[Attenborough] It felt that nothing would limit our progress. And this is what they saw what we all saw. And a few years later, that idea became obvious to everyone. Saving individual species or even groups of species would not be enough. [Attenborough] Ive been lucky enough to spend my life exploring the wild places of our planet. A tale of the smartest species doomed by that all too human characteristic of failing to see the bigger picture in pursuit of short term goals. Its entirely possible for us to apply both low-tech and hi-tech solutions to produce much more food from much less land. The Kenya Sea Turtle Conservation Committee (KESCOM). It was only in the 50s that large fleets first ventured out into international waters to reap the open ocean harvest across the globe. Explore and monitor how Future of the Environment is affecting economies, industries and global issues. Phytoplankton at the oceans surface and immense forests straddling the north have helped to balance the atmosphere by locking away carbon. I got as close as I did only because the gorillas were used to people. Since I started filming in the 1950s, on average, wild animal populations have more than halved. Japans standard of living climbed rapidly in the latter half of the 20th century. And I remember very well that first shot. Write your screenplay and focus on the story with many helpful features. Planet Earth: With Sigourney Weaver, David Attenborough, Nikolay Drozdov, Thomas Anguti Johnston. By the 1980s, uncontrolled logging had reduced this to just one quarter. Orangutan mothers have to spend ten years with their young, teaching them which fruits are worth eating. Leading lives that interlock in such a way that they sustain each other. BBC One - The Blue Planet Were going to have to learn together, how to achieve this, ensuring none are left behind. With nothing to restrict us, our population has been growing dramatically throughout my lifetime. The living world is essentially solar-powered. Today, the forest has taken over the city. [birds chirping] Just imagine if we achieve this on a global scale. David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet - Transcript Humpbacks living in the same area learn their songs from each other. Why wouldnt we want to do these things? Sparkling coastal seas. And we now had the means to make people across the world aware. It triggered an environmental catastrophe that had an impact across Europe. Attenborough launched an official Instagram account on Thursday, Sept. 24, in support of the film. Theyd never seen sloths before. Fishing is worlds greatest wild harvest. You could fly for hours over the untouched wilderness. Its quite straightforward. Sunlight, wind, water and geothermal. And tree diversity is the key to a rainforest. View all of Mongabays coverage of conservation solutions here. . The problem is that our fishing fleets are just as good at finding those hot spots as are the fish. [Attenborough] It was a stark contrast to the world I knew. How Darwin noticed different adaptations in the tortoises from Galapagos. Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale. 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A documentary series on the wildlife found on Earth. The Second World War was over, technology was making our lives easier. 25 min read. and the commentary has organic flow . New David Attenborough series about UK and Ireland likely to be his There are solutions whaling almost sent the great whales extinct, but its cessation after society changed its perspective to this being unacceptable has led to one of the planets greatest wildlife recoveries. We are overusing the earth's resources. A key reason the population is still growing is because many of us are living longer. And in that one shot, there was the whole of humanity with nothing else except the person that was in the spacecraft taking that picture. This city in Ukraine was once home to almost 50,000 people. Sir David Attenborough explains how humans can take charge of our future and save our planet. How Sir David Attenborough puts a script together for Planet Earth 2 To save the humanity, we have to save the earth. Over billions of years, nature has crafted miraculous forms, each more complex and accomplished than the last. As a result, the no fish zones have increased the catch of the local fishermen, while at the same time allowing the reefs to recover. You and I belong to the most widespread and dominant species of animal on earth. The last time it happened was the event that brought the end of the age of the dinosaurs. Speech-to-Text API for pre-recorded audio, powered by the worlds leading speech recognition engine. Thank you sir David , for opening my eyes, for letting me see the world as it is now. Narrated by Sir David Attenborough, the perennial voice of the British nature doc, "Breaking Boundaries" is brimming with grim scientific insight and urgent cautionary pronouncements, but its . Summer sea ice in the Arctic has reduced by 40% in 40 years. Easily integrate Rev using our robust APIs to start building your product quickly. The white corals are ultimately smothered by seaweed. It was extraordinary that you could see what a man out in space could see as he saw it at the same time. For 65 million years, its been at work reconstructing the living world until we come to the world we know our time. That without such an immense space, the herds would diminish and the entire ecosystem would come crashing down. David Attenborough's 'witness statement' for the planet (commentary) By the time Sir David Attenborough had reached his 50s, the human population had doubled in size from when he was born . It was going to bring everything we had ever dreamed of. 