.
What's already happening here on the banks of this river, and soon will occur in large parts of Russia, could spell dramatic change to the climate. The amount of biomass lying dormant in the permafrost is immense. If the carbon dioxide and methane accumulated in the ground were to escape into the atmosphere, the pace of climate change would increase dramatically. So these are roots of grasses which grew here maybe around 40,000 years ago. And the problem is that there's a huge storage of carbon.
And take all these little roots and put them on the one side of the balance, and on the other side of the balance put all the above ground vegetation of the planet, so basically all trees and shrubs of the planet, you will see that these tiny little roots weight more. And if perifrost will start to degrade everywhere, All this will become available for microbes to eat and they will very soon convert into greenhouse gases, CO2 or methane. That's ice, pure ice out there. And you see, when this ice is melting, the water is mixing with this soil and creating these mud flows which are channeling down the slope. And degradation is happening very rapidly here.
So it's a combination of both, lots of carbon and lots of ice. And that gives you a very rapid carbon bomb. A self-perpetuating vicious cycle in which global warming releases a growing quantity of greenhouse gases, leading to ever higher temperatures.
A process that will eventually be impossible to stop. So we have to cut emissions. In Germany, the situation poses an additional challenge. The Brockdorf power plant has already gathered moss since it was shut down at the end of 2021 as part of Germany's nuclear phase-out. The expansion of renewable energy sources is still on too small a scale.
At the same time, there's been a rise in energy generation from coal, oil and gas, meaning more instead of less CO2, methane and nitrous oxide. Global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began, there was a slight decline. But by 2030, if we fail to cut emissions, we'll be looking at a figure of 55. billion tons. And by the end of the century, the earth would heat up by almost three degrees, with alarming consequences.
Preventing that scenario requires us to expel a maximum of 25 gigatons into the atmosphere by 2030. And that means slashing emissions of CO2 and all greenhouse gases, a 50% reduction. For over two decades now, Professor Niklas Hoene has been tracking the environmental policies of the biggest emitters. A task that led to growing frustration over the years, with governments doing a lot of talking but taking precious little action. There are signs, however, of a slight reversal.
The international community has actually been getting serious about phasing out coal, oil and gas. The Paris Climate Agreement was signed in 2015. But we're now seeing a growing number of countries setting themselves the goal of becoming climate neutral, by cutting emissions to zero. Scientists at the New Climate Institute in Cologne, Germany, have divided the required measures into three categories. The first category is the most optimistic one, with a very high likelihood of climate goals being met, including a significant increase in renewable energies. This would require emissions savings of 30 gigatons by 2030, say the experts.
To illustrate what that entails, we'll use a soccer stadium as a scaled-down model, the Allianz Arena, home to Bayern Munich. Once a year, a new turf is rolled out across the stadium. The job for those trying to save the climate is to ensure that everything is green.
The task at hand is to cover the entire pitch in order to actually remove those 30 gigatons. Is this even possible? Now to the source of the issue. Norway is famed for its abundance of lakes, fjords, rivers and streams.
An almost inexhaustible supply of energy for society if you store the source in reservoirs. As the Norway report, the source of energy is the water. The source of energy is the water.
Norwegians do. Here at the Tonstad power plant in southern Norway, Gauter Tjohom opens the gate to another world inside a rocky hillside. He'll be showing us how the country manages to produce more energy than it consumes, with the help of 1,600 hydroelectric facilities.
The Tonstad facility alone generates enough energy to power the homes of a city of 1.5 million people. Its waters plunge to a depth of 440 metres. The maximum capacity here is 320 megawatts. It is 100 times a normal wind turbine.
So quite big, one of the biggest in Norway. And where does all that surplus energy go? First to this substation not far from the plant.
And from there to Germany via a subsea cable that enables both countries to relay or receive clean green energy as circumstances demand. When there is a lot of more energy than German use, they can send it to us. and we can stop our own machines and save our water for the future.
When the wind is not blowing in Germany, we can produce and send it back. So in that way, we're working together to get the best out of it. The direct power link between water-rich Norway and wind-swept Germany went online in May 2021. NordLink runs between Tonstadt, where the power lines have an audible buzz, to Wilster in northern Germany, where the 1,400 megawatts have more of a hum.
In theory, this balance of production and demand would work inside Germany too, were it not for legal objections delaying the planned SüdLink extension of the project down to the south of the country. As a result, stiff breezes in the north have led to wires overheating, and turbines having to be temporarily shut down. A waste of energy with valuable green electricity lost in the wind. With NordLink at least, there's no such profligacy. What we're doing here is connecting German wind energy with Norwegian hydropower, in the process making the system far more robust and reaping the benefits of both energy sources.
NordLink is a European showcase project and a boost for Germany's energy transition and the expansion of renewables, even if it's just a first step. Until now, the transition's been mostly about electricity. We now have 50% renewables in our grid, but they only constitute 10% of total energy needs.
So with 90% to cover over the next 25 years, it's time to speed up. Going back to the greenhouse gas cuts needed by 2030, what does the first and least challenging category of measures comprise? And how would they help?
Increased renewables production, less coal-based power in China, reductions in India and fewer fluorinated greenhouse gases these are relatively simple measures that could be implemented quickly and together. They'd mean cutting around 3.7 gigatons. Our soccer stadium example is showing its first patches of green.
