A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future

Attenborough emphasizes that humanity must move beyond a mindset of perpetual growth and into a mindset that values sustainability. The first steps are to slow and eventually to halt the greenhouse gas effect that creates global warming; this, in turn, will allow biodiversity to flourish yet again, rebalancing the Earth. He recounts a list of actionable steps in which humanity can accomplish this: end dependence on fertilizers and other harmful environmental chemicals; stop intruding on wildlands with farmland; rethink the wasteful lifestyles of the wealthiest humans; and work to create a more equitable world, in terms of access to resources.

He returns to the problems of the Great Acceleration, which has led to “the Great Decline of the living world” (131). Rather than put emphasis on eternal growth, Attenborough argues, humanity should look toward building economic and environmental stability via the lens of “the three Ps”: this is a theory of the markets, introduced by a newly emerging group of environmental economists, that would “change the system so that markets around the world benefit not just profits, but people and the planet too” (131). This marks the shift to “green growth” rather than simple material growth (131). He points out that the Great Acceleration was made possible by leaps in technological innovations over time—among them “the advent of water power”; “our adoption of fossil fuels and steam power”; the “electrification of the early twentieth century”; and “the digital revolution” (132)—so it is possible to innovate for the betterment of humanity.