Last chance to put aside our differences to save the planet
Sir David’s hope for climate summit
SIR DAVID Attenborough has called for a complete change in attitudes if we are to save our planet.
Ahead of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow this year the TV naturalist demanded politicians “shed national interest for the international interest”.
He said the world did not want delegates returning from it, “beating their chests, saying ‘We won, we put it over them, we got more than they did.’”
Sir David, 94, added: “That time is passed.There has to be a complete revolution in attitudes to the world in which nations think it’s more important to get international agreements than particularly patriotic ones.”
Nations who have built wealth by exploiting other countries, needed to figure out how to contribute more than others that paid the price.
The UN conference in
November, may be the opportunity, Sir David said.
“Our last chance to preserve the planet with the richness that it has at the moment, which in itself is already reduced.
“One of the most fateful examples is, of course, the ocean. We surely [will] be able to get an agreement on the oceans.
“Mankind has destroyed vast wealth of the oceans.
“It’s absolutely clear there’s no argument about what overfishing does. There’s no argument
last the
about how, given the slightest protection, the seas can become marvellously productive.
“The rights and wrongs are absolutely clear. The only thing that prevents it happening is selfishness, and we can’t allow that.”
Sir David was speaking at the weekend as part of Earth Optimism, a global summit hosted online by Cambridge Conservation Initiative.
He was talking to TV Liz Bonnin. presenter