National Post (National Edition)
GLOBAL MOURNING
A PERFECT PLANET TAKES A LOOK AT HOW WE CAN RESTORE THE ENVIRONMENT
A Perfect Planet Debuts Sunday, BBC Earth and Amazon Prime Video
Where in the world is David Attenborough? Honestly, everywhere. The 94-year-old natural historian has been travelling to remote lands and examining exotic species for TV audiences since the 1950s. Of late, he's been focused on the five-part BBC Earth series A Perfect Planet, for which he serves as narrator.
Journeying to 31 countries and filmed over four years, A Perfect Planet explores how forces of nature — volcanoes, sunlight, weather and oceans — support Earth's diverse wildlife. The final episode takes on the effect of humans, and how we can restore our equilibrium with animals and the environment.
Attenborough, executive producer Alastair Fothergill and series producer Huw Cordey spoke about the series, what humans can do to help Earth, and the moment captured on camera that Attenborough calls “extraordinary.”
Q Why is it important now to draw attention to the forces of nature that shape our planet?
A Attenborough: I think everybody understands now, worldwide, that we are at a crucial point. Our planet is poised close to real big disasters. We can stop these disasters, but in order to stop them we must understand what they are and how they work, and that's what this series does.
Q Can you tell us a bit more about the final episode and why it's important that humans are included in this series?
A Attenborough: The first thing I keep reminding myself is that there are three times as many human beings on this planet as there was when I first made a television program. I mean, this isn't something that's happened over eons of history — it's happening right now. If we don't sort out how we deal with this problem then we're in big trouble.
A Cordey: Our impact is now so great that scientists have suggested we have entered a new geological era, the Anthropocene — a period where human activity has been the dominant influence on the environment. We now release more carbon dioxide, through our burning of fossil fuels, than all the world's volcanoes — and this gas is destabilizing our weather, upsetting ocean currents and making our planet warmer. The consequences of this, if left unchecked, would be disastrous — not just for humanity but also for our great diversity of species. At the moment, we are losing species at a rate of more than 1,000 times faster than would be considered normal. It's why many scientists now
believe that we are in a sixth mass extinction. This episode shows how and why we have got to this position — but, and more importantly, it also reveals what we need to do to reverse the damage.
Q During the making of A Perfect Planet, was there a favourite moment that really stayed with you?
A Attenborough: There is a flamingos nesting sequence on Lake Natron in Tanzania that opens the first episode and it's one of the most memorable sequences that I've ever seen on television. Shot under extraordinary different circumstances it's impossible not to identify with these poor little chicks. It was filmed so beautifully with the use of drones, so skilful, and the pictures are planted in my mind. My goodness, it's extraordinary.
Q Did you film any new species?
A Cordey: The vampire finches we filmed for the volcano episode were only officially recognized as a new species in 2018. They live on a very isolated, uninhabited island in the Galapagos and nobody has filmed them for TV in over 30 years. Every episode in the series has animal behaviour that has never been filmed before, such as the black tip reef sharks beaching themselves to catch bait fish in Lizard Island, flamboyant cuttlefish mating and laying eggs, the cave-seeking giant tortoises of Aldabra, white wolves hunting musk oxen in the Polar night, and huge Nile crocodiles launching themselves out of the water to predate flocks of drinking quelea and bee eaters.
Q How important do you think A Perfect Planet is at this critical time when we're in a global pandemic?
A Attenborough: The remarkable thing is that this pandemic has made a lot of us suddenly become aware of the natural world. In our former busy lives we were running around — moving here, there and everywhere — now, many of us are stationary and stuck at home. Some of us are lucky enough to have gardens and I've never listened to more bird songs in my life since the pandemic started last spring. We've come to realize our dependency on the natural world, both emotionally and intellectually, in a way we never have before.
A Fothergill: It's funny when you start working on a series four year ago, you don't know how timely it's going to be, but it's turned out to be extraordinarily timely.
Q If there was one behaviour you could ask humans to change, to best reduce the impact of the climate crisis, what would it be?
A Attenborough: I would ask that we reduce the demands that each one of us make on our planet — our demands in terms of how much food we eat, what we throw away and what we use for our power to make sure that we don't produce carbon dioxide. If we can act with a little restraint in regards to how we treat the world around us, if all of us do this, our problems would be solved.