Faster and faster.

The more the world develops, the greater its thirst for energy.

Everywhere, machines dig, bore and rip from the Earth

the pieces of stars buried in its depths since its creation...

Minerals. As a privilege of power, 80% of this mineral wealth is consumed
by 20% of the world's population.

Before the end of this century, excessive mining will have exhausted
nearly all the planet's reserves.

Faster and faster.

Shipyards churn out oil tankers,
container ships and gas tankers to cater for the demands of globalized industrial production.

Most consumer goods travel thousands of kilometers from the country of production
to the country of consumption.

Since 1950, the volume of international trade has increased 20 times over.

90% of trade goes by sea. 500 million containers are transported every year.

Headed for the world's major hubs of consumption,

such as Dubai.

Dubai is a sort of culmination of the Western model, a country where the impossible becomes possible.

Building artificial islands in the sea, for example. Dubai has few natural resources, but with oil money it can bring in millions of tons of material and workers from all over the planet.

Dubai has no farmland, but it can import food.

Dubai has no water, but it can afford to expend immense amounts of energy

to desalinate seawater and build the world's highest skyscrapers.

Dubai has endless sun, but no solar panels.

It is the totem to total modernity that never fails to amaze the world.

Dubai is like the new beacon for all the world's money.

Nothing seems further removed from nature than Dubai,

although nothing depends on nature
more than Dubai.

Dubai is a sort of culmination of the Western model.

We haven't understood that we're depleting what nature provides.

Since 1950, fishing catches have increased fivefold

from 18 to 100 million metric tons a year.

Thousands of factory ships are emptying the oceans.

Three-quarters of fishing grounds are exhausted,

depleted or in danger of being so.

Most large fish have been fished out of existence

since they have no time to reproduce.

We are destroying the cycle of a life that was given to us.

At the current rate, all fish stocks are threatened with exhaustion.

Fish is the staple diet of one in five humans.

We have forgotten that resources are scarce.

500 million humans live in the world's desert lands,

more than the combined population of Europe.

They know the value of water.They know how to use it sparingly.

Here, they depend on wells replenished by fossil water,

which accumulated underground back when it rained on these deserts.

25,00000 years ago.

Fossil water also enables crops to be grown in the desert

to provide food for local populations.

The fields' circular shape derives from the pipes that irrigate them
around a central pivot.

But there is a heavy price to pay.

Fossil water is a non-renewable resource.

In Saudi Arabia, the dream of industrial farming in the desert has faded.

As if on a parchment map, the light spots on this patchwork show abandoned plots.

The irrigation equipment is still there. The energy to pump water also.

But the fossil water reserves are severely depleted.

Israel turned the desert into arable land.

Even though these hothouses are now irrigated drop by drop,

water consumption continues to increase along with exports.

The once mighty River Jordan is now just a trickle.

Its water has flown to supermarkets all over the world in crates of fruit and vegetables.

The Jordan's fate is not unique.

Across the planet, one major river in ten no longer flows into the sea
for several months of the year.

Deprived of the Jordan's water, the level of the Dead Sea goes down
by over one meter per year.

India risks being the country that suffers most from lack of water
in the coming century.

Massive irrigation has fed the growing population and in the last 50 years,
21 million wells have been dug.

In many parts of the country, the drill has to sink every deeper to hit water.

In western India, 30% of wells have been abandoned.

The underground aquifers are drying out.

Vast reservoirs will catch monsoon rains to replenish the aquifers.

In the dry season, local village women dig them with their bare hands.

Thousands of kilometers away, 800 to 1,00000 liters of water are consumed

per person per day.

Las Vegas was built out of the desert. Millions of people live there.

Thousands more arrive every month.

Its inhabitants are among the biggest water consumers in the world.

Palm Springs is another desert city with tropical vegetation and lush golf courses.

How long can this mirage continue to prosper?

The Earth cannot keep up.

The Colorado River, which brings water to these cities, is one of those rivers
that no longer reaches the sea.

