Our Earth provides us food, shelter, protection and other necessary resources. This is a privilege given to us by nature and it's our responsibility to protect this planet. We can do our bit in saving the earth by not littering, reducing our garbage, not wasting water, and supporting programs that produce more food on less land, eliminate overfishing, and increase clean energy.
Sir David Attenborough explains how humans can take charge of our future and save our planet in the new Netflix documentary: David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. This film finds the legendary broadcaster and conservationist looking back at his long life, possibly because he’s looking ahead toward the end of it — and to the end of all life on Earth, something that would occur all too soon if humanity doesn’t wise up, he asserts. This is about the gross negative impact human life has had on the planet, from a man who spent the vast bulk of his 94 years studying it.
A Life on Our Planet opens with scenes from the 2019 Attenborough-narrated Netflix series Our Planet: Chernobyl, where a nuclear power plant exploded in 1986, irradiating the area and forcing 50,000 people to evacuate. Now, it’s overrun with vegetation, and animals wander through the crumbling ghost town. Nature has reclaimed this site of, as Attenborough puts it, exemplary human error.
There are some quick highlights of Attenborough’s career, including archival black-and-white BBC footage of him traveling the world and famous scenes of him all but snuggling with gorillas. But Attenborough uses his lifetime as a point of emphasis for how drastically the world has changed in a scant nine decades — the global population has more than tripled, deforestation has increased at a frightful rate and the oceans are warming. The presentation of eye-opening statistics is balanced by a few poetic moments, most notably how the Apollo missions provided a vision of Earth from space, looking small and fragile and lonely.
Can the earth be saved? Don't miss this highly recommended and timely film, and the see the recent Nature Conservancy article at https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/who-we-are/our-science/three-ways-to-save-our-planet/
“The science is in: We don’t have to accept a fate of gloom and doom for the Earth. This is a hopeful wake-up call, but only if we act with great urgency”
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