Attenborough pleads to ‘Stop Waste of any Kind’

“Please examine it and please respond.”

This is the plea from Sir David Attenborough in his new upcoming documentary with Netflix. Called A Life On Our Planet, the programme will look at the challenges facing Earth and what can be done to address them.

“This film is my witness statement and my vision for the future – the story of how we came to make this our greatest mistake and how if we act now, we can yet put it right,” the 93-year-old broadcaster says in a trailer for A Life on Our Planet.

Attenborough has always been vocal about his passion for the planet and his calls for us to help save it is not new. In his new Netflix documentary, he urges people to “stop waste of any kind”, saying the world is precious and should be “celebrated and cherished”.

The biggest problem humanity has ever faced

The broadcaster and naturalist has called it “the biggest problem humanity has ever faced” and that we have a “last chance” to change our behaviour and save the planet. Attenborough has also said it will be the younger generation who will have to make changes because “they will be able to see the consequences of what they do”.

“The world is not a bowl of fruit in which we can just take what we wish. We are part of it and if we destroy it we destroy ourselves,” he warned.

His main piece of advice to us?

“Stop waste. Stop waste of any kind. Stop wasting power, stop wasting food, stop wasting plastic. Don’t waste, this is a precious world. Celebrate and cherish.” He went on to say that his message to world leaders would be: “This is the last chance. There are short-term problems and long-term problems.

But there is hope – the last part of the film suggests that even at this late stage, we can genuinely change course, rewild the planet and live differently. Attenborough tells us that, given the chance, the natural world can restore itself remarkably quickly, as he recalled visiting a lush jungle in Costa Rica which only 25 years previously had been a meadow grazed by cows.

We look forward to watching Life on our planet, although we feel that it will make for some difficult viewing.

Hopefully it will resonate with enough of us to make a difference.

Original article published in The Journal. Edited by Wasted.ie