Water levels in the catchment lakes along its course are plummeting.

Water shortages could affect nearly 2 billion people before 2025.

The wetlands represent 6% of the surface of the planet.

Under their calm waters lies a veritable factory,

where plants and micro-organisms patiently filter the water

and digest all the pollution.

These marshes are indispensable environments for the regeneration and purification of water.

They are sponges that regulate the flow of water.

They absorb it in the wet season and release it in the dry season.

In our race to conquer more land, we have reclaimed them as pasture for livestock,

or as land for agriculture or building. In the last century, half the world's marshes were drained.

We know neither their richness nor their role. All living matter is linked.

Water, air, soil, trees. The world's magic is right in front of our eyes.

Trees breathe groundwater into the atmosphere as light mist.

They form a canopy that alleviates the impact of heavy rains.

The forests provide the humidity that is necessary for life.

They store carbon, containing more than all the Earth's atmosphere.

They are the cornerstone of the climatic balance on which we all depend.

The primary forests provide a habitat for three-quarters of the planet's biodiversity, that is to say, of all life on Earth.

These forests provide the remedies that cure us.

The substances secreted by these plants can be recognized by our bodies.

Our cells talk the same language. We are of the same family.

But in barely 40 years, the world's largest rainforest,

the Amazon, has been reduced by 20%.

The forest gives way to cattle ranches or soybean farms.

95% of these soybeans are used to feed livestock and poultry in Europe and Asia.

And so, a forest is turned into meat.

Barely 20 years ago, Borneo, the 4th largest island

in the world, was covered by a vast primary forest.

At the current rate of deforestation, it will have disappeared within 10 years.

Living matter bonds water, air, earth and the sun.

In Borneo, this bond has been broken in what was one of the Earth's
greatest reservoirs of biodiversity.

This catastrophe was provoked by the decision to produce palm oil,

one of the most productive and consumed oils in the world, on Borneo.

Palm oil not only caters to our growing demand for food,

but also cosmetics, detergents and, increasingly, alternative fuels.

The forest's diversity was replaced by a single species, the oil palm.

For local people, it provides employment.

It's an agricultural industry.

Another example of massive deforestation is the eucalyptus.

Eucalyptus is used to make paper pulp. Plantations are growing
as demand for paper has increased fivefold in 50 years.

One forest does not replace another forest.

At the foot of these eucalyptus trees,

nothing grows because their leaves form a toxic bed for most other plants.

They grow quickly, but exhaust water reserves.

Soybeans, palm oil, eucalyptus trees...

Deforestation destroys the essential to produce the superfluous.

But elsewhere, deforestation is a last resort to survive.

Over 2 billion people, almost one third of the world's population,

still depend on charcoal. In Haiti, one of the world's poorest countries,

charcoal is one of the population's main consumables.

Once the "pearl of the Caribbean",

Haiti can no longer feed its population without foreign aid.

On the hills of Haiti, only 2% of the forests are left.

Stripped bare, nothing holds the soils back.

The rainwater washes them down the hillsides as far as the sea.

What's left is increasingly unsuitable for agriculture.

In some parts of Madagascar, the erosion is spectacular.

Whole hillsides bear deep gashes hundreds of meters wide.

Thin and fragile, soil is made by living matter.

With erosion, the fine layer of humus,

which took thousands of years to form,disappears.

Here's one theory of the story of the Rapanui, the inhabitants of Easter Island,

that could perhaps give us pause for thought. Living on the most isolated island
in the world, the Rapanui exploited their resources until there was nothing left.

Their civilization did not survive. On these lands stood the highest palm trees in the world.

They have disappeared. The Rapanui chopped them all down for lumber.

They then faced widespread soil erosion.

The Rapanui could no longer go fishing. There were no trees to build canoes.

Yet the Rapanui formed one of the most brilliant civilizations in the Pacific.

Innovative farmers, sculptors, exceptional navigators,

they were caught in the vise of overpopulation and dwindling resources.

