David Attenborough's reminder about the global crisis

Brut America

An extinction as "profound and far-reaching" as the one that wiped out dinosaurs: Here is naturalist David Attenborough's reminder about the global crisis that threatens the balance of nature.

Transcript

00:00Nature once determined how we survive.

00:04Now we determine how nature survives.

00:09As far as we know, there have been far too many

00:13major extinction events on our planet, events caused by changes so severe that many species

00:38simply can't adapt and, as such, die out.

00:43Right now, we are in the midst of the Earth's sixth mass extinction,

00:50one every bit as profound and far-reaching as that which wiped out the dinosaurs.

00:57It's almost impossible to grasp as we go about our lives that the rest of life on Earth is

01:03experiencing destruction on the scale of that wrought by a colossal asteroid collision.

01:10But consider these facts. 96% of the mass of mammals on our planet today are us and the

01:26livestock that we've domesticated. Only 4% is everything else, from elephants to badgers,

01:35tigers to bats. 70% of all birds are now domesticated poultry, mostly chickens.

01:50Nature once determined how we survive. Now we determine how nature survives.

01:59One of the things Darwin's work has taught us is that we break nature's connections at our peril.

02:09Yet, break them we do at ever greater speed. The impacts of our growing population and our

02:18consumption now directly threaten our own future. That magnificent creature up there,

02:27the blue whale, can give us inspiration. Just 30 years ago, most whale species,

02:34including the blue whale, were heading towards extinction. A public outcry led to a global

02:42agreement to protect whales, and now most populations are recovering.

02:50We've subsequently learned how important whales are to the entire ocean system,

02:56including the fish that we eat. So saving these majestic creatures actually benefits us as well.

03:08What we did to save the whales, we must now do for all nature.

03:14And that is a communications challenge as much as it is a scientific one.

03:25you

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