Extract from The Guardian
Broadcaster appeals for summit to commit to 1.5C temperature limit to avoid climate catastrophe
Last modified on Tue 2 Nov 2021 06.02 AEDT
Sir David Attenborough has called on leaders at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow to be “motivated by hope rather than fear” to avoid climate catastrophe.
Speaking in front of an audience that included the US president, Joe Biden, at the conference’s opening ceremony on Monday afternoon, the broadcaster and naturalist said humanity was “already in trouble”.
He also appealed to the political leaders and heads of state gathered for the two-week summit to commit to holding global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, the lower of two limits set out in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
Attenborough said: “Everything we have achieved in the last 10,000 years has been enabled because of the [climate] stability during this time.
“The global temperature has not wavered over this period by more than either plus or minus one degree celsius – until now.”
He continued: “We are already in trouble. The stability we all depend on is breaking.
“This story is one of inequality as well as instability. Today those who have done the least to cause this problem are among those to be hardest hit. Ultimately, all of us will feel the impact, some of which is unavoidable.
“Is this how our story is due to end? A tale of the smartest species doomed by that all too human characteristic of failing to see the bigger picture in pursuit of short-term goals?”
He added his voice to increasingly growing calls for world leaders to thrash out a commitment to the 1.5C temperature limit and called on young people to “rewrite our story”.
“Perhaps the fact that the people most affected by climate change are no longer some imagined future generation but young people alive today, perhaps that will give us the impetus we need to rewrite our story,” he said.
“To turn this tragedy into a triumph – we are after all the greatest problem solvers to have ever existed on Earth.
“We must recapture billions of tonnes of carbon from the air, we must fix our sights on keeping 1.5 degrees within reach.”
Attenborough also highlighted the fact that “no nation has completed its development because no advanced nation is yet sustainable”, and demanded “all nations have a good standard of living and a modest footprint”.
He concluded: “It comes down to this. The people alive now and the generation to come will look at this conference and consider one thing – did the number stop rising and start to drop as a result of commitments made here?
“There’s every reason to believe that the answer can be yes. If working apart we are forces powerful enough to destabilise our planet, surely working together we are powerful enough to save it.”
He added: “That desperate hope … is why the world is looking to you and why you are here.”
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