Elderly environmental prophet

By Bill Fox/Columnist

David Attenborough is a 93-year-old environmentalist who has some startling and yet wonderful news in his recent Netflix film, A Life on Our Planet.

“The living world is a unique and spectacular marvel, yet the way humans live on Earth is sending it into a decline. Human beings have overrun the world.”

Attenborough asserts that our planet is heading for disaster if we don’t learn to live with nature rather than against it. In this film, he outlines all the ways we have ravaged and devastated our Earth in the name of greed, but he also tells us how we can still make things right.

At the beginning, he is seen in Chernobyl, which on April 25, 1986, was still a thriving city of nearly 50,000 people. As a result of bad planning and human error it experienced an environmental catastrophe on April 26. Yet, today as he walks through deserted schools and other buildings, nature is taking back the city. In the film you see vegetation reaching up the walls of deserted apartment buildings, and animal life is making a comeback.

He makes the argument that our world, as a result of bad planning and human error, is also on the brink of an environmental catastrophe. We have lost so much of our wilderness and our biodiversity.

One definition of biodiversity is “a contraction of biological diversity. Biodiversity reflects the number, variety and variability of living organisms. So it includes diversity within species of plants, animals and ecosystems.” The film shows that biodiversity also contributed to a reliable rhythm to our seasons.

Our natural world is fading. As an example, when Attenborough was born in 1937, there were 2.3 billion people on Earth. In 1957, when he began his career, there were 2.7 billion, and in 1997 it doubled to 5.9 billion, and today it is 7.8 billion.

Sixty-six per cent of the world was in a wilderness state in 1937, 64 per cent in 1954, but only 46 per cent in 1997. Today we have 35 per cent of our world remaining in a wilderness state.

Attenborough contends that, partially, as a result of this growth overtaking wilderness, we have gone from 280 carbon parts per million in our atmosphere in 1937 to 310 parts in 1957 to 360 parts in 1997 to 415 parts today. We see that oceans and immense forests helped the balance by locking away carbon. With forests depleted and our oceans ravaged, we now have more carbon, meaning less oxygen.

The existence of polar ice has also been critical to mankind. The glaciers and snow reflect the sun off the ice surfaces and this helps to cool the whole Earth. However, we have lost 40 per cent of our ice caps in the last 40 years. We can see the difference therefore in climate change. The average surface water temperature in our own Lake Ontario actually reached 77.1 degrees Fahrenheit this summer. This was unheard of even 10 years ago.

Here are some of the proposals Attenborough puts forth:

1. By working together to properly manage our oceans, humanity can establish a “global network of no-fish zones.” He also calls for a treaty on the use of international waters in order to “restore the health” of our oceans so they “produce more fish for us all to eat.”
2. “By investing in education and women’s rights, and raising people out of poverty we could bring about peak human growth even sooner,” he says.
3. Eat less meat. By upgrading to efficient food production and reducing our consumption of meat, humanity will “require far less space to provide for ourselves and instead leave more for “grasslands,” says Attenborough. It takes 80 lbs. of grain to make one lb. of meat. This will in turn reduce deforestation and our demand for freshwater, and ensure more people are fed with healthier, more affordable food, he adds.
4. Transition to renewable energy. Humanity must move to “phase out fossil fuels” and replace them with renewable energy sources, including the “eternal energies of nature” such as wind, water and sunlight. “This will not only slow the warming of the planet, and the acidification of the ocean, but it will lead to clean air for all of us,” he says. “If we take care of nature, nature will take care of us.”

I learned so much from watching the testament of Sir David Attenborough. I trust many of you will too. I’m at bdfox@rogers.