A 3.7 gigaton drop in greenhouse gases is a good 12% of the 30 gigatons that need to go by 2030. Global inequality and injustice are being exacerbated by the omnipresent effects of climate change. While the rich northern hemisphere continues to pollute the air, those bearing the burden are primarily towards the south. mostly around the equator in countries such as Indonesia.
This little village by the Indian Ocean is called Pantai Bahagia. Rising sea levels and torrential downpours have left the Happy Beach, as the name translates to, sinking into the water. And this is during the dry season. Over half of the children here have already been taken out of school.
Parents say conditions in the damp and foul-smelling classrooms are unacceptable. Teacher Musjayadi Ramatula used to be a pupil himself at the elementary school and is now doing his best under trying conditions to brave the elements with his lessons. He tells us about the first time his classroom was flooded in 2013. It's extremely difficult for all of us here.
We often have to send the pupils home. Because when the tide comes in, they're sitting on water up to their legs. Regular classes are impossible, leaving teachers unable to keep up to schedule. In five or six years'time, reckons the teacher, the entire school will be submerged. Then there'll be nobody left here.
But how will the world be faring in three decades from now, in 2050? At that time there will be the most extreme conditions of the weather, with our 17,000 islands and a lot of coasts, and that will be eaten up by the sea. So life will not be the same as here.
There will be a lot of illnesses, there will be plagues, and the economic growth of the whole world. We will be disturbed by horizontal strife, one against the other, because fighting for food, water, maybe air also. That will be a very sad picture in 2050. As their homelands become impossible to live in, people will leave them, simply in order to survive. Climate migration is already with us, and this is just the beginning. Several zones of the earth will become literally uninhabitable because it's too hot, there's flooding or the soil is not farmable.
Today we are struggling when we're talking about people on the move in the millions. Then we're talking about people in the billions. By the middle of this century, millions more people are expected to flee their homes, not because of war, conflict or persecution, but because of the climate. The world seems to be heading towards a deeply worrying future.
It's not just in the likes of Alaska and Russia that we need to prepare for permafrost melting away and no longer holding the soil together. The European Alps are also affected. Permafrost expert Michael Krautblatter from Munich's Technical University has assembled a team of scientists for a research project.
Today they're flying up to inspect a place of acute interest. The landing spot chosen on the Hochvogel mountain Straddling the border between Austria and Germany is so small that the helicopter cannot touch down properly. Right next to the summit is a crevice that has widened rapidly since 2014, increasing the risk of rock falls.
The view from above reveals the full extent of the danger, with several hundred thousand tons of rock threatening to cascade their way down into the valley. Conducting the measurements here at an altitude of just under 2,600 meters is a risky undertaking. What could happen if the summit collapses doesn't bear thinking about. This rock mass has a total volume of 260,000 cubic meters, which is a lot. It's moved 30 centimeters since we began taking measurements in 2014. And currently...
The rate is a few millimeters per month. The deformations are so strong and can change so quickly that it won't be long until it all comes flying down, potentially even this year or next year. The mountains start to give way when the permafrost is no longer able to hold them together, and not just here in central Europe. The Alpine Idle is literally crumbling. And the repercussions are something that residents are well aware of in the village of Bondo in south-east Switzerland.
For Elvira Saales it's time to say goodbye to the house she's lived in her entire life. Today it's being demolished. When I look at my house while it's gradually dying, it does make me feel sad.
But we're prepared for it. In the summer of 2017, a massive landslide starting on the Piz Cengelo mountain brought three million cubic meters of rock crashing down into the valley. I suddenly heard this huge noise.
And as I looked up to the mountain, I saw these big chunks of rock falling down. They looked like lava. Because it was so slow and silent.
Ice, water and soil. This footage was captured by the security camera of a carpenter's shop. The landslide left eight hikers dead and the village partly destroyed.
Another disaster resulting from climate change. There used to be houses here. Now there's just a mass of rubble. Elvira Zales'home was flooded with debris and is now in a prohibited area of the village, where nobody is allowed to live. Elvira Zales had to leave her home village after the disaster and has since been living with her son in a neighbouring village.
She shows us photos of her beloved 345-year-old family home, bought by her great-grandfather. Initially I was deeply saddened. I cried an awful lot. And I was very happy that I could be there at the demolition. It's like with people.
You don't let people die alone. And I didn't want to let my house die alone either. And the danger is far from over for the residents of Bondo, with a further 3 million cubic metres of scree threatening to descend on the village from Pits Tjengelo at any time.
Summing up the situation in Bondo and neighbouring villages is a sign that's been attached to the side of a house. The mountain has a fever. The impact of climate change on Siberia and the far east of Russia cannot be compared equally to that in Africa or Southeast Asia.
But here too the number of people under threat is increasing every year. And for those affected directly, like an old friend of Nikita Zimov, it means another livelihood destroyed. Leonid Nalatov has been living a secluded existence here for over three decades. The nearest town is some 80 kilometres away. And he'd been faring just fine for all of those years.
A fisher by trade, he had a monopoly on the large lake directly behind his home. Of all the different species of fish it contained, the salmon-like whitefish was the most lucrative, earning him over 5 euros per kilo, with an average specimen weighing some 15 kilos. But the days of plenty are now over because his lake no longer exists.
