Just before A Life on Our Planet’s publication, its main author broke Instagram’s record for time taken to reach one million followers. Ask countless nature lovers, writers, activists, broadcasters and so on in the field, and he’d likely be cited as the most inspirational human being on Earth. When David Attenborough brings out a book, it seems ridiculous not to sit up and pay attention. When he brings one out in the middle of a global pandemic – that hits when our planet is hurtling towards a devastating new chapter of climate emergency – we should probably pay the most attention we have for quite some time.
Jonnie Hughes is co-author, assisted by the science team at WWF, and I’m heartened to see thanks given to those without whom this book would not exist. With books, like with the steps required to save a planet, “it is possible to achieve so much more working with others than any one of us can achieve alone”.
A Life on Our Planet is almost textbook-like in its structure. We’re presented with an honest but hopeful introduction, followed by a witness statement (a chronological mapping of both the author and planet’s journeys), a summary of what lies ahead, a vision for the future and conclusion. It finishes with a glossary, notes and index.
Peppered throughout are exquisite photography and illustrations, thorough statistics, and easily digestable information. Content ranges from Leicestershire limestones to the Holocene’s Garden of Eden, farms to floodlands, from hunter gatherers to the survivors of the second World War, the moon to oceanic plankton, whales to hummingbirds; this is a book about our planet.
There is a description of humanity watching itself on television screens – in images taken from Apollo 8, in the winter of 1968 – held by Attenborough as a critical turning point in our relationship with our planet: “We had all simultaneously realised that our home was not limitless – there was an edge to our existence.” I doubt I’m alone in finding overwhelming relevance for us once more – experiencing days so utterly unlike what we may have ever known before.
The section on coral reefs moved me beyond measure; how the Blue Planet crew observed them, due to stress, “exposing the bone-white of their… skeleteons”, turning “from wonderland to wasteland”. The cause of this process took scientists a while to uncover, eventually reaching the conclusion – hard-hitting and harrowing – that humans, without having visited these distant ecosystems, were destroying them by changing the ocean’s temperature. “The bleaching corals were like canaries in a coal mine… the first… indication… that the Earth was becoming unbalanced.”
Global destruction
The chapter on 2020 is a difficult read, fact after fact recording the global destruction our race has inflicted upon the other beings with which we share this planet: “We have been accustomed to an impoverished planet… are we sleepwalking into a catastrophe?” It’s followed swiftly by an outline of The Planetary Boundaries Model: “currently our activities are committing the Earth to failure… four warning lights are flashing on the dashboard”, and we are warned how the next century looks for those left to live (survive) it.
By the time I got to the complete poisoning of the entire ocean (predicted to occur by 2050 unless we implement substantial change drastically) I had to stop reading, for a considerable amount of time. This is not an easy book to read. This is not going to be an easy planet to inhabit. It is no longer a case of whether people believe in the climate emergency or not: this is the time to act.
I felt a little uneasy reading the chapter addressing population, wary as I know many of us are of viewpoints which, historically, have mislaid blame on marginalised members of society instead of fully addressing the bigger human picture. The unfair distribution of wealth is allocated just a handful of sentences, which, for me, was simply not enough.
Low-energy lightbulbs, plant-based burgers and government leaders who locked down early are all key points to raise when mapping a move away from a global growth mentality. However, unless issues such as racism, homelessness and inequality are properly brought to the table, too much will continue to be ignored when it comes to those on our planet who have, and will continue to experience, climate emergency on the most shattering levels.
“If we are to continue to exist… we will require wisdom… We must not give up hope. We have all the tools we need.”
Perhaps the tool we most need is empathy. It might guide us towards a desire for equality – human to human, human to non-human – and to properly redress the continuing inequalities that got us here, for “we often talk of saving the planet, but the truth is that we must do these things to save ourselves”.
