Haunted by an unsolved murder, brilliant but disgraced London police detective John Luther breaks out of prison to hunt down a sadistic serial killer. Ive visited the polar regions over many decades. Thank you so much for being with us. But in certain places, there are hot spots where currents bring nutrients to the surface and trigger an explosion of life. This too is happening as a result of bad planning and human error and it too will lead to what we see here. Environmental issues have historically had low news value. Follow him @davidattenborough. You and I belong to the most widespread and dominant species of animal on earth. In the past, animals had to develop some physical ability to change their lives. Today, forests cover half of Costa Rica. Soil would be inadequate, insects and bees destroyed, and droughts and flooding would increase. Its covered with small family-run farms with no room for expansion. Rainforests are particularly precious habitats. When I was a boy, I spent all my spare time searching through rocks in places like this for buried treasure. I advocate that there should be zones, parts of the ocean where they should be absolutely sacrosanct, where, in fact, populations of fish can build up and actually from that, colonize the rest of the seas that we've stripped. All rights reserved. An in-depth, sobering look at the tragic events of a century ago. Clean energy has to replace fossil fuels. Summer sea ice in the Arctic has reduced by 40% in 40 years. They discovered that the Serengeti herds required an enormous area of healthy grassland to function. The global air temperature had been relatively stable till the 90s. [Attenborough] Animals that had been viewed as little more than a source of oil and meat became personalities. Ocean life was also unravelling in the shallows. When you first see it, you think perhaps that its beautiful, and suddenly you realize its tragic. Downloads only available on ad-free plans. Be the first one to, David Attenborough - A Life on Our Planet 2020, Advanced embedding details, examples, and help, Terms of Service (last updated 12/31/2014). And then you clear that furthermore for cattle. As the Arctic warms, the tundra in Alaska, northern Canada, and Russia, would collapse as the permafrost would not stay sufficiently frozen to hold the soil together. Which is why weve cut down three trillion trees across the world. Its a creature called an ammonite. Unlike land chains, which may have three food chain links, such as grass, to wildebeest, to lion, the sea has about five, so if we overfish at one point, we collapse the entire system. David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet is a 2020 film by the documentarian and natural historian David Attenborough. [1] Initially scheduled for cinematic release on 16 April 2020, the film was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 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. Im talking about the loss of our planets wild places, its biodiversity. Our planet, vulnerable and isolated. Starring: David Attenborough. Mangroves and coral reefs along thousands of miles of coast have harbored nurseries of fish species that, when mature, then range into open waters. This is now our planet, run by humankind for humankind. But to continue, we require more than intelligence. Whole habitats would soon start to disappear. It's estimated that three-quarters of our food crops could fail. SIMON: I - forgive me, but I feel the need to quote a movie in which your brother starred (laughter), "Jurassic Park," where the scientist says, nature finds a way. The Holocene was our Garden of Eden. So there's not a profit in it, we still go killing it, and they throw a heck of a lot of it back. A few millennia after this began, I grew up at exactly the right moment. It will lead to our destruction. Fewer trees and more carbon in the atmosphere would escalate global warming significantly. It was designed for employees working at Chernobyl, a nearby nuclear plant. But, there are ways to change direction and alter the doom and gloom we've created. However, here's a curveball. With nothing to restrict us, our population has been growing dramatically throughout my lifetime. Uh The Human beings have overrun the world. Forests are a fundamental component of our planets recovery. The living world is essentially solar-powered. A monoculture of oil palm. The last time it happened was the event that brought the end of the age of the dinosaurs. Billions of individuals, and millions of kinds of plants and animals [birds chirping] dazzling in their variety and richness. Many people regarded it as the most costly in the history of mankind. The nearby nuclear power station of Chernobyl exploded. One of the greatest films ever made, The Sorrow and The Pity is a contribution to history, to social psychology, to anthropology, and to art. 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. But it was noticeable that some of these animals were becoming harder to find. The rest, from mice to whales, make up just 4%. Skeletons of dead creatures. More recently, you may have heard of Pripyat from the HBO series Chernobyl? This docuseries delves into one of our greatest modern mysteries: Flight MH370. After all, theres plenty of it. There just isnt the space. on October 24, 2021. He believes that we have The Planetary Boundaries model as our guide, and that we should be looking to it for inspiration. David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet: Directed by Alastair Fothergill, Jonathan Hughes, Keith Scholey. In his latest book and film, "A Life on Our Planet," he offers a grave and alarming assessment about . Nature will take any chance to reclaim some space. Without predators, nutrients are lost for centuries to the depths and the hot spots start to diminish. Farms take up a combined space the size of North America, South America, and Australia combined, with devastating greenhouse gas emissions. As Attenborough says: 'We regard the Earth as our planet, run by mankind for mankind.' Population growth peaked in about 1962. 