"But can I just look at some elephants please?"

 

Sarah Vine, wife of former Environment Secretary Michael Gove, tweeted this tonight: 

Tuned in to watch a bit of David Attenborough but am now being subjected to propaganda. Yes, I know: humanity is an evil plague on the planet. But can I just look at some elephants please? #PerfectPlanet

Of course, the answer to Sarah's question is, 'No, you can't just look at some elephants. This is the BBC'.

Wonder if Michael was watching and felt the same way?

The BBC's Real Official New Year's Message

I didn't know this until Charlie mentioned it, but between Doctor Who (which I watched, and after which I immediately switched the TV off) and Eastenders on New Year's Day came an extra item - a New Year's message, not from the Queen, or the Prime Minister, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, but from Sir David Attenborough, the patron saint of the BBC. And it was a campaigning message too:

Hello. I'm David Attenborough. I'm speaking to you from my home because, like many of you, I've spent much of the last year indoors, away from friends, family, and access to the natural world. It's been a challenging few months for many of us but the reaction to these extraordinary times has proved that when we work together, there is no limit to what we can accomplish. Today we are experiencing environmental change as never before. And the need to take action has never been more urgent. This year, the world will gather in Glasgow for the United Nations Climate Change Conference. It's a crucial moment in our history. This could be a year for positive change, for ourselves... ..for our planet... ..and for the wonderful creatures with which we share it. A year the world could remember proudly and say we made a difference. As we make our New Year's resolutions, let's think about what each of us could do - what positive changes could we make in our own lives? So here's to a brighter year ahead. Let's make 2021 a happy New Year for all the inhabitants of our perfect planet.

Just as The World at One was signalling yesterday that it approves of Black Live Matter, so BBC One couldn't let New Year's Day pass without signalling its commitment to urgent action on climate change at the United Nations Climate Change Conference. 

Admittedly, probably because Doctor Who isn't what it used to be, the audience for this was under 5 million, so its reach wasn't anywhere near what it would have been even a few years back.  

On which theme, here's the BBC's Lizo Mzimba:

The Doctor Who New Year special Revolution of the Daleks was the BBC's most watched show last night with an overnight audience of 4.69 million. The two most watched programmes overall were ITV's Coronation Street with 5.02m and the ITV Evening News won the night with 5.54m.

Lizo then added a coda:  

Doctor Who's overnight figure is up by almost a million from the previous episode, March's series 12 finale The Timeless Children.

This is an area I know a bit about. The Timeless Children was the second lowest-watched Doctor Who ever, only beaten by the episode which preceded it. It 'achieved' a meagre 3.78 million viewers. Jodie Whittaker's first episode had got 8.2 million viewers, so the programme had lost some 4.4 million viewers under her - and showrunner Chris Chibnall's - tenure. Doctor Who seasonal one-offs always get higher figures. Peter Capaldi got 6.34 million for his in 2014. This year's 4.69 million, therefore, is dire for Doctor Who. To say it isn't the audience-puller it used to be is a considerable understatement. 

So Sir David's homily won't have been seen by the VAST majority of the public, and those catching up with Doctor Who on the iPlayer won't be catching it either.

The BBC doesn't have the reach it used to have.

Transcript of David Attenborough's 'Extinction: The Facts', BBC One (13/9/2020)

 

The body of this transcript consists of David Attenborough's narration from Extinction: The Facts. Everything behind bullet points comes from the experts who appeared in the programme. 

*******

Our planet is home to a seemingly infinite variety of species. From ocean giants to the tiniest insects. We call this abundance of life biodiversity. But today, it's vanishing at rates never seen before in human history. 

• News report - "The UN panel of experts has found that one million animal and plant species face extinction". 
• It is worse than expected. This is happening much faster than we've ever seen before. 
• Today, we are the asteroid that's causing many, many species to go extinct simultaneously. 

The evidence is that unless immediate action is taken, this crisis has grave impacts for us all. 

• We're not just losing nice things to look at. We're losing critical parts of Earth's system. 
• And it's threatening our food, our water, our climate. 
• This year has shown us we've gone one step too far. 

Scientists have even linked our destructive relationship with nature to the emergence of Covid-19. 

• We are encroaching further and further every day into wildlife habitat, and that drives emerging diseases. 
• If we carry on like this, we will see more epidemics as bad as this, and some of them could even be worse. 

The decisions made as we rebuild our economies are critical. 

• Get it wrong and we will be in deeply dangerous territory. 
• Get it right and we still have the ability to pull back and rein in the collapse of biodiversity. 
• We have a moment when we can change our world and make it better. This is that moment. 

Over the course of my life, I've encountered some of the world's most remarkable species of animals. Only now do I realise just how lucky I've been. Many of these wonders seem set to disappear forever. We're facing a crisis, and one that has consequences for us all. It threatens our ability to feed ourselves, to control our climate. It even puts us at greater risk of pandemic diseases such as Covid-19. It's never been more important for us to understand the effects of biodiversity loss, of how it is that we ourselves are responsible for it. Only if we do that will we have any hope of averting disaster. 

Last year, the United Nations asked over 500 scientists to investigate the current state of the natural world. 

• This is the first time there's been a global assessment where all the evidence has been pulled together, thousands and thousands of papers. 
• We're losing biodiversity at a rate that is truly unprecedented in human history. 
• All groups in the natural world are in decline, which means their populations are getting smaller, day by day. 
• Since 1970, vertebrate animals - things like birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles - have declined by 60% in total. Large mammals have on average disappeared from three quarters of the range where they were historically found. 
• What's different is that it's happening simultaneously in the Amazon, in Africa, in the Arctic. It's happening not at one place and not with one group of organisms, but with all biodiversity everywhere on the planet. 
• It means that one million species out of eight million species on Earth are now threatened with extinction. 500,000 plants and animals and 500,000 insects. 
• Extinction is a natural process. Things come, they grow, their populations get huge and then they decline. But it's the rate of extinction. That's the problem. So when you look at previous groups in the fossil records, then it's over millions of years they go extinct. Here we're looking at tens of years. 

Since 1500, 570 plant species and 700 animal species have gone extinct. Studies suggest that extinction is now happening 100 times faster than the natural evolutionary rate, and it's accelerating. 

• Globally, there was a shock. Because you hadn't pulled all that data together, people hadn't realised that we have a very serious crisis on our hands. 
• Many people think of extinction being this imaginary tale told by conservationists, but I have lived it. I know what it is. I am caretaker of the northern white rhinos. We only have two left on the planet. They are mother and daughter. This is Najin, the mother, who is 30 years old. She is very quiet. And her daughter is Fatu. This is Fatu. Hey, come on. Hey, Fatu. Fatu, no, come on. She's 19 years old. She's pretty much like a human teenager. She's a little bit unpredictable and can be feisty sometimes, especially when she wants something.
  
  

Northern white rhinos were once found in their thousands in central Africa, but were pushed to the brink of extinction by habitat loss and hunting. By 1990, just seven known individuals survived. 

• I've seen these beautiful rhinos count from seven down to two. They're here because we've betrayed them. And I think they feel it, this threatening tide of extinction that is pushing on them. They feel their world is collapsing. Unless science saves them, when Najin passes away, she'll leave the daughter Fatu alone forever. The last northern white rhino. And their plight awaits one million more species. 
• Once we lose these species, we do not have hope of accumulating them back on a timescale that we exist on. 

Unique animals with complex and varied lives disappearing from our planet forever isn't just disturbing. It's deeply tragic. But this is about more than losing the wonders of nature. The consequences of these losses for us as a species are far-reaching and profound. 

• What we now know about the natural world is that everything is joined up. From a single pond to a whole tropical rainforest. All of biodiversity is interlocked on a global scale and all parts of that system are required to make it function. We tend to think that we're somehow outside of that system, but we are part of it and we are totally reliant upon it. 
• The problem is we're now changing those ecological systems on a massive scale, right across the globe. And it's threatening food and water security. We're losing many of the things that nature provides us. One of the big threats is the loss of insects. We've estimated 10% are at risk of extinction. Other scientists believe the number could be much larger. 
• Driving around, we don't have moths, butterflies, bees, all sorts of insects on our windshield any more. And that is scary. Because they form the food chain for hundreds of thousands of other species. And they are extremely important for pollination. 

