- My name is Moses Storm.
As a major social media influencer, it's my responsibility to help make the world a better place.
What good is it to have the eyes of the world on you, if all of those eyes are attached to dead bodies?
Global warming is a severe and complicated issue with a very simple solution, the polar icecaps were jacked as an air conditioner for the planet, moderating its sea levels, are melting at an alarming rate,
simply put, the polar icecaps just need more ice, so I am gonna fix global warming by bringing.
When we get the ice in the devastated zone, what I imagine is that, you know,
the ice is gonna freeze the water around it.
Now, I know it's gonna take a while, it's probably gonna take like 20 or 30 minutes.
Before I could inspire millions of others online to take action with my solution,
I needed to prove how simple it was to execute, so I rented a truck and maxed out my credit card at Arctic Glacier in Van Nuys, California.
This was one, this was me figuring out the logistics, but you know, once this goes live on social media and people see it, the number two load I take, huge, it's gonna be a devastating load.
One more, I don't like my face in that one. I think if you go from like a lower angle.
With $3300 worth of ice loaded up, the next step was getting it onto a container ship destined for the North Atlantic.
No, no, I'm trying to get onto the boat.
We're doing a thing, where we're helping the environment and we're taking ice
You're calling the police?
Due to the fact that customs had zero chill, I decided to go with a private shipper, because these guys will ship anything.
To Iceland.
- [Man] But you didn't think about contracting somebody to do it for you?
- [Moses] Well that's what you would be here for.
- [Man] I'm not here to do that.
- [Moses] Struck by his lack of appreciation for the importance of my project,
I let my emotions get the best of me.
- [Man] You've gotta contact people, man, people who own these things and they ship it for you, not you.
- [Moses] Okay, what is your job here, besides being the most sassy man alive?
- well, I didn't go to your house and ask you what your job is today or what you had planned.
- [Moses] You mean here, this is your house, you live in one of these containers?
- Look man, look, I ain't interested in an argument with you, you can't, you can't.
- I could have stayed and easily won this fight, but with five tons of ice melting,
I had to remember that this wasn't about me, this was about saving the world.
I needed another form of transportation.
15 container ships burn as much fuel as all the cars in North America.
Oh God.
I love your accent, where are you from?
Iceland.
Is there any sort of exception for charities or charitable efforts?
We gotta cut it down.
While any regular person would feel embarrassed about being cut down to size, for me it felt right.
My ice carver, George here, right, cut me down, right, this is a good amount of ice.
That's his form of enthusiasm.
This is the amount I wanted, you don't know what you want, until someone tells you exactly what you can get and this is what I can get.
With a completely fine amount of ice successfully aboard, the $900 oversized cargo fee felt like nothing as a wealth of online love poured in.
Making it to Iceland was a huge accomplishment, but I still needed to get the ice to the actual devastated area, the glacial lagoon located 365 kilometers away, but all this would mean nothing, if my solution didn't have backing from the scientific community, so I made a quick stop to meet with Iceland's top environmental enthusiast, Gisli Gislason.
- You know, firstly I can't see that, you know, you can move so much ice, but you have to make it somewhere and that's not good for the environment, no.
To Iceland. - No.
It's not going to make any sense.
- Oh, you're actually making the environment worse, when you're producing and transporting the ice, I think it's a really bad idea actually,
I think it's just-
I don't, I don't,
I don't know what else to do.
I think we should agree to disagree, I think we're done here. - Yeah, you should.
- [Moses] Being shot down by the entire scientific community was a devastating blow, it made me ask myself, whose approval was I really seeking?
Big science has been working on global warming solutions for the past two decades, yet scientists say global warming is a worse problem today, than what it was 20 years ago
and let's not forget that scientists were the ones that first told us about global warming.
So why would I trust the opinion of the founders of global warming?
But because scientists are wrong so often, they did help me see my one flaw,
I was burning too much energy, if I was gonna be a true agent of change, I couldn't lecture people about the solution, while driving around in the problem, I needed to ditch my gas-guzzling cargo van and find a greener way.
How could I ignore that you would be my baby
How could I ignore
- [Moses] I drove through the night, fueled only by the fumes of spite for the naysayers,
but every time I stopped to fill up my quarter tank,
I was filled with a full tank of guilt,
I was still burning fossil fuels.
Yah, yah!
Yah!
Yah!
Yah!
Yah! - Halt, halt, no!
You can't go any further.
- What's the issue?
In a perverted twist of irony, thanks to global warming, there wasn't enough snow to continue on the sled, but unlike the people of Iceland, I wasn't just gonna sit back
and let global warming take my ice, I had heard too many nos to give up now,
so I took my remaining ice and my marathon skills and I made a run for the glacial lagoon.
- That glacier you're looking at over there, it's doomed, in 100 years, it will probably be gone.
- Not anymore.
(laughs)
- Okay.
- [Moses] While this wasn't the amount of ice, that I was hoping for, it was still enough to make an impact, an impact on me, now that I was no longer seen as a passive citizen,
but someone who actually takes action to make the world a better place, I couldn't help but feel a sense of superiority over overs.
But if the reward of moral high ground is enough motivation for young people to get out there and actually take action, is that such a bad thing?
In the process of raising awareness about myself, I had also raised awareness about global warming, an issue so boring, Rotten Tomatoes' audience gave it only 49%, with numbers like that and so much injustice in the world, modern activism needs anyone and everyone, who's willing to take action.
While I may have more than tripled my carbon footprint by transporting the ice, at least that footprint is a step in the right direction and as you take those first steps into activism, people will say that you're wasting your time and that you extra, but if all your ice melts and the sea levels rise, know that you won't drown, because as long as you have the label of activist, you can hold your head high.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFnt9OiBhxs
