Sir David Attenborough

Whereas other species depended on physical changes over generations, we could produce an idea that brought significant change within a generation. Tricks such as finding the plants that yield water even during a drought, crafting a stone tool for skinning a kill, lighting a fire or cooking a meal, could be passed from one human to another during a single lifetime. It was a new form of inheritance that didn’t rely on the genes which an individual received from its parents. So now the pace of our change increased.

Wherever I went, I found wilderness: sparkling coastal seas, vast forests, immense open grasslands. Year after year I explored such places with cameras, recording the wonders of the natural world for the viewers back home.

The top driver of continuing deforestation, which doubles that of the next three greatest cases combined, is beef production. Brazil alone devotes 170 million hectares of its land, an area seven times the size of the United Kingdom, to cattle pasture. Much of that area was once rainforest. The second driver is soy. Growing soy uses some 131 million hectares, much of it in South America.

At some stage, the situation may well be made worse with the emergence of another pandemic.

Things can thrive without necessarily getting bigger.

If we do make the transition to renewables at the lightning speed required, humankind will forever look back on this generation with gratitude, for we are indeed the first to truly understand the problem–and the last with a chance to do anything about it.

the most formidable obstacle we face is the abstract force we might call vested interests. Change is a threat to any invested in the status quo.

Almost every large company and government uses fossil fuels predominantly for their power and distribution.

At least three nations–Iceland, Albania and Paraguay–already generate all their electricity without using fossil fuels.

In the 1950s, as a result of the traumas of the Second World War, there was a strong desire in the Netherlands for families to be self-sufficient and have enough land to grow their own food.