A Storm to Weather

Unseasonal storms in the UAE, constant rain in sunny Cyprus, downpours in fire-devastated Australia and crippling snow falls in northern Canada should force climate change deniers to change their minds about the threats posed by human activities destructive of the environment. At the launch of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) Our Planet Matters series, world-famed naturalist Sir David Attenborough warned, “The moment of crisis has come... We have to realise (global warming/climate change) is not playing games. This is an urgent problem that has to be solved and, what’s more, we know how to do it.”

He continued, “As I speak, southeast Australia is on fire. Why? Because the temperatures of the Earth are increasing. We have been putting things off year after year. We’ve been raising targets, saying, ‘Oh well, if we do it in the next 20 years.’ If the world waits another 20 years, it will be too late.”

Still active at 93, his documentary, A Life On Our Planet, is set to premiere in Britain on April 16. “Human beings have overrun the world. We’re replacing the wild with the tame,” he stated and called on humankind to “work with nature rather than against it.”

While his voice is soft and gravelly and his manner low key, Attenborough has shaped the thinking of millions of people on all seven continents with stunning natural history documentaries produced by the BBC. With his first major programme, Zoo Quest, broadcast in 1954, Attenborough began a long, distinguished career. He is now considered a British “national treasure” and has been put on the list of the 100 greatest Britons.

Born in May 1926 in west London, he grew up on the campus of University College, Leicester, where his father was principal. As a child, Attenborough collected fossils, stones and natural specimens which he displayed in his museum. In 1936, he and his brother, film director Richard Attenborough, attended a lecture on conservation by a well-known activist and was greatly impressed by dire warnings that the earth’s ecological balance could rapidly be destroyed by reckless humans. David Attenborough studied geology and zoology and earned a degree in natural science from Claire College, Cambridge, and in 1947 he was conscripted into the British navy. After demobilising, he found work in a publishing firm but soon joined the BBC as a producer for non-fiction broadcasts.

During the 1960s, he completed a postgraduate degree in social anthropology at the London School of Economics while continuing to film. On condition he could go on making occasional films, in 1965 Attenborough became chief administrator of BBC Two and shook up the channel by commissioning innovative programmes on history, art, the US, archaeology, money and evolution. He joined a colleague in producing a seminal series entitled, Life on Earth. The most dramatic incident took place in the 12th episode when Attenborough met a group of African mountain gorillas in a sanctuary in Rwanda. While trying to get near enough to speak about the apes’ behaviour, he met a female face-to-face. Surprised but ready to record, he whispered about the similarities between humans and gorillas, pointing out that they are neither aggressive nor violent, as reputed, unlike humans. The series was a huge success and the gorilla incident was one of the most watched on televisions across the world.

In 1973, he left his BBC post to plan, write and present his major body of work. Among his other most commanding projects broadcast in 1984 was The Living Plant, A Portrait of the Earth, from creation though evolution to habitats created by and for humans. In the last instalment, he investigated a 9,000-year-old human settlement in Beidha in Jordan. He spoke of how mankind tamed nature and owned animals, altered landscapes, built cities and destroyed the environment.

In the last of this series, he warned, “Immensely powerful though we are today, it’s equally clear that we’re going to be even more powerful tomorrow. And what’s more, there will be greater compulsion upon us to use our power as the number of human beings on Earth increases still further. Clearly we could devastate the world. ... As far as we know, the Earth is the only place in the universe where there is life. Its continued survival now rests in our hands.” In a radio interview in 2013, he said humans were a “plague on the Earth.”

Attenborough has produced scores of films, some on a single topic, others in series, as well as books and recordings. When in 2013 he suffered problems with his health, he observed about retirement, “If I was earning my money by hewing coal I would be very glad indeed to stop. But I’m not. I’m swanning ’round the world looking at the most fabulously interesting things. Such good fortune.”

During 2019, at the age of 92, he appeared in a new BBC series called The Blue Planet where, in the final episode, he showed images of a grieving mother whale carrying her dead baby around for days after it had died. While feeding, the poor mother had ingested our plastic refuse which poisoned her nursing calf. The incident was a call to uncaring humans to protect our oceans which are being polluted not only by plastic bags and implements, but also fine plastic particles that sea creatures of all varieties ingest. Plastic bags kill them outright by snagging their digestive tracts, others by insidious poisoning which intelligent creatures like whales do not expect to find in their environment. Attenborough’s message has long been: we must comprehend what we are doing to our planet and its other inhabitants and try to change our behaviour before it is too late.

Since last year, more than 60 countries have joined the battle against plastic pollution by restricting production and consumption, and civilian groups and individuals have launched efforts to clean up our oceans and shores. Many people have been driven to good works by the “Attenborough effect.”