In an intimate address to the viewer, Attenborough calls this his “witness statement” detailing the world’s devastating biodiversity loss at the hands of humanity, along with his vision for the future. In contrast, “ A Life On Our Planet” is an explicit call to action never quite expressed before in his documentaries. Perhaps in the hopes it would still spark enough concern in its viewers to become more environmentally conscious. However, quintessential series like “ Planet Earth” continued to tread carefully around “politicising” the topic and stuck largely to the expected content of traditional programming. In the Photo: David Attenborough pictured in nature documentary “One Planet.” Photo Credit: Netflix It would be difficult – if not impossible – to avoid addressing these issues in wildlife programs where the consequences can be so palpably witnessed. His iconic nature documentaries have increasingly touched on the issue of declining biodiversity and the impact of climate change on the natural world. It is clear from the start that this is both a personal love letter for the world he grew up in and a stark warning of how – as a society – we have squandered this gift.Ī household name synonymous with wildlife documentaries, Attenborough has always championed conservationist causes. Now, at 93, Attenborough is taking the opportunity to reflect on the changes that have occurred over the span of his lifetime. Over the course of his 60-year career as a naturalist and beloved wildlife narrator, the landscape of the natural world has changed dramatically. Now, he’s borne witness to the “story of global decline during a single lifetime” and proposed a better future: It’s up to everyone else to figure out how to get there.David Attenborough graces our screens again in his most poignant documentary yet. At 94, Attenborough has made dozens of films and connected people around the world to bizarre forms of wildlife that they could only dream of. In another, bison roam under the blades of gigantic wind turbines.Īttenborough doesn’t really have a plan to get us to this eco-utopia, where the world population has leveled out, countries are run on solar, wind, and geothermal, and many, if not most, of us are vegetarian. In one particularly wild shot, drones lift timber from a mist-covered rainforest, carrying them over the trees to a shimmering city on the horizon which bears a passing resemblance to Black Panther‘s fictional land of Wakanda. The documentary zooms from hopeful images of the present - glittering solar fields in the Moroccan desert and quiet, lush hydroponic farms in the Netherlands - to speculative visions of the future. Those forests and plains and seas were already emptying.” “Although as a young man I thought I was out there in the wild, experiencing the untouched natural world,” Attenborough says in the film, “it was an illusion. Attenborough has been here, watching the disaster unfold, the entire time. Today, however, the world’s population has more than tripled, wilderness has shrunk to a paltry 35 percent, and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has shot through the roof. In 1937, when Attenborough was 11 years old, just 2.3 billion people lived on the planet and 66 percent of the world’s wilderness remained. But as successive generations are born, that baseline shifts downward - eroding understanding of what “normal” really is.Īttenborough’s new film is peppered with grim reminders of how much the world has changed over the course of its narrator’s life. Pauly fired off a quick commentary in an ecology journal, arguing that any given generation of fishers experience the fish stocks of their childhood or early career as “normal,” setting a “baseline” that shapes their reaction to later losses. One fisherman might remember his nets teeming with bluefin tuna, while his grandson has never seen a single one. Pauly was frustrated by the inability of humans to comprehend the rapid loss of aquatic life. Who better to document the decline of wilderness than a nonagenarian who has chronicled nature for 70 years?Ī Life on Our Planet is the perfect antidote for “shifting baseline syndrome,” a phrase coined in 1995 by Daniel Pauly, a fisheries scientist living in the Philippines at the time. A teenager today wouldn’t remember what the world looked like before half of the world’s animal populations disappeared - or for that matter, what it’s like to live in a stable climate. The footage is a reminder of how Attenborough’s age has become one of his greatest assets. To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist.
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