Top man, lives up on Richmond Hill and absolutely loves it - when asked about his travels and adventures and where he would choose to live, he replied, "I already live there"
Fairly well-known locally is that my favourite bookshop, The Open Book in Richmond, stocks signed copies of all his books. They used to be signed directly on the page, but since he got to the mid-to-late nineties in age, tons of hardbacks are too much, so Helena wanders up there to get a load of bookplates signed these days.
Apart from that, I order all my books from them when I'm in London and a subsequent chat with Madeleine usually lasts ten times as long as the book shopping.
Anyway, I digress, yes, Sir David, amazing body of works and the books are wonderful.
Whilst we're doing random anecdotes that vaguely link to him, my late grandfather remembered David from his Wyggeston days as a good rugby player, which is a funny way to imagine him. Apparently he had the voice even then, but not so much to say about the world.
I always find it really weird when somebody on the anonymous internet talks about local places as if we're all neighbors or something. Googling "Richmond Hill" gave me multiple pages of results that had nothing to do with the one that Attenborough lives at.
Not to sound hipster about it, but if it's done in this way I find it charming. I also had to piece it together, which took me on a little virtual travel tour, and had me wonder about what Richmond Hill means to the locals. Rather fitting in context, too.
The "everyone on the internet is American" stuff in e.g. politics or job market convos is a lot more grating.
You had context, it piqued your interest and you did a tiny amount of work to figure it out. You could have quit without all three but you didn't; I wish the internet had a lot more of these types of experiences. It's only in the last ~25 years when the Internet became an anonymous place where we aren't all neighbours, and I mourn the loss.
The hill offers the only view in England to be protected by an Act of Parliament—the Richmond, Ham and Petersham Open Spaces Act passed in 1902—to protect the land on and below it and thus preserve the fine views to the west and south. Two years before the wooded isle centrepiece of the view, Glover's Island (also known as Clam Island), was bought by a local resident and given to the Richmond Corporation (Borough) in return for the latter noting against its records that it and its successors would not develop the isle.
In hindsight it maybe should have also been obvious from the language alone. "Richmond Hill" feels a bit like saying "Rich Hill Hill" which is basically like saying "Wealthy Desirable Area."
BTW there is a linguistic tradition of “hill hill”. When new immigrants come to an area and ask the locals what that hill is called, the locals say “big hill” in their language. The newcomers call it “bighill” hill in their language. I forget the examples but this has happened enough in England that there are places whose names are five hills deep (Brythonic -> Latin -> Saxon -> Norse -> Norman).
One of my favourite quotes from the late Terry Pratchett:
> When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalised in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don't Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool.
I get where he's coming from, Attenbrorough is vocal about being a londoner to the point he has a whole documentary about the city, and he's very present in UK media.
I get why it doesn't seem so obvious from the outside, but for British people it's as obvious as Apple headquarters being in California.
Just around the corner from The Open Book is Richmond Green. And that's where David Attenborough's brother lived; Richard Attenborough. Jurassic Park at the bottom of Richmond Hill and Blue Planet at the top of the hill.
Oh and if you were at Richmond Green today, you could have gone to the May fair.
He was just mentioned on today's Lateral podcast with Tom Scott.
Apparently, he's the reason tennis balls are yellow.
I guess they were traditionally white but when they started broadcasting matches on TV it was too hard to see the ball.
David who was at the BBC at the time suggested they use yellow balls instead so they would come through on camera. Ever since then tennis balls have been yellow.
> David who was at the BBC at the time suggested they use yellow balls instead
Apparently he didn’t explicitly say they should be yellow, he just said the white didn’t work, the ITF chose yellow after research and studies.
Ironically, Wimbledon was the last venue to switch to the colour, despite David influencing the decision to change it.
> In 1972 the ITF introduced
yellow tennis balls into the rules of tennis, as research had shown these balls to be more visible to television viewers. Meanwhile Wimbledon continued to use the traditional white ball, but eventually adopted yellow balls in 1986.
But what is the oldest color photo of white ball tennis?
Also, do we have a good source for this story, because it’s not mentioned on Wikipedia: ”In 1972, the International Tennis Federation introduced yellow balls, as these were easier to see on television. Wimbledon continued using white balls until 1986.”
A true hero in my life. I had VHS copies of Trials Of Life that I wore out through watching over and over as a child. It opened my eyes to the world and wonder of nature. In college I started hunting down every single appearance he had listed in any filmography I could find and have a hard drive in my attic with all but a couple of his earliest Black and White appearances from the earliest part of his career. I haven’t kept up with it with the newest stuff in the past 15 or so years but I definitely need to pull that out and see if I can finalize his catalog.
lol, I’ve seen everything and scramble to VPN or download anything released as soon as it comes out (it’s usually BBC and not available in my region). It brings that childhood nostalgia right back!
Luckily my wife thinks it’s cute
>I definitely need to pull that out and see if I can finalize his catalog
This is what I've been doing over the last few months. Quite a lot is available for free on the Internet Archive, if you look. I just finished the 5-part "Life in the Undergrowth" (2005), about insects and other small critters. Wonderful.
He definitely influenced my life and choices; some of the strongest memories of my youth in the '80s are tied to his documentaries Life on Earth and The Living Planet. I was lucky to live in the countryside and near a beautiful lake but his documentaries expanded my horizons so much more. I didn't love watching TV but that content was a magic window. They were dubbed by the magnificent voice of Claudio Capone and skillfully commented by Piero Angela, who died recently at 93. Piero was the most prominent Italian science journalist and his own career shaped TV and spanned 70 years.
Their work made me and my family definitely more environmentally conscious.
I don't doubt this content will have a lasting impact on humanity even if we can't clearly discern its effects right now.
Happy Birthday David! I'm so happy you are still alive and well.
I just love those documentaries where he starts off in Europe following some bird and ends up on a rock in the middle of the ocean. And he's been at it since when the world was much bigger. What a life!
It's also fascinating to see he is still active with regards to BBC documentations. I watched some newer BBC documentaries with other people voicing it, and while they are not terribly, all (!) of those newer guys are significantly more boring than even an old David. David understands things better than the newer guys do.
I'll never forget the disgust amongst me and my friends when we found out that American television had replaced Attenborough's documentary voice with Oprah fucking Winfrey. Cultural vandalism.
Well, one brother lived til 90, which is still above average, and iirc he only died because of complications of a fall and would have lived longer without that bad luck. And one other brother who lived to 84 and was taken out by a rare neurological disease.
So it's probably just that he has genetics for longevity in his family. And they were all wealthy which helps
He travelled with them on numerous occasions. In some of his earlier programmes, you can see him on location in the most farflung corners of the world. I am sure he has been to the Galápagos and Antarctica, on multiple occasions. In more recent times, Attenborough has just tended to do the voiceovers.
Maybe they won't: AI versions of his voice pop up everywhere now (especially older Attenborough) including on YouTube videos about Irish Republicanism of all things.
There's a rumour, probably apocryphal, that Richard Attenborough only got his knighthood because of David.
Somebody at the palace or the civil service was reviewing the nominations, saw "David Attenborough" and thought "that's a typo, they must have meant Dickie Attenborough".
The sad thing is Attenborough has lived to see the destruction of nature he loved so much. His constant warnings have gone mostly unheard. In some ways I think excellent nature programming like his own Nature is doing a disservice by making it seem like there's lots of wild nature left.
I wish humans would come together to re-wild more of the earth. Restoring wild nature and cutting emissions is the only way to really restore natural ecosystems. We're nowhere close to doing that.
I would strongly push back on that. In most developed countries, natural wilderness is at its highest rate in hundreds of years. China's turning around the world with solar panels, all that. I wouldn't call the current state of things backsliding at all.
Even granting your numbers, you're measuring the wrong thing. Wilderness acreage and emissions trends are not ecosystem health.
Citing a wilderness figure for developed countries is misleading. Most of it is ecologically vacant--second-growth and tree plantations sans apex predators, large herbivores, intact soil biota, etc. Tree cover is not a functioning ecosystem. Developed countries have exported their ecological destruction: the beef, soy, palm oil, and minerals driving habitat loss in the tropics get consumed in the same places where the domestic "wilderness" figures look great.
