David Attenborough’s ‘Saving the Wild Isles’: A Powerful Message, But Urgent Concerted Direct Action Is Still Overwhelmingly Needed
10.4.23
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Last night, after watching the fifth and final episode of David Attenborough’s ‘Wild Isles’ series on BBC1, a three-year project that has provided a beautifully filmed and visually unprecedented perspective on the extraordinary wildlife of the UK, I watched the online-only extra episode, ’Saving the Wild Isles’, which, we heard last month, was only being shown on iPlayer “because of fears its themes of the destruction of nature would risk a backlash from Tory politicians and the rightwing press”, as the Guardian explained.
In the end, the programme failed to present what we had been led to expect — “images of rivers polluted with plastics, sewage and pesticides, tales of dwindling numbers of insects, birds and mammals, of ancient woodlands destroyed, overfished seas, mature urban trees felled, meadows ploughed, raptors such as golden eagles poisoned, the climate crisis running amok”, as Dave Goulson, professor of biology at the University of Sussex, explained in a critical article for the Guardian today, entitled, ‘David Attenborough’s online Wild Isles isn’t too hard-hitting for TV — it doesn’t go far enough.’
Instead, ’Saving the Wild Isles’ was an uplifting endorsement of ‘rewilding’, focusing on important efforts across the country by farmers, ecologists and volunteers to undo the worst effects of industrial, pesticide-driven agriculture, to ‘rewild’ denuded nature (with a particular focus on the Cairngorms), and to re-plant vital, wildlife-supporting sea meadows on the ravaged ocean floor. For Londoners, there was even a focus on the inspiring work restoring nature to the River Lea at Cody Dock, a formerly heavily polluted industrial site in Canning Town, which everyone in the capital should visit.
I wouldn’t want to belittle Attenborough’s efforts — and the RSPB, the WWF and the National Trust, who worked on the programme — to get people involved in projects like these. I found the programme genuinely inspiring, although even on its own terms what kept occurring me was the need for these projects to be scaled up — a hundred-fold, a thousand-fold.
It could all be done if the political will existed to make the UK a leader in ‘rewilding’ and in transitioning to a green economy, and the programme —and the series as a whole — didn’t flinch from mentioning, repeatedly, that we have become “one of the most nature depleted countries in the world”, but ‘rewilding’, encouraging people to get involved in projects to save and revive nature, and placing hope above anger can only go so far.
The series as a whole, for example, focused relentlessly on water. How could it not, when it focused on a country with vast shorelines, and when nature, in all its forms, depends on water? And yet, there was no mention of how, as Dave Goulson described it, “Raw sewage is being dumped into England’s rivers on average 800 times a day.”
There is, arguably, no greater scandal than this perpetual sh*tshow, facilitated because, in 1989, England and Wales became the only countries in the world to have a fully privatised water and sewage disposal system. Wales has recently opted out of this model, but in England, as the ‘We Own It’ website explains, “Privatisation is a legalised scam. Shareholders receive £2 billion a year on average. Since the 1990s, investment from the privatised English water companies has gone down 15%, and they’ve built up a debt mountain of £53 billion (paid for by us).” The CEOs of the water companies are paid millions, as the i newspaper explained last year, ”even as billions of litres of sewage are poured into the country’s rivers and oceans.”
The re-nationalisation of our water companies ought to be at the top of our political priorities, and yet, as with other urgently needed policies — a ban on all new oil, gas and coal extraction, as part of our commitment to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by at least 45% by 2030 — it is being deliberately ignored by our government.
In conclusion, then, the urgency of the climate crisis wasn’t really highlighted by David Attenborough, despite him stating, rather eloquently, “We now have a few short years during which we can still make a choice. Where just enough of the natural world remains for it to recover. This starts and ends with us. Every one of us, no matter where we live, can and must play a part in restoring nature to our isles. Never has it been more important to do this for ourselves and for our wildlife. This is our home, and this is the moment. We have just enough time and just enough nature left to save our wild isles for our children, and for future generations.”
These were fine words, of course, and they will undoubtedly have a role to play in persuading nature-loving but non-radical Brits (an important demographic) to take the UK’s depletion of nature seriously, as well as helping others stay on the right side of debilitating despair when it comes to the climate crisis.
However, urgent action is also required, and for that I’m hoping that anyone in the UK who is reading this will come to London from Friday April 21 to Monday April 24 for what Extinction Rebellion are calling ‘The Big One’, an effort to get 100,000 people together to demand urgent change, which is supported by over 130 other organisations.
I hope to see you there.
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Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and see the latest photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here, or you can watch it online here, via the production company Spectacle, for £2.50).
In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and he also set up ‘No Social Cleansing in Lewisham’ as a focal point for resistance to estate destruction and the loss of community space in his home borough in south east London. For two months, from August to October 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody. Although the garden was violently evicted by bailiffs on October 29, 2018, and the trees were cut down on February 27, 2019, the struggle for housing justice — and against environmental destruction — continues.
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13 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:
Here’s my latest article, my reflections on David Attenborough’s ‘Wild Isles’ Series, and, in particular, the additional episode, ‘Saving the Wild Isles’, which was only made available online.
While applauding his efforts to get people involved in climate action, and particular in ‘rewilding’, I also can’t help but note that urgent and concerted direct action is also required to overcome our government’s continued support for our sewage-spilling privatised water companies, and for new oil, gas and coal extraction, and I urge people to join Extinction Rebellion’s ‘The Big One’ protest in London on April 21, for which the organisers (and over 100 supporting organisations) are hoping to get 100,000 to attend.
You can sign up here: https://extinctionrebellion.uk/the-big-one/
...on April 10th, 2023 at 10:17 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Kevin Hester wrote:
I’ve admired the man enormously for decades, but his scientific reticence is doing no one any good.
