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Nature & the Environment16 min read
A Life on Our Planet
by David Attenborough
My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future
Published: December 13, 2020
4.6 (223 ratings)
Table of Contents
1
what’s in it for me? a sobering look at the state of our planet – and what to do about it.2
as attenborough got older, his fascination with the natural world gradually changed to concern.3
as attenborough traversed the globe, his concern for the natural world turned to alarm.4
if we don’t take action, our quality of life on earth will severely degrade.5
creating greater equality will help us slow down human population growth.6
rewilding the world will capture carbon, increase biodiversity, and safeguard our food supplies.7
switching to clean energy is the most important thing we can do to create a more sustainable future.8
final summaryBook Summary
This is a comprehensive summary of “A Life on Our Planet” by David Attenborough. The book explores my witness statement and a vision for the future.
what’s in it for me? a sobering look at the state of our planet – and what to do about it.#
Introduction
david attenborough a life on our planet
my witness statement and a vision for the future
narrated by marston york and maureg sims on april 26th 1986, one of the four reactors at the chernobyl nuclear power plant in what is now ukraine exploded.
more than 400 times the radioactive material released by the hiroshima and nagasaki atom bombs was carried all over europe.
it fell to the ground in raindrops and snowflakes and seeped into the soil.
it got into the food chain.
according to some estimates hundreds of thousands of premature deaths occurred as a result.
while the accident at chernobyl was arguably one of the greatest human-caused environmental catastrophes in history, we're living in the midst of an even greater one.
and it's happening right in front of our eyes.
it's the careless way we've taken our environment for granted, triggering the spiralling decline of our planet's precious biodiversity.
we're all culpable, but at the same time it's not our fault.
the previous generations who set up the damaging systems we now benefit from didn't know the true cost of what they were doing.
but we know.
and we have to change.
the good news is there's still time left, just a little, to do something about it.
as attenborough got older, his fascination with the natural world gradually changed to concern.#
chapter one of six.
when the author david attenborough was a child, he would spend whole days cycling around the countryside of leicester, uk, hunting for ammonites, small fossilised sea creatures from millions of years ago.
their spirally little shells, frozen in time in the limestone, sparked in the young boy a fascination with the natural world and the truths that govern it.
eventually he learned that the ammonites had died out during the last mass extinction, which is when an apocalyptic event caused by global change wipes out great numbers of species in one go.
the last mass extinction ended the 175 million year era of the dinosaurs.
in the millions of years since then, life rebooted into a long period of stability in which humans could eventually develop.
unlike any species before us, we were able to develop something utterly unique – culture.
through culture and our newborn ability to store and pass on knowledge from generation to generation, we developed ever more sophisticated ways to make the natural world easier to live in.
with this new power came tremendous responsibility.
the key message here is, as attenborough got older, his fascination with the natural world gradually changed to concern.
about 10,000 years ago, in what is today the middle east, people started farming grains and domesticating wild animals.
ultimately, they had enough surplus for some people to trade their crafts for food rather than spend time growing it.
this was the beginning of civilisation.
but each advancement these complex societies made relied on one thing – the stability of their environment.
as attenborough's career progressed from presenter to executive at the bbc, which he had joined in 1952, he began to realise that this stability was in peril for the first time in human history.
as he criss-crossed the world producing natural history programmes, he saw more and more evidence that humans were not only impacting the precious biodiversity of the planet, but causing habitats to disappear entirely.
in 1978, attenborough got a chance to travel to rwanda to film mountain gorillas.
what he found there changed his outlook forever.
he particularly remembers one surprising and very intimate encounter when a huge female gorilla appeared from a bush behind him and began playing with his face.
then he felt something land on his feet.
her two infants were playing with his shoelaces.
the situation for these human-like creatures was dire.
fewer than 300 individuals were left.
their habitat had been severely reduced as people cut down rainforest to create cultivated fields.
what's more, the gorillas were being killed by poachers who sold their severed body parts as souvenirs.