The Living Planet Index (actual wild vertebrate populations) is down 73% on average since 1970. North American bird populations are down ~3 billion over the same period. Terrestrial insect biomass shows steep decline in studied regions. None of that shows up in "how much undeveloped land exists" or "how many solar panels got installed."
China's solar buildout is great news for climate, but climate is one driver among several. Habitat fragmentation, pollution, and overfishing don't get solved by the energy transition. You can decarbonize the entire grid and still preside over a mass extinction.
And in developing countries too. People may not realize that when there's no industrialization, people still need fuel. So they cut down tree that they could walk to. Just look at the pictures missionaries and travelers took in China a hundred years ago. Wherever there were people, there were only barren land. Heck, it was like that even in the early 80s in some places.
You do know that in china while renewables are 30-40% of installed capacity(how many GWh they can theoretically produce), they are a smaller portion of generated capacity because if inefficiency of grid, intermittency if sun and wind. They are a smaller ~9-10% of Total Energy consumed (which is much bigger pie including for e.g. gas cars, jet fuel, diesel etc), right?
They may be able to distribute all solar panels and wind turbines worldwide; in the end that is just tiny-potatoes good because those markets are not that big. But when it comes to getting to energy independence they are using an "all of the above" strategy to get there. Planetary catastrophy can take a back seat to socio-economic unrest due to less/no money and opportunities for people.
Too little too late. China's coal emissions declined last year by a whooping 0.3%... after decades of increasing.
We should be already reducing emissions, not flattening the curve
Every Nature documentary that ends with David Attenborough saying "there is still time to revert this destruction of natural habitat" makes me want to turn of the TV. I understand David's motivation (instill some catalyst for change) but I am with that other David - David Suzuki.
As per David Suzuki: it is shit, it will get shittier, responsible people should act accordingly [0]: <<"The science has said, ‘We have passed a tipping point, we cannot go back,'" Suzuki said. Survival in a warming world, he says, will increasingly depend on the resilience of local communities — and preparation must start now.>>
Many things are the truth, so it's really a question of framing. Another truth: humans have done reversible and irreversible damage to their natural environment; they can collectively reverse some of the damage and prevent further reversible and irreversible damage.
To focus on only irreversible damage -- especially as David Attenborough, somebody who over the better half of a century has earned massive respect and trust from people all over the world -- would be wildly irresponsible.
fwiw a lot of his programming has for decades included explicit conservation messaging and warnings about climate change, disappearing habitats, etc. It's an old strategy (and one he helped invent) of making people care about the thing they're seeing before telling them it's being destroyed.
Looking at EU, the problem do not seem that his warning has not been heard. People see how thing has gotten worse and have heard the warning. The problem is that people can't agree on what to do next. Just looking at the energy discussion in EU, half of those want to use natural gas in Peaker Plants, and the other want to use nuclear, and the result was that both strategy got the EU stamp of green with neither side agreeing with each other. By both sides opposing each other strategy, the result is that very little change happen at all.
A similar situation exist with hydro power. We know that it is causing major extinction of species that depend on migration, with major harm to the ecosystem, and yet no one want to give it up despite being fully aware of the harm. Removing hydro do not fit any of existing strategies and so the current situation, as unreasonable it is, continues unchanged.
I have also seen similar issues here on HN when people discuss emission per capita vs absolute emissions. A large portion of people who heard the warning and are aware of the effect of global warming, would still argue that reducing emissions where emissions are being created is unfair if emissions per capita is relative lower compared to other places. The two camps created from this has opposing strategies, even if both camps agree with the current situation.
Ultimately, it speaks to people's lifestyle choices. In the US people are used to a particular standard of living: driving big cars and eating big steaks. If you tell people you can't have those things, they will have a visceral reaction. Politicians caught wind of this and turned it into a divisive left vs right debate. Im oversimplifying, but at the core its an incentives problem: Why should I tighten my belt today for some future payoff I may not even be around to see?
It's more like - why should I tighten my belt today when the celebrities, politicians and corporations making a big fuss about climate change are still flying around in private jets, buying up coastal property, eating steaks and are responsible for the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions?
The people spreading fear about environmental collapse and claiming to be terrified of it, are displaying behaviors that contradict their claims. The people saying the ocean is rising and going to swallow communities while buying mansions on the coast and flying around in private jets, are either displaying extreme cognitive dissonance or aren't really that concerned with the environment collapsing. If it were one or two individuals displaying this behavior I'd blame cognitive dissonance, but it's pretty much every high-profile politician / celebrity.
He did mention in one of the planet earth 2/3 series how so much of the land is used for farmed animals.
And, for the sake of completeness of argument, for restoring what was lost, the challenge is how to raise the standard of living fast enough for people so they give a damn about anything apart from ourselves was THE challenge to combat climate change and global ecological disaster. He specifically mentioned e.g. educating girls and making older-aged societies more propsperous. Prosperous people can make better choices about farmed animals as food.
Extremely insightful re: capacity to care for others.. though the trend of "NIMBY" and "petite-bougie" ideology (a more modern term being "temporarily embarrassed billionaires") and pretty much the guiltless profit maximization of the oligarchy point to that hypothesis being another form of trickle down economics (only the "prosperous" part. the educating women part should be a given, but if you read the comments in a recent frontpage post about humanitarian aide, the findings of those with decades in direct involvement pointing to "gender empowerment" and road infrastructure as most impactful long-term were met with the same "pronoun" schtick.
Modern agriculture, both animal and non-animal versions, are bad for the environment. Artificial fertilizers, replacing forests with farm land, and drainage of wet lands are all heavily contributing to emissions and water pollution, destroying local ecosystems as well as warming the planet. Artificial fertilizers is particular bad since its production uses fossil fuels, has large amount of accidental green house emissions, and causes eutrofiering to the point of areas like the baltic sea becoming basically dead from loss of oxygen. Runoff from farms are also now the primary cause of ecosystem collapse in fresh water lakes.
The most impactful elements of modern agriculture are entirely animal-based. Full-stop.
You in fact rightfully but incompletely recognize : artificial fertilizers (for giant mono-crop fields of soybeans to feed to cows and pigs [0]), replacing forests (to clear room for soybean fields and pasture for cows and pigs [1][2]), and runoff of these fertilizers and manure into waterways. The parent comment is right - if we want to fix these problems, we must stop killing and eating animals at such an industrial and horrendous scale.
If it was a competition in who did more harm the distinction may be relevant but in terms of saving the environment and turning back the ecosystem back to a sustainable one, the distinction between animal based or non-animal based is mostly irrelevant. Modern agriculture are not sustainable for the environment. The fossil fuels that are pulled from the earth and put on fields are not sustainable, and the amount of run off that goes into the water are destroying ecosystems with no time table if they ever can recover. When different species goes extinct they stay extinct, and the distinction that "well, its not as harmful as animal-based agriculture" will not bring them back. The Baltic Sea an loud warning signal of what happens if we continue to go down this path of modern agriculture.
One of the few areas of sustainable farming is aquaculture like shellfish and seaweed, which could actually be used to reduce the negative effects caused by modern farming. If there were a competition in least amount of harm, those would likely be the winners.
Fields of corn or soybeans will still exist without animal-based agriculture, especially with current demand for biofuels. As long as the land can be farmed to generate revenue, people will farm it. Artificial fertilizers is the primary enabler of this.
No one is saying fields of corn and soybean wouldn't exist, but we would have far less of them without animal agriculture. You are creating a false dichotomy of "sustainable"/"not sustainable" the reality is human societies would be much more sustainable without animal agriculture. More sustainable does in fact result in less extinctions/ecosystem impact and reduced climate change.
Maybe I'm wrong but reading your comment it feels like you are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and you use your conclusion that we will never be sustainable as your excuse to continue to eat animals.
> No one is saying fields of corn and soybean wouldn't exist, but we would have far less of them without animal agriculture
There is no evidence that there would be far less farm fields without that. Farm fields exists if there is profit to be had. Right now the demand for biofuels are directly competing with the demand for animal feed. Farmers will primary grow and sell crops based on what pay the most, and can easily switch if one pays more than the other.