I guess it’s his way of dealing with his grief!
https://kevinhester.live/2017/01/20/the-coming-tsunami-of-grief/
...on April 10th, 2023 at 10:41 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for that link, Kevin -and good to see a mention of Dahr Jamail, through whom I first awoke to the scale of the crisis, with Chris Hedges in New York when his book ‘The End of Ice’ was published.
I think David Attenborough has faced two problems – firstly, if he wanted to tell the truth as forcefully as he should, he wouldn’t be allowed. No one would broadcast it.
In addition, I think he genuinely doesn’t want to panic people, and I appreciate that, instead, he tries to find a positive angle -as here, with all the encouragement for people to get involved in volunteering – but in common with pretty much the whole of the liberal media, everyone involved in gatekeeping doesn’t seem to understand that the problem isn’t going to go away, and that, essentially, panic deferred now can only become even worse panic later.
...on April 10th, 2023 at 10:42 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Ed Calipel wrote:
It’s a great shame that Attenborough continued to depict the dying natural world as a paradise when there was clear and substantial scientific evidence to the contrary and millions of tonnes of plastic in the oceans several decades ago.
...on April 10th, 2023 at 10:43 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, I remember a few years back when George Monbiot called him out about how he was increasingly presenting a warped view of the natural world, Ed. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/07/david-attenborough-world-environment-bbc-films
I can’t help but think that his criticism hit home, as not too long after Attenborough finally acknowledged the scale of the climate crisis in ‘Climate Change – The Facts’: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00049b1
...on April 10th, 2023 at 10:44 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Ed Calipel wrote:
About 12 years ago, I contacted the BBC, referencing various documentaries – particularly Oceans de plastique – and asked why the documentaries they aired continued to depict the natural world as a glowing, vibrant ecosystem.
Strangely, there was no reply.
Many thanks Andy for the link, I hadn’t seen the article – it’s reinforced my already strong opinion.
...on April 11th, 2023 at 11:24 am
Andy Worthington says...
It’s pretty shameful that the BBC didn’t even respond to you, Ed, and that we had to wait until 2018 for George Monbiot to point out how absurd disgracefully reality had to be manipulated to enable a rosy view of nature to continue. I remember when the article came out that I was struck in particular by these passages:
“For many years, wildlife film-making has presented a pristine living world. It has created an impression of security and abundance, even in places afflicted by cascading ecological collapse. The cameras reassure us that there are vast tracts of wilderness in which wildlife continues to thrive. They cultivate complacency, not action.
“You cannot do such a thing passively. Wildlife film-makers I know tell me that the effort to portray what looks like an untouched ecosystem becomes harder every year. They have to choose their camera angles ever more carefully to exclude the evidence of destruction, travel further to find the Edens they depict. They know – and many feel deeply uncomfortable about it – that they are telling a false story, creating a fairytale world that persuades us all is well, in the midst of an existential crisis.”
It’s taken several more years, as I see it, for the almost 100% consensus amongst climate scientists about the scale of the climate crisis, and industrial capitalism’s responsibility for it, to finally be accepted by the mainstream media so that climate change deniers are no longer given equal airtime to spout their lies in the name of ‘impartiality’ – although the fossil fuel companies have now mined a rich new seam of misinformation through the ‘new world order’ conspiracy theories that have captured the minds of tens of millions of people in the West.
However, the mainstream, allegedly ‘responsible’ media are still far from the position they should be taking, which is to report the truth about the scale of the climate crisis on a daily basis. There should be features about aspects of the crisis running every day, and discussions about what changes are needed, and how they can be achieved, to halve greenhouse gas emissions throughout the rest of the decade.
...on April 11th, 2023 at 11:25 am
Andy Worthington says...
Damien Morrison wrote:
the only backlash that needs to happen is one against the tories and the water companies the bbc needs to be wound up now
...on April 11th, 2023 at 11:34 am
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, we definitely need to be rid of the Tories, Damien, and Labour look faintly promising on the environment, in stark contrast to almost everything else being pumped out by the authoritarian Kier Starmer. However, they really need to commit to re-nationalisation of the water industry NOW. How docile are we as a nation that we (England and Wales) are the only countries that accepted water privatisation, and that it wasn’t re-nationalised under Blair and Brown, even though it was already apparent at the time that it was a disaster?
As for the BBC, I don’t want rid of them, but I do think they should be free of government interference, and they need to wake up to the fact that their editorial policies regarding the news are so compromised that many of us have completely given up watching any BBC news programmes whatsoever.
...on April 11th, 2023 at 11:34 am
Andy Worthington says...
Damien Morrison wrote:
I dont watch television at all now … we are passive no other country would accept what we accept raw sewage in the waters … the corruption
...on April 11th, 2023 at 4:24 pm
Andy Worthington says...
The Guardian ran a good series in November looking at the scandal of the privatised water companies, Damien, in which Kate Bayliss, from the department of economics at SOAS, who has written extensively about England’s privatised water, stated, “We are managing our water in the interests of offshore investors.” Another researcher has called England’s privatised water system “An ATM for Investors.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2022/nov/30/englands-water-the-worlds-piggy-bank
...on April 11th, 2023 at 4:25 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Here’s another analysis, from Jonathan Portes, professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London, who worked on Thatcher’s water privatisation in 1989 as a civil servant: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/16/i-worked-on-privatisation-england-water-1989-failed-regime
...on April 11th, 2023 at 4:25 pm
Andy Worthington says...
And here’s a reminder of how the Bolivian people fought back against water privatisation over 20 years ago, in a New Yorker article with the excellent headline, ‘Leasing the rain’: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/04/08/leasing-the-rain
...on April 11th, 2023 at 4:26 pm