Rainforests are particularly precious habitats. Giving people a greater opportunity of life is what we would want to do anyway. As a result, the average global temperature today is one degree Celsius warmer than it was when I was born. It seems utterly impossible that after such a devastating environmental disaster, there would be any kind of happy ending. That disaster is being brought about by the very things that allow us to live our comfortable lives." They had never seen the center of New Guinea before. The Amazon rainforest could suffer from "forest dieback" and be starved of moisture, becoming an open savannah and destroying its biodiversity. Population growth peaked in about 1962. [Attenborough] It felt that nothing would limit our progress. The living world cant operate without a healthy ocean and neither can we. The cycle of destruction continues as the sea life is trapped by or ingests this waste. We have pursued animals to extinction many times in our history, but now that it was visible, it was no longer acceptable. There is a double incentive to cut down forests. We will finally learn how to work with nature rather than against it. Walruses rest on the sea ice when they're not hunting, and because there isn't enough space on the diminishing ice, it becomes very overcrowded. And the rich and thriving living world around us has been key to this stability. Attenborough's BBC production, The Blue Planet, changed this when its sophisticated camera equipment filmed a bait ball frenzy, a fantastic underwater hunt the likes of which no one had seen before. Algal forests would not attach to ice, damaging the ocean food chain. 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. Because what youre looking at is skeletons. Over time, I began to learn something about the earths evolutionary history. If we fast-forward to 2020, a mere 83 years later, the statistics are disheartening. And we understand that it's going to cost something if you put it right and that the Western and developed countries had more than their fair share. In this future, we discover ways to benefit from our land that help, rather than hinder, wilderness. ATTENBOROUGH: Well, it could be gone. David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. The 50,000 large dams in the world, change the water flow and temperature of rivers. The living world will endure. Thank you so much for being with us. A mass extinction has happened five times in lifes four-billion-year history. As with the citizens of Pripyat, we carry on with our daily lives, unaware that our carelessness and lack of planning will ultimately destroy us, and our natural world, unless we alter our self-destructive trajectory. Recordings like these revealed that the songs of the humpbacks are long and complex. And we've exterminated the great fisheries. If we travel back to modern-day Pripyat, David Attenborough tells us that nature is once again asserting itself. And freshwater is equally at risk. Our closest relatives. It was an astonishing vision of a completely unknown world, a world that had existed since the beginning of time. We seem to have broken loose from the restrictions that have governed the activities and numbers of other animals. But, there are ways to change direction and alter the doom and gloom we've created. For 10,000 years, the average temperature has not wavered up or down by more than one degree Celsius. Within the span of the next lifetime, the security and stability of the Holocene, our Garden of Eden will be lost. The ocean bears the brunt of this because it absorbs the excess heat of global warming. The longer they have to wait for the ice to return, the more they use up their fat supplies. And they are centers of biodiversity. 75% of all species were wiped out. It seems that the human population will only really peak early in the 22nd century, at about 11 billion people. Regenerative and urban farming are two options. Indoors, within cities. Attenborough is now 94, and throughout his long life, has watched the natural world wither before his eyes. Sir David Attenborough is 94 years old and has some stark, startling sentences in the first few pages of his new book. The cod fishery, I mean, we exterminated that from the Atlantic. Without this training, they would not complete their role in dispersing seeds. In his latest book and film, "A Life on Our Planet," he offers a grave and alarming assessment about . And this is what they saw what we all saw. Instructions Preparation David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet | Official Trailer | Netflix Watch on Transcript Task 1 Task 2 Discussion Have you seen any of David Attenborough's films? There are signs that this has started to happen across the globe. . SIMON: Sir David Attenborough - his book, along with his co-author Jonnie Hughes, is "A Life On Our Planet." No one has lived here since. The film's grand achievement is that it positions its subject as a mediator between humans and the natural world. Coral reefs don't like acid, and 90% of our reefs could die off in a few years. [imperceptible] Theyve always been a place beyond imagination with scenery unlike anything else on earth and unique species adapted to a life in the extreme. [groaning] Those beneath can get crushed to death. Earth could be 4 degrees Celsius warmer, making farming in many areas impossible. We rely entirely on this finely tuned life-support machine. [young Attenborough] We heard a crashing in the branches ahead. It was called natural history because thats essentially what it was all about history. Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Sparkling coastal seas. Unlike land chains, which may have three food chain links, such as grass, to wildebeest, to lion, the sea has about five, so if we overfish at one point, we collapse the entire system. But within only a few years, the nets across the globe were coming in empty. The healthier the marine habitat, the more fish there will be, and the more there will be to eat. Japans standard of living climbed rapidly in the latter half of the 20th century. A world that demanded more every day. However, Attenborough points out that vested interests will hold us back. Addeddate A key reason the population is still growing is because many of us are living longer. He and his son used a plane to follow the herds over the horizon. And we were responsible. The future was going to be exciting. A broadcaster recounts his life, and the evolutionary history of life on Earth, to grieve the loss of wild places and offer a vision for the future. Attenborough's wildlife journey started at a young age. Emmy-winning narrator David Attenborough ("Our Planet," "Planet Earth II") looks back and shares a way forward. Theyd never seen sloths before. A thick belt of jungles around the equator has piled plant on plant to capture as much of the suns energy as possible, adding moisture and oxygen to the global air currents. Uploaded by A moment ago, we made this recording with an underwater microphone here in the Pacific near Hawaii. But during his lifetime, Attenborough has also seen first-hand the monumental scale of humanity's impact on nature. We found humpbacks off Hawaii only by listening out for their calls. Its rhythm of seasons was so reliable that it gave our own species a unique opportunity. Baby gorillas were at a premium, and poachers would kill a dozen adults to get one. The Holocene has been one of the most stable periods in our planets great history. [Attenborough] By working hard to raise people out of poverty, giving all access to healthcare, and enabling girls in particular to stay in school as long as possible, we can make it peak sooner and at a lower level. For the first time, Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garca Mrquez's masterwork comes to the screen. Honest, revealing and urgent, David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet is a powerful first-hand account of humanity's impact on nature and a message of hope for future generations. But that distant world is changing. Right now, were facing a manmade disaster of global scale. 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. If there is no corner of the oceans which is safe from fishing vessels of one kind or another, we are heading for total elimination of the edible fish from the sea. In the process, they also provide us with simple solutions to saving our planet before it is too late. But its possible to slow, even to stop population growth well before it reaches that point. By the 1980s, uncontrolled logging had reduced this to just one quarter. Humpbacks living in the same area learn their songs from each other. I'm quite sure. Billions of individuals, and millions of kinds of plants and animals [birds chirping] dazzling in their variety and richness. All that evolution undone. It was a feature of all five mass extinctions. And tree diversity is the key to a rainforest. The pace of change was getting faster and faster. Its entirely possible for us to apply both low-tech and hi-tech solutions to produce much more food from much less land. The nearby nuclear power station of Chernobyl exploded. Working together to benefit from the energy of the sun and the minerals of the earth. [Attenborough] By the time Life on Earth aired in 1979, I had entered my 50s. Today, it generates 40% of its needs at home from a network of renewable power plants, including the worlds largest solar farm. Based on the comic book series by Mark Millar and Peter Gross. [Attenborough] Animals that had been viewed as little more than a source of oil and meat became personalities. Trailer: David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. 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. According to Attenborough, the 22nd century could herald massive enforced human migration. [whales singing] Their mournful songs were the key to transforming peoples opinions about them. In one act, this would transform the open ocean from a place exhausted by subsidized fishing fleets to a wilderness that will help us all in our efforts to combat climate change. For a long time, I and perhaps you have dreaded that future. [Attenborough] We had broken loose. 2.4M views 2 years ago In this unique feature documentary, titled David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet, the celebrated naturalist reflects upon both the defining moments of his. The explosion was a result of bad planning and human error. We had very little understanding of how the living world actually worked. Iceland, Albania, and Paraguay generate their electricity without fossil fuels. I mean, we have completely well, destroyed that world. There was an edge to our existence. No ecosystem, no matter how big, is secure. As Attenborough cautions, the bleached coral is like canaries in a coal mine. [Attenborough] It was a stark contrast to the world I knew. When I was a boy, I spent all my spare time searching through rocks in places like this for buried treasure. One man has seen more of the natural world than any other. Sir David, thanks so much for being with us. With this in mind, David Attenborough has dedicated his life to educating us about our planet, and making discourses visible, through his captivating storytelling. At some point in the future, the human population will peak for the very first time. It's not too late. Since the Second World War, what's known as the "Great Acceleration" has brought us many progressive things, as our GDPs indicate. They are the best technology nature has for locking away carbon. SIMON: I feel the need to take up some of the very practical points that you raise in this book. Ive experienced the living world firsthand in all its variety and wonder. There are something like 4,000 million of us today, and weve reached this position with meteoric speed. As a child, Attenborough enjoyed studying fossils. Coral reefs were turning white. The United Nations and World Trade Organisation are trying to establish new rules in international waters, which are notoriously overfished by large nations. By damming, polluting, and over-extracting rivers and lakes, weve reduced the size of freshwater populations by over 80%. Preparation. He believes that we have The Planetary Boundaries model as our guide, and that we should be looking to it for inspiration. By the time Frozen Planet aired in 2011, the reasons for these changes was well established. People were coming to care for the natural world. I noticed that in this transcript the years of the population, carbon & wilderness miss: 1937 & 1954 & repeat the year 1997 twice the last should be 2020. Humanitarian crises would result as people would be forced to relocate, triggering border conflict. I first witnessed the destruction of an entire habitat in Southeast Asia. There is little left for the rest of the living world. Fewer trees and more carbon in the atmosphere would escalate global warming significantly. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, the nine natural history documentary series that form the Life collection, which form a comprehensive survey of animal and plant life on Earth. I advocate that there should be zones, parts of the ocean where they should be absolutely sacrosanct, where, in fact, populations of fish can build up and actually from that, colonize the rest of the seas that we've stripped. It needs protecting. The number that can be sustained on the natural resources available. Sir David. We cut down over 15 billion trees each year. In addition to this, we have an increased life expectancy. 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. Yet, theyve removed 90% of the large fish in the sea. Our imprint is now truly global. Tune in for a live pre-show 30 minutes before Chris set, followed by an aftershow. Raising yields tenfold in two generations while at the same time using less water, fewer pesticides, less fertilizer and emitting less carbon. Many of the millions of species in the forest exist in small numbers. Ive always had a passion to explore, to have adventures, to learn about the wilds beyond. What we see happening today is just the latest chapter in a global process spanning millennia. In 1998, a Blue Planet film crew stumbled on an event little known at the time. Just listen to this. Nothing to stop us. Rising sea levels could lead to cities like Rotterdam, Ho Chi Minh City, and Miami being evacuated. Increasingly, theyre doing so sustainably. The deforestation of Borneo has reduced the population of orangutan by two-thirds since I first saw one just over 60 years ago. . In David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet (2020), which premiered on Netflix, co-director Keith Scholey of Silverback Films and producer Colin Butfield of the World Wildlife Fund bring us Sir David's witness statement. Its now time for our species to stop simply growing. While the future of our planet may look bleak, Attenborough offers us hope and a vision for restoring our planet. Weitere Details. The true tragedy of our time is still unfolding across the globe, barely noticeable from day to day. Sitting on the edge of the Sahara, and cabled directly into southern Europe, Morocco could be an exporter of solar energy by 2050. But it now appeared this was only because the ocean was absorbing much of the excess heat, masking our impact. The number of children being born worldwide every year is about to level off. Due to a planned power outage on Friday, 1/14, between 8am-1pm PST, some services may be impacted. The sooner it happens, the easier it makes everything else we have to do. Despite its size, the Netherlands is now the worlds second largest exporter of food. SIMON: What does that mean? Fast forward to 2021, and a far greater catastrophe looms. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. Do the preparation task first. It had everything a community would need for a comfortable life. 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. And that's because of the oceanic commons, as they say, the areas of the ocean in which anybody can do what they like. The trick is to raise the standard of living around the world without increasing our impact on that world. Politicians and corporates have to overcome vested interests and work towards the greater good. It's happening already. A story of global decline during a single lifetime. At first, the cause of the bleaching was a mystery. And a few years later, that idea became obvious to everyone. This unique feature documentary is his witness statement. [Attenborough] Ive been lucky enough to spend my life exploring the wild places of our planet. But in certain places, there are hot spots where currents bring nutrients to the surface and trigger an explosion of life. Buy now Recent surveys indicate that one-third of the population has either stopped or reduced their meat consumption in the UK, and 39% of Americans are trying to eat less meat. We are Canadian. To move from being apart from nature to becoming a part of nature once again. That may sound impossible, but there are ways in which we can do this. Every other species on Earth reaches a maximum population after a time. Fish populations crash. Its an achingly intricate labor. Nature is our biggest ally and our greatest inspiration. The complete series [HD DVD] / a BBC/Discovery Channel/NHK co-production, in association with the CBC ; . 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. 