Three quarters of the world's food crops rely partly on pollination by insects to produce the food that we need. 

• Another threat is the loss of diversity below ground. Soil should be teeming with life. But reports have suggested that up to 30% of the land's surface globally has been degraded and has soils of low biodiversity. One of the most important things that animals in the soil do is break down organic matter which can then be used for plant growth. So if we lose the diversity of the soil, the consequences of that can be catastrophic. 
• We're seeing already that due to soil degradation and changes in the Earth's climate, food production in some parts of the world is going down. Unfortunately, the most affected would be poor people in developing countries. But there's no question everybody in the world, one way or another, is being affected by the loss of biodiversity. 
• One of the really big problems is what's happening to plants. The picture is grim. 25% of the plant species that have been assessed are threatened with extinction. One in four plants. I find that terrifying. Plants underpin almost every single thing that we require. Think about the air we breathe, concentration of CO2 in the air, clean water. Trees regulate water flow across landscapes. Intercept the rainfall and the roots hold the soil in place. So you chop all those trees down, there's nothing doing that, you end up with a landslide. We've learnt that many, many times, and yet we carry on making the same mistake. 
• Even in the UK, we've converted many areas that have been natural wetlands, which would absorb the water. What we're now seeing is major floods. 

The impacts of biodiversity loss are no longer a threat for future generations to face. We ourselves must do so. It's never been more critical for us to understand what is driving this crisis. Scientists have identified the key ways in which we humans are destroying the ecosystems on which we depend. 

• There are many ways to remove pieces of the puzzle. The most obvious way is to kill something, and we do a lot of that. 

Over the last 20 years, the illegal wildlife trade has become a multi-billion dollar global industry. 

• News reports - "One of the biggest ever hauls, worth more than #4 million"... "326 pieces were seized"... "was found in a shipping container"... 
• Poaching is still sort of like a war, a constant battle that we have to fight. Every day, we lose between two or three rhinos in Africa. And it is not just rhinos. 
• We're talking about millions of animals being snatched from the wild, from thousands of species. 
• Illegal wildlife trafficking ranks fourth of transnational crimes after human trafficking, arms and drugs. 
• One of the drivers for increasing demand is increased income in China, Vietnam or elsewhere. If you have money, if you have internet, you can literally order anything that you want. It could be a status symbol or it could be for medicinal purposes. But it's all made up. People claim these are cultures and traditions, but a lot is really just a marketing scheme by traders looking for the next animal to exploit.
   

Today, the most trafficked animal in the world is one few people have ever seen and many have never even heard of. Pangolins are nocturnal animals found throughout Asia and Africa. They are natural pest controllers. Each one can consume 70 million ants a year. Pangolins are the only mammal covered in scales, and this is their downfall. 

• The massive demand in Asia for pangolin scales is driving the decimation of pangolins. 
• Traders claim that they have medicinal purposes, but, you know, pangolin scales are made of keratin. It's like our fingernails. So they have no medicinal properties. 
• The numbers of African pangolin scales that have been intercepted going into Asia has dramatically increased over the last few years. Last year, 2019, it was just over 100 tonnes of scales. That's 175,000 pangolins that have been killed for the scale trade. We work closely with law enforcement officials. This little pangolin came in off the trade, and they're usually dehydrated and emaciated. This pangolin's still got the little white tips at the end of each scale which shows his use. And this is a particularly pretty little pangolin. Poaching is a brutally cruel business. I have seen video footage of them being boiled alive. It's extremely distressing to see how these animals are killed. 
• Last year, when Covid-19 first emerged, pangolins were pointed to as a potential source of the virus. And everybody hoped that this would cut down the trade straight away, but unfortunately, that's not happened. The trade is highly profitable and it's unlikely to stop. 
• There are four Asian pangolin species and four African. And all eight species are threatened with extinction. 

There is another huge trade that is driving the loss of biodiversity, and this one happens in plain sight. 

• We have created a database that has world fisheries statistics, and we were the first ones to study fisheries on a global basis, and this global view shows that we have massive and widespread overfishing. 

In the last 40 years, the scale of global fishing has dramatically increased. At any one time, there could be as many as 100,000 trawlers operating in our seas. 

• Modern fishing is an industrial operation run by huge corporations, boats, factories, ships. Some sweep up the ground with a net that might be as big as this house. And you can put four jumbo jets in the mouth of a big trawl. And everything that is in the path goes in. 
• The problem is, as you remove more and more of the adult fish, particularly the larger sized fish, you end up with fewer and fewer of the eggs and the fry, and there's simply not enough for the population to recover. There are ways of sustainably managing fish stocks. Reducing fishing in an area can get a population back to sustainable levels. 
• But you have to choose whether you want to extract a sustainable, modest catch or have a big catch for a short term. And we have always opted for the big catch for a short term. 
• Even where fish quotas are put in place, often they're not being implemented. And in some parts of the world, there's not even good regulations to limit the catches. 
• The waters around the edge of fishing countries are being emptied. We found that in China, we have about 16% left of what we had 120 years ago. And studies suggest that some British waters, where industrial fishing begun, have been decimated. There is now about 5% of trawler cod fish left before the turn of the 20th century. 
• This is a really big problem for the species of fish that prey upon the fish that we're harvesting, and this has huge impact for marine ecosystems. 
• We have completely destroyed the natural balance of fish in the world's oceans. 

Across the globe, the pressures faced by the natural world are becoming ever harder to solve because of our growing demand for nature's resources. 

• When I was a kid in the 1960s, there were three billion people in the world. So I watched it go to six billion around 2000 or so, and I'm now probably going to see it actually reach, you know, nine billion in my lifetime, which is pretty startling.
• Population growth is much, much higher in the developing world than in the developed. 
• But it's problematic to just talk about population because there are two things which are going on. It's population, but it's also consumption. 
• And in terms of impact on the planet, what's much more important is the growth in consumption levels, and these are far higher in the developed economies. 
• That's why I call it a taboo topic, because who's at fault? Is it the very large number of people, or the small number of people with very few children who are actually driving negative impacts? 
  

The average person in the UK consumes nearly four times the resources of the average person in India, and in the United States it's about seven times as much. One of the problems is that many of the products we use are manufactured in ways that pollute our air, land and water, making pollution another of the drivers of biodiversity loss. 

• While in a country like the United Kingdom, where some very strong laws on how to reduce pollution, we do have to realise we're no longer a major industrial country. Most of the things that we actually use are produced abroad in countries where the laws can be non-existent or not implemented. So we are simply moving our footprint on destroying nature to another country. 

Pollutants can have a lasting impact on species - an impact that may take time for us to fully understand. 

• PCB stand for polychlorinated biphenyls. They're used in the electrical industry. We invented them in the '20s and then we began to ban them from the '80s onwards because we realised they had quite a serious and toxic effect on life. They affect the immune system and they also cause reproductive impairment. If PCBs are not disposed of appropriately, then you can get leaching out from the landfill site, into river courses, river beds and back out to sea. Animals at the base of the food chain might absorb very small amounts. But then as animals above them eat more and more of the small animals, they'll concentrate up the food chain. In the UK, we have one really striking example of that. The last remaining pod of in-shore killer whales up in north-west Scotland, where they only have eight individuals left. That population has been studied for about 30 years. In all that time, they've never had a calf. Lulu was a part of that pod. She died due to entanglement in fishing gear. When we had her blubber levels analysed for PCBs, they were quite shocking. One of the highest levels ever recorded in any killer whale on the planet. And when we looked at her ovaries, we found they were non-functional. In my lifetime, we're looking potentially at the complete loss of that population. And then we'll have no more killer whales left around the coast of the UK. 

In addition to these threats, many ecosystems are increasingly feeling the impact of another driver of biodiversity loss. Climate change. Our world is getting hotter. 

• At this moment, we do have the Paris Agreement that says all governments should try and limit climate change to no more than two degrees Celsius. All of the calculations show we're on track for a three to four degree world. And the more the Earth warms, the worse the problem is. 
• There are lots of ways that climate change will impact on species - changing food sources, how they breed and whole patterns of migration and movement. 

Increasing temperatures mean some species are unable to survive in their normal habitat. They're forced to move higher and higher where it's cooler, and eventually there's nowhere left to go. 

