A Life on Our Planet

I finished reading this book by Sir David Attenborough a week or so ago and it still resonates with me. I read it as a library book but decided to buy it because I wanted to re-read and study it. I want it to inform a lot of my purchasing decisions. I actually think it should be required reading for everyone on the planet - or at least for everyone with young children. 

Although this book is packed with scientific information, it's an easy read - except perhaps for the Glossary which I found I had to concentrate to get through. All those terms placed in context with his straightforward style of writing were easy to take on board when introduced in the text. 

It isn't a terribly depressing book either. I had watched his television programme of the same title and found that though the information presented was alarming, the gorgeous photography and the history of his career (in black and white) was fascinating. This book does present much of the same information but it also presents some of the possible solutions being developed. He sets the stage for us all to make some adjustments as well. 

One of the things I love about A Life on Our Planet is that is explains why some things are important, eg 'diversity'. I've recently come to associate this term more with racial and other minority people being more included in society, but of course diversity of species is one of the necessary criteria for health of the planet. Or, let's be right about it, health of the human race. The planet will be just fine, thank you very much, without humans. The plant life we work so hard to beat back will re-grow, various inconvenient species will thrive and the ecosystem will set about re-creating itself. The species we've killed off may never return, but other species will develop to take their place, in time.

For example, Attenborough explains why we needed to stop killing off whales: 

A key problem restricting life in the open ocean is the availability of nutrients. When conditions are right, plants and animals live in the surface waters and, when they die, drift continuously downwards as 'marine snow'. Where nutrients are not freely available, the surface waters of the oceans can be almost sterile. Just as land plants need fertiliser as well as sun and water, so phytoplankton, the photosynthesising foundation of the food web, need nitrogenous compounds in the sunlit surface waters if they are to thrive. There are places in the ocean where the decomposed marine snow is stirred and carried upwards by the currents flowing over submarine mountains and ridges, and here the phytoplankton - and hence fish populations - can flourish. But the rest of the open ocean would remain a vast, blue desert were it not for the whales. They are so big that when they dive to feed in the depths or rise to the surface to breathe, they can create a great stirring of the water around them. That helps keep nutrients near the surface. And when they defecate, the waters around them are also greatly enriched. This 'whale pump' as it is often termed, is now recognised as a significant process in maintaining the fertility of the open ocean. Indeed, whales are now thought to be responsible for bringing more important nutrients to surface waters in some parts of the ocean than the outflows of local revers. The ocean of the Holocene needed its whales to remain productive. In the twentieth century, men killed close to 3 million of them.

He also includes the idea of a 'Donut Economy' as part of his vision for the future. Population growth is a large contributor to the difficulties we are facing. He quotes a report I hope to read soon: The Economics of Biodiversity, which states that 50% of the impact we humans have on the living world is attributable to the richest 16% of the human population. I am curious to learn whether I am part of that 16%. Don't laugh - there are an incredible number of very poor people in the world and it is remarkably easy to be 'rich' by comparison if one lives in a developed country. The donut economy should be our compass for the future: the inside ring is a minimum standard of living to be enjoyed by all humans: clean water, health care, food, housing, gender equality and other basics for a decent life, called the 'social foundation'. The outer ring is is called the 'ecological ceiling' which is the limit of our human activities that the natural world can tolerate and still be in balance, still provide us a place to live. Some of these boundaries include climate change, air pollution, biodiversity loss, fresh water withdrawals, among others. Not all of these boundaries have been quantified, but several have already been breached and need to be brought back into line. Using the Donut Economy is seen as the best way to bring all nations into a state of population stability, to help them transition past the high death rates and resulting high birth rates.

One of my favourite parts of this book is about empowerment of women. It seems that 

Among all these social improvements, one in particular is found to significantly reduce family size - the empowerment of women. Wherever women have the vote, wherever girls stay in school longer, wherever women are in charge of their own lives and not dictated to by men, wherever they have access to health care and contraception, wherever they are free to take any job and their aspirations for life are raised, the birth rate falls. The  reason for this is straightforward - empowerment brings freedom of choice and when life offers more options for women, they choice is to have fewer children. The faster and more fully women are empowered, the quicker a nation will move through State 3 and on to state 4. 

I may have fallen in love with David Attenborough when I read those words. He goes on to describe various examples of empowerment. As it happens I am also in the midst of reading The Moment of Lift: how empowering women changes the world, by Melinda Gates. It hasn't thus far told me a great deal I didn't already know or suspect, but it's an interesting read all the same. At this point I might venture the opinion that it is more about social psychology than philanthropy.

So, I hope I've convinced you to read A Life on Our Planet. Do you think you might?