Notice that none of those says that farmers would not use the fields if the current most price worthy crop would go away. Farmers choose what to farm based, among other things, the market. If you remove animal agriculture, you don't get far less fields. You get fields with a different crop in them.
The only thing that will stop farming is either if the external cost of farming is applied, such as pollution, or if climate change makes farming the land unprofitable. Currently that pollution is not applied as a cost. A carbon and water pollution tax could be a strategy that addressed this, and would impact all farming regardless of crop. If that is "perfection" and "enemy of the good", then the definition of perfection is not shared.
> If you remove animal agriculture, you don't get far less fields. You get fields with a different crop in them.
we just simply cannot know this. but, we do know the impact of our current practices, not to mention the (supposedly) debatable ethical element of killing hundreds of billions of animals each year.
> in terms of saving the environment and turning back the ecosystem back to a sustainable one, the distinction between animal based or non-animal based is mostly irrelevant
this is simply false - did you follow any of the citations? you’re welcome to find something to support your position but as they say: if it can be asserted without evidence, it can be dismissed without evidence.
strongly disagree; we can quantify the differences. our current population levels are sustainable if we stopped overfishing our oceans and raising billions of animals each year for slaughter. check my other comment for a bunch of citations!
> I wish humans would come together to re-wild more of the earth. Restoring wild nature and cutting emissions is the only way to really restore natural ecosystems. We're nowhere close to doing that.
A big issue is cost and economic opportunity. For example, a lot of land in the SF Bay Area cannot be developed. This is great for the environment, but not so great for housing costs.
Long term, it’s likely worth it to save the environment, but let’s not ignore its immediate cost to everyone besides the upper class.
They’re not necessarily at odds. Manhattan has something like 75x the population density per mile. You could rewild 4/5 of the the SF Bay Area while also building 10x the housing stock under that development pattern. Single family homes are just an extremely expensive and ecologically destructive way to live. They require a ton of infrastructure per person.
Unfortunately, I think that housing unaffordability is just a desired feature - people who live there don’t want to live near people who couldn’t afford to live there. It’s much more segregated than many other parts of the country I’ve lived in.
Tokyo has plenty of earthquakes, it's not a showstopper. NIMBYs, yeah, they came out in force when height limits were discussed in San Mateo. It was always pretty annoying how progressive SF Bay residents claim to be vs. how progressive they act.
'Cutting emissions'. Trouble is that if folk are convinced this is so negative they'd do something about it - and they do not. Conclusion?
The renewables revolution has been accompanied by a steady increase in emissions. For emissions read carbon dioxide (no argument from anyone about toxic gases) which is a carbon source for plant growth and as we know, is pumped into greenhouses to increase production. Satellite pictures confirm greening of the Earth in many areas.
This does not have to be a counter argument but the emission story would be more convincing to a lot of people if other factors like this (and the difficult question of just how do you decrease energy use without impoverishing people?) were discussed in the public forum in a balanced way as with dissenting views from those distinguished scientists evidently holed up on luxury yachts financed by the oil industry. 'I think you are wrong because ...' or 'you have a point in that respect but ... '. In a nutshell let's get the discussion onto what used to be called 'an adult level'.
Example: Today's Guardian
"In case of any doubt about Norway’s commitment to maintain – and expand – its production of gas and oil offshore, the energy minister, Terje Aasland, has a pithy response: “We will develop, not dismantle, activity on our continental shelf.”
Sadly I don't think the outlook is very positive on that. I saw an article from McKinsey about the Himalayan country of Bhutan which has famously put restrictions in place to keep the country heavily forested. Good for nature, good for preserving culture, not so great for capitalism.
The article I saw basically outlined in more detail what I said above and then followed it with: "....but what if that forest could be made productive?" It's rare that I want to reach through the screen and choke somebody but they got me that day.
The cult of Line Go Up will continue to win. They will destroy what we have and then sell us the solution to the mess they created. This will be coupled with a morality tale around individual hard work and personal accountability.
The Himalayan country of Bhutan has seen 6% of its population emigrate since 2020. People enjoy the preservation of nature, but they also enjoy having more and better stuff, and a healthy society can't just tell people the second impulse is wrong and they need to give it up.
"People" and their "wants" or "enjoyments" are manufactured by culture (which is in turn now dominated by corporate propaganda). They are not fixed by nature. Any examination of the range of 'wants' in human history will inevitably conclude that, beyond a few corporeal basics, they are endlessly plastic. This is hard to see from the centres of Empire (especially highly mediated ones) where local and highly propagandised 'desires' are seen as 'natural'.
Agricultural societies are machines for creating large numbers of humans. In any democracy (or sufficiently responsive government) the kinds of persons that are created is a powerful determinant of what subsequently happens. Corporations choose to make consumer-humans. Many other types have existed, so ipso facto are possible.
I agree that agricultural societies are machines for creating large numbers of humans. That's why every agricultural society on the planet is working hard to grow and become wealthier. They're not infected by "corporate propaganda"; they know that subsistence farming sucks, and they want to join the rest of us in the post-agricultural future where food is so abundant nobody has to do it.
Bhutan historically pushed "Gross National Happiness" and such as part of a propaganda program to maintain their largely agricultural society against this pressure. Again, this absolutely did not work, and they're now setting up a proper capitalist center in Gelephu to try and convince young people that they don't need to leave the country to have a prosperous life. The precise details of what people want may vary from culture to culture, but there's very few where the average person would not like to have more and fancier stuff.
The "cult of line go up" is why we aren't living in caves and eating each other. Come on, we can criticize the deleterious aspects of modern society without disparaging the idea of growth itself.
1. At a certain point, the idea of growth must be criticized. Unless, of course, you think infinite growth is possible.
2. Claiming the modern capitalism’s “cult of line go up” has anything to do with humans leaving caves is a stretch at best and intellectually dishonest at worst. Humans left caves out of a desire to create better lives. Stable shelter, better quality and variety food, tools to make life easier, clothing to protect us, etc. Plus probably some human desire for exploration. None of that is driving capitalists who insist “line must go up”.
We have more than enough to go around. We cannot grow infinitely. Greed is holding us back from caring for our entire human population.
57 companies are responsible for 80% of greenhouse gas emissions. I'm very tired of people trying to tell others that not eating meat or driving a vehicle with an internal combustion engine is the key to solving the problem, because it's not and never has been.
This is extremely reductive. Noting that oil, gas, and cement companies are responsible for pollution is ignoring that oil, gas, and cement are inputs to everything we consume and the infrastructure used to transport goods. Exxon Mobil isn’t extracting oil and burning it for no reason, it gets refined into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, plastics, pharmaceuticals, etc. Cement is used in concrete which is what infrastructure is made of, along with steel. Everyone uses infrastructure, either directly or indirectly. Everything you buy was transported on a truck, and possibly a plane or a ship. The supply chains for the components of products you consume, and so on. It’s impossible to avoid if you want to maintain the current global population. We could stop using oil and cement, but there would be mass starvation and our current infrastructure would degrade and crumble over time.
Right - so how is me not eating meat or not driving an ICE vehicle going to help change the situation? The people with the capital to actually change things seem to be more interested in mongering fear while continuing to profit off of their ecosystem-destroying industries, than trying to come up with effective solutions to the problem.
The gigatonnes of CO2 linked to a small number of fossil fuel producers are also linked to a very large number of people putting it in their ICE vehicles. People not driving ICE vehicles is clearly going to change that quite a lot...
The list you linked explicitly excludes emissions from agriculture, you are talking about %70 of what they measured, not overall emissions. If everyone stopped eating meat, it would reduce overall global emissions by a third which is hugely significant.
A lot, especially in organismal biology / field biology. We even name things after him, like carnivorous plants (Nepenthes attenboroughii), the whole genus Sirdavida, a hawkweed (Hieracium attenboroughianum), ... more than 50 taxa in all.
The unfortunate thing is that the area of biology he has drawn people to is difficult to make a living in. Jobs are few, there is intense compettion for them, they don't pay well, and there is often little job security. In some ways it is the Art History of a STEM discipline.
> We even name things after him, like carnivorous plants (Nepenthes attenboroughii), the whole genus Sirdavida, a hawkweed (Hieracium attenboroughianum), ... more than 50 taxa in all.
