Sir David Attenborough's extinction documentary begs government to take action

Sir David Attenborough’s extinction documentary begged the government to take action in a bid to defeat climate change in wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

The national treasure’s hour-long show looked at the ever-changing world and its loss of both biodiversity and the ecosystem.

However, as destructive as humanity has been on the planet, the nature expert did leave us with some hope and looked to those in charge for help.

‘We face a frightening future, so how has it come to this? Why haven’t we acted sooner to address these issues and stem the loss of biodiversity?’ he quizzed.

‘What can governments, industries and we ourselves do to slow this decline of the natural world?’

Sir David was joined by a number of experts who gave their verdict on how the governments of the world can come together and suppress the damage we have done to planet Earth as we start over following the events of 2020.

Economist Prof Lord Nicholas Stern explained how the Covid-19 outbreak has left us in the perfect position to ‘reset the way we run our economy’,

‘The world is in a recession and the government is acknowledging that they have to invest in the environment,’ he said. ‘I’m involved in a study with the finance ministers in thinking through what the best ways out of this crisis are.’

The professor pressed: ‘We have found that those investments that are good for the environment are very powerful ways to get out  of the depression we’re in.

‘For example, we could be in work on restoring degraded land, we can plant trees, we can start retrofitting buildings so they’re much more efficient, make our cities much cleaner.

‘All those examples – they are labour intensive and strong economic multipliers and are exactly the kind of things we need for a strong recovery. They are all these things we know we have to do for biodiversity and the climate, so let’s bring them forward to this period of unemployment.’

Meanwhile, chemist Sir Robert Watson had his say, adding: ‘If we don’t act now the youth of today and the youth of tomorrow are going to look back at this generation with absolute horror – “What were you thinking?”‘

And Prof Elizabeth Hadly felt the same, as she reiterated Sir Robert’s point, by saying: ‘We have a moment where we can change the way we are running our world and make it better – this is that moment.’

Extinction: The Facts is available on BBC iPlayer.

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