Nineteen years ago, on this day, May 23rd, 2006 David Attenborough was interviewed on Ten O’Clock news about his acceptance of climate science, ahead of the showing of a two part documentary.
Are We Changing Planet Earth? and Can We Save Planet Earth? are two programmes that form a documentary about global warming, presented by David Attenborough. They were first broadcast in the United Kingdom on 24 May and 1 June 2006 respectively.
Part of a themed season by the BBC entitled “Climate Chaos”, the programmes were produced in conjunction with the Discovery Channel and the Open University.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was Attenborough had maintained a studied silence on the question of carbon dioxide build-up. This had been spotted by the likes of George Monbiot –
Since 1985, when I worked in the department that has made most of his programmes, I have pressed the BBC to reveal environmental realities, often with dismal results. In 1995 I spent several months with a producer, developing a novel and imaginative proposal for an environmental series. The producer returned from his meeting with the channel controller in a state of shock. “He just looked at the title and asked ‘Is this environment?’ I said yes. He said, ‘I’ve spent two years trying to get environment off this fucking channel. Why the fuck are you bringing me environment?’”
I later discovered that this response was typical. The controllers weren’t indifferent. They were actively hostile. If you ask me whether the BBC or ExxonMobil has done more to frustrate environmental action in this country, I would say the BBC.
We all knew that only one person had the power to break this dam. For decades David Attenborough, a former channel controller widely seen as the living embodiment of the BBC, has been able to make any programme he wants. So where, we kept asking, was he? At last, in 2000, he presented an environmental series: State of the Planet.
It was an interesting and watchable series, but it left us with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Only in the last few seconds of the final episode was there a hint that structural forces might be at play: “Real success can only come if there’s a change in our societies, in our economics and in our politics.” But what change? What economics? What politics? He had given us no clues.
David Attenborough has betrayed the living world he loves | George Monbiot | The Guardian
What I think we can learn from this is that we have been so poorly served by the mass media. But then, the mass media is not there to raise the awareness of the masses, now, is it?
What happened next
In 2017 I killed off David Attenborough in this article.
As of May 2025 Attenborough, at 99, is still going.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
References
Hudson, M. 2017. 2019: How we blew it again. Peace News,
Monbiot, G. 2016. Rare Specimen – George Monbiot
Also on this day:
May 23, 2000 – Deputy Prime Minister versus Greenhouse Trigger – All Our Yesterdays
May 23, 2012 – wicked problems and super-wicked problems all around…