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. But Ive had unbelievable luck and good fortune. The Private Life of Plants is a BBC nature documentary series written and presented by David Attenborough, first shown in the United Kingdom from 11 January 1995.. A study of the growth, movement, reproduction and survival of plants, it was the second of Attenborough's specialised surveys following his major trilogy that began with Life on Earth.Each of the six 50-minute episodes discusses . Whales were being slaughtered by fleets of industrial whaling ships in the 1970s. We have a lot more than just climate change to worry about, argues this nature doc narrated by Sir David Attenborough. In the northern regions, the temperatures would lift in March, triggering spring, and stay high until they dipped in October and brought about autumn. In 1950, a Japanese family was likely to have three or more children. BBC iPlayer - Sir David Attenborough 'Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet' Review: A Dire Warning David Attenborough meets a particularly talented lyrebird. David Attenborough investigates the age of an elephant bird's egg that he has discovered. Even in places where theres no land at all. David Attenborough: (03:16) David Attenborough's Powerful Speech To COP26 Leaders - Forbes Without this training, they would not complete their role in dispersing seeds. Stay up to date: 1997 WORLD POPULATION: 5.9 BILLION CARBON IN ATMOSPHERE: 360 PARTS PER MILLION REMAINING WILDERNESS: 46%. And the extent of the polar ice has been critical, reflecting sunlight back off its white surface, cooling the whole earth. Life had no option but to rebuild. David Attenborough: (04:37) Only when billions of different individual organisms make the most of every resource and opportunity they encounter, and millions of species lead lives that . We are ultimately bound by and defined by the resources on this planet.. When they do, theyre able to gather the concentrated shoals with ease. Its rhythm of seasons was so reliable that it gave our own species a unique opportunity. Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses. The Best Speech-to-Text Solution for Your Business Learn how Rev fits into your businesses workflow. Speaker 7: (05:55) 1960 WORLD POPULATION: 3.0 BILLION CARBON IN ATMOSPHERE: 315 PARTS PER MILLION REMAINING WILDERNESS: 62%. That is my witness statement. Making Waves. It was a brutal and unpredictable world. Affordable, clean energy, healthy air and enough food to sustain us all. The number of children being born worldwide every year is about to level off. [imperceptible] Theyve always been a place beyond imagination with scenery unlike anything else on earth and unique species adapted to a life in the extreme. This decade's generation is decisive for what will happen in a century when our children are supposed to live their best lives. You think you have control. To start to thrive. Mountains 58 mins Humans like to think that once they have climbed a mountain, they have somehow conquered it. [thunder rumbling] [lowing] On the tropical plains, the dry and rainy seasons would switch every year like clockwork. [Attenborough] By the end of the century, Borneos rainforest had been reduced by half. And we were responsible. Otherwise, this is brilliant! And that completely changed the mindset of the population, the human population of the world. We can start to produce food in new spaces. [Attenborough] By the time Life on Earth aired in 1979, I had entered my 50s. Ive had the most extraordinary life. Thats the sort of commitment you need if you want to even begin making a portrait of the living world. In my lifetime, Ive witnessed a terrible decline. By 1997, only 46% of the planets wilderness remained. No ecosystem, no matter how big, is secure. You can be forgiven for thinking that these plains are endless when they could swallow up such a herd. Its covered with small family-run farms with no room for expansion. Immense grasslands. The Maasai word Serengeti means endless plains. To those who live here, its an apt description. And yet, this is what weve been turning this dizzying diversity into. We invented farming. The white color is caused by corals expelling algae that lives symbiotically within their body. Planet Earth (TV Mini Series 2006) - IMDb How Sir David Attenborough puts a script together for Planet Earth 2 and records the voiceover. And it lived about 180 million years ago. We waste the majority of stuff we consume, be it food, electricity, or space so Attenborough implores us to reduce waste if we do nothing else. And in life the animal itself lived in the chamber here and spread out its tentacles to catch its prey. In my time, Ive experienced the warming of Arctic summers. The future was going to be exciting. Climate Change: The Facts (2019) - IMDb We cant cut down rainforests forever, and anything that we cant do forever is by definition unsustainable. A boundary that marks a profound, rapid, global change. Every other species on Earth reaches a maximum population after a time. Back then, it seemed inconceivable that we, a single species, might one day have the power to threaten the very existence of the wilderness. This is a challenge that we should try to solve in a quick way, but with a long term vision. Unless we stopped ourselves. This too is happening as a result of bad planning and human error and it too will lead to what we see here. We must immediately halt deforestation everywhere and grow crops like oil palm and soya only on land that was deforested long ago. