The cod fishery, I mean, we exterminated that from the Atlantic. David Attenborough Scripts We cut down over 15 billion trees each year. The 50,000 large dams in the world, change the water flow and temperature of rivers. David Attenborough, A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future 8 likes Like "To restore stability to our planet, therefore, we must restore its biodiversity, the very thing we have removed. Sunlight, wind, water and geothermal. This model outlines nine critical thresholds, or planetary boundaries, such as climate change, air pollution, land conversion, and biodiversity loss. [reindeer grunting] [birds hooting] [buffalo snorting] [birds cawing] [elephants trumpeting]. We need to rediscover how to be sustainable. We just have to do what nature has always done. 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. Our greatest threat in thousands of years. Fishing is worlds greatest wild harvest. 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. And the quickest and most effective way to do that is for us to change our diet. In this trailer, he talks about his documentary A Life on Our Planet. Just imagine that. We rely entirely on this finely tuned life-support machine. David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet - Netflix No one wants this to happen. on the Internet. Overnight, Pripyat transformed from a pleasant, bustling town to a nightmarish disaster zone. In 1937, at age 11, he would cycle from his home in Leicester into the countryside to study fossils in the rocks. Yet the way we humans live on Earth now is sending biodiversity into a decline. When you think about it, were completing a journey. Today, the forest has taken over the city. And then you clear that furthermore for cattle. Did you know that 1.8 trillion plastic fragments are currently drifting like a garbage site in the northern Pacific? A knight framed for a crime he didn't commit turns to a shape-shifting teen to prove his innocence. We are ultimately bound by and reliant upon the finite natural world about us. As a result, female polar bears are giving birth to smaller cubs, and these underweight cubs are less likely to survive. Why wouldnt we want to do these things? In 1937, at age 11, he would cycle from his home in Leicester into the countryside to study fossils in the rocks. We humans cannot presume the same. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. To restore stability to our planet, we must restore its biodiversity. Because what youre looking at is skeletons. SIMON: I - forgive me, but I feel the need to quote a movie in which your brother starred (laughter), "Jurassic Park," where the scientist says, nature finds a way. A Life on Our Planet - Wikipedia This is now our planet, run by humankind for humankind. [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. 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. A 12-year-old boy learns he's the returned Jesus Christ, destined to save humankind. Half a million gazelle. But, the moral of the story is indeed a positive one. Its finite. We need to shift to plant-based diets. [Attenborough] I was in a television studio when the Apollo mission launched. As a result, the average global temperature today is one degree Celsius warmer than it was when I was born. David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet is a 2020 film by the documentarian and natural historian David Attenborough. Environmental issues have historically had low news value. Every other species on Earth reaches a maximum population after a time. There just isnt the space. At some point in the future, the human population will peak for the very first time. Above, very few. Levies and carbon taxes will go somewhere to shift this. As much now as I did when I was a boy. Just listen to this. And freshwater is equally at risk. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Its now time for our species to stop simply growing. The film's grand achievement is that it positions its subject as a mediator between humans and the natural world. David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet | Official Trailer | Netflix 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. And of course, if we increase our wilderness areas, we have a natural way of capturing carbon. A mass extinction has happened five times in lifes four-billion-year history. "A Life on Our Planet" is as much a love story, a requiem, and a final request as it is a film about deforestation, overfishing, exponential population grown, and the various other culprits. This is a series of one-way doors bringing irreversible change. 2020 | Maturity rating: 7+ | 1h 23m | Nature & Ecology Documentaries. These rivers are also dumping grounds for chemicals and pesticides, destroying birds and freshwater fish. We invented farming. We've adopted a fatalistic attitude that it's "too little too late." We seem to have broken loose from the restrictions that have governed the activities and numbers of other animals. You and I belong to the most widespread and dominant species of animal on earth. [thunder rumbling] [lowing] On the tropical plains, the dry and rainy seasons would switch every year like clockwork. Whole habitats would soon start to disappear. 