this was attenborough's first realisation that we were causing irreparable harm to the most precious of earth's wonders.
unfortunately, it was far from his last.
as attenborough traversed the globe, his concern for the natural world turned to alarm.#
chapter 2 of 6 by the end of the 1970s, attenborough's career as a television naturalist had taken off.
life on earth, the first series he produced after leaving his executive post at the bbc, was viewed by an estimated half a billion people around the world.
the 1978 series filmed over 200 animal species in over 30 countries.
it gave attenborough an unparalleled opportunity to tell the history of life as it had never been told before, as well as to witness first-hand what was happening to the natural world.
the key message here is, as attenborough traversed the globe, his concern for the natural world turned to alarm.
one of attenborough's biggest shocks came when he learned the plight of the blue whales, the world's largest animals.
whales are critical to the health of our oceans, and yet, over the course of the 20th century, humans have killed close to 3 million of these marine mammals.
this has brought the especially vulnerable blue whale to the brink of extinction.
but it wasn't just the whales.
over the next few decades, attenborough saw evidence of devastating environmental degradation and habitat destruction everywhere he went.
rainforests are some of the most biodiverse places on the planet.
they are home to more than half of earth's land-living species, who thrive in the rainforest's temperate climate.
but we are cutting down the rainforests at an astonishing rate.
when attenborough visited southeast asia in 1989, two million hectares of rainforest, roughly equivalent to the size of colombia, had already been replaced by oil palm plantations.
today, half the world's rainforests are gone.
the situation at our planet's poles is no better.
when attenborough began filming frozen planet in 2011, the world was one degree centigrade warmer than it had been when he was born.
that's the fastest change that has happened in the past 10,000 years.
summers at the poles are now lengthening, which spells all kinds of problems for our planet's future.
we have also poisoned the oceans by burning fossil fuels.
when we burn coal and natural gas, vast amounts of carbon dioxide captured by prehistoric plants are released into the atmosphere.
this causes increased acidity and higher temperatures in the oceans, which has led to massive coral reef die-off.
when healthy, these reefs are critical havens of biodiversity.
now, they're disappearing at a staggering rate.
attenborough's programmes have had some impact, though.
his team captured the first recording of whale song while filming life on earth.
these recordings captivated the public imagination and inspired anti-whaling activists to convince governments to ban whaling.
whale populations are now recovering as a result.
but, unless we take drastic action, swift action, life on earth will begin to degrade to the point of no return.
if we don’t take action, our quality of life on earth will severely degrade.#
link 3 of 6 david attenborough is now 94 years old.
he was 19 when the second world war ended and he began his career during the 1950s.
this was a time of great optimism and technological innovation.
people believed that there was no limit to what we could achieve.
little did we know that the seeds of our current discontent were already sprouting.
the 1950s is known as the great acceleration.
everything we did increased exponentially, from having children to greenhouse gas emissions to overfishing.
but there is only so much our planet can take and any biologist will tell you how this story ends.
once all the available resources are used up, there is a precipitous population decline.
the next 90 years will be known as the great decline.
the key message here is, if we don't take action, our quality of life on earth will severely degrade.
in the 2030s, just a decade from now, the amazon rainforest will collapse.
it will have been cut back so much that it's unable to produce enough moisture in its canopy to feed the rain clouds.
biodiversity loss will be catastrophic.
and the destabilisation of the massive rainforest will trigger unpredictable flooding, water shortages and wildfires all over south america.
fewer trees will mean less natural carbon capture, which will accelerate global warming.
global warming will also speed up in the arctic, which will see its first ice-free summer in the 2030s.
normally, the white ice reflects the sun's light back into space.
with no ice, the planet's natural air conditioner is effectively turned off.
in the 2040s, the arctic permafrost will thaw, triggering massive landslides and floods.
but water isn't the only thing locked away in permafrost.
it also stores huge amounts of carbon.
