David and Goliath

David is look­ing you full in the eye. Do not look away.

You know me a lit­tle by now. I am, fun­da­men­tally, just like you. I love my fam­ily be­yond words. I need and ap­pre­ci­ate com­mu­nity. Liv­ing a lov­ing, sus­tain­ing life, what I have left means the world to me. I can­not, and will not, re­move my­self from the sen­sory mir­a­cle of na­ture. More, I am lost with­out it.

And yet, as with every­one with a mind to fig­ure and a voice to shout and a ca­pac­ity to make choices, I strug­gle to look my chil­dren in the eye.

There is a seem­ingly im­pos­si­ble amount to be done in such a pre­cious short amount of time. I test my­self every dawn. It is a con­scious ef­fort. I say to my­self, I am not pow­er­less. I must con­sider my every ac­tion, I must fight for the ground on which we stand.

The nat­ural world is dying. The eco-sys­tem, our life sup­port, is shut­ting down. We are di­rectly and rapidly tilt­ing the del­i­cate bal­ance to­wards ir­re­versible mass ex­tinc­tion. It is stun­ningly ob­vi­ous, un­less we choose to look away, that we must fun­da­men­tally re-eval­u­ate the mean­ing of life, what our core re­spon­si­bil­i­ties are. And we must change.

Ev­i­dence? Who can we look to for rea­son, logic, the hard truth? Where is the lead­er­ship? We are in des­per­ate need for a wit­ness, a qual­i­fied, calm voice of rea­son; some­one to look us in the eye.

His name is David At­ten­bor­ough, the 94-year-old ecol­o­gist and broad­caster, and he has just is­sued an im­per­a­tive state­ment that is as clear, con­cise and com­pelling a por­tent as we are every likely to get. There is noth­ing in it you can­not un­der­stand. It is har­row­ing and yet de­fines hope. It is a tes­ta­ment to our de­struc­tion of na­ture, our di­rect re­spon­si­bil­ity for cli­mate change, and it is a prac­ti­cal guide to stop­ping it in its tracks be­fore it is too late.

En­ti­tled A Life On Our Planet – a doc­u­men­tary and a book – the sci­ence-based state­ment is also deeply per­sonal and en­gag­ing, de­liv­ered by one of the most fa­mil­iar faces in the world, with softly spo­ken, prag­matic can­dour. He tells us what we need to know, what we have no choice but to face. Please lis­ten to him. Com­mit to do it now.

There is, bizarrely, a glimpse of Cat­alo­nia within it, but na­tion is pro­foundly not the point. This tran­scends bor­ders and is about all of hu­man­ity and how, when we put our minds to it, we can achieve, if we bond to­gether.

Life is NOT, con­trary to how we all can feel, locked into a pat­tern be­yond our con­trol. No. Say no, to your­self and to those in power. The name Go­liath, that of the giant Philis­tine war­rior slain 3,000 years ago, has be­come syn­ony­mous with in­sti­tu­tional power and tech­nol­ogy in op­po­si­tion to de­cent, sus­tain­ing lives for all.

Make choices, on what you buy, what you eat, how you get from A to B, how much you truly need in the ma­te­r­ial sense; re­cy­cle, share, tread softly, and sup­port those who are ac­tively coun­ter­ing cli­mate change, who are re-wild­ing our Cat­alo­nia, Iberia, Eu­rope, the World.

In­cre­men­tally, from today, we all can change. The small­est deeds can make a world of dif­fer­ence and the small­est seeds can quickly grow into a be­lief we can turn this around. David At­ten­bor­ough’s dire mes­sage is sim­ple and di­rect, as is his an­swer as to how we counter cat­a­stro­phe. It is within the power of each and every­one one of us. We just need to face the facts.

“The liv­ing world will en­dure, we hu­mans can­not pre­sume the same.”

“Sav­ing our planet is now a com­mu­ni­ca­tions chal­lenge. We know what to do, we just need the will.”

David’s wit­ness state­ment doc­u­men­tary, made in con­junc­tion with the World Wildlife Fund, is avail­able on Net­flix. See www.​wwf.​org.​uk. Take di­rect ac­tion.