And suddenly, we realized, you know, we're there together, and we're alone. Der Emmy-gekrnte Naturforscher David Attenborough (Unser Planet", Planet Erde II") hat einen Plan fr die Zukunft. In his latest book and film, "A Life on Our Planet," he offers a grave and alarming assessment about . We humans cannot presume the same. We cut down over 15 billion trees each year. It was called natural history because thats essentially what it was all about history. Over billions of years, nature has crafted miraculous forms, each more complex and accomplished than the last. Half of the worlds rainforests have already been cleared. And in life the animal itself lived in the chamber here and spread out its tentacles to catch its prey. Earth could be 4 degrees Celsius warmer, making farming in many areas impossible. Our home was not limitless. It needs protecting. Recordings like these revealed that the songs of the humpbacks are long and complex. The Holocene was our Garden of Eden. The wealthiest 16% in the world are responsible for almost 50% of the environmental impact. Thats almost 20 times the energy we need just from sunlight. Fast forward to 2021, and a far greater catastrophe looms. Its happened in my lifetime. [Attenborough] We had broken loose. As healthcare and education improved, peoples expectations and opportunities grew, and the birth rate fell. Ive experienced the living world firsthand in all its variety and wonder. We seem to have broken loose from the restrictions that have governed the activities and numbers of other animals. Forests are a fundamental component of our planets recovery. A further 60% are the animals we raise to eat. Even as some of us were setting foot on the moon, others were still leading such a life in the most remote parts of the planet. A meteorite impact triggered a catastrophic change in the earths conditions. 1960 WORLD POPULATION: 3.0 BILLION CARBON IN ATMOSPHERE: 315 PARTS PER MILLION REMAINING WILDERNESS: 62%. But it was noticeable that some of these animals were becoming harder to find. [birds chirping] Just imagine if we achieve this on a global scale. We also need to rebuild our seas to capture carbon, increase biodiversity and food supply. In 2008, academic researcher Maxwell Boykoff, studied UK tabloids to determine how climate change was represented across the widest circulating newspapers. ATTENBOROUGH: That means that nothing is safe. [exclaiming in surprise] And Im still learning. Filmmaker Sir David Attenborough has been documenting the natural world since the 1950s. By and large, its a story of slow, steady change. I look at these images now and I realize that, although as a young man I felt I was out there in the wild experiencing the untouched natural world it was an illusion. A sixth mass extinction event is well underway. Apple TV+ has renewed the award-winning natural history series from executive producers Jon Favreau and Mike Gunton and BBC Studios Natural History Unit (Planet Earth). As a result, female polar bears are giving birth to smaller cubs, and these underweight cubs are less likely to survive. [Attenborough] They lived in small numbers and didnt take too much. I am David Attenborough, and I am 93. The number that can be sustained on the natural resources available. Yet, we're nowhere near the stage where our population has stopped growing. Sitting on the edge of the Sahara, and cabled directly into southern Europe, Morocco could be an exporter of solar energy by 2050. And we don't learn the lessons. At first, they caught plenty of fish in their nets. No ecosystem, no matter how big, is secure. The purpose of Boykoff's study was to examine environmental representations, to 'provide opportunities to interrogate how particular narratives are translated, and how they make (in)visible certain discourses.' And Im going to tell you how. Above, very few. They have a symbiotic relationship; the algae absorb sunlight, which provides the polyps with the energy they need to snap up their passing prey, and expand their coral colony. They discovered that the Serengeti herds required an enormous area of healthy grassland to function. They were virtually impossible to find. The predators help to keep nutrients in the oceans sunlit waters, recycling them so that they can be used again and again by plankton. But that rainforest is one of the key elements in the whole of the weather patterns of the world. Uploaded by If we fast-forward to 2020, a mere 83 years later, the statistics are disheartening. If this is the case, surely it's up to us to treat our planet with kindness and respect. When fish stocks began to reduce, the Palauans responded by restricting fishing practices and banning fishing entirely from many areas. 2020 | Maturity Rating: 7+ | 1h 23m | Science & Nature Docs. Half of the fertile land on earth is now farmland. Um, so, the world is not as wild as it was. 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. The history of all human civilization followed. We now have the opportunity to create the perfect home for ourselves, and restore the rich, healthy, and wonderful world that we inherited. Its now time for our species to stop simply growing. Working together to benefit from the energy of the sun and the minerals of the earth. Download Worksheet Language level [NASA technician] Five, four, three, two one, zero. We are ultimately bound by and reliant upon the finite natural world about us. The evidence is all around. [Attenborough on video] Climbing over the tightly-packed bodies is the only way across the crowd. The sooner it happens, the easier it makes everything else we have to do. I wasn't prepared for it. 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. We have overfished 30% of fish stocks to critical levels. Population growth peaked in about 1962. 