For over 15 years, Sir David has been at the forefront of efforts to move the dial on climate change and during the last decade his warnings have became even bleaker. <\/p>
The fluffy albatross chick reduced many of us to tears. Hurled off its nest by 110kph winds, it was flat on its back in the mud, while its father looked down helplessly. At last, like a tiny mountaineer in the eye of a ferocious storm, the bedraggled youngster heaved itself back up into the warm embrace of its parent.<\/p>\n
Distressed viewers breathed a sigh of relief. However, Sir David Attenborough\u2019s commentary left them in no doubt \u2013 other chicks would not be so lucky.<\/p>\n
Harrowing sequences such as this clifftop drama, filmed in South Georgia for 2019\u2019s Seven Worlds, One Planet<\/em>, have become harder to avoid during Sir David Attenborough\u2019s more recent series.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n There\u2019s no getting away from it: filming the natural world means not shying away from potentially upsetting scenes of wildlife confronting mortal challenges. Storms, floods, droughts, wildfires. Melting ice. Food shortages. Lack of mates and nest sites. Plagues of parasites.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Climate change poses an existential threat to life on Earth, and the wildlife film industry \u2013 with Sir David as its unofficial figurehead \u2013 has for a while now had to grapple with this inescapable reality in its storytelling. It is no longer tenable to relegate the environmental impacts to a few closing comments at the end of a programme.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Natural-history film-makers have increasingly found themselves reporting from a war zone. More of them have come to see part of their role is akin to that of war correspondents. By showing us what things are like on the front line, they hope to influence hearts and minds back home and, perhaps, stop these tragedies happening.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Even children\u2019s TV features content about climate change these days, with animated Netflix series Octonauts: Above and Beyond <\/em>one of the first shows to put the subject front and centre, managing to inform a young audience without scaring it witless.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And for over 15 years, Sir David has been at the forefront of efforts to move the dial on climate change, thanks to his unrivalled position as a massively popular broadcaster respected throughout the English-speaking world. When he says something, we tend to listen. As Chris Packham remarked, we care because we trust him.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n During the last decade, the nonagenarian presenter\u2019s warnings about the climate crisis have became even bleaker.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Take this example: \u201cOur blind assault on the planet is changing the very fundamentals of the living world. We have overrun the Earth.\u201d There\u2019s a lot more like this in his important book A Life on Our Planet<\/em>, published in 2020, which has the uncompromising air of a manifesto.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In the final moments of 2022\u2019s Frozen Planet II<\/em>, a beautiful yet heart-rending series in which the effects of a rapidly heating planet were brutally apparent, Sir David exhorted the watching millions: \u201cIf we can do something about it, then do it. We can<\/em> do it. We must<\/em> do it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But the owner of a voice once voted Britain\u2019s most popular has not always been a campaigner \u2013 far from it. Sir David\u2019s early outings in front of the camera, such as the Zoo Quest<\/em> expeditions to the tropics in the mid-1950s and 1960s, can today seem breezy and insouciant about the threats to nature; often uncomfortably so.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In later interviews, however, he is quick to hold up his hands. He would be the first to admit that many of the assumptions made when Zoo Quest<\/em> first aired on the BBC were simply plain wrong.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Sir David alludes to this shift of attitudes and presenting styles in A Life on Our Planet<\/em>, where he reflects on a 70-year career: \u201cAs a young man, I felt I was out there in the wild, experiencing the untouched natural world. But it was an illusion.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe tragedy of our time has been happening all around us, barely noticeable from day to day \u2013 the loss of our planet\u2019s wild places, its biodiversity.\u201d Failing to act earlier, Sir David concludes, has been \u201cour greatest mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Climate-change science actually has a surprisingly long history. The brilliant American scientist Eunice Newton Foote, for instance, proved in 1856 that atmospheric carbon dioxide had the potential to warm the planet\u2019s climate. But it was not until the 1970s that the power of the \u2018greenhouse effect\u2019 to change climate at frightening speed \u2013 within human lifespans \u2013 finally came to dominate scientists\u2019 thinking. During the 1980s, this developed into a scientific consensus, helped by the University of East Anglia\u2019s establishment of the first global surface air temperature record.<\/p>\n