• It's been called the escalator to extinction, and we see it all around the globe. 
• In the Australian Wet Tropics, we're already seeing that with possums and birds that just can't handle the heatwaves. About 50% of the endemic species that live in these mountaintops are on that escalator to extinction. These are no longer predictions. We are seeing it happen. 

Scientists predict that in the future, as temperatures continue to rise, climate change will become the greatest threat faced by species. But right now, the single biggest driver of biodiversity loss is the destruction of habitats. 

• Many people imagine there's this untouched wilderness because they see it on their TV screens. But the reality is there's really not a lot of wild left out there. 
• We've already lost nearly 90% of the wetlands around the world. We've transformed the forests and grasslands, we've converted 75% of the land that is not covered by ice. 
• Three quarters of the terrestrial surface has been changed, a lot of it just to feed one species. 
• Obviously, if you clear a rainforest or natural savanna and you replace it with a monoculture agriculture, of course it's unsurprising you're going to lose most of the species that evolved to survive there. The critical thing is that there is now enough land that's already been cleared to sustain the levels of production that we need. But new land is still being cleared because often it's quicker and cheaper to do so. 

It's estimated that every year around 3.8 million hectares of forest are cleared. 

• A lot of that clearance is driven by demand on the other side of the world. We want cheap food and we want to have choice on offer all year round. 

These commodities often provide the mainstay of countries' economies, but many are produced in ways that are not sustainable. 

• So a consumer walking into a supermarket may unwittingly be contributing towards loss of biodiversity. What we're doing is taking customs data, shipping data, and for the first time we connect them all together and ask who is buying from the hot spots where we're really losing biodiversity. We now have enough data to be able to identify the main drivers of biodiversity loss. Soy, cocoa, coffee, palm oil and beef. 

Conversion of land for cattle is probably the greatest single cause of habitat loss. Of the total mass of mammals on Earth, livestock has been found to account for 60%, humans for 36%, and wild animals just 4%. 

• Brazil has one of the world's largest cattle herds, more than 200 million animals. About 12% of Brazil's beef exports comes to the EU, but China is the main buyer. 

The UK doesn't import much beef, but we do import another product from Brazil which is driving the destruction of habitat. Soy. 

• Soy is a bean. It's a very productive form of plant protein that's widely used. The majority goes into animal feed. 

Since 2006, efforts have been made to reduce deforestation for soy in the Brazilian Amazon, so production has moved to another part of the country. 

• The Cerrado is very special and in many ways it's a forgotten landscape. At first glance, it may not seem attractive. It's basically scrub grasslands, scrub forests. Yet the Cerrado has many unique species. Giant anteaters have been around for millions of years, but they have gone extinct from many areas. They only have one pup at a time, so this one pup is very precious. So the mothers carry their pups on their backs, but their habitat is being lost in front of our very eyes. Over 50% has now been transformed into agricultural landscapes. 
• The greatest expansion of agriculture, the destruction of habitat in the Cerrado, is in this northern area. And here we can see the exports of soy from this area are predominantly going to China. But some of it is actually imported into the UK. We're buying as much as half a million tonnes produced in the Cerrado per year. 

The majority of this is used to make feed for chickens that are sold by many British supermarkets. 

• Some supermarkets and some manufacturers are starting to shift, but what our data show is that the consumption of soy in the UK, even though it's a small amount of the total exports, because of where we're buying it from, is having a disproportionate impact on certain species. 
• Anteaters have to be able to move freely throughout its environment. This is important for males to find mates or when young will go find new territories. If there are barriers to movement, this can cause very serious consequences. 

As the Cerrado is being cleared, anteaters can be driven into isolated islands of habitat. And the surrounding areas become lethal territory. 

• The land is being crossed by highways. Sometimes when a female giant anteater dies on the road, her pup will survive. But we have found roadkill decreases the population growth rate of anteaters by half. 

The unprecedented impact we are having on the planet is not only putting the ecosystems we rely on at risk. Scientists believe that our destructive relationship with nature is actually putting us at greater risk of pandemic diseases. 

• We've seen an increasing rate of pandemic emergence. We've had swine flu, SARS, Ebola, and we've actually looked back over every emerging disease and said, where did it originate on the planet? And what are the things going on there that could have caused it? And we've found we're behind every single pandemic and it's human impact on the environment that drives emerging diseases. 
• Animals have lots of different viruses that circulate inside their bodies, just like we do. And so one of the most obvious ways that we're making it more likely that a virus would jump is that we're having lots of contacts with animals. 
• The wildlife trade is at unprecedented levels. We have huge markets with tens of thousands of live animals, shedding their viruses through faeces and urine, being killed in front of you. These are incredible places for viruses to spread. And we're connected to that trade through things like the fashion industry. We've seen this huge increase in the use of fur trims for winter jackets. And that means hundreds of thousands of animals are bred in fur farms. 
• You have large densities of animals put in a situation with a lot of people. To make things worse, those animals are very stressed, and we know that animals that are stressed shed viruses at higher rates. 
• What also drives emerging diseases is that we are encroaching further and further every day into wildlife habitat. 31% of all emerging diseases have originated through the process of land use change. Forests around the world, where there's a lot of biodiversity, have thousands of viruses that we've never come into contact with yet. The minute we build a road in there, we start getting exposed. The first people into those logging camps go out and hunt bushmeat and pick up the viruses. That's how HIV emerged. Then we bring our livestock in. Viruses move from wildlife into livestock, into people. At every step of the process, we're bringing people closer in contact with wildlife and their viruses. It's easy to imagine that we're so far away from these diseases' origins that it's nothing to do with us. But we drive it, actually. Our consumption of beef drives this, our consumption of poultry, and the products that are used in poultry, drives this. 
• My research is showing that when humans convert habitat, there's also something else at play. It's not all species that are likely to make us sick. Often the best reservoirs for the pathogens that can jump to humans are smaller bodied species, like rats and mice and certain kinds of bats. When we have intact natural systems with high biodiversity, these species are kept in check. But when humans destroy habitat, the large predators and herbivores disappear first. Which means the smaller bodied species are the big winners. They proliferate wildly. They live at super high density and are the ones far more likely to make us sick. 
• So we've been saying for 20-plus years that this exploitation of our environment is driving pandemics. But what we didn't think was it was going to happen so quickly and so devastatingly. 
  

Since the first cases of Covid-19 were identified in China and linked to a wet market in Wuhan, scientists around the world have been piecing together where and how the virus emerged. 

• It was figured out quickly that it was a coronavirus. Those are known to reside in various kinds of animals, and so people started looking for the animal from which that coronavirus would have jumped into people. 
• We found the closest relative to the virus in bats, in rural south China, in Yunnan Province. It's really well known for its biodiversity of plants and of animals, including bats, and they live in these incredibly complex colonies. One part of the colony's a nursery where all the kids live and the parents fly out every night to get food. But Yunnan has been under incredible change for the past few decades. High-speed rail links have gone in there, roads have been built into remote areas. And so we think Covid-19 maybe even started there. And either somebody got infected and travelled to Wuhan themselves or sent animals that they were shipping into the wildlife trade into those wet markets and then the virus exploded from there. We don't know exactly what happened yet, but it's my view that it's our relationship with nature and the way we interact with it that drove the emergence of Covid. 
• We've been changing biodiversity in really critical ways that made this more likely to happen. 

If we continue on our current pathway, then what we've experienced this year might not be a one-off event. 

• We estimate there are going to be five new emerging diseases affecting people every year. We cannot live with that. And the rate at which they're increasing and crushing our economies, if we have one of these every decade, we cannot persist with that level. 

We face a frightening future. So how has it come to this? Why haven't we acted sooner to address these issues and stem the loss of biodiversity? 

