A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future

Leveling a carbon tax on emissions has long been a part of the struggle to confront climate change. While there are critics who argue that this tax is too easily manipulated or avoided altogether, Attenborough sees its potential: “It is widely acknowledged that the most powerful incentive of all to end our reliance on fossil fuels would be a high global price on carbon emissions—a carbon tax that penalises any and all emitters” (142). He uses Sweden, which imposed such a tax back in the 1990s, as an example of its effectiveness.

Carbon capture, in contrast, entails designing systems—and, most importantly to Attenborough, rewilding areas of ocean and land—that will capture and store significant amounts of carbon emissions. Also known as CCS (carbon capture and storage), this method “is extremely attractive to politicians and business leaders who need to buy more time to phase out fossil fuels” (145). For Attenborough, however, the notion of carbon capture supports his project of rewilding. For example, if certain areas of the sea are left unfished—that is, left to regenerate their biodiversity—they would also be capable of capturing more carbon: “It is no coincidence that these [coral reefs, submarine seamounts, kelp forests, mangroves, seagrass meadows and saltmarshes] are also the best places to help us achieve our other big objective—carbon capture” (150). Thus, Attenborough’s plan to rewild land and sea would effectively engender natural CCS shelters.

The opposite of fossil fuel energy, clean energy derives from “the inexhaustible natural sources of energy—the Sun, the wind, the waves, the tides and the heat from deep in the Earth’s crust” (139). These sources cannot be depleted like fossil fuels, and they do not inherently pollute. As Attenborough warns: “We have less than a decade to switch from fossil fuels to clean energy” should a full-blown climate crisis be averted (139). Clean energy, along with rewilding and restoring biodiversity, will bring the Earth’s environment back into balance, according to Attenborough.

Attenborough relies on research from the newer field of Earth system science to bolster his idea that Earth is a closed system, with limitations on its natural ability to regenerate and support life. Earth system science “examine[s] nature at a planetary scale” to determine “how much more our planet can take” (109). These limitations are known as “planetary boundaries,” defined by nine crucial rubrics: climate change; ocean acidification; chemical pollution; fertilizer use; freshwater withdrawals; land conversion; biodiversity loss; air pollution; and ozone layer depletion (110). According to Attenborough’s understanding, the Earth has already exceeded its boundaries in four of these areas: climate change; fertilizer use; land conversion; and biodiversity loss. Air pollution and chemical pollution are also on the threshold, though these are more difficult to quantify across the planet. Attenborough explains the impact of looking at the Earth and its limitations on this planetary scale: “If we keep our impact within these thresholds, we occupy a safe operating space, a sustainable existence. If we push our demands to such an extent that any one of these boundaries is breached, we risk destabilising the life-support machine, permanently debilitating nature” (109).

The Doughnut model uses the work of Earth system science and planetary boundaries to implement a different kind of model, one that takes into account the “social foundation” of the human world (128). Essentially, an inner ring of considerations within the ecological boundaries of the planet is applied; thus, access to water, food and shelter is considered, along with health, work and educational needs, gender equality, political freedom, and peace and justice. In this way, Attenborough’s vision for the future includes not only an ecological imperative but also a humanitarian one.

Attenborough discusses the problems with industrial farming throughout the book: it encroaches on wildlands; encourages deforestation; creates monocultures wherein biodiversity loses out; and relies on petrochemicals, like fertilizers and pesticides, for its maintenance. However, he acknowledges that humanity must find a way to feed itself—preferably sustainably. Thus, he recommends the practice of regenerative farming, “an inexpensive approach able to revive the exhausted soils of most [industrial] fields by bringing organic matter rich in carbon back into the topsoil” (164). Regenerative farming also avoids ploughing, which can release more carbon into the air, and the use of fertilizers; instead, cover crops and crop rotation methods are used to keep the soil rich and healthy.

Urban farming entails farming in smaller and innovative places, “the practice of growing food commercial in cities” (165). This utilizes space that would otherwise by fallow, and thus creates carbon capture areas as well as food for urban populations. These urban farms can occupy rooftops or exterior walls of highrises, window ledges, and/or “shipping containers on brownfield sites” (165). Urban farms often rely on vertical farming, “in which layers of different plants, often salad crops, are placed one on top of the other, lit with LEDs powered by renewables” (166). They also often use hydroponic methods, which “maximise growing conditions and keep the need to add soil, water and nutrients to a minimum” (165). Thus, urban farming alleviates the pressure to develop more wildlands into farmland while also, like regenerative farming, maintaining a minimal carbon footprint.

The Great Acceleration that Attenborough describes at length was (some argue still is) a period of unprecedented growth that began during World War II, fueled by the technological development and engineering advancements of the war effort, and continued after the war. This Great Acceleration paved the way for peace, prosperity, and comfort for millions of people—but at an extraordinarily high price. The result of the Great Acceleration is the loss of biodiversity, deforestation, conversion of wildland into farmland, and excessive pollution that has led to the oncoming/ongoing climate crisis. Attenborough notes that his “testimony [in this book] is a first-person narration of the Great Acceleration” (106). He also clearly argues that this kind of growth cannot continue unabated; the stakes are too high. The very sustainability of the Earth is under threat.

To understand the Great Acceleration is also to understand the dominant economic stance of the twentieth century: growth, as measured in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), is desirable and infinite. Attenborough describes the Great Acceleration in terms of its impact on GDP: “The trends in our activities can be expressed in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), energy use, water use, the building of dams, the spread of telecommunications, tourism, the spread of farmland” (106). One could add the growth of human population, as well. The Great Acceleration, as partly measured by GDP, also resulted in increased life expectancy and better health care, not to mention a prolonged period of international peace, the spread of democracy and human rights. However, these advances have been fitful at best and inapplicable to millions across the globe; the gap between the wealthy and the impoverished, worldwide (and nationally in the United States among other industrialized nations), continues to grow. In addition, as Attenborough emphasizes, the Great Acceleration has eventually led to the Great Decline, the destruction of natural habitats, ecosystems, and biodiversity.

While Attenborough admits that he will pass away in the Anthropocene (see above), he claims he was born in the Holocene era, “one of the most stable periods in our planet’s long history” (20). The Holocene’s relative stability has enabled a wide variety of life to flourish across the globe—until recently, that is, as “the sixth mass extinction” looms over the Anthropocene (120). Attenborough describes the conditions of the Holocene as “our Garden of Eden,” a period of unmatched “security and stability” (120). Due to the activities of humans—encroaching on wild areas, generating carbon emissions, polluting on an unprecedented scale—this paradisical period has passed. The loss of biodiversity, the linchpin of maintaining the Earth’s balance, threatens the existence of all species, including humans themselves.