Seven Worlds, One Planet

Attenborough is back, and the BBC’s decision to schedule him in that Sunday evening slot makes drawing viewers as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.  However, shooting fish in a barrel is unethical and, probably, environmentally unsound, which means I am already making bad choices with metaphors and it’s only the second sentence of this week’s post.  If I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here can get with the times and acknowledge that insects shouldn’t be eaten alive for our entertainment, especially when the people eating them haven’t had proper telly careers for ages, then I can at least show our planet the respect that Seven Worlds, One Planet is very clear it deserves.  And by very clear, I mean smacking you in the face with it over and over throughout a single hour of television.  We’re at the height, here, of what TV can achieve.  Combining wildlife photography that easily stuns even the most soporific post-roast Sunday-evening eyeball into wholeheartedly acknowledging that everything ever on Earth is a miracle with undeniable demonstration of humans’ denigration of those miracles for our own gain, surely this programme will deliver the watershed moment where mankind stops it and tidies up?  (It being environmental naughtiness).

We all know something needs to happen, but our every subsequent action betrays a compromise of that truth.  I’m currently crawling through Connecticut on a train to Boston.  To reach the US, I generated a load of carbon emissions, but I’ll need to cross the Atlantic again by air to get back, so I already know I’ll be adding some more emissions.  I’m sorry.  Today’s been light on the old single-use plastics, yet I do have a bundle of garbage (American for rubbish) to throw in the trashcan (American for bin) when I reach my destination.  I’m sorry.  I stayed with a pal in New York whose building centrally regulates the heat for all apartments (American for flat).  The heating was therefore on too high and couldn’t be adjusted, but, no worries, the air conditioning kicked in to cool things down, burning energy at both ends in order to find the most energy-inefficient way to achieve room temp comfort.  We’re sorry.  So, can we rely on Sir David Attenborough to save the planet from climate change and plastic pollution?  The fact is, we shouldn’t have to.

Nevertheless, each episode of Seven Worlds, One Planet focuses on a different continent, detailing its unique and fragile ecological systems, so let’s review the story so far.

Antarctica

Penguins, seals and whales, with a backdrop of dramatically melting ice.  The guilt is woven in throughout, setting the tone for some uncomfortable viewing, but pulling no punches with the message that action is needed now.  We have facts and figures on population numbers that have dwindled or resurged at the hands of human activity, but there is retribution from Mother Nature when we see how seasick the production crew get as they sail to reach South Georgia.

Asia

Finally, a continent I have actually been to, though I am now of course racked with guilt at my carbon footprint following separate trips to China, Japan and South Korea.  This episode features the harrowing footage previously discussed on this blog from Netflix’s Our Planet: walruses falling to their deaths from Siberian cliffs.  Their plight is no less shocking this time around, though hopefully the BBC’s broader audience should draw greater attention to the living collateral damage my trips to the Far East have caused.  You’ll also weep for the orang-utan, both because this close cousin’s habitat is being destroyed so Iceland can make ads about it (I think) and because you’ll never pronounce the name of this animal correctly as it changes every few years.

South America

Never been here either, but we of course take time for the decades-old narrative about the disappearing rainforests.  This is chat that’s been in the media for such a long time that it’s become as easy to ignore as that rough-sleeper you walk past every morning on the way to work.  If, like me, the total number of hectares of virgin forest you have cleared personally in your lifetime is zero and you think that exculpates you, then you’re missing the point, you big silly.  But what do we do with the powerlessness we feel about the change we want to see?  This episode also delivers real novelty with animal behaviour never filmed before: pumas hunting guanacos.  I didn’t even know what guanacos were when the episode began, and now I am obsessed with them.

I’ll be catching up on Australasia once home, plus big player Africa is still to drop in the series.  I might confess early to expecting to be underwhelmed by Europe (the continent, not the political union we all want to stay in forever) as I’m not sure we can stretch foxes and squirrels out for an hour, but they might have found wilder cast members away from English suburbia.  Either way, this is the type of landmark content that makes me eager to pay my license fee (even if the BBC News app uses biased language to favour right-wing politics).  We can’t let down dear old David by carrying on as we have been doing.  I’m switching to Bulb, voting Green, shopping more at Co-op and haven’t put my heating on so far this year (mostly as I can’t work the new-fangled thermostat in my fancy newbuild) but these are drops in the plastic-filled ocean while New York is still giving out single-use plastic bags and I, ever the Millennial, jet about on fossil-fuelled aeroplanes.  Someone needs to stop me.  Someone needs to stop us.  Over to you, David.  We’ll do whatever you say.