This good Earth according to Attenborough
STRANGE and hopeful it is that, at the age of 94 years, David Attenborough looks back at the Earth whose cause he has documented fervently. Attenborough, a historian of nature, is back doing what he is good at: showing us how beautiful our planet is and how ugly we have made its future. Interestingly, for all the warnings of gloom and catastrophic future, Attenborough does something original—not to be a prophet a doom but a companion in looking for ways to heal the environment around us.
All this is in a documentary released by Netflix, called Life on Our Planet.
Attenborough takes us, at the opening of the documentary, to a place in Ukraine called Chernobyl. It is 1986. A nuclear power plant accident causes an explosion. People abandon their homes and the once bustling place is eerily quiet.
The next scenes show nature at its best and man at his worst.
We go with him in one of his earlier explorations, with a tribe in the New Guinea Highlands. In that remote village, we encounter men naturally living with nature, taking only what is necessary. There is no need for hoarding because the world, after all, is plentiful. It is a society that apparently has no notion of surplus and no idea about poverty.
Then he goes unafraid into the jungle and becomes the Natural Man. He is seen playing with gorillas, creatures described as our closest kin and yet victims of our encroaching into their homes. As always, and as true with naturalists, David Attenborough makes things appear easy and natural, including being pressed close to the ground by a gorilla that anytime can pin a human being to death. Or, maybe not.
Courage and candor are two things very clear in the persona of David Attenborough. If nature is worth preserving—and there is no question about this—it is because Attenborough makes it appear there is no wiser way to living in this planet than being conscious everyday about the danger we humans pose to the world.
David Attenborough uses footage from his long career defending the life and fate of Earth. Put together, the images and other additional photos are startling. From mountains unrecognizable from the air as we look down and puzzle over the kinds of plants making those intricate topographical designs, to the tiny and huge animals inhabiting the forests and plains, Attenborough shows us how fragile our planet has become.
Along the way, we get to know the young man in Attenborough, interested in fossils and the age of this Earth. This eagerness and openness to get to know more of our planet is captured in Attenborough sharing with us one of these discoveries—the view of the planet Earth taken from the satellite. He is a boy once more describing this “blue marble” of a planet. More than the splendor of that sight, Attenborough matter-of-factly announces the truth about Earth—it is finite.
All things are finite. All things are limited. These are the recurring thoughts of Attenborough. Even the sea, the wide expanse of blueness, is limited. The regular guy—and we are, in a sense, all regular guys apprehending the life of our planet—is made to realize the vulnerability of our home and ourselves.
In his earlier works, which are many, David Attenborough has brought back to us beautiful images of the Earth, its seas and rivers, plains and valleys. Those startling images are here and more. David Attenborough knows that when one talks about the need to preserve, protect and respect nature, the one lawyering for ecology and environment must present proofs of the beauty of those we should care for. And yet, photos, much as they paint a thousand words, are not enough. People need the rhetoric. David Attenborough does not fail. His narration delivered in that unhurried manner is an example of when to stop describing and when to start proposing action. Succinct and witty, full of charm but never smartalecky, Attenborough’s words become the most urgent plea for the crusade that is Earth.
The personal references abound and yet we cannot demand an apology for such. Attenborough has done so much documenting the fragility of the lands around us that when he makes his biography a reference, it comes familiar and accessible. He, for example, shares with us how in the year of his birth in 1926, the average temperatures were one degree cooler than what we are experiencing at present.
In his lifetime, the world population has ballooned beyond any one’s imagination. Deforestation is the order of the day and the oceans continue to warm rapidly. As forests disappear or thin out, animals lose their homes. The orangutans of Borneo are one of those displaced by a shift in the environment around them. One of the most frightening images in the documentary is the sight of ice melting. Those huge white icy mountains may be far from us but their implications on weather and flooding are so great, their meltdown might as well be in our neighborhood.
What separates David Attenborough’s plea for Earth from the more militant approaches we generally see in those environmental crusaders (and militancy is not bad) is how he does not blame anyone. This can be a flaw but, at the same time, a point for this documentary. The destruction of the planet has been devastating that blaming people for it will not work anymore.
The other half has Attenborough describing approaches in simple terms—from noting how certain societies have curbed the population growth, and how a strong regulation of the fishing industry will allow the oceans to replenish—and these are just some of his remarkable contribution. He asks us to notice the tendency for monoculture, which is the development of one particular species. He cites as an example the clearing of forests to allow the cultivation of oil palm. At this point, the camera grazes over the uniform row of planted trees, flat and regular, against the forest with all kinds of grasses, shrubs and trees, with different animals under and in them. In that
moment, we learn—and appreciate—biodiversity.
But if there is marvelous proposal among the many David Attenborough presents in this documentary, it is his call to rewild our planet. We have tamed the environment so much and rendered it in weak monochromes that it cannot anymore fight the variegated threats from the other elements in the planet. As in the opening, the documentary goes back to Chernobyl. Without the human population, the city, with its buildings and homes, have been overtaken by the forest once more. Trees grow on top of the tall roofs of buildings; homes are shrouded in deep greens. Animals roam the streets of Chernobyl. Even the wolf is back in Chernobyl. It is once more a clean, livable place.
Why should be save this planet? Shouldn’t we be saving the human groups first? David Attenborough, avuncular and more a teacher than a prophet, speaks how “it’s not really about saving the planet. It’s about saving ourselves.”
David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet is currently streaming on Netflix.