What Did Attenborough Get Wrong?
Abbie Warner / March 21 / Environmentalism
Attenborough, 2018
While David Attenborough is undoubtedly a national treasure, whose work on the natural world has inspired multiple generations of environmentalists, his most recent documentary on the destruction of our planet ‘A Life on Our Planet’ has come under much criticism. This article will seek to explain why. If you haven’t seen it, it is well worth a watch – as always, the cinematography is outstanding and some of the figures on the destruction of our planet, shocking. It is a reminder of what we, as humans, are doing to our planet and all of its other inhabitants. However, as always, it is important to remain critical while watching – hidden within the overarching message of environmentalism there are some questionable undertones.
A central theme of the documentary is population growth and showing the correlation this appears to have with the destruction of the planet. While the documentary ends with a message of hope, telling us we can save the planet if we act now, the message falls into a familiar trap. Attenborough speaks of decreasing the birth rate in developing countries in order to put less strain on the planet’s resources in the future. Disguised behind the more palatable vail of economic development and emancipating women, the sentiment of such claims once again blames the actions of the white west on black and brown women in the global south.
Now, by no means does this article intend to incriminate David Attenborough as an overt racist, but rather intends to show that a large body of scientific research has developed which serves as a convenient distraction from the problems of overconsumption in the West.
In order to make my point, it seems appropriate to first look at the stats; ‘A Life on Our Planet’ does initially appear convincing, showing a strong correlation between population growth and the degradation of our planet. The misstep here, however, is pretty elementary – it conflates correlation and causation. While a correlation can definitely indicate a potential causal relationship, this reasoning alone is not sufficient. Stating that an increase in ice-cream sales has caused an increase in sunburn because of their positive correlation seems ridiculous – it is obviously the sun that has caused both of these two things. Yet, this misconception continues to prevail within the scientific community, particularly in relation to climate science. And, if statistics are used to present population growth to be the cause of the destruction of the Earth, it does seem logical that decreasing the birth rate would help to curb damage. However, David Satterthwaite (who was part of the IPCC team honoured with a Nobel Prize in 2007) shows simply and clearly in his 2010 paper that when carbon emissions are analysed on a country-by-country basis, the correlation between birth rate and carbon emissions simply does not hold. And why would it? Clearly a large family in Sub-Saharan Africa does not damage the planet nearly as much as a single New York businessman who commutes across the Atlantic on a regular basis. The number of children they have has very little impact on this fact.
Nations by consumption rate: World Mapper
A much more sensible analysis of what is causing the destruction of our planet is consumption patterns which provide a well-reasoned explanation for the disparity in carbon emissions between the Sub-Saharan African family and the New York businessman. This is because waste, from plastic to pesticides to greenhouse gas emissions are all an unfortunate yet inevitable biproduct of current production processes. And therefore, higher levels of consumption cause more waste and, in turn, environmental degradation. The damage done by high levels of consumption is unfortunately something that cannot be eliminated no matter how many bags for life or paper straws people use. Such changes, while not totally futile, does not eradicate one of the most fundamental features of capitalist economies – they must grow.
We could go into the economics of growth here, but I’m going to leave that one to the experts – Richard Smith writes a convincing account of what he calls the ‘Growth Imperative’ in his well renound book ‘Beyond Growth or Beyond Capitalism?’. And given the current constraints of technology, we still rely on completely unsustainable resources to sustain such growth. Fossil fuels and single use plastics are obvious examples of unsustainable resources that indefinite economic growth relies upon, but the list is extensive - any use of electricity relies on the atmosphere’s finite ability to reabsorb fossil fuels. It is this overexploitation that is causing the climate crisis and all that comes with it. What underpins this discussion is what seems to be a pretty irrefutable argument: a system of indefinite growth which relies on the Earth’s finite resources is obviously unsustainable.
So, the question rises that if it is Western capitalist production and consumption patterns which are destroying our planet, why was changing these patterns not the focus of the documentary? What I put this down to is the perception that Science is positivist by nature. What I mean by this is that science exists outside the realm of political interpretation – that scientific research simply uncovers pre-existing facts. However, this idea is just an illusion. Scientific research is exceptionally costly and therefore requires extensive funding from governments and large private investors, both of which clearly have political agendas which feed into their decisions on which lines of research to fund.
It is no coincidence that the huge medical benefits of LSD were completely discarded under Nixon’s administration who initiated the War on Drugs, branding Timothy Leary, an American psychologist who strongly advocated the benefits of psychedelic drugs ‘the most dangerous man in America’. This is clear evidence that science does not exist outside of politics. It therefore came as no surprise to me when reading Jade Sasser’s book ‘On Infertile Ground’, that a wide range of private corporations, including Hewlett Packard (HP), Goldman, Compton, Pew and Summit, have granted hundreds of thousands of dollars to scientific research which finds population growth to be the biggest cause of climate change; such large corporations have an obvious interest to maintain the status quo, protecting the capitalist market which their goods and services rely upon. Emancipating women and economically advancing the global south simultaneously appeals to people’s morals as well as their desire to buy more, travel more and everything else that comes with economic growth.
So, while Attenborough was no doubt guided by scientific research in his conclusion that we must limit population growth in order to curb the damage to our planet, he remains misguided, falling victim of the political nature of science. Real environmental change requires a reassessment of some of the fundamental principles of our economies and societies, and arguments which include the black and brown women of the developing world are not only a convenient, but also a racist and sexist distraction.