David Attenborough: ‘I Don’t Have Long Left’

David Attenborough turns 95 in May, and he’s the first to admit he hasn’t much time left. 

He will leave the natural world in worse shape than when he first touched on it in his groundbreaking natural history series Life on Earth, all those years ago, in 1979. He was solemn, subdued and philosophical in a poignant 60 Minutes profile late last fall, on the eve of his personal witness statement A Life on Our Planet for Netflix.

“Even the biggest and most awful things that humanity has done pale into insignificance when you think of what could be around the corner,” he said quietly. “There could be whole areas of the world where people can no longer live.”

Attenborough witnessed the changes with his own eyes during his research for Our Planet. He visited many of the same wild spaces he first visited for Life on Earth for BBC’s Natural History Unit, more than 40 years ago now.

“Coral reef is one of the most dramatic, beautiful and complex manifestations of life you can find anywhere.

“But during my last trip it was like a cemetery — all the coral reef had died. Because of the rising temperature and acidity.

“We live in a finite world. We depend on the natural world for every mouthful of food that we eat and every lung-full of air that we breathe.

“If it wasn’t for the natural world the would be depleted of oxygen tomorrow. If there were no trees, we would suffocate.”

The Covid-19 pandemic has proved to be a mixed blessing.

“People who have never listened to a bird’s song are suddenly thrilled, excited and inspired by the natural world. They realize they are a part of it. By saving nature, we are saving ourselves.”

There are moments, during those quiet times when he’s on his own and thinks back on his half-a-century’s worth of natural history programming, when he wonders if he had any effect.

“My generation is no great example for understanding. We have done terrible things.”

There is a glimmer of hope, though, he said, and it has come from an unlikely source: The younger generation, as represented by an 18-year-old from Sweden. The 94-year-old and the 18-year-old have become united in a common cause.

What Greta Thunberg has achieved in her short life on planet Earth has been remarkable, he told BBC’s Radio 4 last fall.

What she has done, he said, is “astonishing, and admirable.

“She has achieved things that many of us who have been working on it for 20-odd years have failed to achieve.”

Thunberg, guest host that week of BBC Radio’s Today program, insisted that wasn’t entirely true.

“I’m just a part of a very large group of people who have done it,” she said, in her clipped, accented English.

“And you are a part of that group, too,” she told Attenborough.

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Climate Emergency: What’s In a Word? Plenty, Judging by Oxford Dictionaries

“When we were looking through the evidence, it was clear that issues relating to the climate were running through all the different lexical items we were working with. It reflects a real preoccupation of the English-speaking world in 2019.”

— Katherine Connor Martin, Oxford Dictionaries

The word(s) “climate change” has morphed into “climate crisis” and again into “climate emergency” in a remarkably short period of time, so much so that Oxford Dictionaries has named ‘climate emergency’ Word of the Year for 2019.

‘Climate emergency’ earned pride-of-place, if that’s the right way to describe it, from an all-environmental shortlist that also included ‘eco-anxiety,’ ‘flight shame’ — aka flyjskam in Sweden, where the movement started in response to the growing feeling of shame felt in that country, birthplace of the environmental activist Great Thunberg, by frequent flyers — ‘climate action’ and this site’s bugaboo word, ‘climate denial.’

Climate emergency joins “youthquake,” “toxic,” “post-truth,” and “fake news” in the Oxford lexicon of recent words or expressions “shown through usage evidence to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations [note use of the Oxford comma] of the passing year, and have a lasting potential as a term of cultural significance.” An editor at Oxford Dictionaries told the New York Times that the selection panel’s unusual decision to focus on climate-related expressions reflects the demonstrable escalation in the public conversation during the past year about fast-accelerating climate events.

The Oxford Corpus, a database that includes hundreds of millions of words written in English — which on the face of it would appear to disqualify flygskam — showed that use of the term climate emergency has increased more than a hundredfold since 2018, with a month still to go in the present calendar year. Climate emergency is now the most common compound using the word ‘emergency,’ appearing more than three times as often as the next most-used, health emergency.

In part, this was because a handful of respected, high-profile mainstream news organizations like The Guardian have decided to prioritize use of the term climate emergency to describe what was until recently called climate change or climate crisis. The Guardian made a conscious decision to use the term climate emergency to better convey urgency of the situation.

Oxford Word of the Year choices are often

politically inflected, Martin told the Times, but that does not mean the selection panel made a deliberately political calculation when examining the cultural impact of words.

“When we were looking through the evidence, it was clear that issues relating to the climate were running through all the lexical items we were working with,” Martin said. “It reflects a real pre-occupation of the English-speaking world in 2019.”

The Chinese-speaking world, too, one would like to think, though the jury is still out on that one.

The selection panel’s decision to narrow the final choice down to an all-environmental shortlist was not a deliberate decision to focus people’s attention on the rapidly changing climate but rather a strict — if admittedly subjective — reading of the public conversation, based on “lexicographical evidence.”

