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.
I am running into a new year and the old years blow back like a wind that I catch in my hair like strong fingers like all my old promises and it will be hard to let go of what I said to myself about myself when I was sixteen and twenty-six and thirty-six but I am running into a new year and I beg what i love and I leave to forgive me.
For we have always understood that when times change, so must we, that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges, that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.
I hope something happens. I'm restless as the devil and have a horror of getting fat or falling in love and growing domestic.
When we, as a nation, put our minds to something, when we truly choose to care about something, change always happens.
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.
Now, having seen the differences between where you are and where you want to be, begin to change-consciously change-your thoughts, words, and actions to match your grandest vision.
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