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AGUILAR - Module 04 Extension - Documentary Film (Bonus)

1) David Attenborough's documentary "A Life on Our Planet" details the environmental degradation that has occurred over his 60-year career in wildlife filmmaking. Through footage from around the world, it illustrates how human activity has depleted oceans, rainforests, and biodiversity. 2) The film instills both fear about the future consequences of continued environmental damage, as well as hope that restoration is still possible if humanity changes its actions. It highlights areas that have been able to recover ecosystems when left alone by humans. 3) Attenborough argues that humans must curb over-farming, deforestation, and domination of nature to avoid making the planet uninhabitable. However, the film

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Mykie Ordoñez
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62 views2 pages

AGUILAR - Module 04 Extension - Documentary Film (Bonus)

1) David Attenborough's documentary "A Life on Our Planet" details the environmental degradation that has occurred over his 60-year career in wildlife filmmaking. Through footage from around the world, it illustrates how human activity has depleted oceans, rainforests, and biodiversity. 2) The film instills both fear about the future consequences of continued environmental damage, as well as hope that restoration is still possible if humanity changes its actions. It highlights areas that have been able to recover ecosystems when left alone by humans. 3) Attenborough argues that humans must curb over-farming, deforestation, and domination of nature to avoid making the planet uninhabitable. However, the film

Uploaded by

Mykie Ordoñez
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Mykie O.

Aguilar Env Sci 1


2019-03451 Section WFX

‘David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet’ Reaction Paper:


Fear and Hope

His witness statement. That is what David Attenborough called this documentary
for the environment. The movie followed his 60-year career, detailing how the planet's
wellbeing has plummeted steeply in his lifetime. Through the course of the
documentary, it struck something deep: fear and hope. It made me realize that if this is
what we fear, then what do we hope for?
A Life on Our Planet is almost objectively pure as a piece of environmental
activism. It started by showing the territory around the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl,
a once buzzing zone that was evacuated after human error rendered it uninhabitable.
Much later did it reveal that the territory, with its vacant vacuum, had become a lush
wildlife paradise. It was almost impossible for me to imagine that it really happened. At
that moment I felt like nature indeed found its way to places that humans no wanted to
deal with. It was astonishing. However, it started to transition into something disturbing.
Attenborough’s retrospective was followed by surprising photographs of nature. Vibrant
marine reefs with photos of massive gutted fish, frozen and piled for sale, to highlight
the emptying of oceans were shown. The depletion of rainforests, seen by the drastic
cutoff between thriving vegetation and rows of oil palms planted for profit, was similarly
disturbing. It showed how the unwilling degradation of nature by humans would leave
the planet utterly degraded and sterile, uninhabitable for millions of people, and
introduce collapsing populations of biodiversity. It also made grim predictions for the
future if civilization persists on its present course. This is where fear dominated me. I
was not only disturbed, I was terrified of what might happen in the future. At that
moment, I had doubts if we still are doing the right thing ​— ​spoiling ourselves with the
life brought by technology at the expense of our nature’s life.
This dramatic transition is occurring in slow motion from a human view, and
Attenborough suggested that if we could zoom back far enough to understand the
collapse of our planet as the Chernobyl-like meltdown that it is, it would feel more
immediate to us. As he spoke about some of the very diverse ways that mankind is
replacing the wild with the tame, he was highly critical of over-farming, deforestation,
and the overall imperialism of humanity over a planet that it has driven to extinction.
Terrifyingly, he wandered from crisis to crisis. With that, he left a question that made me
wonder even more ​— Humans can make a wild into tame, but are we tame?
“There was nothing else to stop us until we stop ourselves.”, he mumbled these
as he continued to show how the Earth is slowly decaying in our hands. However, it is
not ​yet t​ oo late. He showed some parts of the world that are currently making efforts to
restore their ecosystem that made me realize that this is what we hope for. A better
world — not only for us but also for the next generations. All hope is not lost, he
assures. We still have time to avoid the harm we have made to the world and even
undo it. I realized that my question from the beginning of the film does not stop with
what our hopes are, it continues on with what we should do to make it happen. As the
film proposes some fairly simple and realistic solutions, I thought that I must do
something to contribute. There was this need for me to spread awareness, to change
my lifestyle little by little, and to make a small but significant difference. We need to
make an act of urgency because we do not have all the time in the world to reverse our
damages.
The film was an eye-opener. It was moving and persuasive. It is something that I
wanted the whole world before it is too late. ​Yes, the damage is big, but we still have the
resources and skills to return our world to its former glory, we need to reexamine our
relationship with nature, collaborating with it instead of against it. Life cycles go on and if
we make the right decisions and actions, fear and hope would not be in the same room
anymore.

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