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. [young Attenborough] We heard a crashing in the branches ahead. But on the 26th of April, 1986, it suddenly became uninhabitable. We have overfished 30% of fish stocks to critical levels. [Attenborough] It felt that nothing would limit our progress. "No fishing" zones cover less than 7% of the ocean. And as the natural environment fails, pandemics are likely to increase. That is quite true. 2020 WORLD POPULATION: 7.8 BILLION CARBON IN ATMOSPHERE: 415 PARTS PER MILLION REMAINING WILDERNESS: 35%, Science predicts that were I born today, I would be witness to the following. There were twice the number of people on the planet as there were when I was born. Fossils. In the northern regions, the temperatures would lift in March, triggering spring, and stay high until they dipped in October and brought about autumn. No plowing and no fertilizers are used. One of the significant findings was that we pay attention to the environment when it affects us. It was called natural history because thats essentially what it was all about history. Right now, were facing a manmade disaster of global scale. Its crazy that our banks and our pensions are investing in fossil fuel when these are the very things that are jeopardizing the future that we are saving for. We need to rediscover how to be sustainable. watch for yourself. At some point in the future, the human population will peak for the very first time. Baitfish are driven into tight balls by tuna, before they attack, then sharks and dolphins join the hunt; they're followed by gannets, and even a whale. Filmmaker Sir David Attenborough has been documenting the natural world since the 1950s. Coral reefs were turning white. But we can make them the only source. It was extraordinary that you could see what a man out in space could see as he saw it at the same time. If herds of animals couldn't travel to new grazing, they, along with predators, would starve. Sir David,. Increasingly, theyre doing so sustainably. And powerful evidence that however grave our mistakes, nature will ultimately overcome them. The government decided to act, offering grants to land owners to replant native trees. One of the extraordinary things about it was that the world could actually watch it as it happened. SIMON: What does that mean? In truth, I couldnt imagine living my life in any other way. In one person's lifetime, we have demolished our land and sea wilderness. Orangutan mothers have to spend ten years with their young, teaching them which fruits are worth eating. 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. Each generation able to develop and progress only because the living world could be relied upon to deliver us the conditions we needed. The more diverse it is, the better it does that job. Fast forward to 2021, and a far greater catastrophe looms. I'm quite sure. For 10,000 years, the average temperature has not wavered up or down by more than one degree Celsius. And who knows what effect that will have on the world. From Pripyat, a deserted area after the nuclear disaster, Attenborough gives an overview of his life. Preparation. Since the Second World War, what's known as the "Great Acceleration" has brought us many progressive things, as our GDPs indicate. Life in Pripyat continued comfortably until 26 April 1986, when reactor number 4 at Chernobyl exploded. By damming, polluting, and over-extracting rivers and lakes, weve reduced the size of freshwater populations by over 80%. But during his lifetime, Attenborough has also seen first-hand the monumental scale of humanity's impact on nature. It was a rediscovery of a fundamental truth. And in less than 48 hours, the city was evacuated. A Life on Our Planet is a masterpiece that explores the life and legacy of natural historian and national treasure David Attenborough. It needs protecting. Plankton would also be destroyed by the acid, affecting the entire food chain. By burning millions of years worth of living organisms all at once as coal and oil, we had managed to do so in less than 200. So let's go back to the beginning of this summary. For much of its expanse, the ocean is largely empty. And we've exterminated the great fisheries. We all need to change our mindset, and we need to implement a new order right now. If we want to, we can kill almost anything in the sea that we wish. If we continue on our current course, the damage that has been the defining feature of my lifetime will be eclipsed by the damage coming in the next. The only way to keep them alive was for rangers to be with them every day. 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. Then watch the video and do the exercises. on the Internet. And I remember very well that first shot. Iceland, Albania, and Paraguay generate their electricity without fossil fuels. I look at these images now and I realize that, although as a young man I felt I was out there in the wild experiencing the untouched natural world it was an illusion. It triggered an environmental catastrophe that had an impact across Europe. Nature is our biggest ally and our greatest inspiration. However, Attenborough points out that vested interests will hold us back. Any graph that measures their side-effects; carbon dioxide, methane, loss of land and sea wilderness, and increasing farmland will also illustrate a sharply accelerating increase. [chuckles] Because I wish the struggle wasnt there or necessary. It had everything a community would need for a comfortable life.