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. We had worked out how to produce food to order. Um and, in a way, I wish I wasnt involved in this struggle. And to begin with, it was quite easy. It was the first time that any human had moved away far enough from the earth to see the whole planet. A broadcaster recounts his life, and the evolutionary history of life on Earth, to grieve the loss of wild places and offer a vision for the future. Go behind the scenes of Netflix TV shows and movies, see what's coming soon and watch bonus videos on, Trailer: David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. How did that change our view of the world? Interspersed with footage of his career and of a wide variety of ecosystems, he narrates key moments in his career and indicators of how the planet has changed since he was born in 1926. It triggered an environmental catastrophe that had an impact across Europe. Starring: David Attenborough. If the ice disappears, so does the algae that grow underneath. [Attenborough] At the turn of the century, Morocco relied on imported oil and gas for almost all of its energy. Without predators, nutrients are lost for centuries to the depths and the hot spots start to diminish. This city in Ukraine was once home to almost 50,000 people. Since I started filming in the 1950s, on average, wild animal populations have more than halved. In 1990, parts of the Mexican Coast were overfished, so a marine protected area was established. David Attenborough, A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future 33 likes Like "We live our comfortable lives in the shadow of a disaster of our own making. But, the moral of the story is indeed a positive one. The only way to keep them alive was for rangers to be with them every day. After all, theres plenty of it. Polar bears need ice as the launching pads for hunting. The herrings have disappeared from the North Sea. 1937 WORLD POPULATION: 2.3 BILLION CARBON IN ATMOSPHERE: 280 PARTS PER MILLION REMAINING WILDERNESS: 66%. In international waters, the UN is attempting to create the biggest no fish zone of all. No plowing and no fertilizers are used. So, how do we recognize critical thresholds? 2020 | Maturity rating: 7+ | 1h 23m | Nature & Ecology Documentaries. A boundary that marks a profound, rapid, global change. We remember environmental disasters, but do we actually learn from them? Wherever I went, there was wilderness. To restore stability to our planet, we must restore its biodiversity. This devastation could happen quickly, with water and food shortages, and the displacement of about 30 million people. Fossil fuels increase the greenhouse effect, releasing gases such as carbon dioxide. In fact, in 2019, New Zealand dropped GDP as its formal measurement of progress and created its own index, taking into account people, profit, and the planet. Our cities will be cleaner and quieter. In such places, huge shoals of fish gather. Whole habitats would soon start to disappear. Immense grasslands. The Second World War was over, technology was making our lives easier. A century ago, more than three quarters of Costa Rica was covered with forest. Fishing is worlds greatest wild harvest. we would keep consuming the earth until we had used it up. If we dont take action, the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon. But on the 26th of April, 1986, it suddenly became uninhabitable. Der Emmy-gekrnte Naturforscher David Attenborough (Unser Planet", Planet Erde II") hat einen Plan fr die Zukunft. And, of course, the ocean is important to all of us as a source of food. In 2008, academic researcher Maxwell Boykoff, studied UK tabloids to determine how climate change was represented across the widest circulating newspapers. From Pripyat, a deserted area after the nuclear disaster, Attenborough gives an overview of his life. The biodiversity of the Holocene helped to bring stability, and the entire living world settled into a gentle, reliable rhythm the seasons. Starring: David Attenborough Watch all you want. The government decided to act, offering grants to land owners to replant native trees. 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. Throughout the north, frozen soils thaw, releasing methane, a greenhouse gas many times more potent than carbon dioxide, accelerating the rate of climate change dramatically. I think the sudden sight that there were two people way out there, high up in the sky looking at the Earth from a distance where the whole globe was within one picture was an extraordinary realization, not only of the smallness of the planet but its isolation. There are many differences between humans and the rest of the species on earth, but one that has been expressed is that we alone are able to imagine the future. One of the greatest films ever made, The Sorrow and The Pity is a contribution to history, to social psychology, to anthropology, and to art. SIMON: So what gives you hope? But somehow, it really changed the attitude of people. attenborough a life on our planet transcript life on earth the greatest story ever told david . Hence, if we suffer the fallout of a natural disaster, we take notice of the planet. It was a brutal and unpredictable world. Two legendary Go players, once student and master, face victory and defeat as they inevitably come face to face as rivals. More recently, you may have heard of Pripyat from the HBO series Chernobyl? As the ocean continues to heat and becomes more acidic, coral reefs around the world die. Today, forests cover half of Costa Rica. A habitat that is dead in comparison. It's estimated that three-quarters of our food crops could fail. 2020 WORLD POPULATION: 7.8 BILLION CARBON IN ATMOSPHERE: 415 PARTS PER MILLION REMAINING WILDERNESS: 35%, Science predicts that were I born today, I would be witness to the following. Why wouldnt we want to do these things? Above, very few. We need to rediscover how to be sustainable. Imagine if we phase out fossil fuels and run our world on the eternal energies of nature too. Download Worksheet Language level At the same time, the Arctic becomes ice-free in the summer. They charted them as they moved across rivers, through woodlands, and over national borders. This alga is vital because it's the start of the Arctic and Antarctic food chains. Weve managed to travel by boat to islands that were impossible to get to historically because they were permanently locked in the ice. You write, for example, we have become too skilled at fishing. If we want to, we can kill almost anything in the sea that we wish. Mistakes. Still, energy use, production, transport, farming, and telecommunication have also shown their sinister side. In this trailer, he talks about his documentary . A few millennia after this began, I grew up at exactly the right moment.