Source: Sky News
URL: http://news.sky.com/story/1400491/attenborough-humans-deny-climate-threat
Date: 01/01/2015
Event: David Attenborough: People in power "deny" climate change "because it's easier to deny it"
Credit: Sky News
People:
David Attenborough [in documentary footage]: We are setting out to explore one of the most astonishing stories of the natural world - the way in which animals managed to rise up from the surface of the earth and colonise the air.
Lucy Cotter: Sir David Attenborough has explored the natural world in black and white, colour, HD and now 3D, and for his latest venture he's looking to the skies.
David Attenborough: For viewers in 2D, they can expect to see and hear about one of the most exciting developments in the history of life, which is how various animals at various times have managed to cease from being tied to the ground, as we are, and get up into the air. And if you're watching it in 3D, then you can see how, in fact, we have taken advantage of that particular technique to allow animals to fly in and out, and come out... And so it's a - it's very suitable for 3D.
[In documentary footage.] These are ruled by very different creatures - flying mammals.
The final sequence, in the last programme, we're in a huge cave in Borneo. I hang from a rope from the lip of the cave entrance, and I'm 300 feet above the ground, hanging in the... And I'm talking to the camera, hanging in the middle of the air, me at 300 foot high, while a million bats come pelting out of the cave around me - phew...
Lucy Cotter: So, having exposed nature at its finest for the last 60 years, Sir David believes one of the biggest threats to our environment is climate change, and not enough is being done about it.
David Attenborough: It's a very, very, major serious problem facing humanity. But at the same time it would be silly to minimise the size of the problem - never, in the history of humanity, in the last ten million years, have all human beings got together to face one danger that threatens the lot - never! And in fact, wherever you look, there are just huge risks. And the awful thing is when anybody - is that people in authority and power deny that, when the evidence is overwhelming. And they deny it because it's easier to deny it.
Lucy Cotter: Incredibly sad news this year, that your brother Richard died. How do you hope that he will be remembered?
David Attenborough: I mean, the films he made, about Gandhi, and Cry Freedom - he believed in those causes very profoundly, and I think the rest of it, he might have said, was fun. I mean, he was very good at fun. But he was also fairly serious-minded, and he thought that the cinema really ought to examine the important questions that faces [sic] humanity.