It used to stretch 15 kilometres, but it has been reduced to a handful of ponds and pools. Originally, the permafrost had frozen and solidified a natural dam separating the lake from a river. The rising temperatures, however, caused the once-permanent ice to melt away.
Eventually, the dam broke. The breach occurred just a few weeks ago, during yet another hot summer. It's a massive loss for me. The water's gone, my lake is dried out, and all my fish have vanished. They were my income, and now I've lost everything.
For all those 30 years, I had been afraid that something might happen, which... which is why I did my best to reinforce the dam with shrubs and bushes. I'd hoped it wouldn't happen that soon."The fisherman was far from the only one to have underestimated the pace at which the climate is already changing. Now there's no time to lose for researchers, governments and industry to take action. The EU's Green Deal launched to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050 is a step in the right direction. In the past, one major argument against climate protection in Germany was that nobody else was doing anything, but that doesn't wash anymore. China has now declared its willingness to go climate neutral and phase out coal, oil and gas, as has the US. Together with the EU, these countries cover a large part of the global market. So the rest of the world has to join them. The question is, how? no longer whether we phase out coal, oil and gas, but when. Certain major players in the global climate game have been dragging their heels, including Germany in recent years. But as former Chancellor Angela Merkel found out, policy is sometimes defined not in Parliament, but by the courts. In April 2021, the German government was given a very public wake-up call when the country's Constitutional Court issued a historic ruling. ruling, requiring legislators to significantly improve climate protection measures. In another landmark ruling in the Netherlands, just one month later, a court ordered oil multinational Shell to drastically reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Two cases with the potential to set a global precedent of courts serving as environmental policy watchdogs. Vital progress on the climate protection front at the eleventh hour. Ice climber Dani Arnold is embarking on a very precarious descent today in the canton of Bern in Switzerland to explore the Plan Mart glacier from the inside. Deep in this crevasse, he finds spectacular rock and ice formations. Not many people have ever been down here. The ice is thousands of years old and still solid and stable enough for Dani to hack his axe into, enabling him to get to the very bottom. It's a steep and dangerous ascent back out. A unique experience, not least because it might not be possible in the foreseeable future. It makes you think, if you bear in mind that researchers say that none of this will be here anymore in 90 years time. No more glaciers. That's pretty tragic, isn't it? Yeah. This is the Aletsch glacier, likewise in the Swiss Alps. Over 20 kilometres long and in parts nearly 1 kilometre thick. Guillaume Jouvet from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich has been investigating this massive natural wonder. Will at least this monster, as he calls it, survive? we can't really do anything because now the glacier is reacting to the shift in the climate, to the increase of temperatures that we had in from the 90s. So it means that even if we don't, whatever happens in the future in terms of climate, the glacier will keep retreat. by at least five kilometers. And what would happen if temperatures were actually to rise by four degrees, as experts now predict? Guillaume Jouvet has calculated that by the end of the century, the Alec Glacier would then have almost completely disappeared. So if we assume that this climate scenario is right, it's most likely that there will be very little ice by 2100 in the LH. It's obvious that here in this landscape there will be no more ice, no longer ice at the end of the century. Further up we visit the Concordia Alpine Hut. For the last few years it's been run by Christoph Sager and his family. He's come up here today to get it ready for the summer season. It can accommodate 155 guests, alpine hikers, skiers and glacier enthusiasts from all over the world. Thanks to its panoramic views, the Concordia Hut is one of the most popular alpine hostels in Europe. For me, this is the most beautiful workplace here. It's the most beautiful place in the world to work. I know other Alpine huts that are lovely. But to me, this is just the most amazing place to work in. But the Alletsch is in long-term grave and seemingly terminal danger. Christoph Sager goes down a few steep steps from the hut to point out the indications that the largest glacier in the Alps is retreating. The hut was originally built on this spot in 1877. Back then the glacier reached roughly to where we're standing at. So in the course of 140 years, Everything further down has melted. It's retreated about 150 metres. 150 metres in 140 years. A metre or so a year. The ice is melting at a growing pace, sometimes two, sometimes three meters a year. Even this giant of a glacier's days are numbered. Ongoing global warming is likely to affect most of the towns and cities in Siberia and in Russia's Far East. About 25 million people in all. How serious is the impact of the permafrost melting? Measurements taken by the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost give us an idea. In 1996 the permafrost melted to a depth of 45 centimetres in the summer. By 2017 the figure was 87 centimetres, twice as deep in just 20 years. This poses a danger to both people and infrastructure. Pipelines for district heating, natural gas and oil are particularly affected. Greenpeace has estimated that leaks in pipelines caused by the ground underneath subsiding are leading to about 1% of oil being lost. That oil, some 5 million tonnes of it each year, seeps into the ground. The residents of the Arctic city of Chersky in the Russian Republic of Sakha are among those witnessing this rapid transformation. Temperatures are rising inexorably, asphalt on the streets has begun to buckle, and several buildings are showing signs that the ground they were once built on is no longer so solid and has started to sink. Chersky on the Kolyma River is also home to the scientist and climate activist Nikita Zimov. Even though temperatures here drop to minus 60 degrees Celsius in the winter, the continuing erosion of the permafrost soil is relentless. This is especially apparent at the former water treatment plant. Like all the buildings here, it was erected on tall pillars. It's been only two years since the earth began to