the thaw of the permafrost will release up to 1,400 gigatons of carbon in the form of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases, turning on a carbon tap that we will never be able to turn off.
in the 2050s, the oceans will be sufficiently acidic to kill 90% of all coral reefs.
fish populations will also suffer, ultimately signalling a death knell for the fishing industry.
but food production won't only be at risk in the water.
by the 2080s, food production on land will be in crisis due to soil exhaustion and insect die-offs.
by the 2100s, things will be so bad that a huge percentage of the world's population will be forced to migrate.
many of our cities will have become uninhabitable due to rising sea levels and the world's average temperatures will have increased by 4 degrees celsius.
more than a quarter of the population will live with an average temperature of 29 degrees celsius – heat experienced today only in the sahara.
nobody wants this to happen.
so how can we stop it?
creating greater equality will help us slow down human population growth.#
chapter 4 of 6 let's reiterate, the horror-scape described in the previous chapter is an outcome nobody wants to see happen.
it would spell death for many and a drastically reduced quality of life for many, many more.
but if we continue on the path we're currently on, the worst outcome is inevitable.
scientists have identified nine planetary boundaries – critical thresholds in earth's environment that allow us to lead a sustainable existence.
these are climate change, ozone layer depletion, ocean acidification, chemical pollution, fertilizer use, freshwater withdrawals, land conversion, biodiversity loss, and air pollution.
we have already crossed the thresholds for four of these.
but all is not lost.
we can slow and maybe even stop the destruction we're doing to the planet by taking radical, immediate action.
in the next couple of chapters, we'll learn how.
the key message here is, creating greater equality will help us slow down human population growth.
current un projections say that by 2100 there will be between 9.4 and 12.7 billion people on earth.
in wild populations, an environment's carrying capacity is the number of individuals in a species that can be supported.
when the population exceeds that number, individuals die off until the equilibrium is achieved again.
for population scientists predicting the future, the scariest thing is that we don't know the carrying capacity for humans.
and if our population doesn't level off before we reach this figure, we are in for a devastating catastrophe.
the good news is that our population can level off if we focus on making life better for everyone in the world.
as countries move along the path to development, their population first booms and then naturally levels off.
this is what happened in japan in the 20th century.
the country's population now hasn't changed since 2000.
and we see this happening all over the globe.
the rate at which the population is growing has slowed every year since 1962.
at some point we will reach the peak of human population size and from the planet's perspective, the sooner the better.
there are ways to encourage this peak to come sooner and at a lower threshold.
one way is through the empowerment of women.
we've seen time and again that when women have more freedom and control over their lives, they choose to have fewer children.
education is also a crucial factor.
by investing in education, predictions show that we could attain the peak 50 years earlier.
that means approximately 2 billion fewer individuals.
this would take a great deal of strain off our environment.
but it's still not enough.
rewilding the world will capture carbon, increase biodiversity, and safeguard our food supplies.#
chapter 5 of 6 it's no coincidence that as the world's biodiversity took a nosedive, the planet became increasingly unstable.
over the last decades we've learned that earth's biodiversity and our ability to live here comfortably are inextricable.
therefore, in order to restore stability, we need to create the conditions necessary for biodiversity to return.
we must re-wild earth.
the fact that no one owns international waters has meant that fishing crews have fished with reckless abandon, using destructive techniques like trawling that have obliterated habitats and caused fish populations to plummet.
to stop this, we must designate all international waters as no-fish zones.
this would restore the high seas to a flourishing wilderness that would seed coastal waters with more fish than they've had in decades.
the key message here is, re-wilding the world will capture carbon, increase biodiversity and safeguard our food supplies.
but regulating high seas fishing isn't enough.
nutrient-rich coastal waters are havens of biodiversity.
to protect them, we should create a network of no-fish zones in coastal waters throughout the world.
to see how this strategy can succeed, let's turn to cabo pulmo at the tip of baja, california in mexico.
in the 1990s, this area was so heavily overfished that the fishing community was desperate for a solution.
