David Attenborough: hope for humanity and young people

David Attenborough and humanity’s relationship with nature

For decades, we have been accustomed to seeing him on the big screen, tangled in thick vegetation or embedded among communities of wild animals. There was that almost divine voice and an apparent lack of awareness of danger, in a conversation between species that could restore a sense of humanity.

David Attenborough is more than one of history’s most remarkable naturalists. Above all, he is a living witness to the careless way generations of us have treated the planet. His environmentalism is central to who he is, yet the urgency of his warnings only began to register as we collectively realised we were heading towards the abyss.

But it would be wrong to think that the outlook of the now centenarian David Attenborough (blessed genes, blessed lucidity) amounts to the kind of fatalism that drags us towards mediocrity. Nor has this “British national treasure”, as David Beckham so aptly described him, given up on us because he can see neither direction nor hope for humanity.

David Attenborough’s faith in young people

His disillusionment as someone who has seen the best and worst of human beings, always in direct contact with the animal and plant world, has not stopped him opening a leafy window to those who will inherit this shared ground: young people. It is in them that Sir David places his unwavering faith that, even in dark times, humankind can adapt to preserve itself.

That is the greatest lesson we can take from an exceptional human being whom we must celebrate while he is alive. Some years ago, journalist Anderson Cooper put him through a quick-fire questionnaire on “60 Minutes”. Amid this friendly barrage came the question of questions: “What should one or more people know?”

Sir David did not hesitate: “That we are part of the world, we are part of one another, we are part of life. And that everything is connected.”