subside here. Now the crater is already 10 metres deep. As soon as it starts, it's going very rapid. So when I was here a week ago, those two plates were still in the air. And now they already collapsed down. And there is a huge niche going underneath the permafrost, where this ice has been eroded. And eventually all that slope will collapse also. So this process is kind of growing. And it's, I don't know, centimeters a day, maybe tens of centimeters a day in the hot day. So we have serious build in the permafrost. And now with climate getting warmer, Penrhos is also getting warmer. And with degradation, it looks like that. So all the infrastructure in the next few decades will probably be collapsed. With considerable effort, it certainly is possible to secure individual buildings. But the idea of completely saving Russia's east appears to be a losing battle. The early signs of a heat age are on the horizon. In central Germany, Kerstin Wittgen is fighting to preserve the last remaining wetlands of the Münsterland region. Intensive farming and draining have already destroyed 95% of Germany's marshes. The biologist and climate activist wants to see the re-irrigation of these unique ecosystems. Everything that ends up in a raised bog like this is conserved. Acidic conditions and the absence of oxygen mean there's no degradation. And that's what makes the bogs so valuable for climate protection. They store endless amounts of carbon and do not release any of it. Bogs grow by just one millimetre per year. The Fener Moor has had 6,000 years to store vast quantities of carbon. When it comes into contact with oxygen as a result of draining, that peatland likewise becomes a carbon bomb, in similar style to the Russian permafrost. Peatlands only cover 3% of the Earth's land surface, but contain 30% of our carbon reserves. We're talking on a scale that if it does all now decompose and enters the air as CO2, then we'll have a massive climate problem. While climate champions like Kerstin Wittgen are determined to restore those precious peatlands, some of the remaining natural paradises on the planet are under increasingly brutal assault. Much of this jungle is located in swamps and wetlands. Deforestation here means a two-fold carbon dioxide disaster. Slash and burn practices are rife here. The primary reason for the wanton destruction is our enormous demand for palm oil. It's used as a diesel fuel additive and is found in countless products in our supermarkets. Everything from cosmetics to cooking oil, soups and candy. Indonesia is by far the world's biggest supplier of palm oil. Its land covered in plantations as far as the eye can see and beyond. Among them are those belonging to Mohamed Roji. He started out only a few years ago with just two hectares. Rapid profits enabled him to buy more land and grow more trees. His continually growing business empire now stretches to 300 hectares. There are many perennial crops, but I've not found one that makes more money than palm oil. And more money means more deforestation. Almost 11,000 kilometers away, from Borneo, researchers are working on a way out. Algae and yeast strains are the secret weapons at the Synthetic Biotechnology Research Department at Munich's Technical University. They can be used in a huge range of products, says Professor Thomas Brugg. Robust building blocks made of carbon, food, biofuels and indeed also, which is something of a scientific sensation, synthetic palm oil. And there is colossal demand from industry for the palm oil substitute. The researchers now want to rapidly scale up production. from a thousand liters to ten or even a hundred thousand liters. Together with his doctoral student, Brook has decoded a yeast strain with unique characteristics. The yeast cells can turn 90% of their mass into a... an oil with a quality that is identical to that of natural palm oil. Here we have the liquid fraction and the solid fraction. which looks similar to purified palm oil. The big difference is that our process is completely independent of farming activity and climate conditions. Plus, we don't need to clear any rainforest, unlike with large-scale palm oil production. So our product is 100% sustainable and also commercially competitive with the palm oil already available. Back in Indonesia, the fruits of the trees that produce the treasured oil weigh up to 50 kilos per bunch. Farmer Muhammad Roji has harvests of up to a thousand tons per month, and no shortage of buyers. Demand seems to be insatiable. The Munich researchers don't want to destroy jobs in Indonesia. Their aim is to set up laboratories on the ground and cooperate with local farmers. The response so far has been encouragingly positive. This is a new invention that's faster and simpler than our farming method, and with huge profits. There are so many advantages in terms of efficiency, profitability, and prosperity for everyone. Of course every palm oil producer is going to be interested. What we do here in Germany has a major impact on greenhouse gas emissions in other countries. We consume a lot of imported meat and palm oil, and all of these activities mean deforestation or extra emissions somewhere else. So our behaviour matters. Back to our stadium analogy and the model of calculating greenhouse gas reductions. We're now at the end of category number two devised by the climate experts. Second category measures are where we already know how they work, but require a further step, which means following those that are already making progress. First, speeding up the expansion of renewables and stopping deforestation and expanding electromobility. Implementing all of that would save us a further 12 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions. So those reductions from the first category are now joined by a variety of measures, together adding up to 12 gigatons, almost half of the target. Rising temperatures can, as seen in the Alps, lead to water shortages. Even resorts at high altitudes now often rely on artificial snow, which is extremely water and energy intensive to create. Almost every village in the Alps is dependent on tourism. and therefore on snow, and keeping winter sports enthusiasts happy takes absolute priority. The show must go on, while it still can, whatever the cost. The increasing scarcity of water originating from high altitude sources is a harbinger of potential desertification in parts of the Alps. Meltwater is in especially short supply in Upper Bavaria. In the past, the water level in Lake Wallchen had to be deliberately reduced. The precautionary measure was due to a risk of flooding from the vast amount of meltwater in the spring. There used to be so much snowmelt that we had to make room for it in the lake. But for a while