Our Planet: The official companion to the ground-breaking Netflix original Attenborough series with a special foreword by David Attenborough

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The information is well written, too, simple enough for children without talking down to them. It's a fine line and one this book walks very well. Children will be entertained as they're learning - for instance, did you know that elephants can dig wells if their rivers dry up? I didn't! Therefore, I can imagine somewhat how Sir Attenborough must feel after all the things he's seen and experienced. Russian: Жизнь на нашей планете: Мое предупреждение миру на грани катастрофы, romanized: Zhizn na nashey planete: Moye preduprezhdeniye miru na grani katastrofy, lit.'Life on Our Planet: My Warning to the World on the Brink of Catastrophe'. Translated by Sergey Bavin. Moscow: BOMBORA. 2021. ISBN 9785041183585. So I hope humanity can get a grip and remember that if nothing else, it’ll save a lot of money (no matter how expensive some conservation efforts might seem at first glance) and it’d serve us well if we protected the very planet that is feeding us.

As to why anyone beyond naturalists should care about these changes, Attenborough provided an illustration. Scientists who want to grow bacteria place a few bacterium along with nutrients into a petri dish. There's a predictable progression in which growth is initially slow to occur as the bacteria assess the available resources, and then there's explosive growth from the high number of births. Eventually some bacteria die from old age and this will slow the rate of all population growth. But as there's still positive growth, the petri dish is getting crowded as there's more competition for the few remaining nutrients. Eventually once all the nutrients are exhausted, the entire colony begins its death spiral. Although earth is much larger than a petri dish, it is also a closed system with finite resources. Nature programmes used to celebrate how enormous and wondrous our world is. Then the climate crisis forced them to adapt, so they became programmes about how wondrous our world was, and still could be, if we could only stop damaging it. Now, wildlife series are evolving again, and Life on Our Planet is part of a new breed that looks at humanity killing itself, and says: hey, nature has been through worse than this before. Here, the story that will happily carry on without us is told to us as an awesome, cinematic epic.This educators’ guide (and accompanying presentations) includes five activities that provide a range of classroom and outdoor learning opportunities to help young people build their knowledge and understanding of sustainability issues, explore their own values and attitudes and develop key skills so that they feel empowered to take action in shaping a brighter future for our planet. Finnish: Yksi elämä, yksi planeetta: Näkemys ihmeellisen maailmamme tulevaisuudesta. Translated by Ilkka Rekiaro. Helsinki: WSOY. 2020. ISBN 9789510456583.

So this is Sir David Attenborough's account of the change he has witnessed in the natural world since he was born. Considering that he is over 90 years old, he got a good look at a number of really important events in our recent history (from World War 2 and humans landing on the Moon to the Chernobyl disaster and more). I don’t think anyone other than Sir David Attenborough could have written this book and made it so powerful and enlightening. His voice, (yes you do hear him speaking as you read) makes everything interesting in this, a book full of statistics and scientifically described information. He manages to hold your attention and get his stark message in an easily understandable way, that very few others could manage. Potton, Ed (16 September 2020). "David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet review — a pre-emptive eulogy for the Earth". The Times . Retrieved 21 November 2020. David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet is a 2020 film by the documentarian and natural historian David Attenborough. Jonnie Hughes served as director and producer, as he has on Attenborough's documentaries since 2000. [1] Initially scheduled for cinematic release on 16 April 2020, the film was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The film premiered on 28 September 2020 in cinemas and debuted on the online streaming platform Netflix on 4 October. [2] [3] [4]A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future is a 2020 book by documentarian David Attenborough and director-producer Jonnie Hughes. It follows Attenborough's career as a presenter and natural historian, along with the decline in wildlife and rising carbon emissions during the period. Attenborough warns of the effects that climate change and biodiversity loss will have in the near future, and offers action which can be taken to prevent natural disaster. A companion book to the film David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet, it was positively received by critics. So where do I stand when it comes to David Attenborough? Well, I grew up watching his TV programs, and films about nature. He has basically been there my entire life, opening a window into nature in faraway places, and I adore him for it. In fact, I have nothing but respect for the man. I think he has done more in his professional life to ignite interest in nature, animals, plants, basically in this planet we live on, than anyone else I know of. He's got this infectious fascination for life on this planet that I can never help being swept along with. This beautifully written and informative book for children has an uplifting message of hope that will strike a chord with all the family. The perfect gift for families the world over to treasure forever.

We have come as far as we have because we are the cleverest creatures to have ever lived on Earth. But if we are to continue to exist, we will require more than intelligence. We will require wisdom.” He takes us on little journeys through rural England. We learn of his early fascination with fossils and thus learn some details about ammonites, their significance for natural history. We also learn of humanity's evolution, the different environmental circumstances which our ancestors had to survive and what has changed until now (this, the Holocene, is the gentlest era thus far). He also talks of mass extinctions. We all know about the ongoing climate debate and, like the author, some of us are willing to accept the indisputable evidence that climate change is seriously affecting our planet. Like him, some of us have witnessed the changes.As he begins by relating his gaining of insights and experiences, here are a few metrics that he shares: We have replaced the wild with the tame. We regard the Earth as our planet, run by humankind for humankind. There is little left for the rest of the living world. The truly wild world–that non-human world–has gone. We have overrun the Earth.”

This book has a lot of statistical data and data from various scientific studies. This can make the reading experience monotonous in some areas of this book. But the author's absorbing writing skills and the gravity of the topic discussed counterpoises it to a certain extend. I have been witness to this decline. A Life on Our Planet contains my witness statement, and my vision for the future - the story of how we came to make this, our greatest mistake, and how, if we act now, we can yet put it right. Those small moments illustrate how mammals, reptiles, arthropods, fish, cephalopods and other “dynasties”, as the programme likes to call them, established themselves via natural selection. “Throughout history, life has been waging an unending war,” says Morgan Freeman’s film-trailer voiceover, slightly nonsensically. “One dynasty rising, only to be vanquished by the next.”Greek: Η ζωή στον πλανήτη μας: Η μαρτυρία μου και ένα όραμα για το μέλλον, romanized: I zoí ston planíti mas: I martyría mou kai éna órama gia to méllon. Translated by Myrto Kalofolias. Athens: Patakis. 2021. ISBN 9789601693545. I find this extremely problematic. One cannot be a meat-eating environmentalist. One cannot talk about saving the earth when they partake in the single biggest contributor to natural destruction, climate change, habitat loss and species extinction. Worse, yet, is that Attenborough is aware that animal agriculture in the leading cause. He advocates for reducing meat intake, which simply is not enough to make a significant difference. We need to stop consuming animal products entirely because they are ruining the planet. Now let me tell you why: he does not do enough. Most people will read such a statement and get a little bit angry with me and not quite understand the position from which I write, considering his life and work, so I will do my best to explain myself as best as I can. The loss of the undeveloped areas and their animal inhabitants have been anathema to Attenborough, making him a passionate advocate. How could he not bemoan these changes when he has had such rare experiences with our planet's other residents? One such memorable encounter was during a visit to Dian Fossey's research camp in Rwanda. A female gorilla placed her hand on his head and then proceeded to examine his teeth as two infant gorillas played with his boot shoelaces. His respect for animal life is quite evident. Attenborough emphasizes that there’s no room for continued growth - population, GDP, consumption — on a closed-system planet worth limited resources. Earth is all we have, and if we want to continue to be the ones having it, we need to change what we are doing, even if it’s uncomfortable.