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. David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. The Plant-Based Gut Health Program for Losing Weight, Restoring Your Health, and Optimizing Your Microbiome, Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are, An Introductory Guide to Deeper States of Meditation, Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun, 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind. However, Attenborough points out that vested interests will hold us back. Many people regarded it as the most costly in the history of mankind. Or is that question not called for under the circumstances? Polar bears need ice as the launching pads for hunting. Coral reefs don't like acid, and 90% of our reefs could die off in a few years. But within only a few years, the nets across the globe were coming in empty. People benefit from the timber and then benefit again from farming the land thats left behind. We have such a fascination for wildlife, but wild animals make up only 4% of the mammals on Earth. Protected fish populations soon became so healthy, they spilt over into the areas open to fishing. Thats the sort of commitment you need if you want to even begin making a portrait of the living world. Even in places where theres no land at all. In this trailer, he talks about his documentary . These simple statistics speak as eloquently for our planet as our author does. Its been staring us in the face all along. It was going to bring everything we had ever dreamed of. The tragedy is that despite powerful stories such as this, including Dian Fossey's work with gorilla populations, and the creation of tiger reserves in India, wildlife habitats are increasingly endangered. Then you deal so with the land. The complete series [HD DVD] / a BBC/Discovery Channel/NHK co-production, in association with the CBC ; . I don't think anybody has actually said that they were prepared for it, either. A moment ago, we made this recording with an underwater microphone here in the Pacific near Hawaii. The best time of our lives. From Pripyat, a deserted area after the nuclear disaster, Attenborough gives an overview of his life. So when he asks that people heed his "witness statement" about the peril humans . But it now appeared this was only because the ocean was absorbing much of the excess heat, masking our impact. Preparation task . In such places, huge shoals of fish gather. 1978 WORLD POPULATION: 4.3 BILLION CARBON IN ATMOSPHERE: 335 PARTS PER MILLION REMAINING WILDERNESS: 55%. Life had no option but to rebuild. Just listen to this. A few days after that and theyre gone over the horizon. It's estimated that three-quarters of our food crops could fail. [whales singing] [whales continue singing]. As much now as I did when I was a boy. Buy now Half of the fertile land on Earth is currently farmed, and it's often overgrazed, over-sprayed with pesticides, and denuded of topsoil. Renewable energy, such as solar, wind, and water, could supply power. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. Journalist Jenny Eliscu and filmmaker Erin Lee Carr investigate Britney Spears fight for freedom by way of exclusive interviews and confidential evidence. His passion for protecting diverse wildlife, and reclaiming our wilderness is palpable, and A Life on Our Planet is his "witness statement." From a person that has seen just how quickly our natural world has disappeared in his own lifetime, at the present rate how little time could be left, what solutions, course to take. More than half of the species on land live here. We require wisdom. After all, theres plenty of it. One of the significant findings was that we pay attention to the environment when it affects us. Levies and carbon taxes will go somewhere to shift this. Humpbacks living in the same area learn their songs from each other. Sunlight, wind, water and geothermal. [Attenborough] Animals that had been viewed as little more than a source of oil and meat became personalities. It was an astonishing vision of a completely unknown world, a world that had existed since the beginning of time. And they are centers of biodiversity. Urban farming is an option on rooftops, abandoned buildings, and exterior walls of city buildings. The living world cant operate without a healthy ocean and neither can we. Iceland, Albania, and Paraguay generate their electricity without fossil fuels. If theres any justice in the world, Marcel Ophls monumental labor will be studied and debated for years. They had never seen the center of New Guinea before. Environmental economists are trying to address this. One of the extraordinary things about it was that the world could actually watch it as it happened. The wilder and more diverse forests are, the more effective they are at absorbing carbon from the atmosphere. It was a very different world back then. According to Attenborough, the 22nd century could herald massive enforced human migration. In 2014, a plane with 239 people aboard vanishes from all radar. There is a double incentive to cut down forests. My first visit to East Africa was in 1960. In this future, we discover ways to benefit from our land that help, rather than hinder, wilderness. A boundary that marks a profound, rapid, global change. One man has seen more of the natural world than any other. Sir David,. And the reef turns from wonderland to wasteland. SIMON: You were a BBC executive in the control room when the first pictures of Earth were sent back by the Apollo 8 crew. Energy everywhere will be more affordable. Great numbers of species disappear and are suddenly replaced by a few. Ways to fish our seas that enable them to come quickly back to life. However, if we had "no fishing" zones in one-third of the sea, our fish stocks could recover over the long term. 