They experienced social unrest, revolts and famine.

Many did not survive the cataclysm.

The real mystery of Easter Island is not how its strange statues got there,

we know now. It is why the Rapanui didn't react in time.

It's only one of a number of theories, but it has particular relevance today.

Since 1950, the world's population has almost tripled.

And since 1950, we have more fundamentally altered our island, the Earth,

than in all of our 200,00000-year history.

Nigeria is the biggest oil exporter in Africa, yet 70% of the population lives under the poverty line.

The wealth is there, but the country's inhabitants don't have access to it.

The same is true all over the globe. Half the world's poor live in resource-rich countries.

Our mode of development has not fulfilled its promises.
In 50 years, the gap between rich and poor has grown wider than ever.

Today, half the world's wealth is in the hands of the richest 2% of the population.

Can such disparities be maintained?

They are the cause of population movements

whose scale we have yet to fully realize.

The city of Lagos had a population of 700,00000 in 1960.

That will rise to 16 million by 2025.

Lagos is one of the fastest growing megalopolises in the world.

The new arrivals are mostly farmers forced off the land

for economic or demographic reasons, or because of diminishing resources.

This is a radically new type of urban growth, driven by the urge to survive
rather than to prosper.

Every week, over a million people swell the populations of the world's cities.

1 human in 6 now lives in a precarious, unhealthy, overpopulated environment without access to daily necessities, such as water, sanitation, electricity.

Hunger is spreading once more.

It affects nearly 1 billion people.

All over the planet, the poorest scrabble to survive, while we continue to dig for resources that we can no longer live without.

We look farther and farther afield in previously unspoilt territory and in regions that are increasingly difficult to exploit.

We're not changing our model. Oil might run out?

We can still extract oil from the tar sands of Canada.

The biggest trucks in the world move thousands of tons of sand.

The process of heating and separating bitumen from the sand requires millions
of cubic meters of water.

Colossal amounts of energy are needed.The pollution is catastrophic.

The most urgent priority, apparently,is to pick every pocket of sunlight.

Our oil tankers are getting bigger and bigger.

Our energy requirements are constantly increasing.

We try to power growth like a bottomless oven that demands more and more fuel.

It's all about carbon.

In a few decades, the carbon that made our atmosphere a furnace and that nature captured over millions of years, allowing life to develop, will have largely been pumped back out.

The atmosphere is heating up.

It would have been inconceivable for a boat to be here just a few years ago.

Transport, industry, deforestation, agriculture...

Our activities release gigantic quantities of carbon dioxide.

Without realizing it, molecule by molecule,

we have upset the Earth's climatic balance.

All eyes are on the poles,

where the effects of global warming are most visible.

It's happening fast, very fast.

The north-west passage that connects
America, Europe and Asia via the pole, is opening up.

The arctic ice cap is melting.

Under the effect of global warming, the ice cap has lost 40% of its thickness in 40 years.

Its surface area in the summer shrinks year by year.

It could disappear in the summer months by 2030. Some say 2015.

The sunbeams that the ice sheet previously reflected back now penetrate the dark water, heating it up.

The warming process gathers pace. This ice contains the records of our planet.

The concentration of carbon dioxide hasn't been so high for several hundred thousand years.

Humanity has never lived in an atmosphere like this.

Is excessive exploitation of resources threatening the lives of every species?

Climate change accentuates the threat.

By 2050, a quarter of the Earth's species could be threatened with extinction.

In these polar regions, the balance of nature has already been disrupted.

Around the North Pole, the ice cap has lost 30% of its surface area in 30 years.

But as Greenland rapidly becomes warmer,

the freshwater of a whole continent flows into the salt water of the oceans.

Greenland's ice contains 20% of the freshwater of the whole planet.

If it melts, sea levels will rise by nearly 7 meters.

But there is no industry here.

Greenland's ice sheet suffers from greenhouse gases emitted elsewhere on Earth.