But, the moral of the story is indeed a positive one. A century from now, our planet could be a wild place again. It was called natural history because thats essentially what it was all about history. But you now want to explain to us what peril we are in. Chris Rock makes comedy history with this global livestreaming event. There just isnt the space. But in certain places, there are hot spots where currents bring nutrients to the surface and trigger an explosion of life. [wildebeest snorting] For every single predator on the Serengeti, there are more than 100 prey animals. We rely entirely on this finely tuned life-support machine. Nature, once again, had to start again. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Its a creature called an ammonite. NPR's Scott Simon talks with British natural historian and broadcaster David Attenborough about his new book, Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and Vision for the Future. 1937 WORLD POPULATION: 2.3 BILLION CARBON IN ATMOSPHERE: 280 PARTS PER MILLION REMAINING WILDERNESS: 66%. So, what do we do? It was the first indication to me that the earth was beginning to lose its balance. Levies and carbon taxes will go somewhere to shift this. Coral reefs don't like acid, and 90% of our reefs could die off in a few years. And beyond that strip, there is nothing but regimented rows of oil palms. We must immediately halt deforestation everywhere and grow crops like oil palm and soya only on land that was deforested long ago. [Attenborough] It was a stark contrast to the world I knew. SIMON: You were a BBC executive in the control room when the first pictures of Earth were sent back by the Apollo 8 crew. His passion for protecting diverse wildlife, and reclaiming our wilderness is palpable, and A Life on Our Planet is his "witness statement." The last time it happened was the event that brought the end of the age of the dinosaurs. [Attenborough] Animals that had been viewed as little more than a source of oil and meat became personalities. It was shot in 39 countries. And there I was, actually being asked to explore these places and record the wonders of the natural world for people back home. Sir David Frederick Attenborough (; born 8 May 1926) is an English broadcaster and naturalist. Sir David Attenborough was 28-years-old when he convinced his bosses at the BBC to let him travel the world and document his explorations. Theyre places in which evolutions talent for design soars. Since I started filming in the 1950s, on average, wild animal populations have more than halved. And you see this curtain of green with occasionally birds in it, and you think its perhaps okay. It was a very different world back then. Immense grasslands. Regenerative and urban farming are two options. David Attenborough is a famous British naturalist. Attenborough, David, 1926-2 Entertain (Firm) BBC Video (Firm) British Broadcasting Corporation; . It revealed a cold reality. But Ive had unbelievable luck and good fortune. on October 24, 2021. We have pursued animals to extinction many times in our history, but now that it was visible, it was no longer acceptable. The history of all human civilization followed. Polar bears need ice as the launching pads for hunting. As a result, the average global temperature today is one degree Celsius warmer than it was when I was born. After moving his family into his childhood home, a man's investigation into a local factory accident connected to his father unveils dark family secrets. He seems tired of keeping quiet about it. If we push beyond even one of them, we destabilize the balance of our planet. The biodiversity of the Holocene helped to bring stability, and the entire living world settled into a gentle, reliable rhythm the seasons. Then you deal so with the land. With all these things, there is one overriding principle. A habitat that is dead in comparison. The natural world is, fading, he writes. Sir David, thanks so much for being with us. Its a sanctuary for wild animals that are very rare elsewhere. And there, only a few yards away, we spotted a great furry red form swaying in the trees. What has that done? In truth, I couldnt imagine living my life in any other way. Nobody wanted animals to become extinct. And if we do it right, it can continue because theres a win-win at play. Today, it generates 40% of its needs at home from a network of renewable power plants, including the worlds largest solar farm. We eat 50 billion chickens a year and feed them with soy planted on deforested land. Preparation. Population growth peaked in about 1962. We remember environmental disasters, but do we actually learn from them? Its now time for our species to stop simply growing. [1] Initially scheduled for cinematic release on 16 April 2020, the film was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And the quickest and most effective way to do that is for us to change our diet. Complete the sentences with words from the . And in life the animal itself lived in the