Let me say first, I LOVE David Attenborough, and I love that he fights for nature and wants to make a point even at his rip golden age of 90+. The footage he shows is brilliant and mostly new (due to being on Netflix I suppose). The biggest flaw in this new installment of "let's save the planet" is that his view on how humans will turn the corner and not face extinction is entirely flawed.
First we start with slashing forests down for more cattle and coffee plantations - that's not going to stop. Costa Rica is a bad example and even if they were a great example, Brazil will never stop it, Indonesia will never stop it, they prefer to grow tobacco instead of having some "useless" trees. In the end, the government wants money, the people want to earn money, not look at trees and live like hippies around them. Which is actually the problem with most of David's ideas - the governments, the corporations, they will not follow! Nature can recover, we've seen that not only in Costa Rica but also in Malaysia where they created a "fake" rainforest to see if it would turn out the same, and I don't need to go to Chernobyl 40 years after the disaster to check if nature takes back the space - I can see that in my garden after just half a year of neglect. Mr. Attenborough, nobody wants to go to Chernobyl because it's radioactive, but you cannot assume that people would leave alone free land in e.g. Oregon, for nature to grow a forest if it could be used for agriculture or new housing developments instead. That's not how our society works.
Fishing is the WORST solution he provided, enabling no-fish zones to provide spill-over to fishing. The example he made was PALAU of all places. Fact is that Palau receives almost all of their food from the US - Hawaii if I'm not mistaken - by boat. Once the boat didn't come for a month and they all didn't have vegetables for that time period. The locals all live on welfare rather than farming on their own and they all burn their trash to cause more harm to the environment. The fisherman in the documentary throws a tiny net out to catch his fish - that's not the problem anyway - it's a huge Chinese vessel coming along, ignoring any kind of no-fish zones (Palau, Tonga, Galapagos, Antarctica just to name a FEW examples, they are everywhere and will NOT stop!) and the poor fish are all gone. You cannot have this working if rogue nations like China and to many extend Japan just fish whatever and wherever they want.
Overpopulation, Mr. Attenborough, may peak soon but that's not because of society educating young women or family planning - it will be because there is no food, no space, no health care system to care for all of it. His example, a horrible one again, is that Japan stopped having babies! Well, that's their attitude, a lot of women work and don't want children, true, but they are also facing a disaster of no young generation to fill the gaps in the pyramid. Is every nation going to be like Japan? No, Europe has parts of their populating declining but that's mainly because of family planning and understanding that you don't want to have 3-4-5 children anymore. China's controversial one-child policy may actually have worked to level the population growth but I suppose nobody wants to talk about that. Does the rest of the world follow? No. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, they still have a huge amount of kids. Religious believes, no access to family planning, contribute to an oncoming disaster. Let's face it, the Catholic Church banning contraceptives is medieval.
The elephant in the room is that politics and corporate greed will always destroy our planet rather than individuals. We can recycle our trash as much as we want but BP oil spills are worst than us not having recycled our entire life. Brazil says they cannot control the Amazon burning down - I'm sure the plantation owners are happy to see new land becoming available for more cattle that make your burgers (which is horrible again because cows cause more harm to the environment than humans due to constantly belching methane, so do your part and switch to chicken meat).
Lastly, people are selfish and greedy too - let's not lie about it. Maybe you personally reading this are a kind soul, bless you, but there are enough individuals who seek opportunities to gain money, spread their seeds, exploit nature if necessary. That's going to take a lot of effort, and David is maybe trying to reach us for this point but I think he definitely failed in his approach. New York will be cleaner when we switch to renewable energy? Let's hope so!
First we start with slashing forests down for more cattle and coffee plantations - that's not going to stop. Costa Rica is a bad example and even if they were a great example, Brazil will never stop it, Indonesia will never stop it, they prefer to grow tobacco instead of having some "useless" trees. In the end, the government wants money, the people want to earn money, not look at trees and live like hippies around them. Which is actually the problem with most of David's ideas - the governments, the corporations, they will not follow! Nature can recover, we've seen that not only in Costa Rica but also in Malaysia where they created a "fake" rainforest to see if it would turn out the same, and I don't need to go to Chernobyl 40 years after the disaster to check if nature takes back the space - I can see that in my garden after just half a year of neglect. Mr. Attenborough, nobody wants to go to Chernobyl because it's radioactive, but you cannot assume that people would leave alone free land in e.g. Oregon, for nature to grow a forest if it could be used for agriculture or new housing developments instead. That's not how our society works.
Fishing is the WORST solution he provided, enabling no-fish zones to provide spill-over to fishing. The example he made was PALAU of all places. Fact is that Palau receives almost all of their food from the US - Hawaii if I'm not mistaken - by boat. Once the boat didn't come for a month and they all didn't have vegetables for that time period. The locals all live on welfare rather than farming on their own and they all burn their trash to cause more harm to the environment. The fisherman in the documentary throws a tiny net out to catch his fish - that's not the problem anyway - it's a huge Chinese vessel coming along, ignoring any kind of no-fish zones (Palau, Tonga, Galapagos, Antarctica just to name a FEW examples, they are everywhere and will NOT stop!) and the poor fish are all gone. You cannot have this working if rogue nations like China and to many extend Japan just fish whatever and wherever they want.
Overpopulation, Mr. Attenborough, may peak soon but that's not because of society educating young women or family planning - it will be because there is no food, no space, no health care system to care for all of it. His example, a horrible one again, is that Japan stopped having babies! Well, that's their attitude, a lot of women work and don't want children, true, but they are also facing a disaster of no young generation to fill the gaps in the pyramid. Is every nation going to be like Japan? No, Europe has parts of their populating declining but that's mainly because of family planning and understanding that you don't want to have 3-4-5 children anymore. China's controversial one-child policy may actually have worked to level the population growth but I suppose nobody wants to talk about that. Does the rest of the world follow? No. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, they still have a huge amount of kids. Religious believes, no access to family planning, contribute to an oncoming disaster. Let's face it, the Catholic Church banning contraceptives is medieval.
The elephant in the room is that politics and corporate greed will always destroy our planet rather than individuals. We can recycle our trash as much as we want but BP oil spills are worst than us not having recycled our entire life. Brazil says they cannot control the Amazon burning down - I'm sure the plantation owners are happy to see new land becoming available for more cattle that make your burgers (which is horrible again because cows cause more harm to the environment than humans due to constantly belching methane, so do your part and switch to chicken meat).
Lastly, people are selfish and greedy too - let's not lie about it. Maybe you personally reading this are a kind soul, bless you, but there are enough individuals who seek opportunities to gain money, spread their seeds, exploit nature if necessary. That's going to take a lot of effort, and David is maybe trying to reach us for this point but I think he definitely failed in his approach. New York will be cleaner when we switch to renewable energy? Let's hope so!