Sir David Attenborough interview with Jon Snow on climate change and politics

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: So David, I told a few kids that I was going to talk to you, and a seven-year-old asked me, what's the worst thing that's going to happen in my lifetime if we don't tackle climate change? That's in a child's lifetime, so that's in, let's say, 70 years. [00:00:17] Speaker 2: I think civil unrest on a great scale, and mass migration on a great scale. I mean, I think we will go on finding enough food, though it may not be precisely the choice that we would take freely. [00:00:39] Speaker 1: But I think that's what I fear, anyway. When an 11-year-old asked me to ask you, is it actually anyway too late to reverse climate change? [00:00:52] Speaker 2: It's too late to reverse it, I think not only in my lifetime, but in the next lifetime. Yeah, I don't think you can reverse it. I think the best we can hope is that we will slow it down, and slow it down considerably. If we can do that, I mean, after all, if it didn't increase very much from where we are now, well, we can muddle on. [00:01:18] Speaker 1: But it won't go down. There's been far, far more talk in this last year, amongst politicians, amongst teachers, amongst everybody, about climate change. But do you detect real action? [00:01:33] Speaker 2: Well, it's very difficult to detect real action in politicians anyway, and fair play to them. You don't shift a nation's policy universally just overnight, just by a stroke of a pen. And so total shifts are difficult to make. But in fact, oddly, you know, shifts are taking surreptitiously. I've just come back from San Francisco, where I was filming, and driving out of town, it is an absolute forest of wind turbines. I mean, really, literally hundreds of them, big ones and little ones, and they're all whirring away. And this is the land where the president denies that there's any such thing as climate crisis. I was astonished. Of course, California is famous for the fact that its government, state government, is convinced about climate change. And with good reason, I mean, because the West Coast is really very, very hot in the summer. But I also, change is taking place. And it seems strange, but politicians are not very good at explaining what they're doing. I'm surprised this government, it also hasn't said as much as it should, about what is happening and what is improving, and giving us something to convince us that they are taking it seriously. [00:03:02] Speaker 1: I can't remember a general election in which there have been debates solely about climate change. We had one such last night. But you still don't sense that there's a game plan that they want to set before the electorate. Elect me and these are the things we will do immediately. [00:03:23] Speaker 2: Well, I'm sure that would help. I mean, anything we can do will help to keep the issue in the headlines, you know. And to make people, persuade people that what is happening is a serious thing, which is a continuous thing. It doesn't, one that is subject to a quick solution and disappear. This is going to be with us forever. [00:03:46] Speaker 1: What about lifestyle? What about giving up meat and all that sort of thing? Do you believe in that? [00:03:53] Speaker 2: Well, I think it's optimistic to suppose that overnight everybody is going to stop eating meat. And indeed, from many points of view, or some points of view, that wouldn't be a good thing anyway, in that there are plenty of examples of areas where you can run sheep, for example, on moorlands, which you won't actually be able to profit from in any other way. But there is a huge thing about vegetarianism or eating less meat. Five years ago, you wouldn't dream of going to a public meal in which they didn't serve meat of some kind. And now there's often no choice. I, oddly enough, I just find I don't like meat. I almost unconsciously find that I haven't been eating meat for a long time. I mean, sort of years, really. And I can't pretend that I am a dyed-in-the-wool vegan who examines every ingredient of every meal. But it's a long time since I don't think I've eaten red meat for months and months and months. [00:05:00] Speaker 1: When you hear politicians debating issues around climate change, do you believe that actually we have yet reached the point at which people say, actually, it's as important as defence, it's as important as foreign affairs, it's as important as the economy? [00:05:16] Speaker 2: No, because it's slow acting. And because they say, oh, well, next month you won't see any difference. Whereas if in defence or health or whatever, in next month things could happen. But the immediate changes, they aren't of that kind unless you get something really dramatic like the collapse of the glacier or the switch of the ocean currents or something. Except, having said that, of course, I mean, what are all these hurricanes? And what are all these, I mean, why is Australia roasting? And more mysteriously still, it's why is the government insisting that it's got nothing to do with climate change? [00:06:03] Speaker 1: Well, you take Australia roasting. Surely that is enough to persuade a government to say, enough's enough. [00:06:10] Speaker 2: Well, it might be enough to persuade some, but others say, no, no, this is nature. This has always happened, you know. [00:06:16] Speaker 1: I suppose in the end, what people are wanting to know is, we may be talking about climate change. Are we talking about political change? Is there any sign, if you really think of the large span of your lifetime, do you detect