Its happened in my lifetime. Theyd never seen sloths before. Fishers survived on food vouchers but kept the faith, and today, marine life in that area has increased by more than 400%. [Attenborough] If we can change the way we live on Earth, an alternative future comes into view. And you could happily retire. But whether it will survive in the form that will include us in it is just another question. 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. Hence, if we suffer the fallout of a natural disaster, we take notice of the planet. And the reef turns from wonderland to wasteland. ATTENBOROUGH: Yes. [thunder rumbling] And the weather is more and more unpredictable. Um, so, the world is not as wild as it was. If there is no corner of the oceans which is safe from fishing vessels of one kind or another, we are heading for total elimination of the edible fish from the sea. When her husband dies, Sole decides that the best way to take care of her son is to become a crime boss even if that means being her father's enemy. Protected fish populations soon became so healthy, they spilt over into the areas open to fishing. A Life on Our Planet David Attenborough A legacy-defining book from Sir David Attenborough, reflecting on his life's work, the dramatic changes to the planet he has witnessed, and what we can do to make a better future. It needs protecting. . Haunted by an unsolved murder, brilliant but disgraced London police detective John Luther breaks out of prison to hunt down a sadistic serial killer. [Attenborough] They lived in small numbers and didnt take too much. As with the citizens of Pripyat, we carry on with our daily lives, unaware that our carelessness and lack of planning will ultimately destroy us, and our natural world, unless we alter our self-destructive trajectory. The living world cant operate without a healthy ocean and neither can we. If the ice disappears, so does the algae that grow underneath. Even one as vast as the ocean. As carbon release accelerates, the ocean will continue to absorb its share of this. It seems that the human population will only really peak early in the 22nd century, at about 11 billion people. But on the 26th of April, 1986, it suddenly became uninhabitable. David Attenborough. And because we would be then dedicated to raising plants, we could increase the yield of this land substantially. It had everything a community would needfor a comfortable life. As much as 60% of farmland is devoted to beef production. Ocean life was also unravelling in the shallows. 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. Environmental issues have historically had low news value. Ive visited the polar regions over many decades. A Life on Our Planet is a masterpiece that explores the life and legacy of natural historian and national treasure David Attenborough. In the 1950s, Borneo was three-quarters covered with rainforest. You can see it. Rising sea levels could lead to cities like Rotterdam, Ho Chi Minh City, and Miami being evacuated. We cut down over 15 billion trees each year. The problem is that our fishing fleets are just as good at finding those hot spots as are the fish. A determined detective continues his search for the truth behind Asia's largest drug organization and its elusive boss he has unfinished business with. Thank you so much for being with us. Every one has a critical role to play. But what if Nimona is the monster he's sworn to kill? NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Our cities will be cleaner and quieter. But for us, an idea could do that. In his 93 years, Attenborough has visited every continent on the globe, exploring the wild places of the planet and documenting the living world in all its variety and wonder. We rely entirely on this finely tuned life-support machine. It seems utterly impossible that after such a devastating environmental disaster, there would be any kind of happy ending. Great numbers of species disappear and are suddenly replaced by a few. Downloads sind nur bei werbefreien Abos verfgbar. The ocean covers 70% of our planet's surface, and it's where all forms of life began. If we want to, we can kill almost anything in the sea that we wish. Instead, cover crops are planted after harvest to protect the soil, and crops are rotated. I think the sudden sight that there were two people way out there, high up in the sky looking at the Earth from a distance where the whole globe was within one picture was an extraordinary realization, not only of the smallness of the planet but its isolation. It was a feature of all five mass extinctions. According to David Attenborough, we have 'overrun the Earth.' Our impact now truly profound. I noticed that in this transcript the years of the population, carbon & wilderness miss: 1937 & 1954 & repeat the year 1997 twice the last should be 2020. Nature is our biggest ally and our greatest inspiration. The explosion was a result of bad planning and human error. More than half of the species on land live here. The resources they used naturally renewed themselves. When it comes to the land, we must radically