A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future

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But then further into the book it explained all what needs to be done and what is currently being done, and turned my despair into hope. So this is Sir David Attenborough's account of the change he has witnessed in the natural world since he was born. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. I have to admit that I haven't seen many of the documentarys he has narrated as me and tv have it complicated.

He manages to hold your attention and get his stark message in an easily understandable way, that very few others could manage. Their sight, their hearing, their sense of smell are so similar to ours that they see the world in much the same way as we do. Biodiversity is what keeps Earth stable and balanced, with its resources constantly renewable to sustain life on the planet.However, as an introduction to some of the current environmental challenges, I think this offers a pretty good overview. All these stories are always connected to the topic of the book and the reader learns about the importance of biodiversity and how with the Holocene the living world settled into a gentle, reliable annual rhythm. An ecosystem can be thought of as a complex web, where each species depends on many others, each of which depends, in turn, on many others still. However, there is no denying that our mere presence on the planet is having often devastating effects.

There were times when I felt the science became dense, but I imagined the sound of the author’s distinctive voice. When humankind as a whole is in a position to give back to nature at least as much as we take, and repay some of our debt, we will all be able to lead more balanced lives. The book opens with a brief description of how he got into the position he held in the BBC mentioning some of his experiences such as the encounter with the gorillas which is one of my fondest television memories. But as there's still positive growth, the petri dish is getting crowded as there's more competition for the few remaining nutrients.The last part of the book gives an outlook on what lies ahead in the decades from 2030 to 2100 (if we do nothing or if we do certain things). In a natural ecosystem, on the other hand, virtually all waste becomes fuel for another process, creating a stable arrangement. We can prevent over-fishing by only permitting the practice in certain parts of the ocean, leaving others undisturbed to recover their populatioins. It was not laws invented by human beings that interested me, but the principles that governed the lives of animals and plants; not the history of kings and queens, or even the different languages that had been developed by different human societies, but the truths that had governed the world around me long before humanity had appeared in it.