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Discovery and the filmmakers behind "Racing Extinction" have some very loft goals for their documentary.

They want to create a social movement that will change the world. Oh, and they're hoping to get at least 500 million people to watch.

The Discovery Channel is distributed around the globe, and this documentary — which premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival — will air virtually everywhere in a 24-hour period Wednesday. American viewers will be the last to get a look at "Racing Extinction," simply because it will begin airing on the other side of the world.

"But when we are done, it will be in over 240 countries," said Discovery president Rich Ross. "And our goal is to get a billion eyeballs."

"Racing Extinction" comes from the team behind the Oscar-winning film "The Cove," which documented the killing of tens of thousands of dolphins off the coast of Japan every year. The filmmakers and their crews have spent years traveling the globe to produce this film about endangered species and efforts to save them. It's not just wildlife on camera; the team went undercover in black markets that sell ivory, shark fins, rhinoceros horns and more and used cutting-edge technology to show how carbon emissions are linked to species extinctions.

Getting half a billion people to watch will be the easy part.

"We have the potential to change the world relatively overnight," said director Louie Psihoyos. "This is the biggest story in the world bar none."

He said his "friends in paleontology" tell him that in the future, "World War II will be seen as a footnote in history compared to what's going on right now. The loss of biodiversity will be unimaginably horrific for future generations if we don't do something about it now."

While the subject is definitely a downer, the filmmakers are aiming to deliver something more akin to a spy thriller.

"This is an epic story," Psihoyos said. "It's not just about one cove. It's about what's going on globally. So it was harder to, sort of, figure out how to get people emotionally engaged in the story."

So the film focuses on the activists — aiming to get viewers engaged with their efforts and "take people on that same ride that we did with 'The Cove.' "

And encourage people to take action. According to Psihoyos, before the release of "The Cove," the Japanese were killing 23,000 dolphins every year. "We got that down to about 6,000, and it's probably going to drop a lot further this year," he said.

But "Racing Extinction" has much higher goals — in terms of the number of people the producers hope will watch and what they hope all those people will do.

"Hopefully, it will wake people up and make people kind of change the way they behave in their daily lives," said producer Fisher Stevens. "The goal behind doing this movie [is] to do it in a way where you are engaged and really, really entertained while you are learning something, as opposed to being preached to and told, 'This is how the world is.' "

There is a certain degree of preaching. One of the messages is that the world would be better off if humans stopped eating meat. According to Psihoyos, the biggest feature in mass extinction is raising food for the animals that humans will then consume. So the message is to "adopt more of a vegetarian diet."

"I've been a vegan for about six years now," Psihoyos said. "I don't miss meat at all. You basically are cutting out the middleman when you become a vegetarian."

Another message: Stop relying on fossil fuels and start relying on wind and solar power.

"I told the crew, 'We are not making a movie. We are starting a movement,' " said Psihoyos, and the intention is that the documentary will "live in the hearts and minds of people and change behaviors for generations to come."

"We are the only generation left that can save species for millions of years going forward. … So we need to do something desperately fast." —

On TV

"Racing Extinction" premieres Wednesday, Dec. 2. On Comcast, it airs at 7 and 8:36 p.m. on the Science Channel and at 10 and 11:36 p.m. on Animal Planet and Discovery. On DirecTV and Dish Network, it will air at 7 and 8:36 p.m. on Animal Planet, Discovery and the Science Channel.