Rye News reported last weekend about the film, shown on Thursday 30 April, in the Rye Community Centre, The Peoples’ Emergency Briefing. It made clear how climate change, mostly human made, affects every part of lives on the planet as well as the animals at home and in far away places (health, food security, nature and land). It gave a bleak picture which brought about a conversation by the public, believers and non-believers.
To understand more about the circumstances of how and what is destroying the planet, films by Sir David Attenborough are a must see. At 100 years old, he is not done trying to point out the devastation humans are accelerating. He is extraordinary in terms of where he films, with no fear, in the remotest places to show the issues facing the world: deforestation, ice melting, floods, unexpected heat threatening human and animal life on the planet made worse by economic demands, greed and carelessness about what is actually happening. The 100th birthday celebration amazed, with many clips of Attenborough’s youth in the wild and now his concentration on the ocean world. His best moment, he says, was when the gorillas fearlessly sat and lay on him, in Life on Earth in 1979. Because of conservation in certain places, animal species nearly extinct are thriving as is the family stemming from the two young gorillas.
Closer to home, swimming in the sea is not a pleasure anymore, because of the release of raw sewage in some areas. Visiting the beaches with nurdles and all the plastic people leave behind is not a pleasant pastime anymore. Fish have been found dead because of the pollution.
David Attenborough, cultural icon, has over the years inspired adults, young people and conservationists to believe that something needs to be done and he still thinks the situation is fixable. However he stresses that nature must be seen as a critical infrastructure, yet systems are breaking down stating that “The UK is in the bottom 10% for biodiversity.” He believes in education, especially of the younger generation, more public awareness and more input from politicians. He advocates that renewable energy solutions cannot be achieved in isolation but says there has to be world leaders’ agreement for green economic change to be acted upon. No doubt individuals can help in terms of driving or flying less, give the land back to agriculture rather than demanding red meat and more.
Even at 100 years of age, he himself will not give up in his efforts to show us that we are at the cusp, but there is still hope. “The future of life on earth depends on our ability to take action. If human actions are powerful enough to destabilise the planet, we are also powerful enough to save it, provided we work together. It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of visual beauty, the greatest source of intellectual interest.”
Blue Planet 3 is on its way.
Image Credits: Richard Cobden , Young Strandliners .