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in our emails. The real David Attenborough | David Attenborough | The Guardian And, of course, the ocean is important to all of us as a source of food. He talked about his new docu-series, "A Perfect Planet," and why the. This unique feature documentary is his witness statement. Banner image: Sir David Attenborough, image courtesy of the BBC. Pollinating insects disappear. David Attenborough describes the massive variety of life that lives on Earth. [protester over megaphone] We are men and women, and we speak for children, and were all saying, Please stop killing the whales.. We are Canadian. About the Show. The global temperature has not wavered over this period by more than plus or minus one degree Celsius, until now. While some countries recognize the crisis we are facing, other recalcitrant nations prefer short-term profit over long-term calamity. The pace of change was getting faster and faster. Whenever we restore the wild, it will recapture carbon and help us bring back balance to our planet. 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. Web. In an impassioned speech to leaders, the naturalist and COP26 people's . 2. Our burning of fossil fuels, our destruction of nature, our approach to industry, construction and learning, are releasing carbon into the atmosphere at an unprecedented pace and scale. And renewable energy will never run out. STANDS4 LLC, 2023. Is this how our story is due to end? Thank you for the feedback, the missing data has been added and incorrect year amended. The Holocene has been one of the most stable periods in our planets great history. For the first time civilization was possible and we wasted no time in taking advantage of that. You can see it. Transcribe your audio files to find high-impact insights in minutes. This truth defined the life we led in our pre-history, the time before farming and civilization. Climate Change - The Facts | PBS We account for over one-third of the weight of mammals on earth. Sir David Frederick Attenborough is a naturalist and broadcaster, who is most well-known for writing and presenting the nine "Life" series, produced in conjunction with BBC's Natural History Unit. In the 30 years since the evacuation of Chernobyl, the wild has reclaimed the space. [groaning] Those beneath can get crushed to death. We humans cannot presume the same. The start of my career in my 20s coincided with the advent of global air travel. Scientists call it the Holocene. Vast forests. "David Attenborough" Scripts.com. It was a feature of all five mass extinctions. 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. Extend your content reach and maximize your engagement rates. David Attenborough learns about the athletic ability of the tyrannosaurus rex. [Attenborough on video] Climbing over the tightly-packed bodies is the only way across the crowd. Follow him @davidattenborough. Vast swathes of forest have been cleared, waters polluted, species driven extinct. David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet | Stories | WWF He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, the nine natural history documentary series that form the Life collection, which form a comprehensive survey of animal and plant life on . Huge herds on the plains have kept the grasslands rich and productive by fertilizing the soils. we would keep consuming the earth until we had used it up. The stability we all depend on is breaking. Im talking about the loss of our planets wild places, its biodiversity. The very thing that gave birth to our civilization. I feel free. The global air temperature had been relatively stable till the 90s. When David gets a thorn stuck in his hand, Charles Lagus comes to the rescue. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. The point for me was simple: the wild is far from unlimited. We learnt how to exploit the seasons to produce food crops. We cut down over 15 billion trees each year. Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet is a documentary about the end of the world. Not just ruined it. But that distant world is changing. Although the rhinoceros is referred to as black, its colour varies from brown to grey. We just have to do what nature has always done. The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum. David Attenboroughs latest nature documentary on Netflix may be his greatest yet. But you now want to explain to us what peril we are in. Thank you. The BBC celebrates Sir David Attenborough on his 90th birthday. We will all share in the benefits. Indoors, within cities. A story of global decline during a single lifetime. And then, every hundred million years or so, after all those painstaking processes, something catastrophic happens, a mass extinction. Our imprint is now truly global. If we dont take action, the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon. [whales singing] [whales continue singing]. 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. Lions are the second largest of the'big cats' after the tiger and arethe most social, with related females living together in prides and males forming coalitions. BBC - Celebrating Attenborough at 90: clips 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. A RESTful API to access Revs workforce of fast, high quality transcriptionists and captioners. We need to rediscover how to be sustainable. Its finite. David Attenborough plays back sound recordings to astonished villagers in Sierra Leone. As hydropower dams quell the Mekongs life force, what are the costs. All available episodes (9 total) Supporting Content. Billions of individuals, and millions of kinds of plants and animals [birds chirping] dazzling in their variety and richness. One of the extraordinary things about it was that the world could actually watch it as it happened. We will finally learn how to work with nature rather than against it. Large carnivores are rare in nature because it takes a lot of prey to support each of them. So who should watch A Life on our Planet? Large parts of the earth are uninhabitable. And you could happily retire. And in less than 48 hours, the city was evacuated. Right now, were facing a manmade disaster of global scale. . Top 5 David Attenborough Moments | BBC Earth - YouTube A world that demanded