I assumed there’d be 1 or 2 would be, but 50+ is wild. I just went down the rabbit hole of “things named after Sir David Attenborough” and it’s a lot!
I wasn’t pulled toward the field of study, but came away with a great appreciation and wonder for nature. My parents recorded many of his documentaries on Betamax tapes in the 1980s and my brother and I watched all of them many times in our formative years. Happy birthday to a truly great human.
Unpopular opinion: I don't understand why people are so fascinated with a man simply because of his voice narrating truly marvelous, artistic documentaries. I have way more respect for operators, who spent months in harsh conditions with a slim chance to film anything interesting.
He is far more than just a narrator. His 77-year career created and defined the wildlife/nature documentary as a genre, beginning at a time when television was so new that it really was just him and a few individuals making all the decisions. In his youth, he was given some cash and sent to travel the world in a 2-3 man team, off-grid for months, in the “Zoo Quest” series - the first time anyone had really seen animals, in the wild, on television.
Switching to a desk job, he went on to use his position in the BBC to green-light then-pioneering documentaries like “Civilisation” and “The Ascent of Man” (and still travelled occasionally for anthropological and nature documentaries, that he also green-lit) that remain a huge influence on all documentaries today.
Then in 1979, “Life on Earth” created an entirely new format of nature documentary that has only seen iterative change in the almost-50-years since. The rest, as they say, is history. He’s been heavily involved in the production of so many documentaries in the decades since, only reducing his role as he got older. Even in his 90s most of the series he narrates have short on-location sequences with him.
It’s safe to say that he, perhaps more than anyone else, created the “nature documentary” - both in experimenting with the format, and in green-lighting shows - and therefore shares a huge amount of responsibility for the many positive second order effects. Certainly in the UK, I would argue that a significant amount of public awareness of climate change comes from BBC documentaries. As attested to by others in this thread, generations of scientists and conservationists pursued their professions in part because they were inspired by him (and I can throw my own hat in the ring for this). It was also spoken about, at his 100th birthday concert, what an outsized influence his documentaries had on increased worldwide awareness of plastics pollution and the recent UN treaty beginning to address it.
His voice, really, is secondary to all that.
(I would highly recommend reading his “Adventures of a Young Naturalist” and “Journeys to the Other Side of the World” books for anyone with an interest in this sort of thing. They’re combined volumes of books he wrote back in the 1950s and 60s about his Zoo Quest expeditions - both a wondrous first-person view of the travels and interactions with wildlife, but also a fascinating teleportation back in time into a world where air travel and television were brand new, and all of these remote communities were near-untouched compared to today).
Life on Earth was hugely ambitious in ideas too, covering the whole history of life, with evolution as an underpinning theory throughout. As a child, it had much more impact on me than anything else on TV, and I still remember a lot of scenes.
He basically invented the natural history documentary, maybe even the science documentary. Before him, there was little to no serious natural history programming, or what there was was quite "folksy". And with it, he created, sustained and increased the public interest and concern about the natural world.
I suspect many scientists can trace their early interest in science back to him. And I believe the green movement would have had a lot less impact without him.
he is far more than just a narrator, often appearing in the documentaries he narrates. he has helped thousands of people to gain a greater appreciation of nature. his documentaries on insects are particular favorites of mine, such as Micro Monsters and Dragons & Damsels. no matter what kind of animal you're interested in, he has probably done a series or TV special on the subject.
Didn't you see him up to his groin in a giant mound comprised of batshit and cockroaches, and sounding like he was loving every minute of it? Or being cuddled by wild mountain gorillas? Or ...
He definitely goes out there to wild and often dangerous locations, though perhaps not so much at the age of 100.
You clearly no nothing about him which is ok - if you read the adventures he put himself through when he was younger and older you would understand he was not just a narrator but someone who lived the field. If you are interested read one of the books on his life.
Top man, lives up on Richmond Hill and absolutely loves it - when asked about his travels and adventures and where he would choose to live, he replied, "I already live there"
Fairly well-known locally is that my favourite bookshop, The Open Book in Richmond, stocks signed copies of all his books. They used to be signed directly on the page, but since he got to the mid-to-late nineties in age, tons of hardbacks are too much, so Helena wanders up there to get a load of bookplates signed these days.
Apart from that, I order all my books from them when I'm in London and a subsequent chat with Madeleine usually lasts ten times as long as the book shopping.
Anyway, I digress, yes, Sir David, amazing body of works and the books are wonderful.
Whilst we're doing random anecdotes that vaguely link to him, my late grandfather remembered David from his Wyggeston days as a good rugby player, which is a funny way to imagine him. Apparently he had the voice even then, but not so much to say about the world.
I always find it really weird when somebody on the anonymous internet talks about local places as if we're all neighbors or something. Googling "Richmond Hill" gave me multiple pages of results that had nothing to do with the one that Attenborough lives at.
Not to sound hipster about it, but if it's done in this way I find it charming. I also had to piece it together, which took me on a little virtual travel tour, and had me wonder about what Richmond Hill means to the locals. Rather fitting in context, too.
The "everyone on the internet is American" stuff in e.g. politics or job market convos is a lot more grating.
I really enjoyed OP's story, and the way they told it. Knowing the location of Richmond Hill is really not the point.
Well yes but it does open the question for me as to what the place is like and why he'd like it so much.
Yes, but it’s refreshing that for once it isn’t a San Francisco neighbourhood!
You had context, it piqued your interest and you did a tiny amount of work to figure it out. You could have quit without all three but you didn't; I wish the internet had a lot more of these types of experiences. It's only in the last ~25 years when the Internet became an anonymous place where we aren't all neighbours, and I mourn the loss.
If you're familiar with London, you know where Richmond is and that it's a wealthy area. A search confirms there's a Richmond Hill in Richmond.
The hill offers the only view in England to be protected by an Act of Parliament—the Richmond, Ham and Petersham Open Spaces Act passed in 1902—to protect the land on and below it and thus preserve the fine views to the west and south. Two years before the wooded isle centrepiece of the view, Glover's Island (also known as Clam Island), was bought by a local resident and given to the Richmond Corporation (Borough) in return for the latter noting against its records that it and its successors would not develop the isle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond_Hill,_London
Aa in the the old English folk song "The lass of Richmond Hill".
That's about Yorkshire, but yes
Or if you've seen Ted Lasso
In hindsight it maybe should have also been obvious from the language alone. "Richmond Hill" feels a bit like saying "Rich Hill Hill" which is basically like saying "Wealthy Desirable Area."
BTW there is a linguistic tradition of “hill hill”. When new immigrants come to an area and ask the locals what that hill is called, the locals say “big hill” in their language. The newcomers call it “bighill” hill in their language. I forget the examples but this has happened enough in England that there are places whose names are five hills deep (Brythonic -> Latin -> Saxon -> Norse -> Norman).
One of my favourite quotes from the late Terry Pratchett:
> When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalised in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don't Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool.
These are known as tautological place names: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tautological_place_nam...
Thanks for sharing!
My contribution to this discussion is the place in BTTF which makes fun of this concept, the home of Marty McFly: Hill Valley
Not a tautological name but an oxymoronic one!
You're not thinking fourth-dimensionally!
London isn’t exactly a small “local place” and there is only one Richmond Hill in London. So I’m not sure what the issue you’re having is.
The second sentence was unnecessary.
Really? It’s mild compared to the average tone on HN.
Less than 0.2% of the world's population lives in the wider metropolitan area of London.
I live in Europe, I've been to London a few times, I have no idea what "Richmond Hill" is or whether Sir Attenborough actually lives in London.
I get where he's coming from, Attenbrorough is vocal about being a londoner to the point he has a whole documentary about the city, and he's very present in UK media.
I get why it doesn't seem so obvious from the outside, but for British people it's as obvious as Apple headquarters being in California.
You didn’t need to know any that because the GP literally referenced London in their comment.
I don't think full context should be provided at all times in casual internet conversations.
However, in your defense, "Richmond" is one of the most overloaded geographical names, second only to "Kingston".
It's in the Richmond that's in London, not the one in Yorkshire.
would you rather less anecdotes or more hard coordinates?
I'd bet "Richmond Hill, London" would have been geographically adequate. Don't we criticize USAians for their provincialism?