1954 WORLD POPULATION: 2.7 BILLION CARBON IN ATMOSPHERE: 310 PARTS PER MILLION REMAINING WILDERNESS: 64%. We have to do our best. 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. Summer sea ice in the Arctic has reduced by 40% in 40 years. Life cycles on, and if we make the right choices, ruin can become regrowth . As Attenborough cautions, the bleached coral is like canaries in a coal mine. The living world is essentially solar-powered. Journalist Jenny Eliscu and filmmaker Erin Lee Carr investigate Britney Spears fight for freedom by way of exclusive interviews and confidential evidence. Sitting on the edge of the Sahara, and cabled directly into southern Europe, Morocco could be an exporter of solar energy by 2050. So there's not a profit in it, we still go killing it, and they throw a heck of a lot of it back. It seems utterly impossible that after such a devastating environmental disaster, there would be any kind of happy ending. The Amazon rainforest could suffer from "forest dieback" and be starved of moisture, becoming an open savannah and destroying its biodiversity. Rainforests are particularly precious habitats. 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. The 'why' behind this, points to global warming. 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. And we're on the danger of doing that. You say in this book, with us or without us ATTENBOROUGH: Oh, well, yes. 'David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet' Review: The - IndieWire It seems possible for us to feed ourselves quite happily using half the land we currently use. 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. We have overfished 30% of fish stocks to critical levels. And beyond that strip, there is nothing but regimented rows of oil palms. It took a visionary scientist, Bernhard Grzimek, to explain that this wasnt true. Attenborough urges us to restore biodiversity. attenborough a life on our planet transcript life on earth the greatest story ever told david . Whales were being slaughtered by fleets of industrial whaling ships in the 1970s. However, Attenborough points out that vested interests will hold us back. Downloads only available on ad-free plans. Required fields are marked *. We must immediately halt deforestation everywhere and grow crops like oil palm and soya only on land that was deforested long ago. Copyright 2020 NPR. And there I was, actually being asked to explore these places and record the wonders of the natural world for people back home. A monoculture of oil palm. [Attenborough] If we can change the way we live on Earth, an alternative future comes into view. Its all happened within the last 2,000 years or so. For. [Attenborough] They ate meat rarely. Attenborough's wildlife journey started at a young age. That may sound impossible, but there are ways in which we can do this. It was extraordinary that you could see what a man out in space could see as he saw it at the same time. And this is what they saw what we all saw. The very thing that weve removed. And a few years later, that idea became obvious to everyone. Based on a children's book by Paul McCartney. As Attenborough reflects on his life, he begins each chapter with three facts. Working with their traditional technology, they were living sustainably, a lifestyle that could continue effectively forever. A Life on Our Planet is a masterpiece that explores the life and legacy of natural historian and national treasure David Attenborough. David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet - Transcript Um, and I certainly would feel very guilty if I saw what the problems are and decided to ignore them. You can also read the transcript. Renewable energy, such as solar, wind, and water, could supply power. We cant cut down rainforests forever, and anything that we cant do forever is by definition unsustainable. But to continue, we require more than intelligence. That is quite true. In the northern regions, the temperatures would lift in March, triggering spring, and stay high until they dipped in October and brought about autumn. However, these marvels of the underwater food chain have become rarer, owing to overfishing, and because of disruptions in the food chain, our oceans are dying. Imagine if we committed to a similar approach across the world. The last one is thought to have been a meteorite that struck Earth, destroying anything bigger than a dog. And the extent of the polar ice has been critical, reflecting sunlight back off its white surface, cooling the whole earth. Ice-free summers in the Arctic would also start. Many new plant-based foods are on the market, and in the future, biotechnology may be able to use microorganisms to provide us with proteins. Many of the millions of species in the forest exist in small numbers. All we need is the will to do so. Baby gorillas were at a premium, and poachers would kill a dozen adults to get one. 1937 WORLD POPULATION: 2.3 BILLION CARBON IN ATMOSPHERE: 280 PARTS PER MILLION REMAINING WILDERNESS: 66%. The ocean bears the brunt of this because it absorbs the excess heat of global warming. 