The I.E.A. Roadmap is the most important report of the decade
From the Interview on “60 Minutes” on CBS Sunday News, June 6, 2021
The legendary wildlife filmmaker tells Anderson Cooper why urgent action on climate change is crucial and why we need to save nature in order to save ourselves.
For nearly 70 years Sir David Attenborough has been exploring the planet, taking hundreds of millions of television viewers on eye-opening journeys through the natural world. Jungles and island archipelagos, deserts and deep under the sea, no place has been too remote.. no animal too elusive, for Sir David, and his talented team of filmmakers, to document. The man known as a national treasure in his native Britain is 95 years old now, but age and the pandemic haven’t slowed him down, when we sat down with him last fall he was about to come out with a new book and a stunning new Netflix film, “A Life On Our Planet.” They are, what he calls, a witness statement, a first-hand account of what he has seen happen to the planet and a dire warning of what he believes awaits us if we don’t act quickly to save it.
Sir David Attenborough to 60 Minutes: “A crime has been committed”
Attenborough: The way we humans live on Earth, is sending it into a decline. Human beings have overrun the world. We’re replacing the wild with the tame… Our planet is headed for disaster.
Anderson Cooper: You call the film “a witness statement.” A witness statement is given when a crime has been committed.
Sir David Attenborough: Yeah, well, a crime has been committed. And– and it so happens that, I’m of such an age, that I was able to see it beginning. And so it isn’t that I enjoy saying, “Doom, doom, doom.” On the contrary, I’d much rather enjoy, take thrill, excitement, pleasure, joy, joy, joy, joy. But if you’ve got any sense of responsibility, you can’t do that.
Sir David has always been an animal advocate. In the early 1960′s he was a founding member of the World Wildlife Fund, but in his films he rarely focused on the destruction of their habitat or climate change.
Anderson Cooper: You were skeptical of– of climate change. And I think that’s interesting, because I think it makes your warnings now all the more powerful.
Sir David Attenborough: Yeah, yeah, certainly so. And if you’re going to make a statement about the world, you better make sure that it isn’t just your own personal reaction. And the only way you can do it, do that, is to see the– the work of scientists around the world who are taking observation as to what’s happening. As to what’s happening to temperature, what’s happening to humidity, what’s happening to radioactivity, and what’s happening ecologically?
Anderson Cooper: You’ve said that “climate change is the greatest threat facing the planet for thousands of years.”
Sir David Attenborough: Yes. Even the biggest and most awful things that humanity has done, civili– so-called civilizations have done, pale to significance when you think of what could be around the corner, unless we pull ourselves together.
Sir David Attenborough: Deserts in Africa have been spreading. There could be whole areas of the world, where people can no longer safely live.
Sir David Attenborough: The hottest temperatures yet recorded in Death Valley and yet we are such optimists that we say– we go to bed at night and say, “Ah, well, that was exceptional. Gosh, that was interesting, wasn’t it? That was the highest temperature. Good lord. Well, that’s the end of that.” Not at all. Wait. Wait another few months. Wait another year.
Sir David Attenborough: A coral reef is one of the most dramatic and beautiful and complex manifestations of life you can find anywhere. But on the last trip I was stunned by what I saw. We went on this reef, which I knew. And it was like a cemetery. Because all the corals– had died. They died because of a rise in temperature and acidity.
Anderson Cooper: There are still people who are gonna see this and say, “Well, look– it’s not that bad. And technology will evolve to come up with some sort of a solution that we can’t even imagine?
Sir David Attenborough: No. We live in a finite world. Ultimately we depend upon the natural world for every mouthful of food that we eat and indeed every lung full of air that we breathe. I mean, if it wasn’t for the natural world the atmosphere would be depleted from oxygen tomorrow.
Sir David Attenborough: If there were no trees around, we would suffocate. I mean– and actually, in the course of this particular pandemic that we’re going through, I think people are discovering that they need the natural world for their very sanity. People who have never listened to a bird song, are suddenly thrilled, excited, supported, inspired by the natural world. And they realize they’re not apart from it. They are part of it.
Anderson Cooper: So, by saving nature, we are saving ourselves.
Sir David Attenborough: Oh, without question.
Anderson Cooper: You say in the film, “We’re not just ruining the world, we’ve destroyed it.” Is it- is it that far gone?
Sir David Attenborough: It’s not beyond redemption. Redemption depends on a complete shift to renewable energy and an end of our reliance on fossil fuels.
Anderson Cooper: The fossil fuel industry does not want the world to move off fossil fuels.
Sir David Attenborough: No, it doesn’t, but in fact we know ways in which we can get from the sun up there just a tiny fraction of the amount of energy that sprays on this earth 24 hours a day one way or– or another, for nothing. If we can solve the problems of storage and transmission, the world is ours. We have all the power we need. Why should we go on poisoning life on earth?
Sir David also wants to see what he calls a “rewilding” of the planet, giving plants and animals on land and in the ocean time and space to bounce back. The World Wildlife Fund says that two thirds of the earth’s wildlife has disappeared in the past 50 years.
Sir David Attenborough: Repopulation of the oceans can happen in a decade. If we had the will to do it. But we require everybody to agree. The time has come to put aside national ambitions and look for an international ambition of survival.
Anderson Cooper: It seems politically the tide is moving in the opposite direction from that, of– of nations more looking inward and not as being part of a larger international community.
Sir David Attenborough: That’s what’s gonna sink us in the end. That’s what’s gonna sink us.
Anderson Cooper: Can you be optimistic at all?
Sir David Attenborough: We don’t have an alternative. I mean, what good does it do to say, “Oh, to hell with it, I don’t care.” You can’t say that. Not if you love your children. Not if you love the rest of humanity, how can you say that?
It’s the young that Sir David now puts his faith in. And they, it seems, have faith in him. Take for example the reception he received when he popped up on stage at Britain’s largest music festival.
Sir David Attenborough: There’s a huge movement around the world of people from all nations, young people who can see what is happening to the world, and demanding that their government should take action. And that’s– that’s the best hope that I have. I mean, it’s– obviously my generation failed. We’ve allowed it to happen. We’ve allowed this to happen, Sir David Attenborough says, despite being the smartest creatures that have ever lived. Now, he warns, we need more than just intelligence, we need wisdom. After all, this planet is all we have. There is nowhere else to go.
Anderson Cooper: Do you believe there’s life elsewhere?
Sir David Attenborough: No, not really. But also, I think– that’s– I mean, it’s an interesting theoretical question, but it’s a theoretical question. Why would I want to go and live on the moon when I’ve got this world of badgers and thrushes and jellyfish and corals and– why would I want to go and live on the moon? Because there’s nothing else there but dust. I’d say, “Well, thank you very much, I’ll stay where I am and watch hummingbirds.” (LAUGH)
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See also the CBS Video: Sir David Attenborough: The 60 Minutes Interview
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