David Attenborough has been accused of betraying wildlife. So let’s ask his major critic to remake the greatest of all television programmes…
Death on Earth
A Natural History
by George Monbiot
Episode 1
GEORGE: I am now standing at the heart of the Ordovician extinction – and even here, it is ghastly. All around me, trilobites are dying in countless billions. It’s all dreadful.
Episode 2
GEORGE: I am now standing at the heart of the Devonian extinction – and it’s worst thing that has ever happened. Reef-builders are being wiped out, so are armoured fish. It’s perfectly hideous.
Episode 3
GEORGE: I am now standing at the heart of the Permian extinction – and it’s even worse than everything that’s happened before. Ten entire orders of insects are disappearing. All those lovely amphibians are going. 96 percent of all species are being wiped out before my eyes and it’s going to take 20 millions years for the earth to recover. So let us ask the truly important question: why does it bother?
Episode 4
GEORGE: I am now standing at the heart of the Triassic extinction – and it’s even worse than I expected. What will become of those archosaurs? Gone, gone, forever gone. It’s yet another blow raining down on the poor earth. It’s all ghastly beyond belief. Life? Don’t talk to me about life.
Episode 5
GEORGE: I am now standing at the heart of the Cretaceous extinction, and even here, it is teeming with death. Whatever became of the dinosaurs? We shall never see their like again, not unless you count birds, as some shallow people do. Better to concentrate on the ghastliness.
Episode 6
GEORGE: I am now rolling about on the jungle floor with a couple of gorillas — and it’s all absolutely ghastly. Shallow people rejoice in gorillas – in rainforests – in biodiversity. And after that, they might do something to try and save them. But what’s the point? Keep your mind on the hideous ghastliness and horrific futility of everything that walks or crawls or flies or swims, and you can’t go wrong. Does that make you feel like giving up? Well, so it bloody well should.
Hi Simon. A great riposte to George Monbiot. He’s usually a man I respect and enjoy reading but to criticise the man who has informed us about the wonder of nature and made us enthusiastic conservationists was ludicrous.
Simon, what an absolute bloody ace you are! Any chance of bringing Mr Mombiot to a public debat to discus how he sees Nature and how he would protect it!
Sorry, but I totally disagree! We’re pootling about when there is a real risk of total extinction….that’s us humans as well as the natural world (cockroaches excluded, of course!). Unfortunately we won’t have 20 million years to recover…the cockroaches may!
Actually, as is often the case, the truth or rather accuracy, lies somewhere inbetween. There has been an almost unbelievable level of destruction of wildlife in the last 100 years, entirely because of man’s activities. George Monbiot is right I think to point out that Sir David ought perhaps to have been a bit more proactive in highlighting that fact. In the UK we have lost virtually half of ours in the last 40 years or so, and that from a low starting point. Ironically, it was Simon Barnes who first alerted me to shifting baseline syndrome. In other words, we’re losing our wildlife and nobody gives a shit because there’s apparently loads still left… nobody that can make the huge changes happen anyway…
Well, here’s the thing, there isn’t loads left….☹