A Life on Our Planet Buchzusammenfassung - das Wichtigste aus A Life on Our Planet

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Zusammenfassung von A Life on Our Planet

Name: A Life on Our Planet
Rating: 4.6 (212 reviews)
Author: David Attenborough

David Attenborough

My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future

4.6 (212 Bewertungen)

16 Min.

Kurz zusammengefasst

A Life on Our Planet by David Attenborough is a thought-provoking and inspiring exploration of the natural world and our place within it. It offers insights into the challenges facing the planet and provides a roadmap for a more sustainable future.

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A Life on Our Planet
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What’s in it for me? A sobering look at the state of our planet – and what to do about it.

On April 26, 1986, one of the four reactors at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in what is now Ukraine exploded. More than four hundred times the radioactive material released by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombs was carried all over Europe. It fell to the ground in raindrops and snowflakes and seeped into the soil. It got into the food chain. According to some estimates, hundreds of thousands of premature deaths occurred as a result.

While the accident at Chernobyl was arguably one of the greatest human-caused environmental catastrophes in history, we’re living in the midst of an even greater one. And it’s happening right in front of our eyes. It’s the careless way we’ve taken our environment for granted, triggering the spiraling decline of our planet’s precious biodiversity.

We’re all culpable – but at the same time, it’s not our fault. The previous generations who set up the damaging systems we now benefit from didn’t know the true cost of what they were doing.

But we know. And we have to change. The good news is, there’s still time left – just a little – to do something about it.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

how capturing whale song led to anti-whaling legislation;
what the world will look like in 2100 if we do nothing; and
why switching from fossil fuels to clean energy is the most important thing we can do to save our planet.

As Attenborough got older, his fascination with the natural world gradually changed to concern.

When the author, David Attenborough, was a child, he would spend whole days cycling around the countryside of Leicester, UK, hunting for ammonites – small fossilized sea creatures from millions of years ago. Their spirally little shells, frozen in time in the limestone, sparked in the young boy a fascination with the natural world and the truths that govern it.

Eventually, he learned that the ammonites had died out during the last mass extinction – which is when an apocalyptic event caused by global change wipes out great numbers of species in one go. The last mass extinction ended the 175-million-year era of the dinosaurs. In the millions of years since then, life rebooted into a long period of stability in which humans could eventually develop.

Unlike any species before us, we were able to develop something utterly unique: culture. Through culture, and our newborn ability to store and pass on knowledge from generation to generation, we developed ever more sophisticated ways to make the natural world easier to live in. With this new power came tremendous responsibility.

The key message here is: As Attenborough got older, his fascination with the natural world gradually changed to concern.

About 10,000 years ago, in what is today the Middle East, people started farming grains and domesticating wild animals. Ultimately, they had enough surplus for some people to trade their crafts for food rather than spend time growing it. This was the beginning of civilization. But each advancement these complex societies made relied on one thing: the stability of their environment.

As Attenborough’s career progressed from presenter to executive at the BBC, which he had joined in 1952, he began to realize that this stability was in peril for the first time in human history. As he crisscrossed the world producing natural history programs, he saw more and more evidence that humans were not only impacting the precious biodiversity of the planet, but causing habitats to disappear entirely.

In 1978, Attenborough got a chance to travel to Rwanda to film mountain gorillas. What he found there changed his outlook forever.

He particularly remembers one surprising, and very intimate, encounter when a huge female gorilla appeared from a bush behind him and began playing with his face. Then he felt something land on his feet – her two infants were playing with his shoelaces!

The situation for these human-like creatures was dire. Fewer than 300 individuals were left. Their habitat had been severely reduced as people cut down rainforest to create cultivated fields. What’s more, the gorillas were being killed by poachers, who sold their severed body parts as souvenirs.

This was Attenborough’s first realization that we were causing irreparable harm to the most precious of Earth’s wonders. Unfortunately, it was far from his last.

As Attenborough traversed the globe, his concern for the natural world turned to alarm.

By the end of the 1970s, Attenborough’s career as a television naturalist had taken off. Life on Earth, the first series he produced after leaving his executive post at the BBC, was viewed by an estimated half a billion people around the world. The 1978 series filmed over 200 animal species in over 30 countries. It gave Attenborough an unparalleled opportunity to tell the history of life as it had never been told before – as well as to witness firsthand what was happening to the natural world.

The key message here is: As Attenborough traversed the globe, his concern for the natural world turned to alarm.

If we don’t take action, our quality of life on Earth will severely degrade.

David Attenborough is now 94 years old. He was 19 when the Second World War ended, and he began his career during the 1950s. This was a time of great optimism and technological innovation. People believed that there was no limit to what we could achieve.

Little did we know that the seeds of our current discontent were already sprouting. The 1950s is known as the Great Acceleration. Everything we did increased exponentially – from having children to producing carbon emissions to overfishing. But there is only so much our planet can take, and any biologist will tell you how this story ends: once all the available resources are used up, there is a precipitous population decline. The next 90 years will be known as the Great Decline.

Creating greater equality will help us slow down human population growth.

Let’s reiterate: the horrorscape described in the previous blink is an outcome nobody wants to see happen. It would spell death for many and a drastically reduced quality of life for many, many more.

But if we continue on the path we’re currently on, the worst outcome is inevitable. Scientists have identified nine planetary boundaries – critical thresholds in Earth’s environment that allow us to lead a sustainable existence. These are: climate change, ozone layer depletion, ocean acidification, chemical pollution, fertilizer use, freshwater withdrawals, land conversion, biodiversity loss, and air pollution.

Rewilding the world will capture carbon, increase biodiversity, and safeguard our food supplies.

It’s no coincidence that as the world’s biodiversity took a nosedive, the planet became increasingly unstable. Over the last decades, we’ve learned that Earth’s biodiversity and our ability to live here comfortably are inextricable. Therefore, in order to restore stability, we need to create the conditions necessary for biodiversity to return. We must rewild Earth!

The fact that no one owns international waters has meant that fishing crews have fished with reckless abandon, using destructive techniques like trawling that have obliterated habitats and caused fish populations to plummet. To stop this, we must designate all international waters as no-fish zones. This would restore the high seas to a flourishing wilderness that would seed coastal waters with more fish than they’ve had in decades.

Switching to clean energy is the most important thing we can do to create a more sustainable future.

In order to slow – and hopefully stop – the damage we’ve already done to the planet, we have to return to an older way of doing things. Rather than being apart from nature, we must return to being a part of nature.

That doesn’t mean we have to abandon technology and live off the grid. Technology actually has a very important role to play in creating a more sustainable world.

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Worum geht es in A Life on Our Planet?

A Life on Our Planet (2020) is celebrated naturalist David Attenborough’s account of the incredible wonders he’s seen in his 94 years on Earth – and a vivid warning of what will happen if we continue on our current path. It’s accompanied by a Netflix documentary of the same name.

Wer A Life on Our Planet lesen sollte

Anyone who loves nature television
Those concerned about global warming
People who want to take action to save our planet before it’s too late

Über den Autor

David Attenborough has been making natural history programs for over 60 years. He has traveled all over the world, bringing the most rare and amazing animal and plant species to an adoring global audience.

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Natur & Umwelt

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