Archive Website of the UK government

Viewing the film

Please use the links below to download or view the film. You can right click with your mouse on the link, and choose 'Save target as' to save the film to your computer. Note that you can choose either Windows Media format or QuickTime format for the films. For each there is a high bandwidth (broadband) version and a low bandwidth (modem) version.

• Download 'My CO2' - High bandwidth version - Windows Media (WMV, 4116K)

• Download 'My CO2' - Low bandwidth version - Windows Media (WMV, 4110K)

• Download 'My CO2' - High bandwidth version - QuickTime (MOV, 12527K)

• Download 'My CO2' - Low bandwidth version - QuickTime (MOV, 2640K)

Description of the film (transcript)

Open on an out of focus red flickering light that fills most of the screen. The camera pulls back and focuses to reveal the flickering light charger. The charger seems to pulse as if there is an internal energy trying to burst out.

The camera pulls back further and then takes off on a journey around a modern home picking up examples of energy wastage in the home.

We see it pass through the kitchen, then through a utility room and past the washing machine. As the camera finds all of these examples of energy wastage, each appliance appears to pulse with an internal energy trying to escape.

The camera passes through the living room and finds a TV then it moves and finds the flame of the boiler, then follows to the boiler and a hot tap leaking out hot water. It continues through a bedroom where more appliances are throbbing with energy. Then it goes through another bedroom, looks like a child's with TV and computer console on.

Then the camera pans through the house and see various other switches left on and the heating, then follows the energy stream as it first journeys through some circuit boards and then joins the electricity main, which leads from the house.

Voice over:

'Energy-dependent home appliances are part of our modern way of life. Most of the energy they use comes from burning gas, oil and coal, which emit carbon dioxide - CO2 - into the atmosphere, changing the planet's climate.'

The camera cuts higher and higher as we see each street and then each district of a town combine their energy streams and one stream shoots off across the countryside until we reach a power station where (animated) CO2 is belching in to the atmosphere.

Voice over:

'We also waste large amounts of energy unnecessarily, which only increases CO2 emissions affecting the climate even further.'

The camera keeps going higher revealing eventually seeing the Earth from space. But instead of the beautiful, blue planet we are used to seeing it is enveloped in (animated) CO2 making it take on a 'reddish' hue. The Earth almost seems to pulse as all the appliances have before it.

The 'reddish' Earth mixes through to the flickering red light of the charger in the opening shot. As the camera pulls back again, a hand reaches in and turns off the switch.

Voice over:

'We are now producing more C02 than the world can cope with.'

We then see a series of shots as the energy wastage shown in the first sequence is dealt with. As each appliance is dealt with it stops pulsing.

Series of shots: TV being switched off, plug socket switched off, tap turned off to stop the leaking hot water, heating turned down, mobile phone charger being switched off - we then see energy efficient light bulb, loft installation, street scene.

Voice over:

'We can only tackle climate change, if we all act, now – together – by using and wasting less energy and therefore, reduce the CO2 emissions we are each responsible for.'

We end to see parents walking their children and cyclists on the street with no cars. We track past solar panels on the roofs of houses and see the wind turbines in the background. Ends with earth from space back to the way we are used to seeing it - as a beautiful, blue planet.