• Many scientists, including myself, have been saying for the last 25 to 30 years that biodiversity is being lost due to human action. 
• News reports - Thousands arrive for the largest UN meeting ever held in an effort to prevent drastic and irreversible changes"... "I'm here to speak for the countless animals dying across this planet. We're a group of 12- and 13-year-olds come to tell you adults, you must change your ways." 
• In 1992 at the Earth Summit, a convention was signed to protect biodiversity. It was recognised to be of critical importance to the future of Earth. 
• News report - The bleak warning from scientists at a major UN conference in Japan. 
• In 2010, governments came up with 20 targets to protect biodiversity. While we're making some progress, to be quite candid, we probably will not meet any of the targets. 
• Part of the problem is that we don't have really good environmental laws that are global. 
• Also, unfortunately, many in the private sector make a huge profit at the expense of our natural world. They want the status quo to exist. 
• The reality is our world is based on economic growth, grabbing more and more. 
• News report - "Thank you for joining us to examine the extinction crisis"... "The evidence is unequivocal"...
• Even today, there are people that will do anything in their power to make sure that the politicians do not act. 
• News report - "I'm here to tell you that the three lead authors here from the UN are part of this con that the United Nations presents itself as the world's expert on science"... 
• At a recent Congressional testimony, two of the Republican witnesses argued that the loss of biodiversity was nowhere near as serious as what we were saying in the report. 
• News report - "As with the manufactured climate crisis, they are using the spectre of mass extinction to scare the public into compliance"... 
• We've wasted 20 to 30 years when the governments of the world, working with the private sector, could have done a much better job conserving biodiversity. If we had acted more seriously, many species could have been saved and we would not be facing such serious threats as we're seeing today. 

This year has shown the vulnerability of our societies. Will we take the opportunity, finally, to change our course? What can governments, industries and we as individuals do to slow this decline of the natural world? 

• The world has been on pause during the pandemic, and as we begin to move forward, we have a moment, we can change the way we're running our world and make it better. This is that moment. 
• The first thing that we have to do is to reset the way we run our economies. 
• News report - "The massive hit to the economy is no surprise. The UK economy has lost a quarter of its value. The world is in a recession". 
• Governments are recognising that they have to invest to drive out of it. And I've been involved in a study with the finance ministries and the central bank governors of the world in thinking through what the best ways out of this crisis are. And we've found that those investments which are good for the environment are very powerful ways out of the depression that we find ourselves in. So, for example, we could begin work on restoring degraded land. We can plant trees, we can start retrofitting buildings so they're much more efficient, make our cities much cleaner. All those examples can be done quickly, they are labour intensive and are strong economic multipliers. So exactly the kind of things you need for a strong recovery. There are all these things we know we have to do for biodiversity and for the climate, so let's bring them forward to this period of unemployment. And then, going forwards, we need to dramatically change the damage that we do from producing and consuming. That's the big prize. 
• At the moment, nature is coming as a free good. We use rivers and estuaries as sinks for the pollution we create from industry. Who's paying for that? Large chunks of the rainforests have been converted at prices which are astonishingly low given the cost to the rest of the world. As an economist, I think it's right that people who extract from nature pay the due price. 
• We have to recognise that nature has true value that is taken into consideration in national accounts. We also need to start producing affordable food without expanding any further into the forest. This is indeed quite possible. One of the biggest problems is incredible - we actually waste about 40% of the food that is produced. 
• If a farmer can't produce stuff in exactly the right form, he has to throw it away. And of course, we throw it away from the plate. 
• If we could reduce that food waste, it would go a long, long way to making a more sustainable agricultural system. And also, we need to reduce the amount of chemicals, we've got to make sure we're not degrading our soils. We need the best of the private sector to show the others they can make a profit and still conserve nature. 
• Another possible solution is to make more rules. There does have to be some standard. 
• We can't simply depend upon people and institutions of goodwill to do what is needed to be done. 
• If governments imposed legislation that says we will not be allowing the imports of products that are produced in an unsustainable way, then it levels the playing field. 
• Lots of people don't like government regulation, but there are some tremendous success stories of international legal cooperation. Back in the 1980s, scientists figured out chemicals used in aerosol spray or used in refrigerants were actually eating the ozone layer. 
• News report - "About a million tonnes of CFCs are produced every year"... 
• The nations of the world got together and they banned these chemicals, and the problem was solved because once the manufacturing companies started looking for alternatives, they found them quite quickly. So we shouldn't be demoralised, because we know how to do this stuff. It's a question of finding the political will to do it. 
• We shape the future of the planet irretrievably by the decisions we take in this next few years. And indeed, in the months now, as we come out of the Covid crisis. 
• For those of us who care about the future of our planet, you know, we have to look at our lifestyles and we can't look away from our own behaviours. 
• 40 years ago, people consumed a good deal less in the United Kingdom, but there is no evidence that we were unhappier then than we are now. 
• We can be more diligent about thinking about what we're consuming and when. 
• It's really digging down, saying, what's going on here? Where does that come from? We need to think about meat and dairy consumption. 
• That's not to say that none of us should ever eat meat or should cut all dairy out of our diets. But we have to demand that they are produced sustainably. 
• Increasingly, I feel it's not just about our current lifestyle, but about the education of our children on the way nature works.
• There's a wave of revolution going around, especially with young people. We are waking up, we are realising that the planet is an integral part of our existence. 
• If we don't act now, the youth of today and the youth of tomorrow are going to look back on this generation with absolute horror. "What were you thinking?!" 
• I want to tell our youth we have taken the lessons, that we will not allow any other species to walk this tragic road of extinction. 

One thing we do know is that if nature is given the chance, it can bounce back. 40 years ago, I had one of the most memorable experiences of my life. I was in the Virunga Mountains, which straddle the borders of Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. And there I met some of the few remaining mountain gorillas, including a mischievous youngster called Poppy. 

• Footage - "As I sit here, there's more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla than any other animal I know". 
  

As I was preparing to talk to camera, Poppy was at my feet, trying to take off my shoes. It was an experience that has stayed with me, but it was tinged with sadness as I thought I might be seeing some of the last of their kind. 

• In the 1970s, this population of mountain gorillas was estimated to be around 250 individuals in this area. They were on the brink of extinction. Their habitat was under very rapid conversion from forest to agricultural fields. 

This part of Rwanda was one of the poorest and most densely populated in the country. And the expansion of agriculture was the only way for most people to survive. 

• There were tensions between the park and communities. We had many poachers coming, setting snares, cutting bamboo.
• Coexistence of humans and mountain gorillas really wasn't a reality that many people saw. But over the next few decades, the situation would start to change. Government in all three countries, conservation organisations and local communities started to work together with an emphasis not just on the gorillas, but on the people that live with them. 
• We have over 200 rangers, and their jobs is to see every gorilla and check on the habitat. And since 2005, the government set up a tourism revenue sharing scheme. 
• A portion of the price that a tourist pays is actually reserved for those communities adjacent. The result is that the conversion of habitat for agricultural production actually ceased. And the population has recovered. 
• 30 babies were born in this park last year, and we know that these gorillas are going to grow. No-one will be a victim of poachers. So, things have changed. 
• Their numbers have just reached and exceeded 1,000. This change has not happened overnight, but if it can be achieved here, where human population pressure is so high, where the politics can be very complicated, especially among different states, I believe it can be achieved elsewhere as well. Poppy grew up and actually was a very long-lived mountain gorilla and had many offspring. 
• Ururabyo is actually the daughter of Poppy. Ururabyo means flower. She is shining flower in this park. 
• Ururabyo also has a daughter. 
• Prosperity. 

To see Poppy's daughter and granddaughter thriving is thrilling. It just shows what we can achieve when we put our minds to it. I do truly believe that together we can create a better future. I might not be here to see it, but if we make the right decisions at this critical moment, we can safeguard our planet's ecosystems, its extraordinary biodiversity and all its inhabitants. What happens next is up to every one of us. 

Sunday evening thoughts

The sun has long set, the Liverpool and City fans are spilling out of the pubs, and - on returning home - I've just switched on the TV, and the first thing I heard was David Attenborough saying "humans have caused new problems for the swifts" to stunning images of dams and agitated minor key orchestral music.

I know I should have stayed with it for more than 20 seconds, but you really can have too much of a good thing and David Attenborough endlessly channelling his inner St. John the Divine on a Sunday evening really isn't doing it for me at the moment. (Shame on me!!!). So I turned him off and returned to the blog.

Because I've three more things that I really need to say about this morning's The Andrew Marr Show that I really don't want to be lost to posterity. (Not really).

The first thing that The Future must take from this post is that I found Labour's Andrew Gwynne to have an excessively loud voice. He was quite literally a loudmouth - albeit a whiny, high-pitched loudmouth, like Brian Blessed on helium. I hope Andrew Marr's famous ears weren't ringing painfully afterwards. Even I, watching the programme on my laptop, lost 23.7% of my hearing after listening to Andrew Gwynne being what we up north call a 'gobshite'.

