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Issue 34
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In an exclusive interview, Sir David Attenborough talks to Emma Gregg about his most memorable moments on location in Africa and his passionate concern for the planet we all share.
 I'm sitting in the living room of Britain's best-known and best-travelled naturalist and broadcaster, and he’s a little agitated.
“Ten years ago I was as sceptical as anyone,” he says, gesticulating emphatically, “but now, there’s absolutely no doubt that climate change really is happening. There are records in ice bubbles which go back millions of years. If you draw a graph mapping global temperature against industrialisation patterns and human population growth, it’s crystal clear. And we can see the effects, not just in Africa but in all the continents. It’s extraordinary that any of those in positions of power continue to deny the evidence.”
Sir David Attenborough is one of the most respected figures in broadcasting – in fact, in a recent poll commissioned by Reader’s Digest, he was voted the most trusted person in Britain. His voice, one of the most distinctive on television, is known to millions of viewers both in his home country and around the world. Over the years, we’ve listened enthralled as he has expounded on every subject from the social lives of meerkats to the sex lives of tropical plants. Off screen, the breathy intonation and endearingly theatrical delivery are muted, but there’s no mistaking his earnest conviction when he warms to the theme of his forthcoming BBC documentary, The Truth about Climate Change.
“I witnessed the direct impact of global warming time and time again while filming Life in the Undergrowth”, says Sir David, referring to his series about invertebrates, screened in late 2005. “There’s been a shift in the timing of natural events, and traditional patterns of insect behaviour have had to alter.”
Until recently, campaigning messages have taken a back seat to the straightforward science in Attenborough’s documentaries. Considering himself a storyteller and enthusiast rather than an activist or an overt polemicist, he has preferred to downplay his opinions on key conservation issues, communicating them with subtlety and care. He’s also highly selective about the movements and organisations with which he associates himself (the World Land Trust is a particular favourite). But ever since State of the Planet, screened in three parts at the turn of the millennium, his work has begun to address environmental concerns head on.
Attenborough considers State of the Planet a milestone in his career. It took as its premise the chilling prediction that, thanks to humanity’s relentless onslaught on the environment, we are on the verge of a mass extinction of animal and plant species. The footage switches between intimate close-ups of life in the wild and epic aerial shots designed to put the whole planet into perspective, shaking us awake. The African sequences remind us that there’s far more to the continent’s biodiversity than the megafauna which fill the glossy books and brochures: in fact the savannahs teem with tiny life forms, all crucial to the natural balance. If we lose just one species from the ecosystem, the consequences could be significant: driver ants alone, for example, consume more animal matter than all the large mammalian predators put together.
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