Book Review: A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and A Vision for the Future by David Attenborough (2020 Grand Central Publishers)
David Attenborough has had a long, distinguished, award-winning career filming wildlife in hard-to-reach places. He has taken his viewers where few people will ever be able to visit. He has told countless stories about rare and fascinating wildlife.
At 94, he came to a deliberate reckoning about the state of our planet. Over his lifetime, he has witnessed the steady decline in biodiversity brought by the destruction of habitats. He believes that “our planet’s current predicament is beyond alarming.”
He begins each early chapter with three statistics dramatizing critical changes throughout his life from 1937 to 2020:
World population: 2.3 billion increased to 7.8 billion
Carbon in the atmosphere: 280 parts per million increased to 415 ppm
Remaining wilderness: 66% decreased to 35%
These statistics show that we are “sleepwalking into a catastrophe.”
Attenborough sketches dark scenarios of what we will experience if we do not take drastic actions to stop the damages and recover our biodiversity. He explains that we must”
1. Stop using fossil fuels.
2. Stop eating meat.
3. Rewild the planet.
Although he tries hard to convince the reader that rewilding is doable, I was left doubtful. Therefore, I urge you to read his book and decide for yourself.
He concludes, “The task could hardly be more daunting and we have to support it in every way we can. We have to urge our politicians, locally, nationally and internationally, to come to some agreement and sometimes subordinate our national interest in support of the bigger and wider benefit. The future of humanity depends upon the success of these meetings.”