a genuine determination amongst the politicians to actually combat climate change at the level at which it has to be combated? [00:06:45] Speaker 2: Well, I can see that politicians who don't have power can say, this should happen tomorrow. I think if you're in power, you have to look at consequentials all the time. And the number of occasions on which you say, right, I will do this tomorrow, is very few. And you can't blame them for that. I would wish that they took much more notice and they didn't spend, let's get over this election anyway and get that sorted out and we'd have time. But it's really rather sad that it was only last night that we had the first debate in the election conversations about climate change. [00:07:27] Speaker 1: Well, this was on Channel 4 News last night. It was indeed. And the Prime Minister did not take part. [00:07:33] Speaker 2: I know, and I think that is shameful. Well, OK, let's not be all that pompous about it. I mean, I don't know what else he had to do. But it would have to be very, very important to dodge this one, I think. [00:07:49] Speaker 1: So, I'm just wondering where we go from here. I mean, how do we get on to another level? I mean, how do we get on to another level of discourse? Heaven knows, you've done enough on television, through films, through being prepared to talk, even talk now at 93. This is amazing, yes. But is it matched? Are we seeing real movement broader than that? [00:08:13] Speaker 2: I suspect that the big movement that's really going to make the quickest difference is big corporations, big international organisations that are persuaded that it is either genuinely or PR or, for whatever reason, that they ought to take action now and they ought to get rid of plastic, for example. Now, you can do that with a stroke of a pen, jolly nearly. And I keep hearing of various different corporations who are taking that sort of view. And I am persuaded that they will not only do from that point of view, but there are also lots of organisations that recognise that here is a huge commercial opportunity. If you are able to find out ways of storing power, storing electrical power in much more efficient batteries than we have, there's a fortune to be made. If you can work out ways in which we can transport power, let us say from the Sahara to Northern Europe, in which you don't lose a huge proportion of the power on the way, if you can do it efficiently, there's a fortune to be made. If you can work out ways of converting plastic waste into something that's useful, or indeed just getting rid of it economically, there's a fortune to be made. [00:09:32] Speaker 1: There's another way of approaching it, though, that surely, if you say, yes, you want big corporations to get rid of all their plastic and the rest of it, in part, you have to educate the customer how bad plastic is. And the government doesn't actually risk alienating business by saying, we've got to educate the public into understanding just how bad this stuff is. [00:09:52] Speaker 2: Well, that's true. I mean, there are both sides, two sides of the same coin, though. I mean, getting rid of it and decrying it and so on is easy enough to do. It's more difficult to actually suddenly say you're going to take something. Plastic is all-pervasive throughout our industry and throughout our lives. And we can't, for the best one in the world, get rid of it. Actually, I think we've still got a big way to go with the public, as far as I can say. I mean, I get letters, to start with, they're in envelopes twice the size that they need to be. But also, and they are letters telling me how terrible plastic is. And they are sent to me in a transparent folder, a single sheet of A4 paper in the transparent folder, which is two sides of it. So twice as much plastic as there is paper. [00:10:46] Speaker 1: Why? But then you are talking about a need to revolutionise education. Yes. Actually, the primary school teacher comes in and say, kids, the most important thing you need to know is you do not want plastic in any form in your house. [00:10:59] Speaker 2: And you know, of all the sections of society who are really doing something about it, it's primary school teachers. I mean, I get 30 to 50 letters a day, of which a considerable, significant proportion are from teachers or from their schools. And all these kids are persuaded of this, from their teaching. And primary school teachers are doing a great job. [00:11:22] Speaker 1: Hand on heart, do you think we will emerge from this election, a critical election in our time, better off in terms of an understanding of the need to change our ways? [00:11:37] Speaker 2: No, because I know that Channel 4 has led the way in getting a debate on pollution and climate change and that you had to work hard to get that. The fact is that the political parties haven't wanted to do it, didn't want to do it. You forced them to do it and more strength to your elbow. But they think that the issues that are facing the electorate are ones that you're going to have to change their lives tomorrow or the day after. And those are the ones they concentrate on. And that is the problem of having a short-term election, a short-term life for a government. If you have regular elections every few years, no politician thinks about what's going to happen or what will happen or to taking action for something that will happen 10 years off, 15 years off. Are you an optimist? I don't think things will get better. I think we can slow the degree to which they are getting worse. Sir David Attenborough, thank you very much for talking to us. Pleasure.