British naturalist Sir David Attenborough has said the “moment of crisis” has come in the fight against climate change, warning that governments’ targets for decades in the future were not enough to save the planet.
He called on China in particular to reduce its carbon emissions, saying that he thought other countries would follow if China set a lead.
Reuters Newsagency reports that noting the destruction being caused by Australia’s current wave of bushfires, Sir David criticised Australia’s conservative Liberal-National government’s approach to climate change.
He said the government’s support for coal mines showed the world it did not care about the environment.
“As I speak, south-east Australia is on fire. Why? Because the temperatures of the Earth are increasing,” the 93-year-old told the BBC in an interview.
Reuters reports he said it was “palpable nonsense” for some politicians and commentators to suggest that the Australian fires were nothing to do with the world becoming warmer.
“We know perfectly well,” he said, that human activity is behind the heating of the planet.
“The moment of crisis has come, we can no longer prevaricate,” said Sir David, who raised public awareness around the world of the danger of plastic pollution in oceans with his television series Blue Planet II.
“We have been putting things off year after year, raising targets and saying: ‘Oh well if we do it within the next 20 years’.
“This is an urgent problem that has to be solved, and what is more is that we know how to do it, that’s the paradoxical thing, that we are refusing to take steps that we know have to be taken.”
“We have to realise that this is not playing games,” Sir David said.
“This is not just having a nice little debate, arguments and then coming away with a compromise.
“This is an urgent problem that has to be solved and, what’s more, we know how to do it, that’s the paradoxical thing, that we’re refusing to take steps that we know have to be taken.”
Reuters reports Australia’s Liberal-National Prime Minister Scott Morrison defended the country’s position and said this week the country was improving its resilience and responding “to the reality of the environment in which we live”.
Sir David’s interview was part of a BBC’s drive to increase coverage of climate change ahead of a United Nations conference on climate change, COP 26, in Glasgow in November 2020.
Ahead of that gathering, governments worldwide are coming under pressure to toughen their targets for cutting emissions.
That’s because their current pledges do not go nearly far enough.
Last year, Britain’s Prince William launched a multi-million-pound prize to find answers to Earth’s biggest environmental problems, saying the planet was now at a tipping point.
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One Response
With every aspect of our governments including staff and ministries linked and controlled by the coal industry, as well as our concentrated media with coal interests it is very difficult. Anyone who blows the whistle gets closed down or funding cuts like the ABC and Climate Council. No democracy in Australia just coal industry dictatorship.