now, there's been much less. The lake can absorb it, so we don't need to reduce the water level. For centuries, farmers in Switzerland's Engadin Mountains have been relying on meltwater to irrigate their fields. But meltwater has become a finite resource. Reto Dunze is among those who've become dependent on rainwater. Now, in the summer, his meadow is completely parched due to excessively dry weather. So you can see here, really, thick like hay. As you can see, it's as withered as hay. Nothing's grown since May. The grass should be knee-deep at this time of year, and the cows will soon be coming home from the mountain pastures. His cows are for now still grazing at an elevation of 1,900 metres. But there too, it's far too dry. The cows aren't getting enough to drink. In summer 2018, the well that normally keeps them supplied had almost completely dried up. Every drop is appreciated. Reto Dunzer checks on the cattle regularly. He fears for the future of his alpine pasture. We have 90 cows and their calves. And the water here isn't enough for even one single calf. Clouds are gathering. It looks like it might rain. But no, it's yet another desperately dry day. The farmer has to rely on an alternative source of water. Right now, this is the only way of ensuring a water supply on the pastures. The helicopter delivers 700 litres a go. It takes several trips to fill up the well, at a total cost of 1,300 euros. It's only enough for four to five days. There's not enough water for the animals to drink, or for the meadows down in the valley that provide animal fodder in the winter. We aren't going to have enough animal feed for the coming winter, so either we can buy some which is very expensive or we reduce our cattle stock. Krito Dunza has already had to slaughter some of his animals. And there are profound changes underway across the Alps. Here in Austria, teams of specialists are on constant duty to prevent mountain hillsides from sliding down. Prolonged periods of drought and excessive heat frequently result in devastating forest fires, as seen here in Italy's Piedmont region. Climate change, sometimes a shortage of water, and sometimes far too much. The Indonesian island of Java being a prime example. The forests of mountainous regions help to store rainwater. But they're falling victim to increasingly intensive logging, leaving rainwater to flow unhindered into the valleys. Sometimes the water sweeps away everything in its path. This footage is from 2017 and 2018. Local experts estimate that by mid-century, climate change will have forced 40 million people to flee their homes in Indonesia alone. Farmers who can no longer till their fields, slum dwellers whose tin-roofed huts have sunk into the sea, and the residents of small communities like Pantai Bahagia. For them, too, it's only a question of time until they'll be forced to flee from the rising waters. Around 1,000 people were buried in the cemetery on the edge of the village called Happy Beach. For some, there will be no resting in eternal peace. Temperatures are rising everywhere, not least in urban areas, thanks also to more air conditioning for homes and offices. And this is where experts from Aachen Technical University come in. One of their pilot projects is this kitchen studio. The energy-saving technology is visible once you literally look behind the facade. The entire building is enveloped in a fabric that keeps the sun's rays at bay. Take just one step back and it becomes practically invisible again from the inside. It's an experiment that has paid off for kitchen designer Susanne Orlowski. Lower cooling costs in the summer and lower greenhouse gas emissions. This is an excellent example, albeit on a very small scale, with a moderate amount of glazing. But still, this textile facade surrounding the building can alone save around 1.4 tons of CO2 per year in the building's climate control. For a while now, it's not just been fashionable fabrics that have been woven by the machines of the university's Institute of Textile Technology. They also make sustainable products that can help to save the climate. Research on the textile facades is an interdisciplinary undertaking. Here at this co-working space in a former church in Aachen, architects work alongside civil, environmental and climate engineers. and even ophthalmologists. And the results of their joint efforts are hugely promising. Your classical building will have an 80% proportion of glazing, which is already highly transparent, and we can save up to 78% in cooling energy and reduce 60 or 65% of total energy consumption with an additional textile facade. It sounds like tomorrow's world. world and sometimes looks like it too. At this parking garage in Bielefeld, the innovative facades from Aachen improve both the building's climate footprint and its aesthetic appeal. We're now already in the third and final category of potential greenhouse gas reductions proposed by the new climate institute in Cologne. This involves particularly challenging measures that have rarely been implemented to date. Among them, lower greenhouse gas emissions in the cooling of buildings, as seen just now, as well as reductions in industry and in farming. Economist Otmar Adenhofer, co-director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, accompanied by his colleague Hermann Lotzer-Kampen on the right. The agricultural economist wants to see massive reductions in the farming sector. Food production is... responsible for a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions. In Germany, for example, people eat an average of 1.2 kilos of meat per week. Further reducing that figure to around a quarter of current meat consumption would have massive dividends. 300 grams per week is a quarter of the current amount, so we'd still be eating meat. Maybe only once or twice a week, but it would go a long way toward reducing emissions. According to climate specialist Niklas Hoene, the implementation of all three measures belonging to the final category could cut an additional 3.3 gigatons. All added together, that would make around 20 gigatons, but some way short of the 30 gigatons required. So, game over, it would seem, despite all those efforts. More is not possible with conventional means. So what now? If we carry on regardless, by the end of the century, we'll reach a temperature increase of a little under 3 degrees Celsius. That would be a disastrous climate change and an unmanageable situation. Implementing the measures in all three categories could mean a reduction of 20 gigatons by 2030. leading to a temperature rise of 1.8 degrees by the end of the century. While that would unfortunately not be quite enough to hit 1.5 degrees, it's still a huge improvement and a very important step