“The signs aren’t good”: Sir David Attenborough admits he doesn’t have long left to live
Sir David Attenborough has admitted that he hasn’t got long left on Earth after coming to terms with his own mortality.
He mused to the former UN climate chief, Christiana Figueres, in an interview that he “can’t bear” to think about the world his great-grandchildren will live in. The Guardian reported:
“I don’t spend time thinking about that because I can’t bear it," Attenborough explained.
“I’m just coming up to 93, and so I don’t have many more years around here. I find it difficult to think beyond that because the signs aren’t good.”
Attenborough also dismissed critics of the global movement of school strikes as cynics.
“[Young people] understand the simple discoveries of science about our dependence upon the natural world,” he said.
“My generation is no great example for understanding – we have done terrible things.”
He also explained that the protests are the reason he feels that progress is being made.
“That is the one big reason I have for feeling we are making progress. If we were not making progress with young people, we are done.”
Attenborough also said in the interview that stopping climate change and the destruction of wildlife is essential.
“We have no option, if we want to survive,” he told Figueres.
“We have a [moral] obligation on our shoulders and it would be to our deep eternal shame if we fail to acknowledge that.”
Figueres also agreed.
“The other young people are justifiably furious with us. They say we have been at this for 30 years and we still haven’t solved this. Young people are calling us adults to account,” she said.
“We now know we can do it: we know we have the technology, the finance [and] the policies,” she said.
“The outrage is about how is it possible that, knowing that we can do it, we are not doing it fast enough?”