Sir David Attenborough hopes President Trump will ‘come round’ on climate change
The TV legend speaks out about how we have the planet's future in the palm of our hands as new masterpiece Blue Planet II hits our screens
Having brought us – and the world – some of the most groundbreaking wildlife series ever seen, Sir David Attenborough is never more at home than when he’s talking about the hobby that he’s turned into an award-winning 60-year career.
But when TV Magazine meets Sir David the day after the London premiere of Blue Planet II – which he attended with Prince William (“He said he thought it was wonderful”) – we were surprised to learn he’s not always quite at one with nature…
“I’m a hopelessly incompetent diver,” he frowns. “I started diving in 1954 and haven’t improved since! I once arrived at a shoot where they’d been preparing and found a big coral head.
"They said: ‘Why don’t you go about 40ft down and you can just swim around?’ I said: ‘40ft? I haven’t done it for five years.’ The cameraman, who’s been there for a week, says: ‘Go on’, and so you go down there and then bingo! Blow your eardrums.”
Fortunately for us, the naturalist continues to be an expert when it comes to presenting. But despite his extensive experience, he admits even he was awestruck by the gems the team discovered in the visually stunning seven-part follow-up to his 2001 series exploring the world’s oceans.
“In every episode there’s something I hadn’t seen before,” David reveals.
“When I look at the film my jaw drops. You see absolute wonders, like a big coral trout communicating and collaborating with an octopus – come on!
"And when I saw eels diving into what was a lake at the bottom of the sea, it takes a bit of time to get your mind around that sort of thing – how can there be a lake at the bottom of the sea? And then it explodes like a volcano!”
Since the original Blue Planet, advances in technology have made it possible for the team to capture even more incredible scenes on camera, including those featuring a type of ray that glows in the water.
“When we first heard about mobula rays bio-luminescing at night, the cameraman had seen it, squinting into the dark, but said: ‘I just can’t film it, there’s no camera sensitive enough,’” explains executive producer James Honeybourne.
“By the time we got to the end of the series the first prototypes were coming out and we were able to take some cameras out and try them.
“There’s also the megadome, which lets you see both above and under water at the same time. The tow-cams help us whizz along with dolphins and tuna, and there is new diving apparatus – ‘rebreathers’ – that allows us to not produce bubbles. It’s by sitting next to fish for literally hours at a time with no bubbles being made that they get totally relaxed and let you into their world.”
The team even managed to attach a camera to a killer whale, or orca.
“To put a camera on an orca is an extraordinary technical achievement,” exclaims David, clearly impressed.
“To incorporate it in the film in a way which didn’t beat your chest and say: ‘Look how clever we are’ just added to the skill with which we were able to put together a sequence. It’s an act of modesty which is not wholly typical of the BBC.”
It’s not only discoveries of the deep that are new to this series.
Having written the musical score for Planet Earth II last year, Oscar-winning film composer Hans Zimmer – whose other scores include The Lion King and Gladiator – penned the music for Blue Planet II, even collaborating with Radiohead on a song, (Ocean) Bloom, for a prequel film accompanying the series.
“I wasn’t familiar with Radiohead before as I don’t listen to pop music, I’m the wrong generation – I’m too old!” laughs David.
“I do a lot of movies but this is truly important,” says Hans. “Just to be invited into it is such an honour.
Watching it for the first time I felt totally overwhelmed. This is filmmaking at its best because you’re capable of changing the human relationship with the world.”
Aside from narrating an incredibly moving series, David is passionate in telling us how he hopes it will impact on viewers.
Negative effects on nature are addressed and plastic in the ocean is something he feels very strongly about.
“You can help by using less plastic,” he says.
“People write me letters and for some reason they put it in a plastic folder! I cannot imagine why you would want to put a letter in a plastic folder, it’s absolutely fatuous. And then they put it in a plastic envelope! What’s wrong with paper? We’re plastic mad, we don’t think about it.
“Some stores charge for plastic bags and that has had the effect of reducing them.
"You may think it’s a drop in the ocean, but you have to start somewhere. When science invented plastic in the 1920s, or a bit earlier, they spent a huge amount of ingenuity trying to make it indestructible and they were extremely proud of the fact.
"I remember being told: ‘Isn’t it wonderful? You’ve got this new material and it’s indestructible!’ And nobody said: ‘Yeah, but what happens when you don’t want to use it?’
“The consequence is that we now have hundreds of tonnes of plastic dumped in the sea. One of the scientific advances I wish to goodness would happen would be that some device could be put on the market which would destroy plastic without having terrible side effects. You would think that would be quite simple, wouldn’t you? At least I would.”
Of course, when it comes to looking after the planet, world leaders play a key role, so what does David think about US President Donald Trump’s attitude to the environment?
“A lot of us had been working for a long time for the series of talks that ended up in Paris [the Paris Climate Change talks in 2015]. Barack Obama and all the nations of the world were there for the first time ever,” he explains.
“We were all congratulating one another and thinking: ‘The world has changed.’ So it was a bit of a shock when the Presidential view changed.
“The whole consensus of the world population has now moved to accept the reality of climate change and to accept the responsibility and ways of dealing with it.
That movement will go on.
If America doesn’t join it’ll be a huge loss. But my belief is that America will come round to supporting it – Trump has now changed quite a bit and maybe he will go on changing. We’ll see what happens.
“We have a responsibility. For the first time in 500 million years, one species has the future in the palm of its hands. I just hope it realises that is the case.”
NEW! Blue Planet II Sunday 8pm BBC1