forward. Here, along the bed of the Mayobula River, there are signs of despair everywhere. The north of Cameroon receives only two months of rainfall a year, in August and September. During the rest of the year, people have to walk considerable distances to find water, or dig deep. Older people who live here say water used to flow abundantly through the Mayobula and into the Logona River before discharging into Lake Chad. But those days are gone due to continued drought. continually decreasing rainfall. Cameroon is suffering from devastating drought, as is neighbouring Chad. The lake that lent its name to the latter country is the sole natural source of water in the region. Mashourie Mouliro from the UN's Migration Organization has spent years touring the Sahel region. In the sparse shade of a fragile-looking tree, he speaks with Mohamed Ibrahim. He's a herder and tells the visitor about the terrible ordeal his family suffered before finally arriving at Lake Chad. Climate change has a huge impact on us herders. If there's no rain, no plants grow. And without green plants to eat, our animals die. So herders like me are hit very hard by this. From the Chad side, Nigerian side, the Cameroonian side, Nigerian side, they all depended on this source. You can realize that this lake is unique. It's just a fresh water within. a narrate area. So, so many livelihoods dependent on this lake Chad. If the lake Chad disappears, it will be a serious environmental catastrophe because without the lake Chad, we can hardly talk about a living atmosphere in the lake Chad region. Together, the group sets out to inspect the livestock, which are right now being herded a few kilometres away by Mohamed Ibrahim's son. Along the way, the small caravan of cars passes through one of the countless dried-up depressions in the land. Numbering in the tens of thousands, they used to be a part of Lake Chad. But within the space of just a few years, the lake has shrunk at an almost unfathomable rate. In 1963 Lake Chad covered an area of 25,000 square kilometers. By 2007 it was just 2,500 square kilometers, more than 90% smaller, a trend that's set to continue. Millions of people in Central Africa have already left the increasingly arid region and headed south, while some try to go further north, to Europe. Almost 40 million people still live on the sinking shores of the lake. If Lake Chad were to completely dry up, more than 50 million people would probably become climate refugees. Mohamed Ibrahim and his extended family already come under the category of environmental migrants. I had a lot of animals, 60 to 70, but there's no water anywhere and nothing grows anymore. All of the camels, except for five, have died. We were first in Niger, then in Nigeria, and now we're in Chad. It's been no better here either, and we'll soon have to move on to wherever there's still water in the south. Lake Chad remains a source of life for millions of people. But as it continues to shrink, water is becoming an ever scarcer and more valuable resource. And so are arable land and the fish in the lake. As Lake Chad gets smaller, competition for these resources will become increasingly bitter. Even now, fishermen in the region face dwindling stocks of carp, nile perch and tilapia. But there are projects that give reason for hope, such as here in neighbouring Sudan. We were present when a local fair trade organisation was paid a visit by its funding partner Ecosia, a green online search engine based in Berlin. Tree planting officer Katharina Spiedmann is a fan of the sustainable approach taken by Martijn Bergkamp. For years, his small NGO has been helping women in Sudan to grow acacias. The numbers are checked regularly. How many seedlings have been planted and how many have survived. 400,000 seedlings were planted in 2021, a number scheduled to almost double in 2022. 90% of the trees have weathered the conditions, a minor miracle. The women often have to carry the water from very far away, at temperatures in excess of 40 degrees Celsius. Half of the precious commodity is for their families, the other half for their trees. The project involves 400 women in total. Plants drive their roots several dozen meters deep to reach the groundwater. They're survival specialists in a very hostile environment, and they also provide a natural ...natural product that yields a decent profit. The acacia Senegal variety has the big advantage of starting to produce gum after a short number of years. And this gum Arabic means that each tree is then worth 4 or 5 euros, which can increase over time as the trees produce more. So it's a tree that generates a continuous income. Large parts of Sudan are bone dry, often with little or no vegetation in sight. But suddenly that changes dramatically as we reach the village of Chagra, home to some 20,000 acacias. A veritable forest of trees planted here by Nadia Ibrahim Mohamed with seemingly inexhaustible energy and the help of other local women. She shows us how to make cuts in the bark of the trees so that they release the sap that hardens into the valuable raw material. Gum arabic is used in a wide variety of food products including Coca-Cola. Firstly, the acacias give us the gum, which means a regular income. Second, they stabilize the soil. Third, they prevent the desert spreading further. Fourth, they protect all the vegetation in our region. And fifth, because the acacias are so strong and can survive here, they provide shade too. One single seedling in itself doesn't mean much. But in their millions, the budding trees mean hope for Sudan. And should the scale increase to the billions, they could even help to alleviate our climate problem. Nadia Ibrahim Mohamed and other local women from the village of Chagra know the importance of the trees for the Sahel region. Most of their children are now able to go to school thanks to the profits from the prized gum. And with a little luck, they'll go on to enjoy further education or training and find a job. Our team spent three years travelling the world investigating climate change. Our immediate focus was on the appalling consequences of unabated global warming, the increasing frequency of minor and major catastrophes, the growing threat to people on the ground, and the associated rise in people fleeing their homelands. We also talked to those who are actively combating climate change and refuse to see it as a lost cause. Among them is Christian Kroll, the founder of Ecosia. Some would call him an idealist. He turned his successful company into a non-profit operation. Since then, instead of going to investors, any excess income is channeled towards new trees. For every 50 search queries on its website, Ecosia has committed to planting a new seedling in one of 35 