If nothing else, Martin might have added, Oxford Dictionaries’ choice simply reflects the greater immediacy in the way we talk about the climate.

In just 12 months — or 11, if you want to be calendar-specific about it —  the term climate emergency, defined as “a situation in which urgent action is required to reduce or halt climate change and avoid potentially irreversible environmental damage resulting from it,” soared from relative obscurity to, in the panel’s words, “one of the most prominent — and prominently debated — terms of 2019.”

Humour can be an effective way to raise climate awareness, some argue — at least among those who haven’t been directly affected by climate events themselves — as the German climate site Die Klimashutz-Baustelle noted in a compendium of climate-related quips and witticisms. To wit:

Two planets meet. The first one asks: ‘How are you?’

‘Not so well,’ the second answers. ‘I’ve got the Homo Sapiens.’

‘Don’t worry,’ the other replies, ‘I had the same. That won’t last long.’

Touché.

©Niklas Pntk-Pixabay

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Why Worry, Be Funny.

“Here’s a plot idea: 97% of the world’s scientists contrive an environmental crisis, but are exposed by a plucky band of billionaires and oil companies.”

— Scott Westerfield, on Twitter

I owe this one to some fool who has started a money-making operation out of Wyoming and Montana selling baby exotic animals through a Facebook page, and various dodgy online sites.

Many of these baby exotics are said to originate from the several game farms in the area that specialize in providing semi-tame animals for so-called nature photographers to bag  otherwise hard-to-get shots.

Naturally — no pun intended — the outrage has been loud, emotional and voluminous, i.e. lengthy and full.

Almost inevitably, some commenters have complained that their comments taken down, as fast as they can post them, and their accounts blocked.

Here’s an inconvenient truth: As tempting — and cathartic — as it is to rattle off angry 500-word screeds about how awful the perpetrators of these crimes are, it’s all-too-easy for the offender to delete a comment with a single click, and then click ‘Block User.’

Humour, on the other hand — as anyone who’s read Kurt Vonnegut knows — tends to be short, to-the-point, witty and cutting, when used effectively.

Also, and I’m not sure why this is, dumb people often have a hard time telling if the comment is genuine or if they’re being had. Parody can be so hard to spot, if one’s not used to it.

As issues go, the climate crisis and species extinction are serious, but all that seriousness can seem a little one-note at times. If one isn’t careful, it’s easy to allow one’s energy to flag. A reality check, no matter how real, can have the opposite of its intended effect if it seems tired and predictable.

Here goes, then — some of my favourite memes, witty ripostes and fast ’n furious comebacks about the serious issues of climate change, species extinction and environmental ruin.

“If I were ever abducted by aliens, the first thing I’d ask is whether they came from a planet where people also deny science.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson, on Twitter.

“Alien: ‘Why should I not blow up this planet?’ 

“Human: ‘We are an advanced species.’ 

“Alien: ‘How do you travel?’

“Human: ‘We light old dinosaurs on fire.’”

John Biehl, on Twitter.

What, you didn’t appreciate J.K. Rowling enough already? Try this on for size, then:

“The existence of Twitter is forever validated by the following exchange:

“Katie Mack: ‘Honestly, climate change scares the heck out of me, and it makes me so sad to see what we’re losing because of it.’

“Gary P Jackson: ‘Maybe you should learn some actual SCIENCE then, and stop listening to the criminals pushing #GlobalWarming SCAM!’

“Katie Mack: [crickets]”

J.K. Rowling, on Twitter.

And this one, an online climate change meme that doubles as a shout-out to the 1993 Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day:

“Only in America do we accept weather predictions

 from a rodent, but deny climate change evidence from scientists.”

Or this one, from humorist and late-night comedian John Oliver:

“One in four Americans is skeptical about climate change. . . . Who gives a (damn)? That doesn’t matter. You don’t need people’s opinions on fact. You might as well have a poll asking which number is bigger, 5 or 15? Or, do owls exist? Or, are there hats?”

And this, from another celebrity actor-comedian:

“The US leads the world in people who think climate science is fake, but pro wrestling is real.”

John Fugelsang

And these, from ordinary, everyday people, just regular folks:

“You know it’s serious when the introverts show up.”

Climate campaigner Deborah Elizabeth Finn, on Twitter

“We also have science to thank for ‘beer’ and ‘no polio.’”

Climate campaigner Anja Hoffman, on Twitter

And finally, this, from the former Leader of the Free World, at a 2014 midterm campaign rally at Wayne State University in Detroit, Mich:

“Ask a Republican about climate change and he’ll say, ‘I’m not a scientist!’ But when it comes to a woman’s right to choose, suddenly they all become doctors.”

Barack Obama

It’s funny because it’s true.

©Niek Verlaan-Pixabay

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Meet Generation Climate

“Climate change is the most politically divisive issue in America, more so than gun control and abortion. But young people have the social freedom to say it like it is.”