The second thing is that the Green Party's Caroline Lucas got asked the "Do you fly?" question by Andrew Marr and said, yes, she does, to America to see her son. Now, I'm seeing two very different strands of reaction to that. One says that it proves Ms Lucas is a stinking hypocrite, especially after her response to Andrew's question was to say that focusing on individuals distracts from the real villains, the global multinationals. (What would Greta say to that? We can still fly?) The second, however, says that Caroline gave an honest answer and that she appeared the most 'natural' of the three politicians. I think she did come across well, as she usually does. Despite her party's extreme policies, she seems quite pleasant. (I know it's de rigueur at blogs hereabouts to loathe 'the poison pixie' but I can't bring myself to do so). But I think the 'what all of us must do individually' question is one a Green Party MP can't just point towards and shift onto the giant squirrel of giant capitalist companies, given that - as per Greta - we all need to stop flying. Andrew didn't press her at all. In fact, he was actually apologetic about asking her the "Do you fly?" question in the first place. Maybe he likes her too.

The third thing is that Conservative chancellor Sajid Javid didn't put in a good performance. Repeatedly trying to bang on about the cost of Labour's spending pledges without answering any questions about his own party's spending pledges, and trying to shift it back to Labour every time Andrew Marr asked him about the cost of Conservative spending pledges, made him look silly, and just like the kind of politician who really gets up people's noses. It just doesn't look serious. But it is politics.

And on that bombshell...

'The Facts'

Well, for posterity's sake on this fine, sunny Good Friday, I've posted a transcript below of the Sir David Attenborough-presented campaigning documentary Climate Change - The Facts  as I suspect it will be of interest to at least some of you and that you might want to peruse it (or even use it) at your leisure. 

AC/DC's classic Back in Black sprang to mind as former BBC science and environment reporter Richard Black made yet another post-BBC appearance as an expert with very strong views. 

From my social media reading, I think it's fair to say that the programme has divided opinion - or, as the BBC might put it, proved divisive. 

And I think it's also safe to say that those with strong views on either side of the matter didn't budge one micrometre after seeing it (sceptical critics have already posted lengthy rebuttals).  

But did the viewing public (which I suspect was fairly small) find Sir David, Richard Black & Co. persuasive? 

Transcript: 'Climate Change - The Facts', BBC One, 18 Apr 2019

David Attenborough: Right now, we are facing our greatest threat in thousands of years. Climate change. 

- For a long time, climate change was something that scientists were predicting that would happen in the future. But that's no longer the case. - What we're doing right now is we're so rapidly changing the climate, for the first time in the world's history, people can see the impact of climate change. - Greater storms, greater floods, greater heat waves, extreme sea level rises. All of this is happening far faster than many of us thought possible. 

Scientists across the globe are in no doubt that at the current rate of warming, we risk a devastating future. 

- It's difficult to see how the population of the world will actually feed itself. - It's happening in your world. It's happening in my world. - Time is very short. - There's still time but there isn't much time left. 

The science is now clear that urgent action is needed. 

- We're at a tipping point. We can change history. Right now! 

What happens now, and in these next few years, will profoundly affect the next few thousand years. What can be done to avert disaster and ensure the survival of our civilisations and the natural world upon which we depend? 

- It's our future. We can't just let it slip away from us. 

Standing here in the English countryside, it may not seem obvious but we are facing a man-made disaster on a global scale. In the 20 years since I first started talking about the impact of climate change on our world, conditions have changed far faster than I ever imagined. It may sound frightening, but the scientific evidence is that if we have not taken dramatic action within the next decade, we could face irreversible damage to the natural world and the collapse of our societies. We're running out of time, but there is still hope. I believe that if we better understand the threat we face, the more likely it is that we can avoid such a catastrophic future. Our climate is changing because of one simple fact. Our world is getting hotter. 

Prof. Peter Stott, Met Office & University of Exeter: We have temperature records going back over 100 years. There are dips and troughs. There are so many years that are not as warm as other years. But what we've seen is this steady and unremitting temperature trend. 20 of the warmest years on record have all occurred in the last 22 years. 

It's not just Met Office records that are showing this trend. Data from the US Climate Centre, NOAA, the Japanese Met Office and NASA all show the same sharp rise in temperatures. When scientists first became concerned about these increasing temperatures, nobody could be sure exactly what was driving them. Four decades of research later, on land, at sea, and in the far reaches of our atmosphere, the evidence is now unequivocal. 

Prof. Peter Stott: What's striking is that warming trend cannot be explained by natural factors but is caused by human activities. In particular, by use of fossil fuels. Prof. Naomi Oreskes, Science Historian, Harvard University: The problem is that everything we do, our entire economy, from the moment you wake up in the morning and turn on the light, or look at your cellphone, to the moment you go to bed at night, and even then because your cellphone is still drawing power at night, I mean, we're all using energy all the time. And in the industrialised world, that energy is almost entirely fossil fuels. Prof. Peter Stott: When you burn fossil fuels, coal, gas and oil, to power our energy generation, to heat our homes, to drive our factories, to power our cars and our trains, and travel around the world. Prof. Naomi Oreskes: When we burn fossil fuels, it produces carbon dioxide as a waste product. Dr. James Hansen, Former Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Science: Carbon dioxide acts like a blanket. It absorbs the heat radiation from the Earth's surface and that keeps the surface warmer than it would be otherwise. Richard Black, Director, Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit: The problem is what we're doing now is we're adding extra carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. So we're increasing the thickness of this blanket. Dr. James Hansen: 

We have pumped so much carbon dioxide into our atmosphere that our world is now around one degree Celsius hotter than it was in pre-industrial times. This warming is enough to bring about the raft of effects we call climate change. 

Prof. Peter Stott: One degree Celsius global warming may not sound like much, but it's having a dramatic effect on our weather. Prof. Michael Mann, Climate Scientist, Penn State University: You warm up the planet, of course you're going to get more intense and more frequent heat waves. You're going to dry out the soils. You're going to get worse drought. Prof. Peter Stott: We're seeing extreme heat in southern Africa, Japan, North America, in the UK as well. Richard Black: Often, the question is, did climate change cause a certain event? You can never really answer that question. But what scientists do is to look at whether climate change made a certain event more or less likely, or more or less intense. Prof. Peter Stott: Last year, we had a heat wave that was actually the joint warmest on record, alongside 1976. And we have been analysing this here at the Met Office. What that showed us was that the chances of that heat wave had increased by about 30 times. So it's now about 30 times more likely that we had that heat wave than we would have had without climate change. So it doesn't mean to say that every single weather event is due to climate change. But what climate change does mean is that with the baseline climate having changed, then the frequency of the extreme temperatures is increasing. And that has a substantial effect. 

In November last year, when temperatures in Cairns, Australia, hit 42 degrees, even creatures specifically adapted to heat were unable to survive. 

Various voices (unnamed): They're just... everywhere. When we got here in the morning, it was the first time really we saw it. There were just dead bats as far as the eye could see. There was a deafening sound of babies crying. You just don't know where to start. So we just started finding babies, basically. There's a little baby attached to its dead mum. 

Like all species, flying foxes have ways of dealing with the conditions of their environment. But it seems their usual cooling methods are no longer enough for the kind of temperatures Australia is now facing. Last year, temperature records were broken across the country. 

Prof. Peter Stott: Scientists have shown that it's simply inconceivable that you would see these temperatures without the fact of climate change. Rebecca Koller, Conservationist: We saved about 350. The rest are dead. Over 11,000 died from that colony. And if you have two more events like we had, the species is gone. Man's voice: This is climate change in action. We need to wake up. 

I've seen for myself that in addition to the many other threats they face, animals of all kinds are now struggling to adapt to rapidly changing conditions. 

Prof. Catherine Mitchell, Energy Policy, University of Exeter: Think of the equator. As climate change occurs, that central part of the world becomes increasingly uninhabitable. Dr. James Hansen: If climate change is too fast, we're pushing them off the planet, in effect. We're causing extinction of species already. And that's irreversible. 

