A LIFE ON OUR PLANET

The eminent traveler and naturalist delivers a combination of memoir and manifesto, the first leisurely, the second earnest.

Now 94, Attenborough, longtime nature documentarian and a fluent, always interesting writer, recounts growing up in the countryside of Leicester, “in the middle of England,” the kind of place where a kid could hop on a bicycle and spend a day poking around. While his older brother, later a distinguished filmmaker and actor, got involved in local drama societies, the author found himself fascinated by “turning over a stone and looking at the animals,” and he determined that “the most important knowledge was that which brought an understanding of how the natural world worked.” Little did he know that the natural world even then was on the edge of precipitous decline, with catastrophic loss of species, habitats, and biodiversity—and, he notes, “for life to truly thrive on this planet, there must be immense biodiversity.” The converse is true: Diminish biodiversity, and life does not decline but instead begins to go pear-shaped. “We have a choice to make,” he insists: We can pretend that nothing is happening, live out our lives as best we can, and leave it for the next generations to worry about, “or we could change.” The recipe for change constitutes a plan of attack for returning to the Holocene from the Anthropocene, from biological impoverishment to wealth. A critical ingredient is that biodiversity, a critical habitat the forests of which humankind “is such a determined and effective destroyer.” Another critical ingredient is “to change the way in which we power our activities,” building a world in which carbon-free energy technologies replace fossil fuels. We are far along in terms of engineering and economics but far behind overall because of “the abstract force we might call vested interests.” Recognizing that we are at a tipping point, Attenborough is refreshingly optimistic, noting that one thing humans do well is solve problems.

Anyone concerned with the planet’s ecological future will want to spend time with this excellent book.