David Attenborough on the future of the planet - BBC Newsnight

I suppose actually I up to five years ago I was really very very pessimistic the Paris agreement as you say was seemed at the time to be at last nations coming to their senses I walked out of that of those conferences where I was there and alongside who was then the chief scientists of this country and he was walking on air he said we've got it we've got it we've got the agreement and so on and we have got that agreement it is true that President Trump doesn't go along with it and to what extent the United States is going to withdraw from it we will see my suspicion is that people will it will realize that that actually the the United States and that attitude is is outdated it doesn't apply anymore and I think that would be overcome and and that there are there's a groundswell internationally of recognizing of what we're doing to the planet and and the disaster that awaits unless we do something trouble is that the the problems are getting worse and worse and worse by the day and we don't have time to spare and that's difficulty can I ask you some questions about how ordinary people should react because the British Environment Agency published a thing saying look up a single-use plastic bag use once as better co2 effect and and unless you use a cotton bag 130 times you're putting more co2 in the production of the cotton bag than in a single-use plastic so should we never use plastic would that be your you know our best to avoid the use of plastic put it that way and one mustn't maximize the effect of not using a plastic bag I think it's quite important in a democracy that people actually have something to do to express their concern and maybe plastic bags aren't the most important element in the whole plastic problem but it is something that people can do as well as the fundamentally important thing of course which is to put in politician who actually recognize what the danger is and we'll we'll do something that's difficult difficult another area where individuals can make a difference both in terms of environment and in terms of animal welfare it's not eating animals I know you've said you're not altogether much of a meat-eater you're not sort of ideologically vegetarian but you've not much of a meat eater how how do you approach that how do you think we should approach them well as a biologist you can recognize what animal has evolved to what diet as it evolved to take to consume and there's no doubt about it that we are omnivores I mean if you look at the structure party they're not the teeth or their teeth of a cow with with Cod now you don't have incisors I though they're like a like a rabbit or a 100 or rap to be more accurate we are omnivores so biologically there is if they couldn't have a biological morality you can say yes we evolved to eat pretty well everything but at the moment but now we've got to a stage in our own social evolution in which that may is no longer practical because we simply can't destroy the the natural forest and plains of the world it taunt to feed ourselves and destroy the rest of the natural world we cook we can't afford to do that so therefore we have to modify our our diet if everybody did the right thing if they will live by the the best best-in-class practice in compassed ik bag consumption meaty can eating consumption here's a concern it's just a concern I have it might make it might make our existence on earth more sustainable but in the long term the difference between 10 plastic bags a week and two plastic bags a week it's going to make a difference of three hundred years of our time on the planet do you understand what I mean it's it's it's sort of big picture terms it's very very small in the long run we must population growth has to come to an end there are some reasons for thinking there are that will happen almost inevitably one of the reasons that the population has increased as fast as it has is that people like me and living longer than we did and so there are more and more people just just because the expectancy of life has increased but it is very alarming at the rate we are going and although people will say in the long run we are kind of stabilized they're gonna stabilize as far as I can see r2 rather higher level than the earth can can really accommodate let's talk a little about television because it in your most remarkable career which involved being controller of BBC two at one point and then going back into program making a lot of changed in television over the years that you've been involved in the industry mmm-hmm better or worse different BBC know no longer has the sort of Magisterial presence in which it had and that's because the multiplicity of different outlets and different voices and I think if you're a Democrat you have to recognize that that's rather good and that the I mean after all when I joined television there were the only television pictures in the country actually in Western Europe in 1952 you know nothing else existed well you have to say that the that that was unhealthy I mean there are losses you you you you can't do certain things which mass media used to be able to do and they can't anymore because it isn't ecologically economically viable but by and large I don't think that's a small price to big approach to pay I don't know if you heard in August casseon Harrison the editor of BBC four said the BBC no longer wants TV shows in which white middle-aged men stand up and explain things there's a mode of programming involving a presenter usually white middle-aged man standing on a hill and telling you like it is now I'm sure he didn't have you many might well ago because that's what I do those days have passed I could do you think they passed