‘Moment of crisis’ has come in fight to save the planet
DAVID Attenborough has warned that the ‘moment of crisis has come’ in the fight against climate change.
The 93-year-old naturalist said people have been ‘putting things off year after year’ but that ‘we can no longer prevaricate’.
He warned of the need for ‘compelling life-or-death decisions’ and said change would not be achieved by ‘appeals to different kinds of optimism’.
He singled out China, saying ‘bigger-scale’ decisions were needed from the country, and that ‘everybody else’ would then ‘fall into line’. Mr Attenborough was speaking to the BBC as part of yesterday’s announcement by the corporation that it was stepping up its coverage of climate change, with special programming, coverage and debates, under the Our Planet Matters banner.
Mr Attenborough will present one-hour BBC show Extinction: the Facts, which looks at the fragility of the natural world. In his interview, he said south-east Australia was currently ‘on fire’ because of the ‘temperatures of the earth are increasing’.
He branded claims that the devastation was not to do with the issue as ‘palpable nonsense’. He said: ‘We have been putting things off year after year. We’ve been raising targets and saying, “Oh well, if we do it within the next 20 years”. The moment of crisis has come. We can no longer prevaricate.’
He added: ‘We can’t go on saying, “But there is hope and we’ll leave it till next year”. We have to change and we have to change not by appeals to different kinds of optimism, but to deliberate, compelling, lifeor-death decisions.’
The veteran broadcaster continued: ‘There has been a huge change in public opinion.
‘People can see the problem, particularly young people can see the problem and that must force governments to take action.’ He added that ‘this is an urgent problem that has to be solved’.