A Life On Our Planet. David Attenborough. 2020. 221 pages.

A gift from my daughter, this short book documents the striking loss of biodiversity on earth caused by human activity, in a somewhat alarmist tone. But none of the facts are deniable and they are delivered in the same almost poetic lilting style that is so endearing about the now 96 year old’s television narration’s. I can almost hear the deep voice I recognized on BBC television, as I read on.

While Sir David addresses global warming with the same basic information as many other scientists have done, his emphasis, logically given his background as a globe-trotting student of all kinds of life forms, is on the loss of biodiversity as the reason to be concerned if not outright panicky. He introduces the Planetary Boundaries model with its nine components needed to maintain or restore earth’s stability, four of which we have already exceeded, a graphic depiction which was new and confusing to me. And in Part Three, he introduces the even more confusing nine component Doughnut Model also needed to restore earth’s sustainability adding an inner circle of societal and political changes to the Planetary Boundaries compass. I need to study these concepts in more detail to perhaps get close to understanding them, as they seem to be important.

The stakes for the future of Homo sapiens could not be higher if we fail to heed the warnings and sage advice in these pages, now also available on film

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Thanks, Andra.