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  BBC 24 May 06
Attenborough: Climate is changing

The Guardian 21 May 06
Attenborough goes to war over climate
Juliette Jowit, environment editor
The Observer

David Attenborough will this week make his first unequivocal public statement linking humans to climate change - silencing environmentalists who have criticised him for not using his popularity to highlight the dangers posed by global warming.

Launching the BBC's Climate Chaos season on Wednesday, Attenborough will present a moving personal journey through the science of climate change and its impact around the world, from disappearing polar bears to shrinking glaciers in Patagonia to the expanding deserts of China.

The 80-year-old naturalist, who became a household name presenting Life on Earth in the Seventies, has long been privately involved with many environmental campaign groups and charities, but the two one-hour, prime-time BBC1 programmes will make his views known to millions.

He ends the first programme with the following declaration: 'So there we have it. There seems little doubt this recent rise, this steep rise in temperature is down to human activity.' He adds: 'We ourselves have become a force of nature. We are changing the climate and what happens next really is up to us.'

Attenborough - whose other series have included Life of Mammals, Life of Birds and, most recently, Life in the Undergrowth - does not shy away from pointing the finger of blame at his audience, as well as at himself.

'We are all involved in this. Our whole way of life is structured around the burning of fossil fuels,' he says.

'I find it sobering to think while I have been travelling the world trying to reveal the complexity and beauty of our planet that I, too, have been making my own contribution to global warming.'

Dr Joe Smith, an environmental lecturer at the Open University who led a group of scientists advising the programme makers, said it was 'very significant' that the naturalist had agreed to make the programmes because there is widespread public confusion about whether humans are to blame for climate change and Attenborough was more trusted than other figures such as scientists and politicians.

'He's been determined not to be captured at any point in his career by a green movement, by a green position,' said Smith. 'He's wanted to be confident he was working with the very best science.

'The point here is, he now recognises that the science has matured to the point where, even though we're going to stay with uncertainty around climate change science, there is a depth of consensus around the fact that climate change is happening and it's human caused.'

Attenborough's intervention also comes at an important time as politicians are looking for public support to back up attempts to get a new international agreement to tackle the problem, said Guy Thompson, director of the Green Alliance think tank.

BBC 24 May 06
Attenborough: Climate is changing

His comments come ahead of a two-part BBC series in which he examines the impacts of global warming on the Earth.

Sir David has been criticised by environmentalists in the past for not speaking out on the matter.

"If you take one moment in time, you can't be sure what the trend is," he told the BBC. "Now... when we look at the graphs of rising ocean temperatures, rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and so on, we know that they are climbing far more steeply than can be accounted for by the natural oscillation of the weather."

Sir David, whose distinguished broadcasting career spans more than half a century, says everyone has a responsibility to act: "What people (must) do is to change their behaviour and their attitudes. "If we do care about our grandchildren then we have to do something, and we have to demand that our governments do something.

His comments came as a UK parliamentary body, the All-Party Environment Group, issued a report labelling the government a "climate laggard" for its record on reducing emissions.

Climate sceptic

Sir David, whose natural history programmes have been watched by millions of people around the world, is the latest high-profile figure to say the world is facing a climate crisis.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams; the government's chief scientist Sir David King, and former Royal Society president Sir Robert May have all expressed public concern on the issue.

This week, former US Vice President Al Gore has been at the Cannes Film Festival to promote a documentary on climate change. Mr Gore told festival goers that the world was facing a "planetary emergency" due to global warming.

The man who beat him to the White House in the 2000 US presidential elections, George W Bush, remains sceptical about the influence of human activity on the state of the planet's atmosphere.

He says binding targets to reduce greenhouse emissions are inefficient and would harm the US economy. Last year, he launched a partnership alongside five Asia-Pacific nations to promote technological solutions for reducing the world's dependency on fossil fuels.

Sir David will present a two-part television programme that will explore how climate change is altering the planet, from drought-hit rainforest to the decline of polar bears. Sir David Attenborough presents Are We Changing Planet Earth?
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