Sir David Frederick Attenborough’s speech on climate action at COP26
Your excellencies, delegates, ladies and gentlemen, as you spend the next two weeks, debating, negotiating, persuading and compromising, as you surely must, it’s easy to forget that ultimately the emergency climate comes down to a single number, the concentration of carbon in our atmosphere. The measure that greatly determines global temperature and the changes in that one number is the clearest way to chart our own story, for it defines our relationship with our world.
For much of humanity’s ancient history, global temperatures bounced wildly. It was a brutal and unpredictable world. It was just over 10,000 years ago, that Earth’s climate stabilized. We found ourselves in an unusually benign period with predictable seasons and reliable weather. For the first time civilization was possible; and we wasted no time in taking advantage of that. Everything we’ve achieved in the last 1'0,000 years was enabled by the stability during this time. The global temperature has not wavered over this period by more than plus or minus one degree Celsius, until now. Our burning of fossil fuels, our destruction of nature, our approach to industry, construction and learning, are releasing carbon into the atmosphere at an unprecedented pace, and scale.
We are, already in trouble. The stability, we all depend on, is breaking. Today, those who’ve done the least to cause this problem, are being the hardest hit.
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? Perhaps the fact that the people most affected by climate change are young people alive today will give us the impetus we need, to rewrite our story, 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 tons of carbon, from the air. A new, industrial revolution, powered by millions of sustainable innovations, is essential.
We will all, share in the benefits. Nature, is a key ally. Whenever we restore the wild, it will recapture carbon, and help us bring back balance to our planet. We must acknowledge that; no nation has completed its development because no advanced nation is yet sustainable. All have a journey still to complete so that all nations have a good standard of living and a modest footprint. We’re going to have to learn together, how to achieve this.
The people alive now, the generation to come, will look at this conference and consider one thing. Did that 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 force powerful enough to destabilize our planet, surely, working together, we are powerful enough to save it. In my lifetime, I’ve witnessed a terrible decline. In yours, you could and should witness a wonderful recovery. That desperate hope, ladies and gentlemen, delegates, excellencies, is why the world is looking to you, and why you, are here. Thank you.