For me, I know "Richmond" is used numerous places near me locally, so my assumption would've been that "Richmond hill" is too generic a query.
"David Attenborough Richmond hill" would've been the way. I'd hardly fault OP for my own choice in query.
Get better at Googling https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Open+Book+in+Richmond
Richmond Hill, London
Now I just hear the Cinema Sins "ding!".
Try this search: The Open Book in Richmond UK
and when you googled the book shop name?
Just around the corner from The Open Book is Richmond Green. And that's where David Attenborough's brother lived; Richard Attenborough. Jurassic Park at the bottom of Richmond Hill and Blue Planet at the top of the hill.
Oh and if you were at Richmond Green today, you could have gone to the May fair.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond_Hill,_London
He was just mentioned on today's Lateral podcast with Tom Scott.
Apparently, he's the reason tennis balls are yellow.
I guess they were traditionally white but when they started broadcasting matches on TV it was too hard to see the ball.
David who was at the BBC at the time suggested they use yellow balls instead so they would come through on camera. Ever since then tennis balls have been yellow.
> David who was at the BBC at the time suggested they use yellow balls instead
Apparently he didn’t explicitly say they should be yellow, he just said the white didn’t work, the ITF chose yellow after research and studies.
Ironically, Wimbledon was the last venue to switch to the colour, despite David influencing the decision to change it.
> In 1972 the ITF introduced yellow tennis balls into the rules of tennis, as research had shown these balls to be more visible to television viewers. Meanwhile Wimbledon continued to use the traditional white ball, but eventually adopted yellow balls in 1986.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_ball#
https://pressurebox.com/blogs/news/why-are-tennis-balls-yell...
Amazing. It’s relatively easy to find color photos of this, for example one of the very last pics here, from 1970: https://www.esquire.com/sports/g36954688/wimbledon-1970s-pho...
But what is the oldest color photo of white ball tennis?
Also, do we have a good source for this story, because it’s not mentioned on Wikipedia: ”In 1972, the International Tennis Federation introduced yellow balls, as these were easier to see on television. Wimbledon continued using white balls until 1986.”
The only color photo of a ball in that link that I saw was #32 which is from 1978, which would support the idea that Wimbledon did not switch in 1972.
Oh yeah, you’re right, I just gave it a quick scan for balls and thought they were all from 1970.
What do you mean tennis balls are yellow? I always thought they were green? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_ball#/media/File:Closeu...
They're officially yellow. Many people (~50% in my experience) perceive this colour as green though.
> Tennis balls are fluorescent yellow in professional competitions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_ball
Yellow and green are shown in the linked image.
Mind blown. Thanks for sharing!
A true hero in my life. I had VHS copies of Trials Of Life that I wore out through watching over and over as a child. It opened my eyes to the world and wonder of nature. In college I started hunting down every single appearance he had listed in any filmography I could find and have a hard drive in my attic with all but a couple of his earliest Black and White appearances from the earliest part of his career. I haven’t kept up with it with the newest stuff in the past 15 or so years but I definitely need to pull that out and see if I can finalize his catalog.
> A true hero in my life.
Same here. I‘d recommend the 2020 documentary „David Attenborough: A life on our planet“ - if you haven‘t already seen it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Attenborough%3A_A_Life_o...
lol, I’ve seen everything and scramble to VPN or download anything released as soon as it comes out (it’s usually BBC and not available in my region). It brings that childhood nostalgia right back! Luckily my wife thinks it’s cute
From the article:
> Actor Sir Ian McKellen added that Sir David "sums up what was best about the BBC" with "serious programmes made for a popular audience".
A life of serious, informative, gently enlightening work. In itself, an endangered species.
>I definitely need to pull that out and see if I can finalize his catalog
This is what I've been doing over the last few months. Quite a lot is available for free on the Internet Archive, if you look. I just finished the 5-part "Life in the Undergrowth" (2005), about insects and other small critters. Wonderful.
He definitely influenced my life and choices; some of the strongest memories of my youth in the '80s are tied to his documentaries Life on Earth and The Living Planet. I was lucky to live in the countryside and near a beautiful lake but his documentaries expanded my horizons so much more. I didn't love watching TV but that content was a magic window. They were dubbed by the magnificent voice of Claudio Capone and skillfully commented by Piero Angela, who died recently at 93. Piero was the most prominent Italian science journalist and his own career shaped TV and spanned 70 years. Their work made me and my family definitely more environmentally conscious. I don't doubt this content will have a lasting impact on humanity even if we can't clearly discern its effects right now.
Happy Birthday David! I'm so happy you are still alive and well.
I just love those documentaries where he starts off in Europe following some bird and ends up on a rock in the middle of the ocean. And he's been at it since when the world was much bigger. What a life!
Searching for David Attenborough on Google also shows a tribute, with drawings of animals and a "Thank You Sir David".
https://www.google.com/search?q=david+attenborough
I like that Google does easter eggs like this.
Of course, they'll still put tracking links in the share button. Got to get that sweet data of who shared David Attenborough's birthday.
Looking at him I can't believe he's 100. I haven't seen that many centenaries that look that fit.
Protect David at all costs.
It's also fascinating to see he is still active with regards to BBC documentations. I watched some newer BBC documentaries with other people voicing it, and while they are not terribly, all (!) of those newer guys are significantly more boring than even an old David. David understands things better than the newer guys do.
One of the most iconic voices.
https://youtu.be/P3ump1Buszo?si=0DoXiDTqZOyTBUst
I'll never forget the disgust amongst me and my friends when we found out that American television had replaced Attenborough's documentary voice with Oprah fucking Winfrey. Cultural vandalism.
He outlasted his brother by quite a while. Managed to travel more miles than nearly anyone else apart from popes and political leaders.
Well, one brother lived til 90, which is still above average, and iirc he only died because of complications of a fall and would have lived longer without that bad luck. And one other brother who lived to 84 and was taken out by a rare neurological disease.
So it's probably just that he has genetics for longevity in his family. And they were all wealthy which helps
And apart from his film crews who actually shot the footage...
He travelled with them on numerous occasions. In some of his earlier programmes, you can see him on location in the most farflung corners of the world. I am sure he has been to the Galápagos and Antarctica, on multiple occasions. In more recent times, Attenborough has just tended to do the voiceovers.
Crew ain't a single entity.
Desperate not to let anyone else have a go at his job.
Remember when planet earth first came out? And they had sigourney weaver dub it for the American version? It was basically unwatchable.
Maybe they won't: AI versions of his voice pop up everywhere now (especially older Attenborough) including on YouTube videos about Irish Republicanism of all things.
An outstanding voice for nature for all these years, and how kind nature has been to him in return. Long Live Sir David!
What's the opposite of the black bar? Should HN have a green bar for things like this?
I remember watching blue planet seas of life in middle school in the early 2000s crazy.
Glad to hear. I thought all those videos recently of him were AI.
Attenborough is everything the US doesn’t have.
I'd think Americans widely enjoy his work too.
The best of us.
Always found his voice genuinely soothing and a nice reprieve from all the other pressing issues
One of the gems that a publicly funded broadcasting system gave us.
He is a legend and has educated more people in natural history than anyone else ever...
The BBCs style guide amuses me. The princes must be referred to by their titles, as well as Sir David and anyone else with a knighthood.
I understand it's pretty common in the UK, but as an American it's funny to see.
Conversely, I wince everytime I'm called 'sir' in an American restaurant or shop.
Oh, I never thought about that. In the UK, is it improper to call someone Sir who isn't a Knight?
Not at all, for example at secondary/high school you would address male teachers interchangeable as ‘sir’ and ‘mr. Last name’.
Pretty much.
Used outside that frame it’s an insult as in:
You, sir, are a cad and a bounder.
Uh, no it isn't.
TIL he's the brother of director Sir Richard Attenborough.
There's a rumour, probably apocryphal, that Richard Attenborough only got his knighthood because of David.
Somebody at the palace or the civil service was reviewing the nominations, saw "David Attenborough" and thought "that's a typo, they must have meant Dickie Attenborough".
A truly great communicator, we need more like him.
https://share.google/Bmx5QA0ZZQU36NqXK
Legend
Happy Birthday
The sad thing is Attenborough has lived to see the destruction of nature he loved so much. His constant warnings have gone mostly unheard. In some ways I think excellent nature programming like his own Nature is doing a disservice by making it seem like there's lots of wild nature left.
