Global climate is one of the many stories knocked off the front pages by this pandemic, but even as the world economy stores, it’s still there in a remarkable new Netflix film, David Attenborough has been looking back on his life and coming up with Some possible ways to deal with the immense challenges facing the planet.
It isn’t all bad news. I talked him and the World Wildlife fund’s Colin, but fields just before social distancing was introduced, and I asked her David about coronavirus, of course, but first he explained why he had agreed to make what he calls his own personal witness statement on Climate change – I am David Attenborough and I am 93.
I had the most extraordinary life it’s. Only now that I appreciate how extraordinary [, Music ] the living world is a unique and spectacular marvel. Yet the way we humans live on earth is sending it into a decline.
Human names have overrun the world we’re, replacing the wild with the tame. This film is my witness statement and my vision of the future. The story of how we came to make this our greatest mistake: how, if we act now, we can yet put it right.
If we don & # 39, t change everything, the the temperature of the world will go up, and that is the the biggest thing of the changes, because from that stems, all sorts of things stems: climate change, the population enlarges, carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere, the Temperature of the sea rises.
You lose a lot of fertility, the reven, the reverberations of that simple change are going to be enormous unless we do something about it – and this is the very last mammogram we have in which we can actually hope to stem some of these disasters.
They were saying it’s, the last of what you call a series of one-way doors. Yes, what are the one-way doors or one-way door is whether an is avoiding the increase in temperature of the world temperature, because if it gets into a situation where, in fact, the Norden, the Arctic ice cap medals, that’ll, bring such huge changes.
That is almost impossible to predict and with any confidence right, do you think not completely agree. You get a point where I’d, say the me things being released from the frozen permafrost. That sort of tipping point is there’s, a long way towards the acceleration, and all of this is quite soon call in in in David and in this film you have the best possible advocate.
You could have for the cause that you believe in what would you do to get this film in front of Donald Trump for an hour and a half good question say I wonder for that she’s way, someone like Donald Trump.
I think it would sway most people in the population that understands David’s, a trusted voice. I think that experience and understanding changed most people that would be watching this program. Donald Trump.
I would love to get in front of him. I’m 100 % sure I changed his mind. There’s and looks for anything. Would I suppose the semi-serious point is? This is a film which I agree with you. I think this will change attitudes, change minds by itself.
So the question is: can you get it to the world leaders? The opinion makers are the opinion changers who need to see, and I think we can actually, I think, and that’s. Definitely part of the hope is that we try to get in front of the people that can make the biggest possible difference as well as, of course, as many of us as possible.
Yes, I think if you’re an if you’re, a leader of a bank, you’re, a leader of a country. I think you should. You should hear Hill hear what they’ve, seen David. There is a moment about two-thirds of the way through the film when I kind of want to cut my throat.
I think it’s all so awful and so despairing for the last part of the film suggests that even at this late stage we can genuinely change course REE wild the planet and live differently. How can we do that? Well, we can look at the younger generation who are actually going to do it because they will actually be able to see the consequences of what they do and my lot are dying off the one.
We are the ones that cause the problem and but but if you can really live in a more modest economic way as an ambition, don’t waste things think this world is precious inks. Your time is precious think that the rest of the natural world is precious and all those things need cherishing.
That’s. The fundamental attitude the world is not a bowl of fruit from which we are designed can just take what we wish. We are part of it and if we destroy it, we destroy ourselves and you have kind of hero countries.
I can always describe them in this film. You’ve got the Netherlands growing far more food than it used to you & # 39. Ve got Japan with its population out pretty stable and you & # 39. Ve got Costa Rica, and the World Wildlife Fund wants lots of rewilding.
Of course you know it’s. The clue is in the name, but Costa Rica has actually done this. Yes, for for a political leader with great power, to simply say we don’t need an army if we work under it. If the Donald Trump decided to invade Costa Rica’s, nothing we could do so.
Why do we waste all that money on an army? Why don’t we take that money from the national budget and turn it into rewilding and ecotourism, and that’s, not just empty words. They’ve done it. They’ve done it, and and and the the the natural then in nature, reserves got part of the tropical rainforest joy to go to, and nature comes back relatively quickly.
You make a very interesting point at the end of the film which I owned entirely giveaway, but at the end of the hill, when you say used to think this was about saving the planet, and now you realize it’s.
Not because nature will always look after itself, it’s about saving us, yes – and I went into a party just recently and a few weeks ago, went into a partisan of Costa Rica, and I cut my way through it parted the well and looked At the camera and said I was here 25 years ago, and this was a meadow in which there were cows – and this is um now tropical rain for 25 years.
That’s. All it can all be done. Every other population in nature that grows very very fast, comes to some kind of reckoning. I’m, just wondering, as I look around here and out whether coronavirus is not our reckoning, in other words, coronavirus or some other kind of virus sweeping across the Cuba they do.
But then black death was a pretty pretty serious one, as I recall. Yes, it was, but it was a virus and, of course anybody who knows anything about keeping animals of any kind of them would the more dense population you keeps the quicker the disease will spread and there’s, never been a denser population of human Species until this moment, so in a sense this is, we are victims of our own success in terms of our numbers and our interconnectedness, certainly for a lot of people watching this film, they’re, going to really want to change their life.
They’re gonna want to change something about themselves that helps prevent the disasters that you described as he distorts the happier future. That is still possible. If there’s, a single thing that people watching could do.
What would you recommend? Stop waste stop waste of any kind, stop wasting power, stop wasting food, stop wasting plastic don’t waste this for a precious world celebrate and cherish so lots of world leaders.
You hope will be able to see this film and have their minds changed in some way. What would your message to them be now City? This is the last chance. There are short-term problems and long-term problems.
Politician is tempted to deal with short-term problems all the time and neglect long-term problems. This is not only a long-term problem, it is the biggest problem. Humanity has faced ever, please examine it and please respond Sir David Colin thanks both very much and that remarkable film, David Attenborough, a life on our planet will be released in cinemas and on Netflix later this year, everybody should see it.
Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=2PRJL07-WK0
