Sir David Attenborough: ‘This awful summer? We’ve only ourselves to blame’
By Nick Harding
14 July 2012 In times of national crisis people naturally turn to authority figures for solutions, which is why recently Sir David Attenborough is being asked about the weather. He’s being asked about it a lot. “This preoccupation with the weather is an English disease,” he says. “We are always talking about the weather.” Sir David believes the washout summer may be down to climate change. As a credible explanation he points to research by the University of Sheffield which suggests melting Arctic ice has slowed the jet stream, causing it to break into loops which have ushered to the UK unseasonably cold and wet weather systems. And he is convinced humans are the main cause of this. “There is no question that climate change is happening; the only arguable point is what part humans are playing in it,” he says. “I would be absolutely astounded if population growth and industrialisation and all the stuff we are pumping into the atmosphere hadn’t changed the climatic balance. Of course it has. There is no valid argument for denial.” Over the 60 years Sir David has been a broadcaster, he has seen the planet change at a staggering rate. Wildlife paradises he visited in his early career have been decimated and he views the future with pessimism. “I’m not optimistic,” he says. “The climate, the economic situation, rising birth rates; none of these things give me a lot of hope or reason to be optimistic.” The one ray of hope and possible solution Sir David does offer is a global slowdown in birth rate. At 86, he has become an unlikely poster boy for the population control movement. “Population is one of my concerns. I’m not planning to contribute to it any more, but it is an interest.” During his lengthy career, the naturalist has watched humanity more than double from 2.5 billion in 1950 to nearly seven billion. He believes the profound effects of this rapid growth on humans and the environment are unsustainable and that the matter needs to be addressed urgently before nature takes its own action. “We cannot continue to deny the problem. People have pushed aside the question of population sustainability and not considered it because it is too awkward, embarrassing, and difficult. But we have to talk about it. The only ray of hope I can see – and it’s not much – is that wherever women are put in control of their lives, both politically and socially; where medical facilities allow them to deal with birth control and where their husbands allow them to make those decisions, birth rate falls. Women don’t want to have 12 kids of whom nine will die.” He does not, however, advocate implementing population policies similar to China’s controversial one child edict. “Draconian measures making it illegal to bear children with horrible punishments for infringement are not going to work. You have to convince the population that it is in their interests and make it possible for them to do something. The fact is, if we don’t do something, nature will. Quite simply, we will run out of food. People talk about doom-laden scenarios happening in the future: they are happening in Africa now. You can see it perfectly clearly. Periodic famines are due to too many people living on land that can’t sustain them.” […]
Sir David Attenborough: ‘This awful summer? We’ve only ourselves to blame…’
