Sir David Frederick Attenborough is a British broadcaster, biologist, natural historian, and writer. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Studios Natural History Unit, the nine nature documentary series forming the Life collection, a comprehensive survey of animal and plant life on Earth.
Human extinction is the hypothetical end of the human species, either by population decline due to extraneous natural causes, such as an asteroid impact or large-scale volcanism, or via anthropogenic destruction (self-extinction), for example by sub-replacement fertility.
Mark Lynas is a British author and journalist whose work is focused on environmentalism and climate change. He has written for the New Statesman, The Ecologist, Granta and Geographical magazines, and The Guardian and The Observer newspapers in the UK, as well as the New York Times and Washington Post in the United States; he also worked on and appeared in the film The Age of Stupid. He was born in Fiji, grew up in Peru, Spain and the United Kingdom and holds a degree in history and politics from the University of Edinburgh. He has published several books including Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (2007) and The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans (2011). Lynas is research and climate lead for the Alliance for Science and is co-founder of the pro-science environmental network RePlanet. Since 2009 he has been climate advisor to former president of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed, and he currently works to assist Nasheed with the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a group of the world's most climate-vulnerable 58 developing countries. He is a strategic advisor for the international ecomodernist NGO WePlanet. He has co-authored a number of peer-reviewed scientific publications, including a 2021 paper which found that the consensus on anthropogenic climate change in the scholarly literature now exceeds 99%.
A nature documentary or wildlife documentary is a genre of documentary film or series about animals, plants, or other non-human living creatures. Nature documentaries usually concentrate on video taken in the subject's natural habitat, but often including footage of trained and captive animals, too. Sometimes they are about wildlife or ecosystems in relationship to human beings. Such programmes are most frequently made for television, particularly for public broadcasting channels, but some are also made for the cinema. The proliferation of this genre occurred almost simultaneously alongside the production of similar television series which is distributed across the world.
State of the Planet is a three-part environmental documentary series, made by the BBC Natural History Unit, transmitted in November 2000. It is written and presented by David Attenborough, and produced by Rupert Barrington. It includes interviews with many leading scientists, such as Edward O. Wilson and Jared Diamond. Each of the programmes attempts to find answers to the potential ecological crisis that threatens the Earth.
Human overpopulation is the idea that human populations may become too large to be sustained by their environment or resources in the long term. The topic is usually discussed in the context of world population, though it may concern individual nations, regions, and cities.
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.
References to climate change in popular culture have existed since the late 20th century and increased in the 21st century. Climate change, its impacts, and related human-environment interactions have been featured in nonfiction books and documentaries, but also literature, film, music, television shows and video games.
Saving Planet Earth is a season of nature documentaries with a conservation theme, screened on BBC Television in 2007 to mark the 50th anniversary of its specialist factual department, the BBC Natural History Unit.
The following is a chronological list of television series and individual programmes in which Sir David Attenborough is credited as a writer, presenter, narrator, producer, interviewee, etc. In a career spanning eight decades, Attenborough's name has become synonymous with the natural history programmes produced by the BBC Natural History Unit.
Attenborough: 60 Years in the Wild is a three-part BBC documentary series chronicling the 60 years career making wildlife programmes of Sir David Attenborough. The first hour-long programme, titled "Life on Camera" was broadcast on Friday 16 November 2012 on BBC Two at 9pm. The second part, "Understanding the Natural World" and third and final part, "Our Fragile Planet" were broadcast on following Fridays, 23 and 30 November 2012.
Speculative evolution is a subgenre of science fiction and an artistic movement focused on hypothetical scenarios in the evolution of life, and a significant form of fictional biology. It is also known as speculative biology and it is referred to as speculative zoology in regards to hypothetical animals. Works incorporating speculative evolution may have entirely conceptual species that evolve on a planet other than Earth, or they may be an alternate history focused on an alternate evolution of terrestrial life. Speculative evolution is often considered hard science fiction because of its strong connection to and basis in science, particularly biology.
Our Planet is a British nature documentary series made for Netflix. The series is narrated by David Attenborough and produced by Silverback Films, led by Alastair Fothergill and Keith Scholey, who also created BBC documentary series Planet Earth, Frozen Planet and The Blue Planet, in collaboration with the conservation charity World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The soundtrack was composed by Steven Price.
Seven Worlds, One Planet is a television documentary series from the BBC Natural History Unit. The seven-part series, in which each episode focuses on one continent, debuted on 27 October 2019 and is narrated and presented by naturalist Sir David Attenborough. Over 1,500 people worked on the series, which was filmed over 1,794 days, with 92 shoots across 41 countries.
David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet is a 2020 British documentary film narrated by David Attenborough and produced and directed by Jonnie Hughes. The film acts as a "witness statement", through which Attenborough shares first-hand his concern for the current state of the planet due to humanity's impact on nature and his hopes for the future. It was released on Netflix on 4 October 2020, along with a companion book A Life on Our Planet.
Extinction: The Facts is a 2020 documentary film by the natural historian David Attenborough which aired on the BBC. It depicts the continuing sixth mass extinction, caused by humans, and the consequences of biodiversity loss and climate change. It also suggests positive action which can be taken to halt or reverse these effects. With a peak viewership of roughly 4.5 million on its premiere, the programme received positive critical reception.
A Perfect Planet is a 2021 five-part earth science series presented by David Attenborough. The first episode premiered on 3 January 2021 on BBC One. Filming took place over four years, across 31 countries, with crew navigating difficulties in extreme temperatures and remote locations. The editing process was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The series covers volcanoes, the sun, weather and oceans, with the final episode focusing on human impact on the environment. It received positive critical reception.
Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet is a 2021 documentary film directed by Jon Clay, and presented by David Attenborough and Johan Rockström.
Scenarios in which a global catastrophic risk creates harm have been widely discussed. Some sources of catastrophic risk are anthropogenic, such as global warming, environmental degradation, and nuclear war. Others are non-anthropogenic or natural, such as meteor impacts or supervolcanoes. The impact of these scenarios can vary widely, depending on the cause and the severity of the event, ranging from temporary economic disruption to human extinction. Many societal collapses have already happened throughout human history.
The Green Planet is a 2022 nature documentary series on plants and their relationship with animals, humans and the environment. It was produced by BBC Studios Natural History Unit and narrated and presented by David Attenborough.