more every day. This is a fundamentally important documentary by a man trusted around the world, so ideally, this documentary should be seen by everyone, but the brevity of the biodiversity crisis, the potential impacts and the solutions would be educational to politicians worldwide. https://www.scripts.com/writer/david_attenborough/3824, Complete biography of David Attenborough , David Attenborough's Conquest of the Skies 3D, David Attenborough's Natural History Museum Alive. But in certain places, there are hot spots where currents bring nutrients to the surface and trigger an explosion of life. The great man has spoken. It worked out the secret of life long ago. We require wisdom. At first, the cause of the bleaching was a mystery. [Attenborough] By working hard to raise people out of poverty, giving all access to healthcare, and enabling girls in particular to stay in school as long as possible, we can make it peak sooner and at a lower level. A mass extinction has happened five times in life's four-billion-year history. Theres a chance for us to make amends, to complete our journey of development, manage our impact, and once again become a species in balance with nature. But if you get in a helicopter, you see that that is a strip about half a mile wide. Episode guide 1. Attenborough has lived through the initiation of the crisis when he was a small boy exploring the extinct species found in quarries in 1937, 66% of the planet was wilderness. 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. 75% of all species were wiped out. At times, our ancestors existed only in tiny numbers, but just over 10,000 years ago, that number suddenly stabilized and with it, Earth's climate. We urgently need society (and the politicians we elect) to recognize the broader destruction of our natural world by a thousand cuts, and refuse to accept this any longer. David Attenborough has seen more of the natural world than any other. David Attenborough and scientist Johan Rockstrm examine Earth's biodiversity collapse and how this crisis can still be averted. We must use this opportunity to create a more equal world and our motivation should not be fear, but hope. When Bernard Grzimek illustrated to the world in 1960 that wildlife needed huge areas, like the Serengeti, to persist, the planets wilderness had dropped to 62%. And the rich and thriving living world around us has been key to this stability. We can solve the problems we now face by embracing this reality. Each generation able to develop and progress only because the living world could be relied upon to deliver us the conditions we needed. When I was a boy, I spent all my spare time searching through rocks in places like this for buried treasure. Ten thousand years ago, as hunter-gatherers, we lived a sustainable life because that was the only option. . And the speed of global warming increases. Our planet becomes four degrees Celsius warmer. By and large, its a story of slow, steady change. They were virtually impossible to find. This was before any of us were aware that there were problems. Sir David Attenborough, who will present a new series about nature across the Uk an Ireland for the BBC. Narrated by David Attenborough. 1978 WORLD POPULATION: 4.3 BILLION CARBON IN ATMOSPHERE: 335 PARTS PER MILLION REMAINING WILDERNESS: 55%. We seem to have broken loose from the restrictions that have governed the activities and numbers of other animals. The earth is not "living" because of us, but we are living because of the earth. On current projections, there will be 11 billion people on Earth by 2100. In this future, we discover ways to benefit from our land that help, rather than hinder, wilderness. Its the only way out of this crisis we have created. We are ultimately bound by and reliant upon the finite natural world about us. David Attenborough climbs up a tree to capture a 12 Burmese python. Gorillas are the world'slargest primates andare gentle giants that have strong family ties. Um, so, the world is not as wild as it was. We filmed 650 species, and we traveled one and a half million miles. Translated on-screen subtitles for videos. Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet. There was an edge to our existence. We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe.If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly. People had never seen pangolins before on television. In such places, huge shoals of fish gather. Theres every reason to believe that the answer can be yes. But its possible to slow, even to stop population growth well before it reaches that point. Convert your audio or video into 99% accurate text by a professional. Your story put me in the shoes of the gorillas whose life got shortened. Within the span of the next lifetime, the security and stability of the Holocene, our Garden of Eden will be lost. On an expedition in New Guinea, the BBC film crew give gifts to the Biami tribe. Raising yields tenfold in two generations while at the same time using less water, fewer pesticides, less fertilizer and emitting less carbon. The ocean is a critical ally in our battle to reduce carbon in the atmosphere. David Attenborough Still Has Hope for Our Future At 94, the beloved British naturalist remains curious and optimistic. Ive seen it with my own eyes. The earths plants capture three trillion kilowatt-hours of solar energy each day. Below the line are a multitude of lifeforms. He meets the local people who are standing side by side with the wildlife at this pivotal moment in their history. A Life on Our Planet Quotes by Jonnie Hughes - Goodreads Can we fix climate problem in one generation? By Ed Yong. The deforestation of Borneo has reduced the population of orangutan by two-thirds since I first saw one just over 60 years ago. 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. Add English on-screen subtitles for videos.