The challenge of combating climate change is becoming more and more urgent. Sir David Attenborough, the distinguished natural history programme-maker and WWF ambassador, is now convinced that the perils are all too real. He explains why to WWF's Peter Denton.



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Interview transcript

WWF: Nearly 20 years ago in one of your programmes, you said that man had unprecedented control over the world and everything in it - so whether he likes it or not, what happens next is largely up to him.
DA: Yes.

WWF: So what does happen next, do you think?
DA: Um. Well, there is going to be climate change. There already is climate change. We're going to find irreversible changes in the way our countryside is. And that will vary - in some places it may get colder; in other places it will still get warmer. But there will be changes. And there will be more extreme weather, which we're already knowing now. It's not just that there will either be more rainfall, there will be more violent rain storms, and that heat waves will be more extreme. So that's one thing. Those changes will bring changes to the vegetation and to the land, and that will mean the distribution of animals will change. But what happens at the top, as it were? What happens with the animals that are Arctic animals or polar animals, in the north of Scotland and beyond? The answer is that they'll have nowhere to go. And there doesn't seem much doubt that the - unless something very strange happens and unpredictable happens - that we will go on losing ice in the north, in the Arctic, and with the sea ice being lost, polar bears will find it increasingly hard to hunt. And so the polar bear is certainly on the list of the highly endangered animals. For the first time not because of man's depredations, not because of man's hunting, but because its basic living conditions will have changed and disappeared.

WWF: So the big question is - how do we reverse the damage that's already been done?
DA: You can't. You can't reverse this damage. A carbon dioxide molecule will survive up in the atmosphere for a century or more. So the carbon dioxide that was produced by the fires that I sat beside as a child is still up there. And there's nothing you can do about taking that back. You have to wait for the natural processes that may cause it to disintegrate and decay. But ever since then, everything we've done has gone on putting more, as it were, more and more blankets around the Earth. And there is no way we can take 'em off. All we can do is to stop adding to them -well, we can't even stop adding to them because we have to breathe and that produces carbon dioxide. All we can do is reduce the rate at which we're adding to them.

WWF: So try and slow things down?
DA: Indeed so, yeah.

WWF: Do you believe the problem is as serious as WWF and others claim it to be?
DA: Yes, I would have thought probably in excess of that. I mean, I believe WWF is taking a responsibly conservative view really. I think that there are very great dangers.

WWF: Opinion polls suggest that the public accept climate change as a fact. The task now is to convince them, individually, to do something about it, isn't it? How can we best do that?
DA: Um... it's a very difficult question, because it's very easy to kind of escape responsibility by saying 'oh well, I'm very much in favour of it, but of course it's for the government to do something about it and I voted the right way last time so I've done everything I can'.
I actually believe it's a kind of moral question. I'm old enough to have been in the war as a kid, and during the war you ate what was on your plate. You ate it up because it was wrong to leave it, because food was in short supply. So just because you didn't like that bit of fat, you didn't leave it on the side, you ate it up. And I think that that kind of attitude has to come to us all - that it is actually wrong to leave lights burning unnecessarily; it is actually wrong to burn more petrol than you actually need to get around. I'm not asking that people should all get on bicycles, I'm not asking that people should live by candlelight or something - that is not possible, even if one were silly enough to ask it. But if everybody really took the saving of energy seriously, in whatever way they did it, it would have a real effect. And we're going to be forced into it eventually.

WWF: So if there's one thing that anyone listening to us now can do to help things along, to help the environment, what do you think that would be?
DA: Well make sure first of all, that the politicians know that they have the backing of the electorate to do things which may not be immediately on the surface make life easier. Sometimes politicians have to pass laws or make rules or take decisions which are not politically... not popularly... make life comfortable. And we have to make clear to politicians that actually, we understand that these things should be done that way, and to give them their backing. Secondly, in our own lives, do not waste energy - and do not be wasteful in general of the Earth's supplies.

WWF: Generally speaking, are you an optimist - as far as the environment's concerned?
DA: Um... well... I'm well aware - and any biologist ought to be well aware - that nature is not balanced. It's a cliché, you know, 'the balance of nature'. Nature's only balanced over a very short period of time. By and large, nature is always shifting, and it always has shifted, and I don't think that we can possibly go back to that kind of almost fictional paradisial time, which we think of between the two wars, of a green and pleasant land and hedgerows everywhere. That won't happen. We won't go back to that; it's not possible. So I'm... I accept change. I accept that things will change. And that doesn't necessarily distress me. What does distress me is which way that is going to change, and we can influence that. That's where we have to do something about it.