countries, primarily around the equator. They now number over 175 million. It would be great for us as a team to have planted a few billion trees by 2030. The really important thing is that we have a lot of trees. thing is to prompt a big rethink in society. Not just no longer pumping out CO2 into the air, but also giving some serious thought to how we can repair what we've destroyed over the past few decades. Sometimes, even if only occasionally, you might think climate change and the surrounding debate was merely a transitory spectre. Take January 2018 when it seemed that winter was finally back to how it used to be on Glacier 3000 in Switzerland. Fabulous conditions for skiing and tobogganing, perfectly crisp snow and happy ski lift operators and vacationing families from around the world. Say cheese. Cheese! In spring 2018, the mood was positively euphoric, also among scientists. A team led by glacier expert Matthias Hus from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich visits the mountains twice a year, once in spring and again in autumn, when the next season begins. They investigate how much fresh snowfall there was in winter and the thickness of the snow cover over the ice. The more snow there's been, the better the condition of the glacier. On this day, the 25th of April 2018, it was in better shape than it had been for quite a while. More than five meters of thick snow fell in winter. We have measured the snow water equivalent at seven glaciers across Switzerland. Our figures showed that in 2018 snow cover was well above average. The snow wasn't quite as deep everywhere in Switzerland as there was here. But it does look like there was perhaps as much as 50% more than in a normal year. Matthias Hus would be back in the fall, as would we. On the more colourful front of climate change, fatalism is no better than naive but blind ignorance, say researchers, visionaries and others who think out of the box. Some ideas might seem to be on the fantastical side, pies in the sky, and sometimes loud ones at that. This kite, launched above the Danish-German border, is part of an attempt by Hamburg-based SkySails to harness wind power where it's available in almost unlimited quantities, far above the ground. The kite drags a... rope up into the air to a height of around 700 metres, in the process powering an electricity generator. At the end of the cycle, the paraglider is pulled back down to ground with a minimal energy outlay, and the game of yo-yo begins afresh. Green power from the wind, in abundance. High altitude wind gives us more energy and a steadier supply than wind near the ground or at the height of a normal wind farm. Instead of being slowed down by trees, buildings or mountains, it can move freely. And that's why we have a far greater physical potential to harvest. Double wind speed and eight times the energy yield. The kite operators work with smaller devices like this to replace climate damaging diesel generators. But there are plans for a much larger kite producing over one megawatt of power. This is particularly suitable for being used out at sea, offshore and larger wind farms as a large-scale power plant. This kite can be mounted on a small boat. small floating pontoon without the need for expensive foundations. The kites built by SkySails are an enthralling way to produce more green power in the long term as one component of Germany's energy transition in this crucial decade. They're one of many ideas bordering on science fiction from geoengineering, technical intervention on a planetary scale. Cirrus clouds at high altitude are akin to a dome with heat trapped underneath. If you destroy them with chemicals, the heat can escape from the atmosphere into space. Or, conversely, you produce more clouds, but at low altitudes, via turbines on thousands of ships, with the fleecy clouds serving as shade providers. From here, things really assume gigantic dimensions. Space shuttles distribute sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere. Like a big volcanic eruption, the dust will then cool the Earth. Instead of sulfur, other climate fixers plan to use trillions of miniature shields to block the sun, together forming a giant stationary parasol. Skyborne geoengineering on an unprecedented scale is an incredibly costly and risky concept. Critics say that manipulating the clouds, for example, could throw the world's climate completely in its face. into disarray. But with time being of the essence, every option deserves to be considered. One idea is to remove the harmful greenhouse gas CO2 from the atmosphere, as is being attempted by Switzerland-based Climeworks. Failing to meet emissions goals despite progress leaves us limited options, says the team. In around 2050 we'll have to actively remove around 10 gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere every year. And we don't have many options. There are biological options like reforestation or the possibility of deploying machines, which would increase CO2 removal by a thousandfold. The Climeworks pilot venture was installed on the grounds of a waste-to-energy power plant. That's because filtering greenhouse gases from the air via these enormous collectors requires a lot of energy. And for the concept to make sense, that energy has to be renewable. The CO2 molecules are filtered out of the air and then liquefied. Users of the 900 tonnes produced annually, like the nearby industrial greenhouse, are only a drop in the ocean. Climeworks is thinking in completely different dimensions, several million tons per year, which is why the company has signed cooperative deals with the energy experts in Norway, for example. This is the Sleipner oil and gas drilling platform. For a quarter of a century, its Norwegian operators have been experimenting here with the injection of CO2 into the ground deep. below the seabed. And now they're venturing into a new dimension. Special ships will soon be calling at the major ports of northern Europe to pick up liquefied CO2, mainly from polluting industries such as steel and cement production. From there, the material will be transported to the coastal town of Uyghur Garden. This will be the terminal for Norway's new CO2 receiving facility. Critics say it would be better to prevent emissions in the first place, instead of capturing them afterwards. And there's the argument that the greenhouse gas could damage the sensitive underwater ecosystems. In Norway itself, there are few opponents. The country's parliament approved the idea with a large majority, while the government is likewise a strong backer of the Polar Light project. Carbon capture and storage, or CCS, is probably the most feasible concept currently emerging from the world of geoengineering. According to