— Jamie Clarke, executive director, Climate Outreach

They’re too young to vote, but on their slender shoulders rests the future of the planet. Less than two months ago, for the second time in 2019, more than 1.5 million young people in more than 125 countries took to the streets in the most dramatic show of global climate action in human history.

And that’s not hyperbole.

Neither are the stakes. For the simple truth is that, while their young voices are belittled, demeaned, ridiculed, shouted down, set aside, forgotten and ignored, the already narrow window of opportunity to effect positive change is closing rapidly.

Some say that window has already closed, but — eternally optimistic — the youth of the planet cannot allow themselves to think in those terms.

Greedheads rule, and they know that. But they also know, all things considered  — and assuming nature is allowed to run its natural course, free of any sudden, world-ending cataclysm — they will outlive the greedheads.

That’s the one card they hold, after all. They will inherit the Earth, for good or for bad. And once the greedheads are dead and buried, long gone and long since forgotten, consigned to the dustbin of history like so many stanzas in Ozymandias, it will be down to the Greta Thunbergs and Alexandria Villaseñors of the world to clean up the mess and possibly — possibly — save the planet.

The burgeoning climate crisis is not the sole preserve of the white middle class from industrialized, developed — read: white — nations, either.

“I see the effects of climate change every single day,”  11-year-old Yola Mgogwana, of Khayelitsha, one of Cape Town, South Africa’s most impoverished townships, told The Guardian’s Anna Turns just days ago. “Our weather is not normal. One day it’s hot; the next day it’s raining heavily.”Just 18 months ago, Cape Town residents’ water consumption was limited to just 50 litres a day, and the city — pop. 3.7 million — was mere weeks away from “Day Zero,” the day taps would run dry.

“For me, that was a big sign that we need to change our ways and stand up for nature,” 11-year-old Mgogwana told the Guardian. “Because our government wants to profit from the environment, instead of implementing policies that protect it.”

She may be talking about South Africa, but she could just as easily have been talking about the US or UK — or Canada, for that matter.

Since January, Mgogwana has been volunteering with the Earthchild Project, an NGO pushing for climate and environmental awareness education in the world’s schools.

The school strike for climate is the 21st century equivalent of the 13th century’s Children’s Crusade, but it’s not about religion. The stakes are higher, and the outcome less certain.

In the meantime — part coda, part reason for hope — there’s this, from earlier today:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/29/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-met-greta-thunberg-hope-contagious-climate

©Twitter

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Climate Crisis: Words Matter

“The art of communication is the language of leadership.”

— James C. Humes, presidential speechwriter

Words matter — and so does wording.

A starving, disoriented polar bear wanders into a town in Siberia, hundreds of miles from where it should be at this time of year.

A new survey reports the glacial ice cap in the Himalayas is melting twice as quickly as climate scientists predicted just 10 years ago.

Other climate scientists are startled to find Arctic permafrost thawing 70 years sooner than predicted.

The term “climate change” no longer suffices, The Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner decided earlier this year. From now on, she announced, the Guardian would use more pointed, up-to-date terminology.

Semantics? Possibly, but in a sit-down this past week with Guardian readers editor Paul Chadwick, Viner elaborated on the reasons for her five changes to the Guardian’s in-house style guide. The old terms are not banned, she stressed: It’s simply that the new terms are preferred, wherever possible.

Only the most hardened climate denier, after all, would argue that the climate crisis hasn’t precipitated a conversation crucial to our future.

On the use of climate emergency, crisis or breakdown for climate change, for example, Viner noted that immediate action is needed to combat carbon emissions — right now — and yet emissions continue to grow. “That’s an emergency or crisis,” she said.  “Extreme weather is increasing; and climate patterns established (over) millennia are changing. (That’s) breakdown.”

Global heating is more accurate than global

warming. “Global heating is more scientifically accurate . . .  Greenhouse gases form an atmospheric blanket that stops the sun’s heat escaping back into space.”

The use of “wildlife” is preferred to biodiversity. “Biodiversity is not a common or well-understood term, and is a bit clinical when you’re talking about all the creatures that share our planet.”

“Fish populations” are preferred to fish stock. “Fish do not exist solely to be harvested by humans — they play a vital role in the natural health of the oceans.”

“Climate sceptics” — the word “sceptic” gives them too much credit when confronted with empirical evidence that we can all see with our own eyes: The ice caps are melting, and polar bears are starving. The more scientifically accurate handle, Viner says, is “climate-science denier” or the shorter, simpler  “climate denier.”

Said Viner: “Very few experts are, in good faith, truly sceptical of climate science, or of the necessity for strong climate action.”

Those who argue that the climate crisis isn’t a crisis, are flying in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Much like the climate, language is in constant state of flux and constantly evolving, whether, as Chadwick pointed out, it’s language as description or language as exhortation.

Language in the service of a greater good is about harnessing the power of words to focus minds on an urgent global issue.

Semper fidelis, semper vera.

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