chamber here and spread out its tentacles to catch its prey. [Attenborough] They lived in small numbers and didnt take too much. Every other species on Earth reaches a maximum population after a time. [Attenborough] Ive been lucky enough to spend my life exploring the wild places of our planet. Based on a children's book by Paul McCartney. We also have to rewild mangroves, salt marshes, and kelp forests to restore biodiversity. From Pripyat, an area deserted after a nuclear disaster, Attenborough gives an overview of his life. Estimates suggest that no fish zones over a third of our coastal seas would be sufficient to provide us with all the fish we will ever need. [reindeer grunting] [birds hooting] [buffalo snorting] [birds cawing] [elephants trumpeting]. The film's grand achievement is that it positions its subject as a mediator between humans and the natural world. For. Did you know that 1.8 trillion plastic fragments are currently drifting like a garbage site in the northern Pacific? Sitting on the edge of the Sahara, and cabled directly into southern Europe, Morocco could be an exporter of solar energy by 2050. we would keep consuming the earth until we had used it up. This film is my witness statement and my vision for the future, the story of how we came to make this our greatest mistake, and how, if we act now, we can yet put it right. [exclaiming in surprise] And Im still learning. Most of our diseases were under control. If theres any justice in the world, Marcel Ophls monumental labor will be studied and debated for years. By 1975, the average was two. [Attenborough] It felt that nothing would limit our progress. I spent the latter half of the 1970s traveling the world, making a series I had long dreamed of called Life on Earth, the story of the evolution of life and its diversity. Um, so, the world is not as wild as it was. The number of children being born worldwide every year is about to level off. [protester over megaphone] We are men and women, and we speak for children, and were all saying, Please stop killing the whales.. Remember you can read the transcript at any time. Yet, we're nowhere near the stage where our population has stopped growing. Kate Raworth, an economist at the University of Oxford, has added a social boundary to The Planetary Boundaries model - one that requires us to provide minimum levels of human well-being for all, including adequate housing, clean water, food, education, and justice. The fishing quickly became so poor that countries began to subsidize the fleets to maintain the industry. Focusing on a specific period, from the birth of Black Wall Street to its catastrophic downfall over the course of two bloody days, and finally the fallout and reconstruction. Executive-produced by his sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo. Humanitarian crises would result as people would be forced to relocate, triggering border conflict. Baitfish are driven into tight balls by tuna, before they attack, then sharks and dolphins join the hunt; they're followed by gannets, and even a whale. Global food production enters a crisis as soils become exhausted by overuse. The world population sits at 7.8 billion, the carbon in the atmosphere is 415 parts per million, and shockingly the remaining wilderness is 35%. There were twice the number of people on the planet as there were when I was born. In 1971, I set out to find an uncontacted tribe in New Guinea. Half a million gazelle. Saving individual species or even groups of species would not be enough. If you have a global view, which - and science can give us - science would say that there are more species in danger of total disappearance than there have been in human history. As a result, the no fish zones have increased the catch of the local fishermen, while at the same time allowing the reefs to recover. There was nothing left to restrict us. Without predators, nutrients are lost for centuries to the depths and the hot spots start to diminish. It took a visionary scientist, Bernhard Grzimek, to explain that this wasnt true. After all, theres plenty of it. You can also read the transcript. At the same time, the Arctic becomes ice-free in the summer. A determined detective continues his search for the truth behind Asia's largest drug organization and its elusive boss he has unfinished business with. SIMON: I - forgive me, but I feel the need to quote a movie in which your brother starred (laughter), "Jurassic Park," where the scientist says, nature finds a way. He has perpetually been on the road ever since. Phytoplankton at the oceans surface and immense forests straddling the north have helped to balance the atmosphere by locking away carbon. For example, the Costa Rican government offered farmers grants to replant indigenous trees twenty-five years ago. "A Life on Our Planet" is as much a love story, a requiem, and a final request as it is a film about deforestation, overfishing, exponential population grown, and the various other culprits. With this in