How could I look my grandchildren in the eye and say I knew what was happening to the world and did nothing.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the moral obligation to act against global issues for future generations' sake.
David Attenborough expresses a profound sense of responsibility regarding environmental and societal challenges. He suggests that inaction in the face of these issues would lead to personal shame, particularly when confronted by the future generations, highlighting the importance of taking action to ensure a better world for our grandchildren and beyond.
In practice
In a speech at a climate change conference.
I don't think we are going to become extinct. We're very clever and extremely resourceful - and we will find ways of preserving ourselves, of that I'm sure. But whether our lives will be as rich as they are now is another question.
I'm against this huge globalisation on the basis of economic advantage.
I would be absolutely astounded if population growth and industrialisation and all the stuff we are pumping into the atmosphere hadn't changed the climatic balance. Of course it has. There is no valid argument for denial.
There's a small worm called Loa Loa Filariasis. This parasite can survive in one environment exclusively- namely, underneath the skin and inside the eyes of human beings. Children and the elderly in tropical regions (usually the poorest) are the most widely affected. A painful, slow death is virtually certain. The worm can actually live in the host for 17 years before the host finally dies.
The fundamental issue is the moral issue.
It is vital that there is a narrator figure whom people believe. That's why I never do commercials. If I started saying that margarine was the same as motherhood, people would think I was a liar.
The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself.
We need to be weapons of mass construction, weapons of mass love. It's not enough just to change the system. We need to change ourselves.
People can change their own lives, provided they have the right kind of institutional support. They're not asking for charity, charity is no solution to poverty. Poverty is the creation of opportunities like everybody else has, not the poor people, so bring them to the poor people, so that they can change their lives.
When you're really trying to make serious change, you don't want people to get caught up in emotion because change isn't emotion. Because change isn't emotion. Its real work and organization and strategy - that's just the truth of it. I mean, you pull people in with inspiration, but then you have to roll up your sleeves and you've got to make sacrifices and you have got to have structure.
From the pain come the dream_x000D_ From the dream come the vision_x000D_ From the vision come the people_x000D_ From the people come the power_x000D_ From this power come the change.
President Kennedy's election was such an enlargement. It expanded religious freedom to include the highest office in the land. President Kennedy's administration was such an enlargement. It advanced the day when the bars of intolerance against all minority groups will be lifted, not only for the presidency, but for all aspects of our national life.
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