reduce the area we use to farm, so that we can make space for returning wilderness. It was a great place to come to as a boy, because this is, um, ironstone workings, but it was disused. [Attenborough] It was a stark contrast to the world I knew. Large parts of the earth are uninhabitable. Attenborough is now 94, and throughout his long life, has watched the natural world wither before his eyes. Addeddate Prehistoric Planet will be back for a second season. The Amazon rainforest could suffer from "forest dieback" and be starved of moisture, becoming an open savannah and destroying its biodiversity. Attenborough is famous for many of the truly epic natural history documentaries on our planet. Let me just ask you about the 2030s. This particular one has a scientific name of Tiltonicerus, because the first one ever was found near this quarry here in Tilton, in the middle of England. Our intelligence changed the way in which we evolved. [Attenborough] Ive been lucky enough to spend my life exploring the wild places of our planet. There are signs that this has started to happen across the globe. [Attenborough] They ate meat rarely. Imagine if we phase out fossil fuels and run our world on the eternal energies of nature too. The white color is caused by corals expelling algae that lives symbiotically within their body. If we dont take action, the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon. But scientists started to discover that in many cases where bleaching occurred, the ocean was warming. Its an achingly intricate labor. The scale of the problem is so overwhelming . Without this training, they would not complete their role in dispersing seeds. Huge herds on the plains have kept the grasslands rich and productive by fertilizing the soils. Imagine if we committed to a similar approach across the world. 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. Once a species became our target, there was now nowhere on earth that it could hide. Its covered with small family-run farms with no room for expansion. Orangutan mothers have to spend ten years with their young, teaching them which fruits are worth eating. Farmers in developed countries could be incentivized to build biodiversity on their farms. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. All that evolution undone. And this is what they saw what we all saw. Baby gorillas were at a premium, and poachers would kill a dozen adults to get one. The world population was 2.3 billion, the carbon in the atmosphere was 280 parts per million, and the remaining wilderness was 66%. [Attenborough] I was in a television studio when the Apollo mission launched. Our closest relatives. More recently, you may have heard of Pripyat from the HBO series Chernobyl? 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. Attenborough says, We run life on the planet to meet our own ends.. I got as close as I did only because the gorillas were used to people. But that distant world is changing. And, of course, the ocean is important to all of us as a source of food. However, here's a curveball. Focusing on a specific period, from the birth of Black Wall Street to its catastrophic downfall over the course of two bloody days, and finally the fallout and reconstruction. The most remote habitat of all exists at the extreme north and south of the planet. It had everything a community would need for a comfortable life. Many experts wrote off Pripyat, and many of us are apathetic about the future of the planet. "No fishing" zones cover less than 7% of the ocean. It seems possible for us to feed ourselves quite happily using half the land we currently use. The natural world is, fading, he writes. Below the line are a multitude of lifeforms. Yet the way we humans live on Earth now is sending biodiversity into a decline. We have to do our best. But that rainforest is one of the key elements in the whole of the weather patterns of the world. Urban farming is an option on rooftops, abandoned buildings, and exterior walls of city buildings. Uploaded by As we improve our approach to farming, well start to reverse the land-grab that weve been pursuing ever since we began to farm, which is essential because we have an urgent need for all that free land. Rainforests are particularly precious habitats. Pripyat is situated in Ukraine, and was built by the Soviet Union in the 1970s. [thunder rumbling] [lowing] On the tropical plains, the dry and rainy seasons would switch every year like clockwork. This model outlines nine critical thresholds, or planetary boundaries, such as climate change, air pollution, land conversion, and biodiversity loss. Pollinating insects disappear. SIMON: Sir David Attenborough - his book, along with his co-author Jonnie Hughes, is "A Life On Our Planet." Giving people a greater opportunity of life is what we would want to do anyway. Summer sea ice in the Arctic has reduced by 40% in 40 years. Starring: David Attenborough. And beyond that strip, there is nothing but regimented rows of oil palms. SIMON: So what gives you hope? And suddenly, we realized, you know, we're there together, and we're alone. list the consequences of walking in darkness; tate brothers romania; lac courte oreilles tribal membership requirements; uva men's volleyball roster. We learnt how to exploit the seasons to produce food crops. Fossil fuels increase the greenhouse effect, releasing gases such as carbon dioxide. Half of the worlds rainforests have already been cleared. The earths plants capture three trillion kilowatt-hours of solar energy each day. By the time Frozen Planet aired in 2011, the reasons for these changes was well established. In this time-jumping dramedy, a workaholic who's always in a rush now wants life to slow down when he finds himself leaping ahead a year every few hours. A powerful shared conscience had suddenly appeared. 