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. And it relies on its biodiversity to run smoothly. A knight framed for a crime he didn't commit turns to a shape-shifting teen to prove his innocence. 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. For much of its expanse, the ocean is largely empty. 1954 WORLD POPULATION: 2.7 BILLION CARBON IN ATMOSPHERE: 310 PARTS PER MILLION REMAINING WILDERNESS: 64%. He researched how the Earth had experienced massive eruptions at specific points, destroying many species. And sadly, we don't only deplete our fish. And the rich and thriving living world around us has been key to this stability. [protester over megaphone] We are men and women, and we speak for children, and were all saying, Please stop killing the whales.. In my time, Ive experienced the warming of Arctic summers. But, the moral of the story is indeed a positive one. Otherwise, this is brilliant! list the consequences of walking in darkness; tate brothers romania; lac courte oreilles tribal membership requirements; uva men's volleyball roster. An in-depth, sobering look at the tragic events of a century ago. 2030s. But for us, an idea could do that. The cod fishery, I mean, we exterminated that from the Atlantic. When you think about it, were completing a journey. There are something like 4,000 million of us today, and weve reached this position with meteoric speed. The more diverse it is, the better it does that job. It will survive. And if you knock down the whole of the Amazon rainforest, the whole of the climatic systems of rainfall and other climatic factors will be - go off balance. 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. Tasks . The result is that the population has now stabilized and has hardly changed since the millennium. Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. That is my witness statement. Working with their traditional technology, they were living sustainably, a lifestyle that could continue effectively forever. Even one as vast as the ocean. So let's go back to the beginning of this summary. The Amazon Rainforest, cut down until it can no longer produce enough moisture, degrades into a dry savannah, bringing catastrophic species loss and altering the global water cycle. At the same time, the Arctic becomes ice-free in the summer. These people were hunter-gatherers, as all humankind had been before farming. No one has lived here since. 75% of all species were wiped out. If we push beyond even one of them, we destabilize the balance of our planet. It was a rediscovery of a fundamental truth. It was the first time that any human had moved away far enough from the earth to see the whole planet. Pripyat tells us otherwise. But during his lifetime, Attenborough has also seen first-hand the monumental scale of humanity's impact on nature. ATTENBOROUGH: Well, I think it changed everybody's view. Summer sea ice in the Arctic has reduced by 40% in 40 years. You say 75% of the Amazon rainforest could be gone. Its all happened within the last 2,000 years or so. Their solution is to climb higher up the cliffs, but with their poor eyesight, they often fall from the tops of cliffs as the smell of the sea lures them closer. He researched how the Earth had experienced massive eruptions at specific points, destroying many species. If herds of animals couldn't travel to new grazing, they, along with predators, would starve. The planet cant support billions of large meat-eaters. If you have not used our catalog since prior to June 6, 2016 contact Circulation at the number below to get your PIN reset. Attenborough says, We run life on the planet to meet our own ends.. But scientists started to discover that in many cases where bleaching occurred, the ocean was warming. And, of course, the ocean is important to all of us as a source of food. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. But its possible to slow, even to stop population growth well before it reaches that point. And of course, if we increase our wilderness areas, we have a natural way of capturing carbon. These mass extinctions have occurred five times during our planet's four billion-year lifespan. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. A Life on Our Planet. Our blind assault on the planet has finally come to alter the very fundamentals of the living world. We must immediately halt deforestation everywhere and grow crops like oil palm and soya only on land that was deforested long ago. SIMON: What does that mean? So there's not a profit in it, we still go killing it, and they throw a heck of a lot of it back. Its an achingly intricate labor. What has that done? And it lived about 180 million years ago. And I believe we can do our best. This docuseries delves into one of our greatest modern mysteries: Flight MH370. 2021 Scraps from the Loft. Farming would be pushed to a crisis point. As nations develop everywhere, people choose to have fewer children. The truth is, with or without us, the natural world will rebuild. The natural world will survive. Ive seen it with my own eyes. we would keep consuming the earth until we had used it up. However, stressed polyps dispose of their algae partners, leading them to bleach and turn into skeletons. In 1971, I set out to find an uncontacted tribe in New Guinea. The largest whales, the blues, numbered only a few thousand by then. 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. Ive had the most extraordinary life. 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. The pace of change was getting faster and faster. You knock down a rainforest tree, and you get a lot of money from the timber which you sell. And because we would be then dedicated to raising plants, we could increase the yield of this land substantially. We eat 50 billion chickens a year and feed them with soy planted on deforested land. The deforestation of Borneo has reduced the population of orangutan by two-thirds since I first saw one just over 60 years ago. The future was going to be exciting. 