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. Chris Rock makes comedy history with this global livestreaming event. Sir David,. The trick is to raise the standard of living around the world without increasing our impact on that world. Theyre places in which evolutions talent for design soars. David Attenborough COP26 Climate Summit Glasgow Speech Transcript - Rev I wasn't prepared for it. Half of the worlds rainforests have already been cleared. Our blind assault on the planet has finally come to alter the very fundamentals of the living world. In 1950, a Japanese family was likely to have three or more children. Extract | A Life on Our Planet by David Attenborough We eat 50 billion chickens a year and feed them with soy planted on deforested land. That non-human world is gone. There we are, on it, and everybody in the entire world is in that picture except for the two people in the spacecraft. Ten thousand years ago, as hunter-gatherers, we lived a sustainable life because that was the only option. A moment ago, we made this recording with an underwater microphone here in the Pacific near Hawaii. And you could happily retire. The last time it happened was the event that brought the end of the age of the dinosaurs. The result is that the population has now stabilized and has hardly changed since the millennium. If herds of animals couldn't travel to new grazing, they, along with predators, would starve. You put crops on the land and get another reward. Narrated by David Attenborough, the five-episode second season will premiere globally in a five-day week-long event beginning May 22 on Apple [] The predators help to keep nutrients in the oceans sunlit waters, recycling them so that they can be used again and again by plankton. It will survive. It was the first time that any human had moved away far enough from the earth to see the whole planet. Uploaded by [Attenborough] We had broken loose. But that rainforest is one of the key elements in the whole of the weather patterns of the world. Let's rewind to 1937 and some of the statistics of that time. And suddenly, we realized, you know, we're there together, and we're alone. 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. Instead, cover crops are planted after harvest to protect the soil, and crops are rotated. The earths plants capture three trillion kilowatt-hours of solar energy each day. The natural world is fading. We had worked out how to produce food to order. With all these things, there is one overriding principle. The worlds greatest wildlife reserve. Within 20 years, renewables are predicted to be the worlds main source of power. According to Attenborough, the 22nd century could herald massive enforced human migration. A habitat that is dead in comparison. 24FramesArchives In his latest book and film, "A Life on Our Planet," he offers a grave and alarming assessment about . 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. Sir David Attenborough to 60 Minutes on climate change: "A crime has Yet, theyve removed 90% of the large fish in the sea. 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. This city in Ukraine was once home to almost 50,000 people. We have such a fascination for wildlife, but wild animals make up only 4% of the mammals on Earth. We also need to rebuild our seas to capture carbon, increase biodiversity and food supply. And tree diversity is the key to a rainforest. 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. [wildebeest snorting] For every single predator on the Serengeti, there are more than 100 prey animals. Amazingly the plants on Earth, together with their ocean counterparts of algae and phytoplankton, know all about solar power. [Attenborough] Animals that had been viewed as little more than a source of oil and meat became personalities. David Attenborough A Life On Our Planet 2020 An important documentary that everyone should watch. If this is the case, surely it's up to us to treat our planet with kindness and respect. But somehow, it really changed the attitude of people. To start to thrive. The fishing quickly became so poor that countries began to subsidize the fleets to maintain the industry. Insects, our small hunters, and pollinators have reduced by one quarter. A sixth mass extinction event is well underway. Governments need to offer financial incentives to create wilderness areas or involve local communities that can benefit from rewilding. Our impact now truly profound. David Attenborough A Life On Our Planet 2020 (1080p) What has that done? For a long time, I and perhaps you have dreaded that future. 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. In 1998, a Blue Planet film crew stumbled on an event little known at the time. The largest whales, the blues, numbered only a few thousand by then. Over time, I began to learn something about the earths evolutionary history. David Attenborough Quotes (Author of A Life on Our Planet) This video guide includes 5 instructional resources for use with the Netflix video "Our Planet: Jungles".28 Question Worksheet w/ Answer Key43 Word Word Jumble w/ Answer Key43 Word Word Search w/ Answer Key43 Word Word ListWord-for-Word Transcript of the Entire EpisodeCheck out my "Our Planet: One Earth" set of resources for free.The questions are answered about every 2-3 minutes. Haunted by an unsolved murder, brilliant but disgraced London police detective John Luther breaks out of prison to hunt down a sadistic serial killer.