Summaries

Synopsis

From Pripyat (a Ukrainian city of 50,000 residents once upon a time), a deserted area after the nuclear disaster (Chernobyl accident in Apr 1986) (city was evacuated in 48 hrs), Attenborough gives an overview of his life. Interspersed with footage of his career and of a wide variety of ecosystems, he narrates key moments in his career and indicators of how the planet has changed since he was born in 1926. The wildlife and biodiversity live in a delicate balance on the planet. Plants and Animals sustain each other. Humans are killing the bio-diversity. If the natural world fades, the humans won't be able to live on the planet.

In 1937, world has 2.3 BN people, 280 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere and 66% remaining wilderness.As a child, Attenborough enjoyed studying fossils. Earth's history is one of slow and steady change. Mass extinction events. It is seen as a rock layer in between the mountains. There have been 5 such events in Earth's 4 Bn yr history. The last one ended the dinosaurs and 75% of all other species as well. Life had to rebuild.In the current period (the Holocene), the avg temp has stayed within a 1-degree range for more than 10,000 yrs. This has been due to forests and Phytoplankton locking away the carbon into giant sinks. Animals fertilize the soils in the plains. Jungles around the equator act as a store for the sun's energy and add moisture and oxygen to the planet. Polar ice reflects the sunlight back from the surface to keep the Earth cool. All this brought reliability of the seasons. Monsoons brought rains and life to the land. Holocene allowed mankind to thrive by building a society around agriculture.

in 1954, 2.7 Bn people, 310 ppm of carbon, 64% remaining wilderness.in 1960, 3.0 Bn people, 315 ppm of carbon, 62% remaining wilderness.His documentary career began in the 1950s when he began working for the BBC, a British public service broadcaster. He visited places such as the African Serengeti (endless plains), in which native animals require vast areas of land to maintain grazing patterns. If the grasslands diminished, the herds would also thin out and the entire ecosystem would come crashing down.In 1968, Apollo mission revealed Earth to be an isolated and vulnerable planet that required protection.

In 1978, 4.3 Bn people, 335 ppm of carbon, 55% remaining wilderness.Over time, he noticed a decline in wildlife when searching for fish or orangutans in Borneo or other animals which he was looking for as part of his documentaries. Only 300 gorillas were found in the remote jungles of Central Africa. whales were hunted down by the fleets. People's opinions changed only when they heard the mournful songs of the whales. Killing of whales changed from a sport to a crime.Human life grew unabated as it had no predators, and diseases were under control. Food could be produced to order. But humans started eliminating entire habitats. within 20 years, Borneo's rain-forest reduced by half. It was converted into a mono-culture of oil palm. The entire biodiversity of the rain-forest was lost.3 Trillion trees across the world have been cut down. We benefit from the timber and then farm the land that's left behind. Half of the rain-forests are already lost. Orangutans diminished by 2/3 in Borneo.

In 1997, 5.9 Bn people, 360 ppm of carbon, 46% remaining wilderness.Oceans were untouched by human presence. But now fishing fleets are easily able to locate the hot spots where the fish gather to get nutrients and converge on them. 90% of the large fish have been removed from the sea since the 1950's. Slowly their nets started to catch nothing as the fish disappeared. The large fish circulated the nutrients in the ocean to feed the plankton. without them, the nutrients are lost to the depths for centuries and the oceans start to die. Corals reefs turned white, as the algae died. Seaweed takes over and the reefs turns into wasteland. The ocean is also getting warmer. This was due to increase in carbon in the atmosphere.Till the 90's the oceans kept the temp stable by acting as a heat sink. But now the balance is being lost. The Earth is on avg 1 degree warmer than in the 1930's.

Areas of the Arctic or Antarctic were different to what the filming crew expected due to ice caps melting. Summer sea ice in the Arctic reduced by 40% in 40 yrs. The causes are Anthropogenic climate change and biodiversity loss pushing the planet towards a sixth mass extinction event over a period of centuries rather than the hundreds of Millennia that built up to previous mass extinctions.half of the fertile land is now farmland. Freshwater has reduced by 80%. 70% of the birds are domesticated. Humans are 1/3 of the weight of mammals on the planet. 60% of animals are raised to eat. The rest is only 4%.

in 2020, 7.8 Bn people, 415 ppm of carbon, 35% remaining wilderness.Attenborough describes the film as his "witness statement" and gives an impression of what could happen to the planet over the course of a lifetime beginning in 2020 and lasting as long as his own, were human activity to continue unchanged. The Amazon rain-forest could degrade into a savanna (losing its ability to produce moisture and altering the global water cycle); the Arctic could lose all ice during summer (sunlight is not reflected back and global warming increases) (Frozen grounds thaw, releasing methane and making climate change worse); coral reefs could die; soil overuse could cause food crises. These irreversible events would cause mass extinction (as the planet becomes 4 degrees warmer by 2100s) and exacerbate climate change further.

However, Attenborough describes actions which could prevent these effects and combat climate change and biodiversity loss. He asserts that the solution has been "staring us in the face all along. To restore stability to our planet, we must restore its biodiversity. The very thing that we've removed." He proposes re-Wilding; moreover, he says that bringing countries out of poverty, providing universal health-care and improving girls' education would make the growing human population stabilize sooner and at a lower level. Renewable energy such as solar, wind, water and geothermal could power all human energy usage in a sustainable way. Protecting a third of coastal areas from fishing could allow fish populations to thrive and the remaining area would be sufficient for human consumption. Humans changing their diet to eliminate or reduce meat in favor of plant-based foods could allow land to be used far more efficiently. Attenborough cites government intervention in Costa Rica causing deforestation to reverse, Palau's fishing regulations and improved use of land in the Netherlands as good examples.