I’ve been losing sleep over Netflix’s David Attenborough-narrated series, Our Planet. As we have come to expect, the stories it tells of the wonders of the natural world are astonishing. Planet Earth–our planet–is more finely-tuned and intricately-woven together than anything we could possibly make up ourselves.
My sleep loss, however, is not the result of watching the revealing visuals of nature in action. I am losing sleep because this series intentionally faces the changes being wrought in the natural world as a result of human numbers and activities, particularly in the form of climate change.
Beautiful pictures tell some of that tragic story…the deathly pale coral reefs, the rain forests destroyed to make way for coffee plantations, and so on. Statistics about declines in numbers of fish and of Africa’s great beasts and the like tell the story in another way.
Among the most disturbing images to me were those of walruses driven by melting ice to a small, rocky piece of land. According to Attenborough, in order to escape overcrowding there, a number of them somehow climbed up the steep cliffs framing the coastline. When those walruses tried to move back down to the sea, they lost their footing and tumbled over and down those very same cliffs. Their enormous bodies bounced helplessly from one rocky outcropping to the one below it until they finally thudded among their kin huddled at the cliff base.
Human compassion for walruses does not come easily, but when I watched how horribly those lives ended as a result of our human impact upon our shared environment, I felt sorrow, frustration, and anger. I wasn't sure I wanted to watch any more of Our Planet, but I have forced myself to do so. The hour elicits a wide range of my emotions.
It is hard to believe that there are still people–some of them powerful and influential–who continue to close their eyes to the reality of human-caused climate change. New evidence of it in fires and floods comes in almost daily, as well as new ideas on how we might limit it, if not stop it altogether.
But our Secretary of State celebrates the rapid melting of the Arctic ice cap because of the commercial opportunities it will open up. No thought of the cost, either to nature itself or to us, who are as dependent upon nature as are walruses. You and I can do what we can, and surely more than we are now doing individually, but what we need is competent national and international leadership.
“The time is long passed,” the tumbling walrus cries, “to talk of climate change and to take action to address it…before it’s too late for you and your kind.”