Scientists believe that 8% of species are now at threat of extinction solely due to climate change. This isn't just about losing wonders of nature. With the loss of even the smallest organisms, we destabilise and ultimately risk collapsing the world's ecosystems - the networks that support the whole of life on Earth. 

Prof. Peter Stott: What's been happening in recent years is really showing us what one degree Celsius really means. Not just for wildlife, but for people, for their safety, for their livelihoods and for their futures. 

As temperatures rise, the threats we face multiply. Last year saw record-breaking wildfires take hold across the globe. 

Prof. Michael Mann: We've seen wildfires break out in Greece, even in the Arctic. We've seen a tripling in the extent of wildfire in the western US, California. 

The fires that swept through California last year caused $24 billion worth of damage. 106 people lost their lives. 

Prof. Naomi Oreskes: We're not just talking about an inconvenience. We're talking about people's lives, their livelihoods and their communities being damaged. Prof. Peter Stott: The wildfires need an ignition source. What? Maybe cigarette butts, or lightning, and then you need the weather conditions that are conducive to that fire spreading. Research has shown that the chances of having these very hot, dry conditions has increased as a result of climate change. Justin Bilton: It was a dead end road, so we knew it was our only option to drive forward. And all sides of the road just completely engulfed in flames. Charles Bilton: He's going, "Dad, Dad, we're going to die!" And I said, "No, we're going to be fine, you know." I stayed calm. I think being a father, you're trying to keep your son calm too at that point. Justin Bilton: We could hear trees literally exploding. Falling all around us. Charles Bilton: A large branch went right over the top of the car. The whole top of the roof was burning and we didn't realise it. There was a tree down. Justin Bilton: That was the moment when I really thought that we might die. I decided to put the car in reverse. I had to drive backwards through everything we had already passed through to the lake shore. Charles Bilton: This one little boat was down there watching the fire. And we were able to wave them in to help us get out of there. That, to me, was just a miracle. 

But it's not just through extreme heat events that climate change is having an effect. It's changing our weather systems in other ways. 

Prof. Peter Stott: This is a basic result of physics. With a degree Celsius of warming, there's more moisture evaporating off the oceans. Prof. Michael Mann: When there's more moisture in the air, you're going to get more rainfall. You're going to get super storms and force flooding events. We are seeing the impacts of climate change now play out in real time. They're no longer subtle. Sunita Narain, Director General, Center for Science and Environment: You have had the worst rain in China, in Japan. You have had a deluge in Kerala. 

Whilst they can't all be attributed to climate change, last year's extreme weather events meant that millions of people needed humanitarian aid. 

Sunita Narain; Join the dots. It's happening. It's happening in your world, it's happening in my world. And let's be very clear about this - it is going to get much worse. 

Climate change goes far beyond the weather. Thousands of miles away and out of sight of most of us, another threat is building. Earth's ice, frozen for millennia, is melting. 

Prof. Andrew Shepherd, Climate Scientist, University of Leeds: Earth's temperature has risen by what most people would think is a small amount over the past century. One degree Centigrade. That's too much for Earth's ice to withstand. In the last year, we've had a global assessment of ice losses from Antarctica and from Greenland. And they tell us that things are worse than we'd expected. The Greenland ice sheet is melting. It's lost four trillion tonnes of ice, and it's losing five times as much ice today as it was 25 years ago. If you go to the southern hemisphere, in the past, most of the models predicted that Antarctica would grow. That's not the case. Antarctica's losing three times as much ice today as it was 25 years ago. In Antarctica, really small changes in ocean temperature in particular melt a lot of ice. The ocean is only about half a degree centigrade warmer than it should be. But that's melting colossal amounts of ice from enormous glaciers. The water that melts from the ice sheets ends up in one place, and that's the oceans. And that's when it starts to affect people around the rest of the planet. Dr. James Hansen: Sea level has been stable for several thousand years. But if the ice sheets lose icebergs faster and faster to the ocean, the sea level goes up. Prof. Andrew Shepherd: We know that sea level has already risen by about 20 centimetres in the last 100 years. 

Rising seas are displacing hundreds of thousands of people from already vulnerable coastal areas in the South Pacific, Indonesia, Bangladesh. 

Colette Pichon Battle, Executive Director, Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy: The impact on families is going to be something that I don't think we could ever prepare for. In the United States, Louisiana's on the front line of this climate crisis. It's losing land at one of the fastest rates on the planet, at about the rate of a football field every 45 minutes. 

The Isle de Jean Charles was once home to 400 people. But subsidence caused by oil and gas extraction, and now rising seas, means that in the last six decades much of it has disappeared. 

Chief Albert Naquin: Before, this was all land. But due to sea-level rise, slowly but surely it's washing away. What we're looking at here is where I was born and raised, in 1946. It's sad. Very, very sad to see what happened to my mom and dad's home, and where they raised us at. I want to finish my life, as well, over here. Colette Pichon Battle: For the people on Isle de Jean Charles, they're running out of options. And now what we see is just 10% of what used to be there. We have been working with the state to move an entire community. This is the first time the federal government of the United States has offered dollars for the relocation of folks due to climate change. Chris Brunet: When it comes to relocation, this is the only place I've ever known as home. I don't want to abandon it, I don't want to forget it. Juliette Brunet: A lot of people say that this land that we're living on won't be here in 20 years from now. That's kind of hard to think about, where you grew up isn't going to be here any more. Colette Pichon Battle: The residents of Isle de Jean Charles have been labelled as the first climate refugees in the United States. And that may be true. But what we know for sure is that they won't be the last. 

Sea levels are not only increased by melting ice. The world's oceans are expanding because they're getting warmer. Over 90% of the increased heat trapped in our atmosphere has been stored in the oceans. I've witnessed the devastating effect this is having. In the last three years, repeated heat stress has caused a third of the world's corals to first bleach and then die. 

Prof. Michael Mann: Our generation is going to be responsible for the loss of one of the most majestic ecosystems on the face of the Earth. We're literally watching the death of this natural wonder. 

In many ways, what's happening now across the world doesn't come as a surprise. Much of what we're now experiencing, scientists warned about over 30 years ago. 

Dr. James Hansen: What we're seeing at the moment is exactly what we predicted. In the summer of 1988, I testified to Congress. I said I was 99% confident that this was a real, physical effect of the increasing carbon dioxide.  Richard Black: James Hansen was absolutely a pioneer in trying to reach the public and politicians. He played a major role, there's no doubt, in putting climate change on the international agenda. Dr. James Hansen: The short-term response was pretty good. The politicians were saying the right things, that we should avoid dangerous human-made changes to climate. It's just that the policies needed to achieve that were never adopted. Prof. Naomi Oreskes: There are many reasons we haven't acted on climate change. Science is definitely part of the story. The science is complicated. Richard Black: Economists had to look at, "OK, what are the costs are going to be?" And then technologists had to work out, "Well, what actually can we do about it?" And that's one of the reasons why it took a long time for governments really to put policies in place. However, there was also resistance. Let's be honest about this. There are incumbent industries that then, they knew about climate change, but they didn't really want anything to happen. Prof. Naomi Oreskes: The organisations that had the most to lose by acting on climate change were the fossil fuel companies. The most profitable industry possibly in the history of mankind, making huge profits. They wanted to continue that. Prof. Richard Lazarus, Professor of Law, Harvard University: Many of those industries, basically the oil and gas industry, the fossil fuel industry, they undertook a quite concerted campaign to confuse the science and confuse the message. Richard Black: This is industry-funded and industry-driven. Fossil fuel companies engaged PR consultants who used exactly the same tactics that have been used by the tobacco companies, and there's ample documentation. Prof. Naomi Oreskes: The basic strategy is to cast doubt on the science to promote the message that we don't really know, there isn't a consensus and it will be too expensive to fix anyway. The cycle of denial has worked. And even today, the President of the United States says that it's not true. Richard Black: In the UK, we have the Climate Change Act from 2008, which was the first law anywhere in the world to make a legally binding target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But what we've also seen here is a number of people in politics who've decided really to campaign against action on climate change. [Clip of Lord Lawson, saying "There's plenty of evidence that warming will bring benefits as well as maybe disadvantages"]. The arguments have been, well, climate change is happening but it may not be that serious. [Clip of Lord Lawson, saying "There are huge benefits from a warming planet. In the IPCC's own report, there's fewer deaths from cold-related diseases"]. They say we should just adapt to it rather than try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And of course that's very attractive to politicians. Because to decide not to do something is much more comfortable. Prof. Naomi Oreskes: I think that many of us were willing to hear that message because we too depend upon fossil fuels for our lifestyle. So we're all implicated in this economic system, but it's not like we're all equally responsible, right? Richard Black: There's no doubt that that seeding of doubt has slowed the transition to a clean-energy economy. Dr. James Hansen: We haven't entirely wasted the 30 years but it would have been so easy to solve the problem if we had started gradually to make fossil fuels more expensive and develop the technologies to replace them. But we didn't do that. And now there are consequences. 

Greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise and the problem is getting harder to solve. The world's great forests play a vital role in determining the balance of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Trees and plants absorb carbon dioxide, using it to build their leaves, stems and roots. In this process of photosynthesis, they have sucked up and stored nearly a third of our emissions. 

Prof. Matthew Hansen, Remote Sensing Scientist, University of Maryland: The main driver of climate change is greenhouse gas emissions. Forests are one of our ways out. They are like the lungs of the planet. They are big climate regulators at a global scale. My work has always been about monitoring the land surface and forest. Since 1972 till now, Landsat has been tracking and taking pictures of the Earth's surface. In 2008, the US government says it's open free of charge and accessible over the internet. Millions of images, automatically. It's just this huge leap in capability. It was only then where we saw the whole planet. And when you see the whole, it was a bit of a revelation. And, yeah, the alarm bells go off. These warm orangey tones, that's forest disturbance, that means forest was removed. We didn't know that was going on. Colombia, Peru, Paraguay, Bolivia. We can go anywhere and see actual forest be cleared. It usually starts with logging. Rainforests are cleared and burned. They then replace it with soybeans, rubber, pasture for cattle. But one of the big drivers is palm oil. Palm oil is like a magical fruit. We all have palm oil in our houses right now. Prof. Mark Maslin, Climate Scientist, University College London: It's found in almost every good you can think about. It's in soaps, it's in shampoo. It's in chocolate, it's in bread. It's even in crisps. What we're doing, accidentally and inadvertently, is actually causing deforestation in other countries because of our demand for this product. Prof. Matthew Hansen: That means the natural system is not working. Habitats are disappearing. But also when these high carbon stock forests, that are centuries old, are cleared and burned, CO2 is added to the atmosphere. Those emissions go up and warm the planet. When you look at our maps, our results are showing that it's accelerating. It almost looks like a contagion. You know, it looks like a disease across the planet. I mean, the ever-increasing pattern. If we continue this level of deforestation, we'll take it all. And our ability to mitigate climate change and turn the story around becomes really vanishingly small. 

Trees are now being cut down and burnt at such a rate, that nearly a third of our carbon dioxide emissions are caused by deforestation. 

Prof. Matthew Hansen: It sucks. I'm a pretty light-hearted, optimistic guy. But just looking at this data, you just look at the stories, I'd like to see some evidence of a really strong, strong kind of unified political response that was more than an aspiration on a kind of piece of paper, right? That would be cool. 

Looking ahead to the future, we know that if we continue releasing carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, temperatures will keep rising and the consequences will get progressively worse. But do we know how much worse? 

Prof. Mark Maslin: There are thousands of scientists around the world, in almost every single country, working to understand what will happen in the future if we don't act, we don't do more. So we use really powerful climate models, which are numerical representations of the whole of the Earth system. The oceans, the land, the atmosphere and the ice on the planet. And then we drive it with increased carbon dioxide, based on predictions of the future and then we see what the model does. They predict that if we carry on as we are now, where CO2 continues to increase, we would hit 1.5 degrees global warming by between 2040 and 2050. Prof. Mike Berners-Lee, Lancaster University: We're on course to go through 1.5 degrees in just a few decades' time, and the models differ slightly as to exactly when. And not long after that, we're on a trajectory to go through two degrees. 

Whilst we don't know exactly what a two degree warmer world will look like, there's growing evidence about the consequences of crossing this threshold. 

Prof. Mark Maslin: We know that with increased storms, increased floods, droughts and heat waves, production of food will be more problematic. Prof. Peter Stott: It really becomes difficult to see at such levels of warming how we're going to maintain our agriculture, such that the population of the world can actually feed itself. Prof. Mark Maslin: Ensuring people have access to clean, safe drinking water will become much more difficult.Sunita Narain; Developing countries are at the front line of this battle. Prof. Richard Lazarus: Those parts of the globe which will suffer the most and the soonest are not those parts of the globe which have actually loaded all those carbon dioxides into the atmosphere in the first instance. Sunita Narain; But you have to understand, this is also a crisis for the world. The fact is that if the poor are suffering today, then the rich will also suffer tomorrow. 

As we look further into the future, predicting how our climate system might behave becomes more complex. 

Prof. Tim Lenton, Climate Scientist, University of Exeter: There's uncertainty in climate projection, not least because we don't know what our generation when we're older is going to be doing and what the future generations are going to be doing. 

But based on our current trajectory, the various models predict that by the end of the century, our planet will be somewhere between three and six degrees hotter. 

Prof. Mark Maslin: Even if we are looking at the bottom end of predictions, that's still really bad.

Over 600 million people live in coastal areas that are less than ten metres above sea level. 

Prof. Mark Maslin: Some models predict if we don't do anything to curb climate change, then we could be looking at 80 centimetres to a metre of sea level rise by the end of the century. Prof. Peter Stott: So sea level is dangerous for us in the UK, as indeed elsewhere. The main impacts of what might seem a gradual rise of sea level is the risk from storms, surges of sea that we've never seen before. Dr. James Hansen: If we lose all our coastal cities, we've got a different planet and we've got a economic situation which is out of control. 

While there's a lot we understand about what the future might hold, the big fear is that there may be other, more extreme dangers lurking beyond those we already know about. Scientists call these tipping points. 

Prof. Tim Lenton: A tipping point is where in a part of the climate system, just a little bit of extra warming could nudge it into a different state, an irreversible change. 

At the moment, it is our ongoing emissions that are driving global temperatures up. But if we cross tipping points, that could spiral beyond our control. 

Prof. Tim Lenton: If we imagine a map of the world, it turns out that there are climate tipping points dotted all around it. Greenland and West Antarctica could be tipped into irreversible meltdown. There are major ecosystems that we could tip into an alternative state. For example, triggering a climate-induced dieback of the rainforest, turning it into a savannah. Prof. Mike Berners-Lee: Once you've crossed a tipping point, that's it. You've triggered a catastrophic change. It's going to carry on getting even hotter, because you've triggered something that you can't undo. 

One of the potential tipping points scientists have identified involves a greenhouse gas locked underground. 

Prof. Mark Maslin: We know that there's large amounts of methane stored in the permafrost in the Arctic, and we're worried that as that permafrost starts to actually unfreeze, the methane trapped underneath will start to bubble up. Dr. Katey Walter Anthony, Ecologist, University of Alaska Fairbanks: Few bubbles down in there. When we look down into the ice, we see white pockets of gas. We can see that there are bubbles in the surface layer and then there's a whole column of bubbles that stacks up. When this ice sheet melts, the gases are released into the atmosphere and you can actually hear the gases coming out. [GAS HISSES] So look. These flares that we're doing demonstrate that the bubbles contain methane. It's a very potent greenhouse gas. Prof. Mark Maslin: Methane is 21 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2. So you can imagine a large amount of gas burping out of the permafrost actually causing the acceleration in the global warming that we see already happening. Dr. Katey Walter Anthony: You look out across the millions of lakes in the Arctic, you start to wonder just how much methane all of these lakes could release. 

The future looks alarming indeed, but it's not without hope. There is still time, if we act now with determination and urgency. What do governments, industries, nations and we, as individuals, need to do to change our course? At the 2015 United Nations climate summit in Paris, for the first time ever, nearly every country in the world came to an agreement. It set an objective to hold temperatures below two degrees and try to limit warming to 1.5. 

Prof. Mark Maslin: If we want to try and keep the global climate to 1.5 degrees, we have to half our carbon emissions by 2030 and then hit zero carbon emissions globally by 2050. 