I wish humans would come together to re-wild more of the earth. Restoring wild nature and cutting emissions is the only way to really restore natural ecosystems. We're nowhere close to doing that.
I would strongly push back on that. In most developed countries, natural wilderness is at its highest rate in hundreds of years. China's turning around the world with solar panels, all that. I wouldn't call the current state of things backsliding at all.
Even granting your numbers, you're measuring the wrong thing. Wilderness acreage and emissions trends are not ecosystem health.
Citing a wilderness figure for developed countries is misleading. Most of it is ecologically vacant--second-growth and tree plantations sans apex predators, large herbivores, intact soil biota, etc. Tree cover is not a functioning ecosystem. Developed countries have exported their ecological destruction: the beef, soy, palm oil, and minerals driving habitat loss in the tropics get consumed in the same places where the domestic "wilderness" figures look great.
The Living Planet Index (actual wild vertebrate populations) is down 73% on average since 1970. North American bird populations are down ~3 billion over the same period. Terrestrial insect biomass shows steep decline in studied regions. None of that shows up in "how much undeveloped land exists" or "how many solar panels got installed."
China's solar buildout is great news for climate, but climate is one driver among several. Habitat fragmentation, pollution, and overfishing don't get solved by the energy transition. You can decarbonize the entire grid and still preside over a mass extinction.
And in developing countries too. People may not realize that when there's no industrialization, people still need fuel. So they cut down tree that they could walk to. Just look at the pictures missionaries and travelers took in China a hundred years ago. Wherever there were people, there were only barren land. Heck, it was like that even in the early 80s in some places.
Yet the UK has some of the worst biodiversity on the planet.
You do know that in china while renewables are 30-40% of installed capacity(how many GWh they can theoretically produce), they are a smaller portion of generated capacity because if inefficiency of grid, intermittency if sun and wind. They are a smaller ~9-10% of Total Energy consumed (which is much bigger pie including for e.g. gas cars, jet fuel, diesel etc), right?
They may be able to distribute all solar panels and wind turbines worldwide; in the end that is just tiny-potatoes good because those markets are not that big. But when it comes to getting to energy independence they are using an "all of the above" strategy to get there. Planetary catastrophy can take a back seat to socio-economic unrest due to less/no money and opportunities for people.
Too little too late. China's coal emissions declined last year by a whooping 0.3%... after decades of increasing. We should be already reducing emissions, not flattening the curve
Every Nature documentary that ends with David Attenborough saying "there is still time to revert this destruction of natural habitat" makes me want to turn of the TV. I understand David's motivation (instill some catalyst for change) but I am with that other David - David Suzuki.
As per David Suzuki: it is shit, it will get shittier, responsible people should act accordingly [0]: <<"The science has said, ‘We have passed a tipping point, we cannot go back,'" Suzuki said. Survival in a warming world, he says, will increasingly depend on the resilience of local communities — and preparation must start now.>>
[0] https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/david-suzuki-memoir-life-bir...
I am reminded of Mayer Hillman - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/26/were-doo...
You want to the documentary to end with David Attenborough saying that it is too late to revert the destruction of natural habitat?
I, too, would appreciate this. "Look at what is getting lost because of YOUR choices and votes." It would be the truth.
"It's too late" and "It's your fault" are two different claims. The second one is clearly true, but it's never too late to stop making things worse.
Many people here like the bougie narrative that we’re all equally to blame, for obvious reasons. A vote is a vote is a vote.
Since this is the truth, yes, I would like the documentary to end by saying it is too late for natural habitat regeneration.
Many things are the truth, so it's really a question of framing. Another truth: humans have done reversible and irreversible damage to their natural environment; they can collectively reverse some of the damage and prevent further reversible and irreversible damage.
To focus on only irreversible damage -- especially as David Attenborough, somebody who over the better half of a century has earned massive respect and trust from people all over the world -- would be wildly irresponsible.
Well to make matters worse remember we're about to add another ~2 billion humans (Quark DS9 voice) peaking at around 10 in the 2080s.
Most of the growth will be in Africa, not exactly the most lawful place in the world so it looks kind of bleak for the environment and animals there.
Those 2 billion will all want a nice home and a smartphone, computer, TV, car etc…
Earth Overshoot Day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Overshoot_Day
It's not looking great, not even if we got nuclear fusion reactors figured out tomorrow.
Hopefully by 2080 the value of solar plus storage (or something even better) makes things like coal uneconomic.
fwiw a lot of his programming has for decades included explicit conservation messaging and warnings about climate change, disappearing habitats, etc. It's an old strategy (and one he helped invent) of making people care about the thing they're seeing before telling them it's being destroyed.
Looking at EU, the problem do not seem that his warning has not been heard. People see how thing has gotten worse and have heard the warning. The problem is that people can't agree on what to do next. Just looking at the energy discussion in EU, half of those want to use natural gas in Peaker Plants, and the other want to use nuclear, and the result was that both strategy got the EU stamp of green with neither side agreeing with each other. By both sides opposing each other strategy, the result is that very little change happen at all.
A similar situation exist with hydro power. We know that it is causing major extinction of species that depend on migration, with major harm to the ecosystem, and yet no one want to give it up despite being fully aware of the harm. Removing hydro do not fit any of existing strategies and so the current situation, as unreasonable it is, continues unchanged.
I have also seen similar issues here on HN when people discuss emission per capita vs absolute emissions. A large portion of people who heard the warning and are aware of the effect of global warming, would still argue that reducing emissions where emissions are being created is unfair if emissions per capita is relative lower compared to other places. The two camps created from this has opposing strategies, even if both camps agree with the current situation.
Ultimately, it speaks to people's lifestyle choices. In the US people are used to a particular standard of living: driving big cars and eating big steaks. If you tell people you can't have those things, they will have a visceral reaction. Politicians caught wind of this and turned it into a divisive left vs right debate. Im oversimplifying, but at the core its an incentives problem: Why should I tighten my belt today for some future payoff I may not even be around to see?
It's more like - why should I tighten my belt today when the celebrities, politicians and corporations making a big fuss about climate change are still flying around in private jets, buying up coastal property, eating steaks and are responsible for the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions?
What kind of argument even is that? What's next - "why should I care about hurting you when there's so many sociopaths out there that clearly don't"?
The people spreading fear about environmental collapse and claiming to be terrified of it, are displaying behaviors that contradict their claims. The people saying the ocean is rising and going to swallow communities while buying mansions on the coast and flying around in private jets, are either displaying extreme cognitive dissonance or aren't really that concerned with the environment collapsing. If it were one or two individuals displaying this behavior I'd blame cognitive dissonance, but it's pretty much every high-profile politician / celebrity.
David Attenborough saw more clearly than most what was being lost. But even he stopped short of fully applying that logic to animals themselves.
Rewilding at scale, deep emissions cuts, and a serious move away from animal agriculture are the same project.
He did mention in one of the planet earth 2/3 series how so much of the land is used for farmed animals. And, for the sake of completeness of argument, for restoring what was lost, the challenge is how to raise the standard of living fast enough for people so they give a damn about anything apart from ourselves was THE challenge to combat climate change and global ecological disaster. He specifically mentioned e.g. educating girls and making older-aged societies more propsperous. Prosperous people can make better choices about farmed animals as food.
Extremely insightful re: capacity to care for others.. though the trend of "NIMBY" and "petite-bougie" ideology (a more modern term being "temporarily embarrassed billionaires") and pretty much the guiltless profit maximization of the oligarchy point to that hypothesis being another form of trickle down economics (only the "prosperous" part. the educating women part should be a given, but if you read the comments in a recent frontpage post about humanitarian aide, the findings of those with decades in direct involvement pointing to "gender empowerment" and road infrastructure as most impactful long-term were met with the same "pronoun" schtick.
Modern agriculture, both animal and non-animal versions, are bad for the environment. Artificial fertilizers, replacing forests with farm land, and drainage of wet lands are all heavily contributing to emissions and water pollution, destroying local ecosystems as well as warming the planet. Artificial fertilizers is particular bad since its production uses fossil fuels, has large amount of accidental green house emissions, and causes eutrofiering to the point of areas like the baltic sea becoming basically dead from loss of oxygen. Runoff from farms are also now the primary cause of ecosystem collapse in fresh water lakes.
