Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumAttenborough "Extinction: The Facts". Watch online, or demand it if you can't
Last Sunday, the BBC broadcast "Extinction: The Facts" - Sir David Attenborough's latest documentary. I can't work out if it's viewable outside the UK here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mn4n
but if it isn't, make sure someone broadcasts it in the USA. Praise for it:
Twenty years ago, Sir David attempted to capture some of this with State of the Planet, a three-part series that directly examined issues such as habitat destruction and over-fishing. His 2006 programmes Are We Changing Planet Earth? and Can We Save Planet Earth? revisited these themes.
But such shows never had the impact of his other natural history work. His newest production Extinction: The Facts may change that. It is both beautiful and ugly. Uplifting and crushing.
Wondrous animals are shown, and in the next scene a scientists speaking directly to camera explains how they will soon vanish forever. Green tropical rainforests transform into barren red soils. Fish struggle in vast nets that are hauled to the surface in factory fishing ships. Its relentless and powerful. It may serve as the capstone to his remarkable career.
I will soon be teaching a new cohort of students about environmental change. It is hard to comprehend the sheer levels of destruction we have wrought on the biosphere. Extinction: The Facts begins to do that. And so it will be set as one of the readings for the course.
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/david-attenboroughs-extinction-is-so-relentless-and-powerful-im-going-to-teach-it-at-university-652318
Extinction: The Facts is a significant departure. As one of the programmes talking heads, I helped reveal the honest truth: in most places, remaining natural habitats are squeezed between intensive agriculture and urban sprawl.
...
Firstly, the film makes it clear that a key ultimate driver is consumption in rich countries. Given that the average Brit consumes more than four times the resources of the average Indian, reducing consumption in places like the UK is vital. This need not be painful. As the eminent Cambridge economist Partha Dasgupta says, 40 years ago people in the UK consumed a good deal less. But there is no evidence that we were unhappier then. The film starkly highlights what we are losing in exchange for out-of-season food, fast fashion and cheap poultry.
Secondly, having strong environmental standards for things produced in the UK (important though it is), is not enough. We also need to consider where the products we buy and the food we eat comes from if not, people in countries like the UK are simply offshoring environmental problems for others to deal with.
https://theconversation.com/extinction-the-facts-attenboroughs-new-documentary-is-surprisingly-radical-146127
And inevitably, The Usual Suspects gather to deny there is a problem:
The majority of scientists agree we're currently witnessing the start of the planets sixth mass extinction event, a scale of biodiversity loss the planet has not seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs around 66 million years ago. Unlike other previous mass extinction events that were caused by colossal asteroids and ferocious volcanos, the event has a very clear cause: humans and their deforestation, poaching, culling, hunting, pollution, habitat destruction, the introduction of invasive species, and climate change.
However, certain individuals and groups are attempting to resist the scientific evidence with a different narrative. Reporting in the journal Nature Ecology, an international team of conservationists argues that the new threat of extinction denial primarily fits into three main categories: 'species extinctions were predominantly a historical problem', 'economic growth alone will fix the extinction crisis', and 'technological progress and targeted conservation interventions will overcome extinction'.
The new study also claims that many scientific reports about biodiversity loss were met with a swathe of opinion pieces [that] criticized the report and attacked both the reputations of the reports authors and the process of estimating the total number of species threatened with extinction.
For example, in May last year, the Washington Examiner published an article titled How capitalism will save endangered species. The same week, The Spectator published This extinction warning just doesnt add up. Even just this past week, The Spectator published another story addressing a recently aired BBC documentary in a column titled What David Attenboroughs Extinction: The Facts didnt tell you.
https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/theres-a-new-antiscience-movement-creeping-into-the-mainstream-extinction-denialism/
alwaysinasnit
(5,038 posts)Goonch
(3,551 posts)alwaysinasnit
(5,038 posts)Delphinus
(11,808 posts)I will watch soon. I've already watched a DW film today about global sea level rise ... and I need to sleep tonight.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,160 posts)Everyone, apart from the right-wing contrarian Spectator, loved it:
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/david-attenborough-extinction-facts-review-bbc-documentary-new-b420994.html
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2020/18-september/books-arts/tv/tv-review-extinction-the-facts-the-romantics-and-us-with-simon-schama-and-opera-mums-with-bryony-kimmings
https://mashable.com/article/david-attenborough-extinction-the-facts/?europe=true
https://www.smh.com.au/world/shocking-attenborough-film-extinction-the-facts-moves-viewers-to-tears-20200916-p55w9f.html
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/sep/13/extinction-the-facts-review-a-heartbreaking-warning-from-david-attenborough
even the Telegraph, the Spectator's sister publication, but not quite so keen on being 'edgy':
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2020/09/13/extinction-facts-review-stark-warning-will-anyone-take-notice/
alwaysinasnit
(5,038 posts)muriel_volestrangler
(101,160 posts)so it should be on PBS some time.
callous taoboy
(4,582 posts)but a wake up call. I should probably go vegetarian. I had no idea how negatively poultry production impacts biodiversity. I hardly eat red meat any more.