People talk about doom-laden scenarios happening in the future: they are happening in Africa now. You can see it perfectly clearly. Periodic famines are due to too many people living on land that can't sustain them.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the urgent environmental and humanitarian crises occurring in Africa as a result of overpopulation and unsustainable land use.
David Attenborough emphasizes the dire situation faced by many in Africa, where the impacts of climate change and overpopulation are leading to significant challenges such as famine. He urges a recognition of these existing crises rather than a distant, hypothetical future, pointing out that the problems we fear may arise are already present and affecting lives today.
In practice
In a speech addressing climate change, one could use this quote to highlight the urgency of the situation in Africa.
I don't think we are going to become extinct. We're very clever and extremely resourceful - and we will find ways of preserving ourselves, of that I'm sure. But whether our lives will be as rich as they are now is another question.
I'm against this huge globalisation on the basis of economic advantage.
I would be absolutely astounded if population growth and industrialisation and all the stuff we are pumping into the atmosphere hadn't changed the climatic balance. Of course it has. There is no valid argument for denial.
There's a small worm called Loa Loa Filariasis. This parasite can survive in one environment exclusively- namely, underneath the skin and inside the eyes of human beings. Children and the elderly in tropical regions (usually the poorest) are the most widely affected. A painful, slow death is virtually certain. The worm can actually live in the host for 17 years before the host finally dies.
The fundamental issue is the moral issue.
It is vital that there is a narrator figure whom people believe. That's why I never do commercials. If I started saying that margarine was the same as motherhood, people would think I was a liar.
As a kid, I was going to be a marine biologist or an actor. When I became successful as an actor, I said, 'Well, maybe I can lend a voice to this with an equal passion.' You realize how lucky we are and how destructive we've been and what little regard we have for the natural world.
Then in October, Indian Summer, the air turned so soft, the sunlight so fragile, and each day's loveliness so poignantly doomed that even self-ignorance and restlessness felt like profound states of being, and he just wandered the empty beaches and misty headlands in a state of serene confusion and awe.
O frost bitten blossoms, That are unfolding your wings From out the envious black branches. Bloom quickly and make much of the sunshine. The twigs conspire against you! Hear hem! They hold you from behind.
Only as far as the masters of the world have called in nature to their aid, can they reach the height of magnificence. This is the meaning of their hanging-gardens, villas, garden-houses, islands, parks, and preserves.
If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness.
We called her Mother Earth. Because she gave birth to us, and then we sucked her dry.
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