David Attenborough is probably the world's best known naturalist. He has written and produced dozens of documentaries, delighting generations of TV viewers. But for the past few years he's had a much more urgent mission - convincing the world to take action on climate change.
Transcript
LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER:
He's probably the world's best-known naturalist and he has written and produced dozens of documentaries, delighting generations of TV viewers.
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:
We're so similar. Their sight, their hearing, their sense of smell - they're so similar to ours that we see the world in the same way as they do.
MICHAL KURTYKA, PRESIDENT, COP24:
Please welcome, Sir David Attenborough.
LEIGH SALES:
But for the past few years, he has had a much more urgent mission - convincing the world to take action on climate change.
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:
We are facing a man-made disaster of global scale.
LEIGH SALES:
Sir David, in your book, A Life On Our Planet, you write, "We live our comfortable lives in the shadow of a disaster of our own making." What do you mean by that?
SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH, NATURALIST AND BROADCASTER:
Well, I mean that we are living more comfortably, more of us are living more comfortably than ever in history.
I mean, we are living in a controlled temperature, or at least most of us are, or lots of us are, certainly, I won't do the figures, but humanity by and large has taken what it wants from the natural world and built its own construct, its own surroundings, which we tend to think of our world and now we are realising that it isn't our world, actually.
We don't control as much as we think we do, and we are heading for disaster, because we think, we have thought that we could simply take whatever we wanted if it was there.
LEIGH SALES:
When you say, "Heading for disaster," what do you think are the most pressing threats?
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:
One that is lurking is that the icecaps are going to melt. For the first time now you can sail from the Pacific into the Atlantic across the North Pole in the summer and before long it looks as though you are going to be able to do that the year round and if you do that, the consequences, that is what people call a tipping point, when in fact it is not reversible.
If you are going to have all of those thousands of tons of freshwater in the icecaps, melting and going into the sea, rising the sea level, changing the salinity, changing the climate and the way the winds circulate around the world, you are interrupting and changing a fundamental rhythm that our world has lived with for centuries, millennia, and what the consequences will be is anybody's guess.
LEIGH SALES:
To be blunt, messages like yours have so far failed. Political leaders have failed to act decisively, the public is insufficiently motivated to force them to do so. Why do you think that is, and what's the answer?
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:
Why it hasn't happened is because it's not going to happen tomorrow. It's going to happen the day after tomorrow, and newspapers and ourselves, I mean, let's not blame newspapers, but we ourselves are concerned with what happens tomorrow, that seems urgent and if someone says, look a little farther down the road, oh, yes, we ought to be doing something about that, and then something else happens, and we need to deal with that tomorrow.
This problem has been delayed again, and yet again, and yet again, and if we go on delaying it, it will be tomorrow and then it will be too late.
LEIGH SALES:
Your new BBC series is "Extinction: The Facts". In the history of the world, species have always become extinct. What's different now?
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:
What's different now is that they're becoming, hundreds of species are becoming extinct together, right now. I mean, the dinosaurs was an unearthly body hitting the earth suddenly and that was one big effort.
Previous extinctions happened over centuries and even the dying out of the dinosaurs took several decades, we know, if not more than that.
But this is happening right now, and it's happening and it can be happening very, very quickly indeed across every aspect of the world's life.
LEIGH SALES:
Nobody can really travel with ease at the moment but let's say you could magically click your heels and transport yourself to anywhere you wanted to be in the world. Where would you go?
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:
I wouldn't mind being on your side of the world, really. I have a great time when I come to Australia and I've been to Australia fairly regular and I haven't now and I doubt whether I shall be able to do so again because of the restrictions on air travel and one thing and another.
But I've had marvellous times in Australia particularly up north, up in Arnhem Land and down on the Queensland coast, but also in the south. I mean, listening to lyre birds is one of the great experiences of life. It is unbelievable. You probably have.
Well, for me it is just echoes in the mind and just sitting there and hearing this fantastic bird singing this huge range of all the bird calls that's around and then, on top of that, imitating the chainsaws that are cutting down the very forests in which it lives. I mean that's a heart-rending thing to hear, which I have.
LEIGH SALES:
You are 94 now. When you survey the landscape of your life from this vantage point, what most stands out to you?
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:
In my life? Well, I suppose, it's quite a conventional reply, but it is the true one so I might as well say it, I mean, what stands out was the time I met what I thought were wild gorillas, mountain gorillas that was in Rwanda, and it stands out because I'm not allowed to forget it!
I mean, we filmed it and I wasn't expecting to get that close to them and for them to come out of the forest and then sit on me, I can honestly, truthfully say, I wasn't for a microsecond concerned.
I mean, there was this animal who could rip my arm off if it wanted to, you know, and yet there she was, she just sat alongside and put her hand on my head and put her finger in my mouth and looked inside my mouth and just - unbelievable.
And then her son, her young son, came and sat on my legs, and started pulling my shoelaces apart and how long I sat there, I mean, it was, it was certainly the most meaningful first encounter with another animal that I've ever had.
LEIGH SALES:
Well, you and your team have brought many magical moments like that one to the public, thank you for them and thank you for your time this evening.
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:
Okay, thank you.
"We've overrun the planet" - Sir David Attenborough speaks in an exclusive interview with BBC Breakfast
Links
- David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet Review – Stark Climate Emergency Warning
- David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet Trailer
- WWF - Attenborough: A life on our planet
- Netflix - David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet
- David Attenborough to publish 'witness statement' on climate crisis
- The real David Attenborough
- The Guardian view on Planet Earth: its life in our hands
- David Attenborough Instagram
- Lethal Heating: David Attenborough Posts
- Sir David Attenborough warns of climate 'crisis moment'
- David Attenborough Says Australia's Bushfires A 'Major International Catastrophe' And Calls For Climate Action
- David Attenborough Slams Australian PM On Climate Record
- David Attenborough Takes Aim At Australia For Lack Of Climate Action
- VIDEO: David Attenborough Climate Change TV Show A 'Call To Arms'
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