David Attenborough talks about his new Netflix film

For over six decades, Sir David Attenborough has brought the wonders of the natural world to television screens around the world. But his new film, A Life on Our Planet, moves beyond wonder to deliver an urgent message about humankind's damaging impact on Earth and ways in which he's been adapting his own habits for the benefit of the environment. Sir David, you're 93. You've entertained us, informed us, educated and motivated for many decades in your television work. Aren't you tempted to hang up your boots? At some point you said that you had your share of the platform, television. Well, what has brought you back to centre stage? What else do I do? Sit in the corner and grumble? I don't think that. I like the natural world. I live in London, or West London, and I don't see enough of the natural world. I've spent my life going to interesting places and looking at interesting plants and animals. And if I can exploit invitations that come my way to enable me to go and look at interesting things, I go. And the film begins starkly in perhaps the strangest wilderness that you've visited, Chernobyl, where in 1986 a nuclear reactor exploded, a terrible accident, and the immediate evacuation of the entire city and the area around it meant that it has stood empty ever since. Why choose that? It was a man-made disaster. Was that part of your thinking? Because a man-made disaster is what faces us and what we are having to deal with. And it was emblematic of the problems that we have imposed upon the world and of the necessity for us to do something about it. But Chernobyl, just to flesh that out a bit, Chernobyl was a particular kind of nuclear accident. Thankfully, relatively few of those in the world and certainly not on that scale. You're talking about a different kind of risk, I think. Mainly on the timescale. What was the point about Chernobyl is that it happened bang like that and it was a catastrophe. What we're looking at now, with any degree of historical imagination, is a long protracted bang that is going on over decades. It started 100 years ago, 200 years ago, and we are now hearing the full effect of that explosion. In climate change? In climate change. And what's more, it's going on and we don't know where it's ending. One of the sort of interesting things about the way the debate has changed was that sense that your films have engendered a wonder that we would sit at home and, as you say, look at the aardvark or the rare species of bird and think, gosh, isn't nature marvellous in all its forms? Well, some environmentalists, notably George Monbiot here in the UK, have criticised you for focusing too long on that element of wonder, which I think he suspects is a rather passive response, and being sort of late on to climate change and the major challenges. What's your response? Yes, well, we're condensing time quite a lot in that question. And I was sent out by the BBC to make pictures of the natural world. And it wasn't widely seen in the 50s as being a crisis of by any manner of means. And it was only farsighted naturalists, like Peter Scott, who saw the impending dangers. When did you first feel the impending dangers or witness them? I suppose the first one that I really saw myself personally, as being a sign of things to come, was back in the late 50s, 60s, when the first time I saw a bleach coral reef. And I realised that the richest environment, the richest ecosystem the world's ever seen, was suddenly being wiped out. And we were doing it. Let's talk about the tone and the tone of the film that you've made now and how one judges it. Walking the line between wonder and warning, if you like. And I think that this film is rather different. The tone feels like a departure from things that you've done before. You said you don't want to be proselytising or alarmist. So how do you find the right tone that makes people alert, perhaps feel a bit anxious when they're watching something, but at the same time makes them still want to watch, not turn away? Well, you can say, which I think is true, that people won't care about things that they don't know about and have never seen. And that your first job is to make clear what a wonderful world the natural world is. And you can't expect people to spend money or time or worry or concern or political action about an issue about which they really know nothing. So one comes before the other. It's quite true that you've got to decide when you stop one and move to the other. But you've got to do both. What would you say to the notion that this kind of work preaches to the choir? It's very engaged in by those who are already concerned about climate change or keen to educate themselves further. But how would you convince someone who really needs convincing and has immense power, but is perhaps more sceptical or more limited in the reaction that they feel is appropriate? I'm thinking of someone like President Trump, for instance. How would you go about convincing him? I cannot imagine that I would have any effect at all on President Trump. President Trump's views have been firm and clear and well stated for a long, long time, and he's not going to shift them. I don't think he's susceptible to rational argument. So you don't think, because obviously you're interested in things like the Paris Accords, the big level, multilateral, government to government and broader agenda. Are you giving up a little too easily? I'm not giving in because I'm going on saying what I'm saying and doing the best of what I'm doing to the best of my ability. But the brick walls and heads come to mind, and I see no point in going on and on and on on this particular issue. Working on the basis that the United States of America is a democracy, I would prefer to talk to the voters whose minds, I hope, are still open and available to logical thought. Has it worked, Sir David? Have these films really worked to move public opinion? Well, all I can say is that things have changed, and changed radically. In the 1950s, I think perhaps people who appeared on television holding woolly monkeys and things, people thought they were entertaining and amusing and so on. But I didn't think they were particularly important. And that has changed radically. And it's difficult to know when it started. I would say perhaps about 10 years ago, perhaps not more than that, not much more than that anyway. After all, natural history programmes, for example, they were not shown on television in many countries. America's idea of a natural history programme was big game, and you couldn't persuade a network to do a programme about a wood wasp, you know, not for the life of you. Now that has changed, and changed worldwide. And people are now very well informed about the natural world. And I'm delighted that that should be so. People are more informed about the natural world. But what about their changes in behaviour? Very far from everyone who watches will think of going vegan, stopping flying or divesting from fossil fuels, perhaps in their pension portfolio. And indeed, I mean, which of those options do you act on most personally? Yes, I haven't eaten red meat for several years. And as a biologist, I never had any objection to eating red meat. I've decided that my digestion, my teeth suggested I'm an omnivore. And so if there's a biological logic, or morality, it was okay for me to eat meat, like a lion eats antelope. But I don't feel that now. And I just don't want to eat meat anymore. Do you fly less? Yes, I suppose I do. But I don't fly anyway, for fun. I fly as part of my job. I've been very lucky to see more than the world that I can possibly have imagined I would ever do. So I've had my fair share of that, of going out and looking at things. But so if I get on a plane these days, it's because I think it's worthwhile. Not because I think it's fun, but because I think it's worthwhile. The last couple of years have seen an unignorable new wave of environmentalism and protest movements linked to it all around us, sometimes in the streets, from Extinction Rebellion to school climate strikers, obviously motivated by Greta Thunberg and her example. Which of these movements do you feel the most affinity with and any risks to them? I think there's a risk about disobeying the law. In the end, we are all dependent on the law, and we have to follow it. I can see that if you're a young person, you get very impatient. The rest of the population don't see things as you are. But I think sticking to the law is rather important, because in the time that's going to come, when you've actually changed the law, you then have to actually say, oh, well, now we've got the law changed, you've got to do this. Well, those are disjunctions. And Greta Thunberg, blessing to the cause? Greta Thunberg has done marvels and wonders. And I think it's absolutely astonishing what she's done. And she's caused the most mighty potentates in the world to take breath and suddenly think about things. I have to ask you as a last question, whether you were ever thinking of hanging up your boots, and I suspect the answer might be not. You told me before we got started, someone came around to your house not long ago asking if you were still around, and you're actually planning to go back out on the road filming again. They did last night at 10 o'clock. Tell us a story. Tap on the door, and my daughter, who lives in the same house as I do, went to answer the door, and there was a chap from a newspaper, a respectable broadsheet, which I won't mention by name, who said, is it true that David Attenborough is dead? And she said, not as far as I know. It wasn't five minutes ago. Sir David Attenborough, thank you very much for joining us. Still very much alive. You can listen to the full interview in our podcast, The Economist Asks, every week we talk to a high-profile figure. Click the link opposite to find this episode, and thanks for watching.