mind, David Attenborough has dedicated his life to educating us about our planet, and making discourses visible, through his captivating storytelling. We have arrived at locations expecting to find expanses of sea ice and found none. The sooner it happens, the easier it makes everything else we have to do. When they do, theyre able to gather the concentrated shoals with ease. His book, "A Life On Our Planet: My Witness Statement And Vision For The Future" - and the highly honored broadcaster, historian of nature and best-selling author joins us now. And we don't learn the lessons. The problem is that our fishing fleets are just as good at finding those hot spots as are the fish. Just listen to this. Half of the fertile land on earth is now farmland. The last one is thought to have been a meteorite that struck Earth, destroying anything bigger than a dog. But during his lifetime, Attenborough has also seen first-hand the monumental scale of humanity's impact on nature. Our planet, vulnerable and isolated. David Attenborough is a famous British naturalist. People benefit from the timber and then benefit again from farming the land thats left behind. The herrings have disappeared from the North Sea. Its crazy that our banks and our pensions are investing in fossil fuel when these are the very things that are jeopardizing the future that we are saving for. In his more recent travels, Attenborough noticed fishers using mosquito nets in the hope of catching something to eat. Today, forests cover half of Costa Rica. They discovered that the Serengeti herds required an enormous area of healthy grassland to function. In this world, a species can only thrive when everything else around it thrives, too. And if there's a profit in it, we do that - worse than that, even when there's not a profit in it, when governments actually see fit to subsidize it. Im talking about the loss of our planets wild places, its biodiversity. We were apart from the rest of life on earth, living a different kind of life. When it comes to the land, we must radically reduce the area we use to farm, so that we can make space for returning wilderness. It was the first time that any human had moved away far enough from the earth to see the whole planet. The start of my career in my 20s coincided with the advent of global air travel. The natural world will survive. In this trailer, he talks about his documentary A Life on Our Planet. However, here's a curveball. More than half of the species on land live here. Overnight, Pripyat transformed from a pleasant, bustling town to a nightmarish disaster zone. Rising sea levels could lead to cities like Rotterdam, Ho Chi Minh City, and Miami being evacuated. Fortunately, Tanzania and Kenya took far-sighted action to safeguard the sacred paths of the Serengeti migration. Our blind assault on the planet has finally come to alter the very fundamentals of the living world. [Attenborough on video] Climbing over the tightly-packed bodies is the only way across the crowd. ATTENBOROUGH: Well, it could be gone. Half of the fertile land on Earth is currently farmed, and it's often overgrazed, over-sprayed with pesticides, and denuded of topsoil. The various meetings that have been convened by the United Nations - setting out plans which need validation by national governments and which will cost national governments, and I think that we need to persuade our own government in this country - and maybe you in your country - that we as citizens recognize what's happening to the world. Japans standard of living climbed rapidly in the latter half of the 20th century. Rewilding the world is simpler than you might think. And the rich and thriving living world around us has been key to this stability. The white corals are ultimately smothered by seaweed. For 65 million years, its been at work reconstructing the living world until we come to the world we know our time. They may have got time to actually - to pay more to sort things out. Some of the numbers are slightly out too. At times, our ancestors existed only in tiny numbers, but just over 10,000 years ago, that number suddenly stabilized and with it, Earth's climate. Then watch the video and do the exercises. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. But that distant world is changing. Soil would be inadequate, insects and bees destroyed, and droughts and flooding would increase. However, these marvels of the underwater food chain have become rarer, owing to overfishing, and because of disruptions in the food chain, our oceans are dying. When I filmed with the mountain gorillas, there were only 300 left in a remote jungle in Central Africa. A speed of change that exceeds any in the last 10,000 years. We learnt how to exploit the seasons to produce food crops. Videos David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. Above, very few. David Attenborough A Life On Our Planet 2020 An important documentary that everyone should watch.

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