Extinction Rebellion Protesters Demonstrate in London City Airport; Two- Thirds of American Birds at Risk of Extinction.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're doing this for our children. The government is not acting as if there's an emergency, which there is. We need them to declare a climate emergency.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have hope that humanity can do better than this. As a doctor, I am genuinely fed up with putting people right to send them back into a world that's unfair, unkind.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is very difficult. Everything is at stake. Everything.</s>ANDERSON: Well, emotional displays of frustration there from activists taking part in a demonstration at London City Airport, their message very clear. Enough is enough. Life on Earth is in crisis. They say we must act now. As the climate crisis intensifies, our skies may begin to go silent. An alarming report just released to CNN says that almost two-thirds of North American birds are at risk of extinction if climate trends continue. Now this comes as scientists say, in just the past 50 years, we've already seen bird numbers in the U.S. and Canada plummet by nearly 3 billion. Yes, you heard me right, 3 billion. CNN's Bill Weir has more on the report and on why we need birds far more than they need us.</s>BILL WEIR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): From the Baltimore oriole to the golden eagle, from the songbirds in your backyard to America's rarest heron fishing in Tampa Bay, our fine-feathered friends are in deep trouble.</s>MARK RACHAL, SANCTUARY MANAGER, FLORIDA COASTAL ISLANDS SANCTUARIES, AUDUBON FLORIDA: At this site, there used to be 50 to 60 nesting piers. This was only about 15 years ago. And now, we're down to about five to eight piers.</s>WEIR (voice-over): After a recent study found that the U.S. and Canada lost nearly 3 billion birds just since the '70s, Audubon scientists took the latest climate models and looked into the future of over 600 species.</s>WEIR (on camera): So this is not a development comes into a grassland and ruins the nesting grounds. This is that places on earth get too warm for these species, so they have to either move or go extinct.</s>BROOKE BATEMAN, SENIOR SCIENTIST CLIMATE, NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY: Exactly. So, it's a combination of changes in temperature, precipitation and vegetation.</s>WEIR (voice-over): Brooke Bateman was the lead scientist and found that if humanity keeps warming the planet at the current rate, almost two-thirds of the North American birds they study could be driven to extinction. And as they try to survive, many species, like the common loon, will fly north and never come back.</s>BATEMAN: This is a bird that I just -- I went home, in my second grade and I wrote a report about it. And to this day, it's been a special bird for me. Last year, I brought my 5-year-old daughter and we went and we sat on the lake and she got to hear the loon for the first time. And it's like magic -- you see it on her face. And its range is going to completely shift out of the U.S. in the future, with climate change. So you'll no longer be able to go to that same place and hear that bird call anymore.</s>WEIR (voice-over): But more alarming than a loss of pretty songs and colors is what birds like the common robin are telling us about the speed of climate change.</s>BATEMAN: People usually think of robins as the sign of spring -- oh, the robins are back -- but robins are actually overwintering in a lot of places more frequently than they used to and not leaving at all.</s>WEIR (on camera): So it's a different kind of harbinger now.</s>BATEMAN: Yes.</s>WEIR (on camera): And if the robin is hanging out in December --</s>BATEMAN: Yes.</s>WEIR (on camera): -- something's wrong.</s>BATEMAN: Something's wrong. And that's the thing. Birds are indicators, birds tell us. They're the ones that are telling us what's going on in the environment.</s>WEIR (on camera): Yes.</s>BATEMAN: And so, we say, at Audubon, that birds tell us it's time to act.</s>WEIR (voice-over): And if humanity can act fast enough and somehow hit the carbon-cutting targets of the Paris accord, she says 75 percent of the most vulnerable species could survive.</s>WEIR (on camera): You have kids, do you?</s>RACHAL: I do, I have three young girls.</s>WEIR (on camera): Do you think these species will still be around when they're your age?</s>RACHAL: I do, I do.</s>WEIR (on camera): You do?</s>RACHAL: I think -- I think the habitat may be a little bit different but I'm hopeful.</s>WEIR (voice-over): Mark has been working at Tampa Bay for over a dozen years and has seen firsthand how even a casual love of birds can inspire positive action. Even the managers of that coal-fired power plant are Audubon supporters, he tells me. But while it was the canary that warned coal miners of invisible doom back in the day, these days it seems that birds of all shapes and sizes are being forced to do the same.</s>ANDERSON: Well, an update before we go on our top story this hour. The Turkish offensive against Kurdish forces in northern Syria. Another world leader now weighing in against it. French president Emmanuel Macron saying the operations risk helping ISIS, quote, "rebuild its caliphate" and that if that happens, "Turkey," he says, "will be responsible." I'm Becky Anderson. That was CONNECT THE WORLD. Thank you for watching. END