Once Upon a Time... Planet Earth

In his living room, Maestro is explaining to our planet guards how the Earth’s climate has been changing, ever since the atmosphere was created. Contrasting climates change back and forth from hot to glacial. The ice at the poles formed only 2.5 million years ago in the Arctic, followed by a mild, stable climate for the past 10,000 years that gave birth to civilization in the valley of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. But recently things have been taking a turn for the worse. Maestro is interrupted by one of our young friends, bursting in from the newsroom next door. They’ve just received a distress call from a correspondent in the Canadian Far North. Global warming is cracking the ice and the ground, and her Inuit village will probably have to be evacuated. Their way of life, hunting and fishing in particular, has become difficult as it is. And the trend is far from improving. Excessive pollution and use of fossil fuels is contributing to the greenhouse effect that prevents infrared radiation, a source of heat, from radiating out into space.