{"id":2171,"date":"2020-12-16T17:43:45","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T17:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.comandantetchao.net\/wp\/?p=2171"},"modified":"2020-12-16T17:43:48","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T17:43:48","slug":"the-guardian-david-attenborough-the-earth-and-its-oceans-are-finite-we-need-to-show-mutual-restraint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.comandantetchao.net\/wp\/?p=2171","title":{"rendered":"The Guardian-David Attenborough: \u2018The Earth and its oceans are finite. We need to show mutual restraint\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tom Lamont \/ Sat 12 Dec 2020 08.00 GMT<\/sub><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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David Attenborough: \u2018People give me credit I simply don\u2019t earn.\u2019 Photograph: Suki Dhanda\/The Observer<\/sub><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At 94, what has the world\u2019s most-travelled naturalist learned? He talks garden birds in lockdown, the eerie silence of Chernobyl \u2013 and tackling the climate crisis<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before the stay-at-home orders of 2020 kept him in one place for months on end, David Attenborough had never sat in his garden and listened to the birds. Not properly, he says, not determinedly \u201cswotting up with a notebook and keeping a bird list\u201d. The foremost figure in natural-world broadcasting (so admired by naturalists around the planet, he has three types of plant as well as a spider, snail, grasshopper, frog, lizard, marsupial lion and shark-like fish named after him) hardly paid attention to the wildlife on his doorstep until lockdown forced his hand. From spring through to autumn, he says, he sat outside with a pencil and made a determined effort to identify every species he could hear. Blackbirds. Thrushes. Jays. Blue tits and great tits. Swifts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cActually, I couldn\u2019t really hear the swifts,\u201d the 94-year-old admits. Something to do with their pitch, and his failing ears. \u201cMy hearing,\u201d Attenborough growls, using the breathy, mournful voice that often accompanies footage of an ageing alpha getting supplanted by a younger fitter animal, \u201cis not what it was.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Filming Life On Earth, 1979. Photograph: BBC<\/sub><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Back in his 30s and 40s, when Attenborough was regularly out in the field on five continents, shooting endless one-off nature programmes for the BBC, he wore a lot of khaki. In his 50s, presenting the genre-defining 13-episode series Life On Earth, he wore a shirt patterned in pink, the better to show off the lushness of a novel 1979 colour broadcast. Into his 89th year, he was prepared to wear rolled-up summer chinos and blue Crocs for a show about coral reefs. Today, sitting in his study at home in London, Attenborough\u2019s outfit is more muted. Two curly pale shirt lapels escape from the collar of a brown sweater. Your eyes are drawn to the rightward sweep of flossy bright-white hair.
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While he talks, Attenborough clutches spectacles, using these for emphasis \u2013 jabbing them in the direction of his garden, for instance, when discussing the elusive swifts, and later arcing them above his head to suggest a larger world and its troubles with global heating. We\u2019re still on garden wildlife when he stops what he\u2019s saying, suddenly, and points the specs in my direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHave you got a garden?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lire La Suite:<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tom Lamont \/ Sat 12 Dec 2020 08.00 GMT At 94, what has the world\u2019s most-travelled naturalist learned? He talks garden birds in lockdown, the eerie silence of Chernobyl \u2013 and tackling the climate crisis Before the stay-at-home orders of 2020 kept him in one place for months on end,Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,9,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-alexandriaaoc","post-2171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-environnement","category-news-politics","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.comandantetchao.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.comandantetchao.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.comandantetchao.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.comandantetchao.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.comandantetchao.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.comandantetchao.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2172,"href":"https:\/\/news.comandantetchao.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171\/revisions\/2172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.comandantetchao.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.comandantetchao.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.comandantetchao.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}