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. Still, energy use, production, transport, farming, and telecommunication have also shown their sinister side. We are Canadian. In the 30 years since the evacuation of Chernobyl, the wild has reclaimed the space. Because what youre looking at is skeletons. Yet, we're nowhere near the stage where our population has stopped growing. And the speed of global warming increases. Attenborough urges us to restore biodiversity. And freshwater is equally at risk. In a single small patch of tropical rainforest, there could be 700 different species of tree, as many as there are in the whole of North America. Sitting on the edge of the Sahara, and cabled directly into southern Europe, Morocco could be an exporter of solar energy by 2050. Based on a children's book by Paul McCartney. Attenborough, David, 1926-2 Entertain (Firm) BBC Video (Firm) British Broadcasting Corporation; . David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet 2020 | Maturity rating: PG | 1h 23m | Science & Nature Documentaries A broadcaster recounts his life, and the evolutionary history of life on Earth, to grieve the loss of wild places and offer a vision for the future. When they do, theyre able to gather the concentrated shoals with ease. The 'why' behind this, points to global warming. Our blind assault on the planet has finally come to alter the very fundamentals of the living world. Without large fish and other marine predators, the oceanic nutrient cycle stutters. In previous events, it had taken volcanic activity up to one million years to dredge up enough carbon from within the earth to trigger a catastrophe. We account for over one-third of the weight of mammals on earth. There was an edge to our existence. Based on the comic book series by Mark Millar and Peter Gross. In this world, a species can only thrive when everything else around it thrives, too. You say 75% of the Amazon rainforest could be gone. Then watch the video and do the exercises. David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. I'm quite sure. We have pursued animals to extinction many times in our history, but now that it was visible, it was no longer acceptable. These simple statistics speak as eloquently for our planet as our author does. And renewable energy will never run out. Tired of the small-time grind, three Marseille cops get a chance to bust a major drug network. With nothing to restrict us, our population has been growing dramatically throughout my lifetime. Narrated by David Attenborough, the five-episode second season will premiere globally in a five-day week-long event beginning May 22 on Apple [] SIMON: You project what the world might look like in 10 years and even a century. The history of all human civilization followed. David Attenborough: ( 00:48) For much of humanity's ancient history, that number bounced wildly between 180 and 300, and so too did global temperatures. When you think about it, were completing a journey. Wherever I went, there was wilderness. Since I started filming in the 1950s, on average, wild animal populations have more than halved. They may have got time to actually - to pay more to sort things out. The point for me was simple: the wild is far from unlimited. But Ive had unbelievable luck and good fortune. I first witnessed the destruction of an entire habitat in Southeast Asia. David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet - Transcript October 14, 2020 David Attenborough has seen more of the natural world than any other. The trick is to raise the standard of living around the world without increasing our impact on that world. Its now time for our species to stop simply growing. Insects, our small hunters, and pollinators have reduced by one quarter. Every other species on Earth reaches a maximum population after a time. By and large, its a story of slow, steady change. The start of my career in my 20s coincided with the advent of global air travel. This city in Ukraine was once home to almost 50,000 people. The longer they have to wait for the ice to return, the more they use up their fat supplies. This too is happening as a result of bad planning and human error and it too will lead to what we see here. But you now want to explain to us what peril we are in. The United Nations and World Trade Organisation are trying to establish new rules in international waters, which are notoriously overfished by large nations. This devastation could happen quickly, with water and food shortages, and the displacement of about 30 million people. Why wouldnt we want to do these things? attenborough a life on our planet transcript life on earth the greatest story ever told david . And to begin with, it was quite easy. Attenborough's wildlife journey started at a young age. Our home was not limitless. Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. A moment ago, we made this recording with an underwater microphone here in the Pacific near Hawaii. Our imprint is now truly global. The result is that the population has now stabilized and has hardly changed since the millennium. We are ultimately bound by and reliant upon the finite natural world about us. You can be in one spot on the Serengeti, and the place is totally empty of animals, and then, the next morning [bellowing] one million wildebeest. Many of the millions of species in the forest exist in small numbers. You could fly for hours over the untouched wilderness. And we now had the means to make people across the world aware. 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 over his lifetime. web pages Over time, I began to learn something about the earths evolutionary history. Nothing to stop us. Polar bears need ice as the launching pads for hunting. All rights reserved. Ive had the most extraordinary life. We had worked out how to produce food to order. That non-human world is gone. We were transforming what a species could achieve. In my time, Ive experienced the warming of Arctic summers. Fish populations crash. Recordings like these revealed that the songs of the humpbacks are long and complex. Theyre places in which evolutions talent for design soars. Then you deal so with the land. A few millennia after this began, I grew up at exactly the right moment. Even in places where theres no land at all. In international waters, the UN is attempting to create the biggest no fish zone of all. In his latest book and film, "A Life on Our Planet," he offers a grave and alarming assessment about . Fortunately, Tanzania and Kenya took far-sighted action to safeguard the sacred paths of the Serengeti migration. In the 1950s, Bernhard Grzimek, a German scientist, realized that wildlife was under threat in the Serengeti and needed the entire expanse of the plains to survive. 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. We invented farming. When fish stocks began to reduce, the Palauans responded by restricting fishing practices and banning fishing entirely from many areas. Millions of people rendered homeless. Those forests and plains and seas were already emptying. urgency ? Boo! But its possible to slow, even to stop population growth well before it reaches that point. Offline ansehen. It will survive. David Attenborough A Life On Our Planet 2020 An important documentary that everyone should watch. We were apart from the rest of life on earth, living a different kind of life. If we travel back to modern-day Pripyat, David Attenborough tells us that nature is once again asserting itself. Its all happened within the last 2,000 years or so. [whales singing] Their mournful songs were the key to transforming peoples opinions about them. We humans cannot presume the same. That without such an immense space, the herds would diminish and the entire ecosystem would come crashing down. [chuckles] Because I wish the struggle wasnt there or necessary. Attenborough launched an official Instagram account on Thursday, Sept. 24, in support of the film. Morocco generates 40% from renewable power plants and exports solar energy. Their solution is to climb higher up the cliffs, but with their poor eyesight, they often fall from the tops of cliffs as the smell of the sea lures them closer. 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. Half of the fertile land on earth is now farmland. In 1998, a Blue Planet film crew stumbled on an event little known at the time. The thing we rely upon for every element of the lives we lead. In the 1960s, families often had five children, but today the average is 2.5. [over megaphone] Please stop killing the whales. [reindeer grunting] [birds hooting] [buffalo snorting] [birds cawing] [elephants trumpeting]. As Attenborough cautions, the bleached coral is like canaries in a coal mine. Fast forward to 2021, and a far greater catastrophe looms. And of course, if we increase our wilderness areas, we have a natural way of capturing carbon. And the idea could be passed from one generation to the next. We pull out 80 million tonnes of seafood every year, only to replace it with plastic. I am David Attenborough, and I am 93. When you first see it, you think perhaps that its beautiful, and suddenly you realize its tragic. Farms take up a combined space the size of North America, South America, and Australia combined, with devastating greenhouse gas emissions. Ice-free summers in the Arctic would also start. So when he asks that people heed his "witness statement" about the peril humans .