‘What we do in the next 20 years will determine the future for all life on Earth,’ the famed naturalist says
David Attenborough,
Brady Dennis reports for the Washington Post April 11
Sir David Attenborough has been documenting nature for more than six decades. His various television series — such as “Life on Earth,” “The Living Planet” and “Planet Earth” — have taken viewers to every corner of the globe, capturing the beauty and complexity of the natural world.
At 92, the renowned British naturalist is hardly finished.
In recent years, Attenborough increasingly has used his spellbinding whisper of a voice not only to describe the courtship rituals of birds of paradise or the mass migration of millions of Christmas Island red crabs, but also to repeatedly sound the alarm about climate change.
Last fall at a global climate conference in Poland, he told world leaders that “if we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilization and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.” Earlier this year at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Attenborough again pushed for action, warning, “The Garden of Eden is no more.”
“The only conditions modern humans have ever known are changing and changing fast,” he said at the time, adding, “It is tempting and understandable to ignore the evidence and carry on as usual or to be filled with doom and gloom. … We need to move beyond guilt or blame and get on with the practical tasks at hand.”
Attenborough’s latest project, an eight-part Netflix series produced in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund, is full of sobering reminders about how climate change is threatening significant parts of the natural world, coupled with the hope that humans might find the collective willpower to avert the most catastrophic consequences.
“Our Planet” was filmed over four years and across every continent, taking viewers to the remote Arctic wilderness, the vast plains of Africa and the depths of the world’s oceans to explore how much of nature is changing — and, in many ways, vanishing — in the age of climate change. Its central message is one of urgency.
“What we do in the next 20 years will determine the future for all life on Earth,” Attenborough intones in the first episode of “Our Planet.”
Before a screening this week at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Attenborough spoke with The Post about the project, his reasons for optimism and what keeps him motivated. What follows has been edited for length and clarity
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