The most impactful elements of modern agriculture are entirely animal-based. Full-stop.
You in fact rightfully but incompletely recognize : artificial fertilizers (for giant mono-crop fields of soybeans to feed to cows and pigs [0]), replacing forests (to clear room for soybean fields and pasture for cows and pigs [1][2]), and runoff of these fertilizers and manure into waterways. The parent comment is right - if we want to fix these problems, we must stop killing and eating animals at such an industrial and horrendous scale.
0. https://www.ucs.org/about/news/extent-emissions-created-mass...
1. https://ourworldindata.org/drivers-of-deforestation
2. https://gfw.global/39qbPdC
3. https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture
If it was a competition in who did more harm the distinction may be relevant but in terms of saving the environment and turning back the ecosystem back to a sustainable one, the distinction between animal based or non-animal based is mostly irrelevant. Modern agriculture are not sustainable for the environment. The fossil fuels that are pulled from the earth and put on fields are not sustainable, and the amount of run off that goes into the water are destroying ecosystems with no time table if they ever can recover. When different species goes extinct they stay extinct, and the distinction that "well, its not as harmful as animal-based agriculture" will not bring them back. The Baltic Sea an loud warning signal of what happens if we continue to go down this path of modern agriculture.
One of the few areas of sustainable farming is aquaculture like shellfish and seaweed, which could actually be used to reduce the negative effects caused by modern farming. If there were a competition in least amount of harm, those would likely be the winners.
Fields of corn or soybeans will still exist without animal-based agriculture, especially with current demand for biofuels. As long as the land can be farmed to generate revenue, people will farm it. Artificial fertilizers is the primary enabler of this.
No one is saying fields of corn and soybean wouldn't exist, but we would have far less of them without animal agriculture. You are creating a false dichotomy of "sustainable"/"not sustainable" the reality is human societies would be much more sustainable without animal agriculture. More sustainable does in fact result in less extinctions/ecosystem impact and reduced climate change.
Maybe I'm wrong but reading your comment it feels like you are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and you use your conclusion that we will never be sustainable as your excuse to continue to eat animals.
> No one is saying fields of corn and soybean wouldn't exist, but we would have far less of them without animal agriculture
There is no evidence that there would be far less farm fields without that. Farm fields exists if there is profit to be had. Right now the demand for biofuels are directly competing with the demand for animal feed. Farmers will primary grow and sell crops based on what pay the most, and can easily switch if one pays more than the other.
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/360637/?v=pdf The Impact of Market Prices on Farmers' Crop Choices in Ghana https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373480516_Farmers'_... Farmers’ risk rating and crop portfolio choice in Kewot Woreda, North Ethiopia https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X2... Understanding factors influencing farmers’ crop choice and agricultural transformation in the Upper Vietnamese Mekong Delta
Notice that none of those says that farmers would not use the fields if the current most price worthy crop would go away. Farmers choose what to farm based, among other things, the market. If you remove animal agriculture, you don't get far less fields. You get fields with a different crop in them.
The only thing that will stop farming is either if the external cost of farming is applied, such as pollution, or if climate change makes farming the land unprofitable. Currently that pollution is not applied as a cost. A carbon and water pollution tax could be a strategy that addressed this, and would impact all farming regardless of crop. If that is "perfection" and "enemy of the good", then the definition of perfection is not shared.
Bit of a fallacious argument here - why do you presume to know how farm land will be used in the future?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrospective_determinism
> If you remove animal agriculture, you don't get far less fields. You get fields with a different crop in them.
we just simply cannot know this. but, we do know the impact of our current practices, not to mention the (supposedly) debatable ethical element of killing hundreds of billions of animals each year.
> in terms of saving the environment and turning back the ecosystem back to a sustainable one, the distinction between animal based or non-animal based is mostly irrelevant
this is simply false - did you follow any of the citations? you’re welcome to find something to support your position but as they say: if it can be asserted without evidence, it can be dismissed without evidence.
> The most impactful elements of modern agriculture are entirely animal-based.
If we step back a bit, the most impactful bit is true human wish for growth.
If we were satisfied with a comfortable stasis, that would be helpful.
strongly disagree; we can quantify the differences. our current population levels are sustainable if we stopped overfishing our oceans and raising billions of animals each year for slaughter. check my other comment for a bunch of citations!
Population 1926: ~2 billion
Population 2026: ~8.3 billion
Can't escape this and its consequences on the environment.
> I wish humans would come together to re-wild more of the earth. Restoring wild nature and cutting emissions is the only way to really restore natural ecosystems. We're nowhere close to doing that.
A big issue is cost and economic opportunity. For example, a lot of land in the SF Bay Area cannot be developed. This is great for the environment, but not so great for housing costs.
Long term, it’s likely worth it to save the environment, but let’s not ignore its immediate cost to everyone besides the upper class.
They’re not necessarily at odds. Manhattan has something like 75x the population density per mile. You could rewild 4/5 of the the SF Bay Area while also building 10x the housing stock under that development pattern. Single family homes are just an extremely expensive and ecologically destructive way to live. They require a ton of infrastructure per person.
Unfortunately, I think that housing unaffordability is just a desired feature - people who live there don’t want to live near people who couldn’t afford to live there. It’s much more segregated than many other parts of the country I’ve lived in.
Unlike the East Coast, we have earthquakes and more NIMBYs
Tokyo has plenty of earthquakes, it's not a showstopper. NIMBYs, yeah, they came out in force when height limits were discussed in San Mateo. It was always pretty annoying how progressive SF Bay residents claim to be vs. how progressive they act.
'Cutting emissions'. Trouble is that if folk are convinced this is so negative they'd do something about it - and they do not. Conclusion?
The renewables revolution has been accompanied by a steady increase in emissions. For emissions read carbon dioxide (no argument from anyone about toxic gases) which is a carbon source for plant growth and as we know, is pumped into greenhouses to increase production. Satellite pictures confirm greening of the Earth in many areas.
This does not have to be a counter argument but the emission story would be more convincing to a lot of people if other factors like this (and the difficult question of just how do you decrease energy use without impoverishing people?) were discussed in the public forum in a balanced way as with dissenting views from those distinguished scientists evidently holed up on luxury yachts financed by the oil industry. 'I think you are wrong because ...' or 'you have a point in that respect but ... '. In a nutshell let's get the discussion onto what used to be called 'an adult level'.
Example: Today's Guardian "In case of any doubt about Norway’s commitment to maintain – and expand – its production of gas and oil offshore, the energy minister, Terje Aasland, has a pithy response: “We will develop, not dismantle, activity on our continental shelf.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/09/norway-oil-and...
Things were so much worse in the 1970s.
Sadly I don't think the outlook is very positive on that. I saw an article from McKinsey about the Himalayan country of Bhutan which has famously put restrictions in place to keep the country heavily forested. Good for nature, good for preserving culture, not so great for capitalism.
The article I saw basically outlined in more detail what I said above and then followed it with: "....but what if that forest could be made productive?" It's rare that I want to reach through the screen and choke somebody but they got me that day.
The cult of Line Go Up will continue to win. They will destroy what we have and then sell us the solution to the mess they created. This will be coupled with a morality tale around individual hard work and personal accountability.
The Himalayan country of Bhutan has seen 6% of its population emigrate since 2020. People enjoy the preservation of nature, but they also enjoy having more and better stuff, and a healthy society can't just tell people the second impulse is wrong and they need to give it up.
"People" and their "wants" or "enjoyments" are manufactured by culture (which is in turn now dominated by corporate propaganda). They are not fixed by nature. Any examination of the range of 'wants' in human history will inevitably conclude that, beyond a few corporeal basics, they are endlessly plastic. This is hard to see from the centres of Empire (especially highly mediated ones) where local and highly propagandised 'desires' are seen as 'natural'.
Agricultural societies are machines for creating large numbers of humans. In any democracy (or sufficiently responsive government) the kinds of persons that are created is a powerful determinant of what subsequently happens. Corporations choose to make consumer-humans. Many other types have existed, so ipso facto are possible.
