People talk about doom-laden scenarios happening in the future: they are happening in Africa now. You can see it perfectly clearly. Periodic famines are due to too many people living on land that can't sustain them.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the urgent environmental and humanitarian crises occurring in Africa as a result of overpopulation and unsustainable land use.
David Attenborough emphasizes the dire situation faced by many in Africa, where the impacts of climate change and overpopulation are leading to significant challenges such as famine. He urges a recognition of these existing crises rather than a distant, hypothetical future, pointing out that the problems we fear may arise are already present and affecting lives today.
In practice
In a speech addressing climate change, one could use this quote to highlight the urgency of the situation in Africa.
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.
Were I a cloud I'd gather My skirts up in the air, And fly well know whither, And rest I well know where.
Then came the gadgeteer, otherwise known as the sporting-goods dealer. He has draped the American outdoorsman with an infinity of contraptions, all offered as aids to self-reliance, hardihood, woodcraft, or marksmanship, but too often functioning as substitutes for them. Gadgets fill the pockets, they dangle from neck and belt. The overflow fills the auto-trunk and also the trailer. Each item of outdoor equipment grows lighter and often better, but the aggregate poundage becomes tonnage.
I must go down to the sea again For the call of the running tide It's a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied.
We need to send a message to Congress and the president that we want them to take the actions that are needed to preserve climate for young people and future generations and all life on the planet.
We live on a finite planet. We have finite resources, and we're running out of good, arable land.
But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean.
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