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 Amazon rainforest could suffer from "forest dieback" and be starved of moisture, becoming an open savannah and destroying its biodiversity. This might all sound like a post-apocalyptic horror movie. 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. This too is happening as a result of bad planning and human error and it too will lead to what we see here. 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. To restore stability to our planet, we must restore its biodiversity. For. Weve come this far because we are the smartest creatures that have ever lived. Farmers in developed countries could be incentivized to build biodiversity on their farms. It was a feature of all five mass extinctions. Fishing is worlds greatest wild harvest. The fishing quickly became so poor that countries began to subsidize the fleets to maintain the industry. Emmy-winning narrator David Attenborough ("Our Planet," "Planet Earth II") looks back and shares a way forward. Most of our diseases were under control. You can be forgiven for thinking that these plains are endless when they could swallow up such a herd. Search the history of over 797 billion Algal forests would not attach to ice, damaging the ocean food chain. I've seen it with my own eyes. Right now, were facing a manmade disaster of global scale. The return of the trees would absorb as much as two thirds of the carbon emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by our activities to date. So, how do we recognize critical thresholds? Due to a planned power outage on Friday, 1/14, between 8am-1pm PST, some services may be impacted. It has hidden its secrets well because of the difficulties of filming underwater. David Attenborough has seen more of the natural world than any other. Your email address will not be published. It was designed for employees working at Chernobyl, a nearby nuclear plant. David Attenborough. Below the line are a multitude of lifeforms. If we want to, we can kill almost anything in the sea that we wish. Nobody wanted animals to become extinct. on October 24, 2021. Yet, theyve removed 90% of the large fish in the sea. The rest, from mice to whales, make up just 4%. 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. In this world, a species can only thrive when everything else around it thrives, too. Planet Earth. Oil and gas companies represent the largest businesses globally, heavy industry uses fossil fuels, and there's a hefty stock market investment in these companies. Life in Pripyat continued comfortably until 26 April 1986, when reactor number 4 at Chernobyl exploded. Wherever I went, there was wilderness. In Asia, the winds would create the monsoon on cue. Chris Rock makes comedy history with this global livestreaming event. So, what do we do? It was extraordinary that you could see what a man out in space could see as he saw it at the same time. Do the preparation task first. Some of the numbers are slightly out too. What we see happening today is just the latest chapter in a global process spanning millennia. The healthier the marine habitat, the more fish there will be, and the more there will be to eat. Its covered with small family-run farms with no room for expansion. 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. [whales singing] Their mournful songs were the key to transforming peoples opinions about them. When you first see it, you think perhaps that its beautiful, and suddenly you realize its tragic. Overnight, Pripyat transformed from a pleasant, bustling town to a nightmarish disaster zone. David Attenborough became a household name in 1979 with his ground-breaking BBC series, "Life On Earth," which was seen by an estimated 500 million people worldwide. We had very little understanding of how the living world actually worked. Skeletons of dead creatures. The very thing that weve removed. Any graph that measures their side-effects; carbon dioxide, methane, loss of land and sea wilderness, and increasing farmland will also illustrate a sharply accelerating increase. But, there are ways to change direction and alter the doom and gloom we've created. Let me just ask you about the 2030s. This habitat was the subject of the series The Blue Planet, which we were filming in the late 90s. A renewable future will be full of benefits. All these years later, its once again the only option. Within the span of the next lifetime, the security and stability of the Holocene, our Garden of Eden will be lost. In previous events, it had taken volcanic activity up to one million years to dredge up enough carbon from within the earth to trigger a catastrophe. While the future of our planet may look bleak, Attenborough offers us hope and a vision for restoring our planet. The United Nations and World Trade Organisation are trying to establish new rules in international waters, which are notoriously overfished by large nations. It's not too late. Ive always had a passion to explore, to have adventures, to learn about the wilds beyond. In the Frozen Planet series, filming crews noticed that the Arctic summers were growing longer, the summer sea ice had reduced by 30% in thirty years, and glaciers were far smaller. Without this training, they would not complete their role in dispersing seeds. Tired of the small-time grind, three Marseille cops get a chance to bust a major drug network. Every human can make a difference, but we have to come together internationally, and support the many people already hard at work to save our planet. And powerful evidence that however grave our mistakes, nature will ultimately overcome them.