I agree that agricultural societies are machines for creating large numbers of humans. That's why every agricultural society on the planet is working hard to grow and become wealthier. They're not infected by "corporate propaganda"; they know that subsistence farming sucks, and they want to join the rest of us in the post-agricultural future where food is so abundant nobody has to do it.
Bhutan historically pushed "Gross National Happiness" and such as part of a propaganda program to maintain their largely agricultural society against this pressure. Again, this absolutely did not work, and they're now setting up a proper capitalist center in Gelephu to try and convince young people that they don't need to leave the country to have a prosperous life. The precise details of what people want may vary from culture to culture, but there's very few where the average person would not like to have more and fancier stuff.
The "cult of line go up" is why we aren't living in caves and eating each other. Come on, we can criticize the deleterious aspects of modern society without disparaging the idea of growth itself.
1. At a certain point, the idea of growth must be criticized. Unless, of course, you think infinite growth is possible.
2. Claiming the modern capitalism’s “cult of line go up” has anything to do with humans leaving caves is a stretch at best and intellectually dishonest at worst. Humans left caves out of a desire to create better lives. Stable shelter, better quality and variety food, tools to make life easier, clothing to protect us, etc. Plus probably some human desire for exploration. None of that is driving capitalists who insist “line must go up”.
We have more than enough to go around. We cannot grow infinitely. Greed is holding us back from caring for our entire human population.
Why shouldn't infinite growth be possible?
LOL
57 companies are responsible for 80% of greenhouse gas emissions. I'm very tired of people trying to tell others that not eating meat or driving a vehicle with an internal combustion engine is the key to solving the problem, because it's not and never has been.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/04/just-57-...
This is extremely reductive. Noting that oil, gas, and cement companies are responsible for pollution is ignoring that oil, gas, and cement are inputs to everything we consume and the infrastructure used to transport goods. Exxon Mobil isn’t extracting oil and burning it for no reason, it gets refined into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, plastics, pharmaceuticals, etc. Cement is used in concrete which is what infrastructure is made of, along with steel. Everyone uses infrastructure, either directly or indirectly. Everything you buy was transported on a truck, and possibly a plane or a ship. The supply chains for the components of products you consume, and so on. It’s impossible to avoid if you want to maintain the current global population. We could stop using oil and cement, but there would be mass starvation and our current infrastructure would degrade and crumble over time.
Right - so how is me not eating meat or not driving an ICE vehicle going to help change the situation? The people with the capital to actually change things seem to be more interested in mongering fear while continuing to profit off of their ecosystem-destroying industries, than trying to come up with effective solutions to the problem.
The gigatonnes of CO2 linked to a small number of fossil fuel producers are also linked to a very large number of people putting it in their ICE vehicles. People not driving ICE vehicles is clearly going to change that quite a lot...
The list you linked explicitly excludes emissions from agriculture, you are talking about %70 of what they measured, not overall emissions. If everyone stopped eating meat, it would reduce overall global emissions by a third which is hugely significant.
It's not. Not eating meat or driving a hybrid car doesn't help to save the environment, it helps YOU feel better.
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A lot, especially in organismal biology / field biology. We even name things after him, like carnivorous plants (Nepenthes attenboroughii), the whole genus Sirdavida, a hawkweed (Hieracium attenboroughianum), ... more than 50 taxa in all.
The unfortunate thing is that the area of biology he has drawn people to is difficult to make a living in. Jobs are few, there is intense compettion for them, they don't pay well, and there is often little job security. In some ways it is the Art History of a STEM discipline.
> We even name things after him, like carnivorous plants (Nepenthes attenboroughii), the whole genus Sirdavida, a hawkweed (Hieracium attenboroughianum), ... more than 50 taxa in all.
I assumed there’d be 1 or 2 would be, but 50+ is wild. I just went down the rabbit hole of “things named after Sir David Attenborough” and it’s a lot!
I wasn’t pulled toward the field of study, but came away with a great appreciation and wonder for nature. My parents recorded many of his documentaries on Betamax tapes in the 1980s and my brother and I watched all of them many times in our formative years. Happy birthday to a truly great human.
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A lifestyle impossible for any foreseeable generation.
Unpopular opinion: I don't understand why people are so fascinated with a man simply because of his voice narrating truly marvelous, artistic documentaries. I have way more respect for operators, who spent months in harsh conditions with a slim chance to film anything interesting.
He is far more than just a narrator. His 77-year career created and defined the wildlife/nature documentary as a genre, beginning at a time when television was so new that it really was just him and a few individuals making all the decisions. In his youth, he was given some cash and sent to travel the world in a 2-3 man team, off-grid for months, in the “Zoo Quest” series - the first time anyone had really seen animals, in the wild, on television.
Switching to a desk job, he went on to use his position in the BBC to green-light then-pioneering documentaries like “Civilisation” and “The Ascent of Man” (and still travelled occasionally for anthropological and nature documentaries, that he also green-lit) that remain a huge influence on all documentaries today.
Then in 1979, “Life on Earth” created an entirely new format of nature documentary that has only seen iterative change in the almost-50-years since. The rest, as they say, is history. He’s been heavily involved in the production of so many documentaries in the decades since, only reducing his role as he got older. Even in his 90s most of the series he narrates have short on-location sequences with him.
It’s safe to say that he, perhaps more than anyone else, created the “nature documentary” - both in experimenting with the format, and in green-lighting shows - and therefore shares a huge amount of responsibility for the many positive second order effects. Certainly in the UK, I would argue that a significant amount of public awareness of climate change comes from BBC documentaries. As attested to by others in this thread, generations of scientists and conservationists pursued their professions in part because they were inspired by him (and I can throw my own hat in the ring for this). It was also spoken about, at his 100th birthday concert, what an outsized influence his documentaries had on increased worldwide awareness of plastics pollution and the recent UN treaty beginning to address it.
His voice, really, is secondary to all that.
(I would highly recommend reading his “Adventures of a Young Naturalist” and “Journeys to the Other Side of the World” books for anyone with an interest in this sort of thing. They’re combined volumes of books he wrote back in the 1950s and 60s about his Zoo Quest expeditions - both a wondrous first-person view of the travels and interactions with wildlife, but also a fascinating teleportation back in time into a world where air travel and television were brand new, and all of these remote communities were near-untouched compared to today).
Life on Earth was hugely ambitious in ideas too, covering the whole history of life, with evolution as an underpinning theory throughout. As a child, it had much more impact on me than anything else on TV, and I still remember a lot of scenes.
He basically invented the natural history documentary, maybe even the science documentary. Before him, there was little to no serious natural history programming, or what there was was quite "folksy". And with it, he created, sustained and increased the public interest and concern about the natural world.
I suspect many scientists can trace their early interest in science back to him. And I believe the green movement would have had a lot less impact without him.
Like those folk that spent months off the (then) known maps in unexplored parts of New Guinea in order to film A Blank on the Map in 1971?
Yeah, they put the hours in.
Ahem did you know David wasn't always 100 years old, and that in the past he worked on the field?
he is far more than just a narrator, often appearing in the documentaries he narrates. he has helped thousands of people to gain a greater appreciation of nature. his documentaries on insects are particular favorites of mine, such as Micro Monsters and Dragons & Damsels. no matter what kind of animal you're interested in, he has probably done a series or TV special on the subject.
> who spent months in harsh conditions
Didn't you see him up to his groin in a giant mound comprised of batshit and cockroaches, and sounding like he was loving every minute of it? Or being cuddled by wild mountain gorillas? Or ...
He definitely goes out there to wild and often dangerous locations, though perhaps not so much at the age of 100.
> I don't understand...
Why not stop there?
You've got some awareness that there's something other people know that you don't.
Better to ask a question than express an opinion based on ignorance, right?
I wouldn't get so many good responses (upvoted all).
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
You clearly no nothing about him which is ok - if you read the adventures he put himself through when he was younger and older you would understand he was not just a narrator but someone who lived the field. If you are interested read one of the books on his life.
He wasn't always a narrator.
Narrator: He wasn't always a narrator.
That's an uneducated opinion rather than an unpopular opinion.
I'm surprised none of these threads made it to the front page.