Britain's best-known natural history filmmaker Sir David Attenborough has spoken of the destructive effect of population growth on the environment.
The broadcaster and naturalist spoke to KOS Media ahead of a trip to the county to promote his latest book, an update to his autobiography, Life on Air, which now includes extra chapters on his programmes about the lives reptiles and mammals.
For nearly six decades Sir David has been a regular feature on the BBC, making entertaining and enlightening documentaries that push the boundaries of filmmaking.
One of his latest ventures is becoming a patron of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), a think-tank concerned with the impact of population growth on the environment.
Asked about the greatest challenge facing the planet and the natural world, Sir David said: “Population control, there are three times as many people living on the earth as there were when I started making television programmes.
“That cannot go on.
“It is because the planet is only so big and only a finite amount of people can live on it.
“How do we deal with it? Well you needn’t do anything yourself and nature will deal with it. And she will do it.”
He has said he has never seen a problem that would not be easier solved with fewer people, and Sir David has spent his career travelling the length and breadth of the globe studying wildlife and the pressure it is under.
OPT states on its website the charity is “absolutely opposed to any form of coercion in family planning”. The aim is to persuade people that lower birth rates are vital to protecting the planet and to increase access to contraception.
Sir David said: “Famines are increasing and wars as people become more overcrowded and that has already started.
“There are a lot of things we can do something about. If people’s standards of living increase and raise and there is literacy for women then birth control happens.”
Asked whether people should then think about having only one child, he said: “Yes I think so.”
His other recent work has been involvement in celebrations to mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th year since the publication of his seminal On The Origin of Species.
In Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life he took viewers on a journey through the great naturalist’s theory of evolution.
The programme included footage from Darwin’s Kent home where he wrote On The Origin of Species after he returned from his five-year voyage on HMS Beagle.
Sir David said he also provided the guide to English Heritage’s revamped Darwin exhibition at Down House near Orpington.
On Tuesday, he presented a documentary called Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor: The Link about Ida, a 47-million-year-old beautifully preserved fossil that researchers believe provides the missing link in human evolution.
“What Ida does is to show the link between primates and the rest of the mammals,” he said.
“As to whether she is on the line for lemurs or to human beings that is the question that to work out.”
He said palaeontologists and anatomists have been and would continue to have lengthy deeply technical and detailed discussions.
“The people who investigated it have come to the conclusion that it is on the mankind line,” he said.
“I did not make conclusions one way or the other. It is a great thing thought whatever way you look at it. It is a very early example.”
Asked what Darwin would make of it all, he said: “He would be thrilled of course. It is a perfectly clear, very early and shows the link with the rest of the mammals.”
Sir David, 83, said he was making some radio programmes before heading off the Antarctic for his next documentary, which will be exploring the natural history of the Poles.
Many think that he has the best job in the world, he added: “That’s true. It’s absolutely marvellous, I cannot comprehend I’m that lucky.”
• Life on Air is published by BBC Books and costs £20. Sir David will be at Waterstone’s in Bluewater on Thursday from 12.30-1.30pm.
POSTED: 31/05/2009 08:00:00
Bookmark with:
Email to a friend: