![]() Of all the world’s problems, this is the one he sees as central and most difficult to solve, although it is a tricky and unpopular cause to take up. They were the cutting edge and you, as a broadcaster, had to make sure that both sides of the argument were ventilated until such time as you, in your professional capacity, thought it was absolutely justified to say: ‘This is incontrovertible, this is what we’re doing to the natural world.’”Īs he has felt more free to speak out, one of the more controversial areas Attenborough has addressed is population growth. And so the moment had to be judged as to when it was you suddenly started talking about conservation and when it was that you were behind the Greenpeaces of this world. So you had to be guarding against propaganda or guarding against grinding axes. “I joined the BBC after the navy, and there was a monopoly and it was like a civil service. It is evidently a criticism he feels a need to address, and, without prompting, he offers that in his earlier career he felt inhibited by his association with the BBC, where he was a channel controller as well as presenter, and the need to be strictly impartial. For this, he was sometimes criticised by green activists, who wanted him to take a public lead on issues such as climate change. He was associated with several conservation groups, from Flora and Fauna International to the Dragonfly Society, but did not use his public platform to make prescriptions for the planet’s future. When Attenborough speaks, viewers tend to trust him.įor years, he kept this trust to himself. It has also given him a unique authority. ![]() Photograph: Alamy Stock PhotoĪ career spanning seven decades has earned him a loyal following of tens if not hundreds of millions of viewers, who are entranced by his delight in the beauties and savageries he witnesses. There are now more pieces of plastic in the world’s oceans than there are fish. This could involve ways to collect and filter plastics from the sea, and to absorb or break down the plastics that are already there. “And disposing of it could be dealt with technically,” he adds. It could be dealt with technically, through potential breakthroughs such as degradable plastic. That problem could be solved “ if we got together, within a decade, if not less”. “There are solutions, and there is cause for hope, and there’s cause for encouragement, and it isn’t all disasters.” “It’s within our power, because most of the problems are created by us, and we can solve them or should be able to solve them,” he says, slapping his knee emphatically. ![]() ![]() While he admits to sadness at the disappearances he has witnessed – “Overall, without any question, the world is not going to be as varied and as rich as it was a hundred years ago” – he insists on practical solutions. It seems to be repeated endlessly: CFC aerosols and refrigerants destroying the ozone layer pesticides killing wildlife the fossil energies that fuelled a career based around television and exotic international travel resulting in climate change the advances in medicine prolonging life and bringing good health, but giving us a population explosion that Attenborough fears will endanger further species, including our own.įor Attenborough, however, there must always be a message of optimism running above and beyond any warnings of doom. The arc by which plastics started off as a wonder of technology and ended up as a calamity is familiar to the veteran conservationist.
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