current estimates, the Norwegian continental shelf can absorb 80 gigatons of CO2, the same amount as Europe's entire greenhouse gas emissions for the next 100 years. The first ships are set to dock here as early as January 2024. So right now we're at the Northern Knights receiving terminal. This is where we will receive CO2 from all over Europe. This is the jetty where we will take the CO2, the ships will dock, we will take one and a half million tons of CO2 per year and store it here temporarily before it's pumped offshore and injected in a deep reservoir, subsea the North Sea. From Uyegarden, the liquid CO2 will be pumped through a 100km long pipeline and then injected into a porous layer of sandstone 2,600 metres under the seabed. A 75 metre thick layer of shale prevents leakage. Despite all of these efforts, it's unlikely that they will succeed in lowering our greenhouse gas production to a tolerable level by 2030. So an additional plan is to actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere. An essential step also in the eyes of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The risks appear to be manageable. We have experience from the subsurface in the North Sea, having done oil and gas explorations there for more than 50 years. Now we take that experience, all the knowledge that has been developed, on the geology and apply that now to CO2 storage. We have experts in the field who have evaluated the subsurface who say that because of the primary the secondary seal that we have in place because of the geological structures this is absolutely safe even if capturing and storing greenhouse gases were to work however it's not a silver bullet solution any realistic hope depends on further research and further reductions everywhere is the one and a half degrees target still feasible I'm really disillusioned. If we manage two degrees, we can consider ourselves fortunate. We can't give in. We are not allowed to give in. We have to fight this and do the best that we can for the future and for our children. The next five or six years will be decisive, where we'll really have to pick up the pace. We absolutely have to keep on going. The indications of an impending heat age can be found everywhere, as are individuals determined to take action, however unconventional. In Russia's Far East, climate champion Nikita Zimov has fenced off around 20 square kilometres of the large tracts of land he's bought. This is where he plans to realise his vision of a better and colder world, a project of mammoth proportions. Zimov wants to use a plethora of animals to create an ecosystem corresponding to that last scene in the prehistoric Pleistocene era. He already has a hundred animals grazing here. Reindeer, bison, horses, elk, musk oxen, sheep and even a small herd of yaks. If everything goes to plan, there will eventually be 5,000 omnivores here. The climate ecologist wants to prompt a natural marvel in the winter, and his animals have already begun. As they trample down the mounds of snow, the cold can penetrate the soil unhindered. The scientist shows us how his Pleistocene Park, as it's called, is working deep underground. Over the course of several weeks, he carved out a private permafrost tunnel system that serves as one long scientific laboratory. High-quality sensors and countless soil sample evaluations show above all one thing, how vital it is to compress the masses of snow above with the help of his four-legged associates. It's the horses, yaks, bison, reindeer that dig through the snow in the winter because they have to reach their food. And when they trample down the snow, instead of one meter of snow, we have 10 to 15 centimeters of really dense snow. Instead of a thick winter jacket, you just have a thin fleece. Some sensors show that in places where there were no animals, the ground temperature in March dropped to minus 10 degrees. degrees at a depth of half a meter. But in the park where our animals trampled the snow, the temperature dropped down to minus 24 degrees. So this is a huge 14 degrees difference. This will definitely help. Humanity is wavering between a horrible future scenario and an extremely horrible future. We have to fight. It's not a question of defeating climate change or global warming. The point is simply to what extent we are able to save human existence. The visionary who came out of the cold and wants to return to it. Nikita Zimov may never succeed in his mission to save the world with huge herds of animals. But what he has already achieved is a growing number of people realizing the devastating effects of further permafrost melt and the resulting release of more greenhouse gases. Our trip to the Republic of Sakha then takes us to the capital, Yakutsk. This group of researchers ...from Prague is being hosted by the Institute of Applied Ecology of the North. They've just returned from a crater carved into the permafrost, where they discovered bones belonging to extinct prehistoric animals. The site where the fossilized remains were found was named the Batagaika crater, but locals call it the gateway to the underworld. It's easy to see why. In the 1960s a small section of forest was cleared to make way for a new road. The permafrost originally beneath the trees began eroding. At first the resulting hole was just a few meters deep. On average, the mega crater is between 40 and 60 meters deep, and in some places it's 100 meters. It's 1.5 kilometers long and about 1 kilometer wide right now, but it's hard to determine exactly how wide it is because it's a very small crater. expanding so quickly. These kinds of catastrophic events could become increasingly common, and not just in residential areas, but anywhere in the wild. Wherever there are oil pipelines and natural gas facilities, our entire infrastructure could be impacted. In September 2018, glacier expert Matthias Hus and his team paid another visit to Switzerland's Glacier 3000. In April, he'd been highly encouraged by the enormous amounts of snow. And now? The scale of the threat from climate change, if we invest anything less than maximum effort, is already apparent here. The Glacier 3000 is the largest glacier in the world. The glacier they're crossing is dying. All the snow that should be covering it is gone in the space of just one summer. When we were here in April, there was just an incredible snow cover, five meters deep. The snow was thick and compact. Just think about it. Five meters of snow, 3000 meters above sea level, has melted in the course of a summer. We wouldn't have thought that was possible. Five meters of snow plus 1.3 meters of glacial ice all gone. An ongoing and unrelenting loss. Matthias Hus is watching his beloved glaciers die. It's nothing less than a catastrophe.