should they pass no I don't I don't think they pass I personally think there's a there is a place for that sort of thing I equally don't there are other things I could describe about the present day out but of which says far too much so yeah but I don't think they're past I blue planet I don't know that got the biggest audiences of documents a long time on the other hand I suppose he might say well there wasn't a lot seen of you which is quite a good which is absolutely true and very good but but there are some things that you you you can't you do require somebody who knows about something to tell you in in in terms which don't have bogus illustrations don't try and pretend to explain something with the diagram which can't be explained in that way I need to ask you about trust because one of the things that is sort of broken down over the last 30 years is trust and a belief a sort of cynicism with TV and the cheats involved and of course the nature programs have had their share of the accusations leveled out them the most recent was the human planet 2011 came under fire this year for it was about the building of a tree house in Papua New Guinea and I don't want to go into the details do you think when you look at the tricks of the trade do you think viewers are wise to what's going on do you think they are sometimes deceived in the telling of stories and are they deceived in if you like sort of good ways of television making ways I think it's very difficult to generalise I mean some viewers might be and others might or may be more savvy and some programs that set out to deceive and something not on the other hand it seems to me that the the images of television are more difficult to manipulate than words and and that they although they do they may be deceptive or deceiving in sometimes nonetheless there is a lot of veracity involved in just having the picture there tell us about the tricks though in the nature programs I mean is there anything that you think the viewer doesn't understand about the switching between animal in captivity and in the wild or I I think that's almost a trivial distinction I mean it depends what you're doing if you're doing something and saying well have been out here in the wilderness a long time and I'm just going along and over there's this wonderful creature and if I work very hard I might just catch a glimpse and then you showed us a picture and that we're actually taking a zoo that is nonsense and that is but if on the other hand you say the most important thing for you to know about polar bears biology is that it has a very long hibernation period and in the middle while the female is comatose and hardly receptive this little animal comes out in the blackness in this ice cave and you illustrate that with the with with the birth of a polar bear which happened to have been bought who had taken in a zoo and which could never you could never get in the wild without risking the polar bears life or indeed your own then that's that's that's biology that's perfectly fair and when I think of the stridency that some parts of the press have criticized this and I think of that the lack of that kind of veracity which in that would stay about that though I mean it's amazing my become a gut my gas at the thought right I want to get on to the comparison between humans and animals before I do did you watch love island at all surname no let us talk about animals and humans people are talking about gender at the moment and occasionally reach out to see the way animals behave not necessary to justify behavior but to kind of understand it and do you think there's something we can learn about the everything from the me to movement to the interaction between men and women patriarchal society do we gain anything by by looking at the animals well the animal imperatives come from straightforward physiology and there are characteristics that men have and the women have which have evolved for the various roles that they played in prehistory and what we're not living in and prehistory we're living today nonetheless those physiological characteristics imposed behavior on ourselves and you ignore them at your peril right so they help understand but not justified and that's right yeah that's so yeah that's so what about I mean where are you on where the world is today because a lot of people feel the world is going on kurz at the moment and it's got very tribal hasn't in hmm the kind of DNA tribalism destructive tribalism of human beings their willingness to be really quite beastly to people outside their group yeah should we think of that as a kind of that's just what human beings are well you look at our prehistory and that's what we were I mean the remarkable thing is that we've come together to the degree that we have in my view I mean United Nations in the thirties was was one thing the League of Nations was one thing and that was a step towards listening to other people and we've got the United Nations now now that's remarkable you know that has never happened before the 20th century you know would never had oh I mean the whole of history is about battles between different nations and the fact that we have a area in which you can debate these things and not solve them necessarily by thoughts is an advance and as a matter of a surprise and support rather than criticism it's a lovely book life on earth 40 years after the original series the David Attenborough nice to talk to you thank you very much

Channel: BBC Newsnight

Views: 230,891

Keywords: bbc, newsnight, news, interview, david attenborough, blue planet, frozen planet, environment, climate change, television, documentary

Id: pRETT1L-aZQ

Length: 13min 10sec (790 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 03 2018