they finally agreed to set aside over 7,000 hectares of their coast, about the size of iceland, as a marine protected area.
that meant no fishing at all for 15 years.
the following years were the hardest ones the community had ever experienced.
but slowly, fish came back to the waters off cabo pulmo, and their shoals began to grow larger.
after 15 years, marine life in the zone had increased by more than 400%.
sharks returned to cabo pulmo, something older fishermen could only recall from their childhoods.
once the 15 years were up, fishermen were finally granted restrictive permits allowing them to fish again in the coastal waters.
they caught more fish than they had in decades.
and the teeming seas also opened up new revenue streams, dive shops and guesthouses.
preserving wild land, on the other hand, is a different story.
land is owned by people, and we think we know its value.
but in reality there's no way of calculating the true value of the environmental services that wild land provides.
on paper, 100 hectares of rainforest is less valuable than 100 hectares of oil palm plantation.
moving forward, we have to change the meaning of value.
instead of valuing land based on what crops we can grow, we should price it according to its biodiversity.
if we did this, deforestation would stop immediately.
but even these solutions aren't enough.
in the final chapter, we'll find out how we can switch to clean energy and green our farms.
switching to clean energy is the most important thing we can do to create a more sustainable future.#
chapter 6 of 6 in order to slow and hopefully stop the damage we've already done to the planet, we have to return to an older way of doing things.
rather than being apart from nature, we must return to being a part of nature.
that doesn't mean we have to abandon technology and live off the grid.
technology actually has a very important role to play in creating a more sustainable world.
most critically, we need to harness technology if we're going to switch from fossil fuels to clean energy at the rate we need to.
this is far from impossible.
entire nations, including albania, iceland and paraguay, now generate all their energy without fossil fuels.
it's just a matter of will.
the key message here is, switching to clean energy is the most important thing we can do to create a more sustainable future.
human development has been powered by fossil fuels.
since the 1950s, we've returned millions of years' worth of carbon back into the atmosphere.
our thoughtless use of fossil fuels has created the most urgent challenge we have ever faced.
now, we have less than a decade to switch to clean energy harvested from natural sources like the sun, wind and waves.
we've already raised the average temperature on earth by 1 degree celsius.
if we are to retain our way of life we must not allow it to exceed 1.5 degrees celsius, which is on track to happen by the end of this decade unless we take counteractive measures.
we've made some important strides, but the technology isn't there yet.
the most serious challenge however is how to divest from powerful oil and gas companies.
at present, every government and large company depends on fossil fuels for their power and distribution.
how do we move away from the damaging status quo?
most people agree that a carbon tax would be the best way to limit our reliance on fossil fuels.
this means that any entity emitting carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases would have to pay a financial penalty.
sweden introduced a tax like this in the 1990s and many of its sectors have since divested from fossil fuels.
carbon capture technology, which would pull carbon dioxide out of the air and trap it, also shows promise.
but the original carbon capture technology is still the best.
it's called plants.
if we rewild the world, untold amounts of carbon dioxide can be pulled from the atmosphere.
it's here that we all should be investing, and where we must if we are to have a future on this planet.
you've just listened to a chapters to a life on our planet by david attenborough.
final summary#
Conclusion
the key message in these chapters is that our actions over the past decades have led to catastrophic environmental degradation.
we are on track to hit calamity unless we take urgent action to rewild the world, end our dependence on fossil fuels and restore biodiversity to our suffering planet.
here's some actionable advice.
meat, especially beef, requires an incredible amount of resources to produce.
meat and dairy production actually takes up 80% of farmland worldwide.
to have a real impact on the world of the future, we will all need to eat less meat moving forward.
do you have some feedback for us?
we're working on improving our audio content, and you may have just noticed that these chapters were a little bit different.
we'd love to hear what you think about our use of sounds and music to enhance our content.
so just drop us an email to remember at summarybook.org with a life on our planet as a subject line and let us know your thoughts.
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