This poses a huge challenge, as emissions must be cut from almost every part of the economy. But 25% come from how we produce electricity and heat, and alternatives are already within our grasp. 

Prof. Naomi Oreskes: It's actually not that complicated. We need to shift our energy system away from fossil fuels that produce greenhouse gases and towards renewable energies that don't. Prof. Catherine Mitchell: Every country has got a different resource. In Norway, you've got an awful lot of hydro power. If you're in India or Morocco, there's lots and lots of sun. The problem was that renewables were much more expensive than fossil fuels. Richard Black: But what's happened recently is rapid falls in the price of renewable energy. 

Solar power has led the way with this. 

Chris Stark, Chief Executive, Committee on Climate Change: Germany went first with of many of the key technologies in solar, and China really picked up the baton. Prof. Naomi Oreskes: There's tremendous technological innovation taking place around the world. Solar power is now the cheapest form of newly installed electricity in more than 60 countries. Prof. Michael Mann: We're seeing a huge growth in renewable energy. Despite entrenched fossil fuel interests, they've been unable to stop that transition. And we've got to do even more. Chris Stark: In the UK, for a long time, we've been considering future energy sources. It used to be ten, 20 years ago that nuclear power offered a relatively cheap way through. And one really good advantage of nuclear is that it doesn't produce emissions. But what's become clearer recently is that some technologies are performing better than others. And increasingly, that's been about wind. 

Here in the UK, we are building some of the biggest offshore wind turbines in the world. The bigger the turbine, the more wind can be captured. Just one revolution of these blades can power a house for a day. 

Chris Stark: With the increased capacity, wind resource is about to become as cheap and much cheaper in the future, than fossil fuels. 

So far, around 30% of the UK's electricity comes from renewable sources. If that is to continue to grow, we'll need to develop parallel systems to keep our energy reliable and store what we produce. 

Chris Stark: The bit that comes next, that means that we have to decarbonise industry and we've got to decarbonise the transport sector. And that means using things like electric vehicles, battery-powered vehicles, potentially even hydrogen-powered vehicles. Prof. Catherine Mitchell: We know what we have to do. We really have to get on and do it. Chris Stark: And this is the political decision and the brave decision that needs be taken. Do we incur a small cost now, not insignificant cost, let's be clear on it, or do we wait and see the need to adapt? And the economics is really clear on this, that the costs of action are dwarfed by the costs of inaction. 

If we take this path now, we could potentially buy ourselves time to crack some of the most challenging sources of emissions, like aviation. 

Sarabpai Bhatai: One of the major barriers to obtaining electric flight is the power that we can get from batteries today. But we are seeing strides being made and seeing a reduction in the weight of these batteries. 

Recently, the world's first fully electric plane made it across the Channel. 

Sarabpai Bhatai: This was a single-passenger 60 kilowatt power jet. Now we're trying to retrofit a 20 tonne aircraft and get it flying. We'll be replacing one of the engines with an electric motor driving the fan. We're going to take these hybrid electric systems and test them in the air, test them in flight at different altitudes and different temperatures. And this is going to give us the key to understand how we might integrate these systems for future aircraft designs. 

To limit warming to 1.5 degrees, as well as reducing the amount of carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere, we need to find ways to reduce the vast amount that's already there. 

Chris Stark: There's a great deal of interest in the kind of technologies that we might have that could actually remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Now, the first thing to say is we already have these technologies and they're called trees. Prof. Mark Maslin: If we reforest and rewild vast areas of the world, then we can lock up huge amounts of carbon that is currently in the atmosphere. Chris Stark: In the future, there are other technologies that might work. Like direct air capture. Dr. Bergur Sigfusson, Geochemist, Reykjavik Energy: This is one of the world's first carbon collectors. Air is sucked into the collector. Inside there is a filter unit that absorbs CO2. The CO2 sticks to the filter. And then it's dissolved in water. And under high pressure, we pump it down to 1,800 metres. It's the same as the depth of the Grand Canyon. And there it enters the bedrock. Dr. Sandra Osk Snaebjornsdottir, Geochemist, Reykjavik Energy: This is a core taken from deep within the ground at the site where we injected our CO2. It's basalt. The water just flows through these pores and reacts with the rock. So the white that we see here is the CO2 turned into stone. So it's not affecting our atmosphere. 

Technologies like this may be able to help us in the future, but to meet emission targets, action is needed now. Can what we do as individuals make a difference? 

Prof. Mike Berners-Lee: So the average UK person has got a carbon footprint of roughly 13 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, per person, per year. And that's everything that they buy and do, traced right back down the supply chain. And we can pick a few things to start with that will make a really significant difference. Prof. Catherine Mitchell: We should be making our homes as energy efficient as possible. Richard Black: That can be as simple as getting your house insulated so you waste less energy, which by the way, will save you money. Prof. Mike Berners-Lee: Everything that we buy, even if we can't see it, has a carbon footprint. From smartphones, to clothes, to furniture. Prof. Catherine Mitchell: We've all become completely used to buying things produced using fossil fuels. A lot of the time we really don't know that. Prof. Mike Berners-Lee: Take a washing machine, mainly made out of metal and that starts off with a mine. Ore is going to be taken to the blast furnace to extract the metal. An enormous amount of fossil fuel is going to be used. And then parts are turned into components, more emissions again. Lastly, it's shipped all over the world to arrive at your local shop. So we need to think about buying less physical products. When we do so, buy higher quality and then make it last. Prof. Richard Lazarus: We've been such a wasteful world, especially in the more developed parts of the world. You actually can be far less wasteful and not affect the quality of your life at all. Prof. Mike Berners-Lee: Food is about a quarter of our carbon footprint in the UK. If we take three steps, then we can cut that in half. First step, just to eat everything that we buy. In the UK, we waste an enormous proportion of our food. And second, avoid air freighted food which is about 100 times as impactful as putting it on a boat, and suddenly becomes a carbon disaster. Lastly, the most important thing to do is to reduce our meat and dairy consumption, especially beef and lamb. Chris Stark: The problem is not traditional farming techniques. The problem is with intensive farming. Prof. Mike Berners-Lee: It takes a lot of resources to rear an animal, and cows and sheep are especially high impact because they ruminate, which means they burp up methane. And the science on this is absolutely clear cut. Our studies have shown that if we take these three steps, we could knock perhaps even two tonnes off the average UK person's carbon footprint. Chris Stark: These things really do matter. They only get you part of the way. But again, if we don't have them, we won't make the final target. 

What happens next is up to us all. I truly believe that together we can bring about the transformative change that is needed. 

Prof. Mike Berners-Lee: Where your influence really kicks in is the way that you push for the cultural change that we need to see and the political change that we need to see. Prof. Catherine Mitchell: People being able to make their voice heard really matters. Prof. Richard Lazarus: You should not underestimate your own power or underestimate your own significance to change people's minds and change people's behaviour. Greta Thunberg: When I was younger, I had lots of plans of becoming different things, everything from an actor to a scientist. But then my teachers in school told me about climate change. That was sort of an eye opener to me. The more I read about it, the more I understood how dangerous it was for everyone. I stopped going to school. I stopped talking because I was just so sad. And then... that made me very concerned. One day, I decided that this was enough. I wasn't going to accept this any more. My future and everyone else's future is at risk and nothing is being done. No-one is doing anything. So I have to do something. So I sat myself down on the ground outside the Swedish parliament and I decided that I wasn't going to go to school. The first day I sat all alone. Then the second day, people started joining me. I wouldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams that this would happen. It happened so fast. It is amazing that tens of thousands of children all around the world have done the same thing as I did... ..saying that why should we go to school, if there's no future? And why should we learn facts when the most important facts don't matter? I've learned that you are never too small to make a difference. And if a few children can get headlines all over the world, just by not going to school, then imagine what we could all do together if we really wanted to. Change is coming, whether you like it or not. We still have time to turn everything around, to pull the emergency brake and to take action. But that short period of time isn't going to last for long. 

There's a message for all of us in the voices of these young people. It is after all their generation who will inherit this dangerous legacy. We now stand at a unique point in our planet's history, one where we must all share responsibility both for our present wellbeing and for the future of life on Earth. Every one of us has the power to make changes and make them now. Our wonderful natural world and the lives of our children and grandchildren, and all those who follow them, depend upon us doing so.