WIDE ANGLE: Burning Season

• July 24, 2009

Wednesday, August 5 at 10 p.m.

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As temperatures and sea levels rise, the world is scrambling to stop global warming — a threat the UN Secretary General has described as "the defining issue of our era." But international consensus is slow to emerge, and debate over how to slow climate change continues.

WIDE ANGLE travels to Indonesia, where rainforest areas equivalent to 300 soccer fields are cut down and burnt every hour to clear land for crops such as oil palms. New studies show that the devastation of Indonesia’s forests has helped to make it the world’s third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide — exceeded only by the U.S. and China. How to reduce these harmful greenhouse gas emissions? Dorjee Sun, a 29-year-old Australian green entrepreneur, thinks he has a solution: his idea involves selling the carbon credits represented by large forest areas in three Indonesian provinces to polluters in the West.

"Burning Season" follows Sun on a whirlwind trip to boardrooms around the world — from Starbucks to eBay to Merrill Lynch — as he tries to convince skeptical financiers that his proposal is viable. To carry out the plan, local political leaders in the jungle of Indonesia must also agree that their forests are worth more alive than dead. Meanwhile, small farmers like Achmadi, whose survival depends on cutting down trees to plant oil palms, fear the layers of government officials will be the only ones in his country making money from the carbon credit project.

"Burning Season" captures both sides of the climate divide and explores whether commercialism can step in where altruism has so far failed to succeed.

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